The eye mask slipped from her face, and as it fell, the dim blue light of the Haven's kitchen flooded her vision, her blue eyes blinking, adjusting, until they locked onto a reflection in a mirror which was hung on the wall adjacent to the counter, clear enough to reveal her truth.
The face staring back wasn't the composed queen she'd crafted, the unyielding warrior who'd burned through life with fire and defiance. It was something else—erotic, ecstatic, a mess of raw emotion.
Tears streaked her cheeks, pooling at the corners of her parted lips, which trembled with each breath.
Her eyes, wide and glassy, shimmered with a mix of pleasure and pain, her brows arched in a way that screamed surrender, her tongue peeking faintly as if caught mid-moan— vulnerable, unguarded.
She looked like a stranger, yet hauntingly familiar, a ghost of the girl she'd been before the walls, before the mask, before the world taught her to hide.
