Flames illuminated everything around him. All he could see, however, was the way her eyes crinkled at the edges when she smiled at him. How she had seen straight through all of his anger and instead trusted that he wasn’t a monster. No matter how surly he’d been, no matter how much he’d tried to make her hate him. Anya had looked at him with affection and love from the beginning. Not as a pet or some strange creature from the sea. But as a man who had seen too much in life, and she knew what that felt like.
