But when Hawke—Casteel—had seen the pale pink, jagged streak of skin that started below my hairline and sliced across the temple, ending at my nose, and the other that was shorter and higher, cutting across my forehead through my eyebrow, he had said that both halves were as beautiful as the whole. I’d believed him then. And I’d felt beautiful for the first time in my life, something that had also been forbidden to me. And gods help me, but I still believed him.
