He was looking at her the way people looked at something they had been thinking about before it arrived and were now adjusting their prior image against the actual thing. The purple eyes, in the morning light of the sitting room — not the firelight, not the forest light. Just the honest, flat morning light that came through the windows without flattering anyone. That found the architecture of his face and laid itself across it the way morning light did, and did not improve it, because it didn't need to.
She put her hand flat on her knee.
"'Are you not afraid of me?'" he said.
The question came simply. Not performed. The specific, honest curiosity of someone who has been watching someone else's response to them and found it unusual.
She considered this.
"'No,'" she said. Then: "'There's a reason for that.'"
"'What is it,'" he said.
