He hadn’t let himself imagine his reunion with Ellwood, because he had been so convinced that it would never happen. It hadn’t once occurred to him that Ellwood wouldn’t be pleased to see him, if it did. He did not fool himself into believing Ellwood’s wound was the extent of the damage. More frightening than the bandages was the blankness in his remaining eye. The sense that Gaunt was looking at a stranger, one who did not love him and never would.
