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My stomach turns.

Somewhere in Addingham, an old woman might be lying in bed with her family gathered around her, or a child whose mother has spent the night praying for a fever to break. And now I'm supposed to seek them out, stand beside their beds and take the very thing I've devoted my life to preserving. I know Iscairn doesn't kill them. But having to do it myself, to feel somebody else's life pass into me because my own body can no longer manage without it…

“No,” I say, shaking my head as I look up at him. “No, absolutely not. I know I'll have to do it eventually, but I'm not ready for that. Not yet.”

Iscairn stands beside the stool, watching me through the amber lenses of his mask before reaching up to remove his hat. A thick fall of black hair tumbles well past his shoulders, glossy even in the miserable candlelight. It's quite beautiful, actually, though several strands have become caught beneath the leather ties of his mask, and he has to work them free as he loosens the knots hidden beneath his hair. Once the ties come loose, he carefully lifts the mask away and sets it aside.

I've spent weeks beside this man, growing rather more fond of his company than I ever intended. And now he's standing before me without the smoke pouring from his skin, without the darkness of the crypt obscuring half his face, and⁠—

Hang on.

I frown.

Grey eyes?

I squint up at him, trying to make sense of the pale grey irises looking back at me. I distinctly remember his eyes being black from corner to corner, without so much as a scrap of white to be seen.

The smallest of smiles pulls at his lips. “A second membrane draws across our eyes when we look for a soul, or when we are under considerable strain. It turns them black. It passes once we are sufficiently recovered.”

I stare at him, suddenly considerably less interested in how handsome he is. “You mean to tell me my eyes are going to do that?”

“On occasion, yes.”

“Well, I don't want that!” I protest. “I've only just got used to having black fingers. I hardly need my eyes joining in!”

He cocks his head. “Breathe, Ophelia.”

“I don't bloody need to!”

“No,” he agrees, crossing the little room towards me. “But I think you might find it helps.”

He takes my hands in his and lowers himself onto the mattress beside me, making the old rope frame creak beneath our combined weight. His thumbs move gently over my knuckles, and despite myself, I draw a long breath through my nose.

Then another.

It's ridiculous, really, to be reminded how to breathe when I no longer need to, but there's something comforting about the familiar rise and fall of my chest. I let the air out slowly, my attention settling on Iscairn as he sits beside me, his long black hair falling loose over his shoulders.

Much like his hands, his face is littered with small scars, too.

I lift one hand from his and gently catch his chin, turning his face towards the candlelight for a better look. There's a thin, pale line crossing the bridge of his nose, faint and silvered, and another near his temple, partly concealed beneath the long black hair falling across his forehead. I brush the strands aside with my fingers and find a third little mark high on his cheek, no longer than the width of my fingernail.

When I turn his head the other way, however, I discover a much less delicate scar following the edge of his jaw. It's deeper than the others, the skin slightly puckered where the wound must once have been pulled together, and it disappears beneath his collar.

I run my thumb lightly along its edge, wondering what on earth could have left such a mark.

“Unfair,” I murmur.

“What is?”

“That you can be three hundred years old and still look this bloody good.” I tilt his chin a little higher, examining him with a frown. “I'm thirty-one, and I've already got more wrinkles than Widow Pike.”

His head tips back ever so slightly, and a deep, rich chuckle rumbles from his chest. I've heard him laugh before, usually at my expense, but never quite like this. Without the mask to muffle it, I hear every bit of it, and the smile that spreads across his face is so wonderfully unguarded that I can't help grinning along with him.

His long fingers close around the back of my hand where it rests against his cheek, holding it there even after his laughter has faded.

“Would you allow me to do something, Ophelia Harrow?”

“Depends what it is,” I murmur.