Near a wild lilac tree, a man touched the petals of one blossom. His hair was the shade of tilled soil before planting and was shorn on the sides with black tattooed runes on his scalp. The ridge of his hair was braided down his neck to his shoulders. A sharp apprehension clung to my heart. I didn’t know him. Over one side of his face was a black mask. A shape fitted to the ridges of his cheekbones, half the slope of his nose, until it ended down one half of his face. The facemask hid one brow and his left profile, but it didn’t cover his eyes. Whatever scars and pain the stitching on the
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