tailor.

Eliana took the package and gave the messenger three silver coins. The pale-skinned man wore the plain brown tunic of an apprentice, and at first glance looked as ordinary as anyone. But Eliana knew at once that this man was no tailor's apprentice.

She thanked him with a silent nod and returned to her bedroom. From her window, she watched him walk down the street, crowded with Garden Quarter shoppers.

He walked almost perfectly. But Eliana had learned to watch for a certain stiffness in the way adatrox moved—every so often, a tiny, unnatural tic accompanying shifts in direction. A slight dimness in the eyes, delayed movements of the mouth, the brow. The subtler parts of the face that told you what the person inside was thinking.

It was as thoughhave to lie. Or flee. Or be found out.

But found out for what? Was she one of them? Whatever Lord Morbrae was—whatever strangeness gave him his liquid black eyes, the gaunt hunger of his cheeks, the ability to repair a slit throat and walk away whole—was Eliana also such a creature?

A wave of disgust swelled in her throat.

I don't have black eyes.

I have eaten, and I have had lovers. My hunger was sated, and the loving felt good and always has.

But...

But my body was covered with burns. And now, it is not.

She had always known that her body's ability to heal itself faster and more thoroughly than anyone else's was...unusual, to say the least. Impossible and unthinkable. She had, however, always explained it away when she lay awake