“I dare you to look her in the eyes!” Unbidden voices bubbled from the darkest corner of my memories. “Look the lorn in the eye and every one you love will die!” The taunting rhymes from other children, and the scorn of their parents who quietly laughed along with them. Years of rejection and ostracism carved into my thoughts with sharp-edged tongues. Zevander looked at me as if I were something more than the disparaging word that’d been hammered into me since I was found by the edge of the woods: unwanted. Lorn. He looked at me as if I was worthy of being seen.
