Three hundred years she’s had to learn the color of his moods. She knows them all by now, the meaning of every shade, knows his temper, wants, and thoughts, just by studying those eyes. She marvels, that in the same amount of time, he never learned to read her own. Or perhaps he saw only what he expected: a woman’s anger, and her need, her fear and hope and lust, all the simpler, more transparent things. But he never learned to read her cunning, or her cleverness, never learned to read the nuances of her actions, the subtle rhythms of her speech.
