More than it seemed, Entreri thought. Wasn't everything?

He had slept soundly after his encounter with Calihye the previous night. Too soundly? Calihye could have killed him, he realized, and the thought flickered through his mind that perhaps the woman was using her charms on him. She had put him into more vulnerable a position than he had ever known.

No, he assured himself. Her feelings for me are genuine. This is no game.

Except, he noted, wouldn't that have been Calihye's strategy, to put him so completely off his guard that she could risk an attack upon him?

Entreri dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his bleary eyes. He shook his head as he did, and was glad that his hands covered his helpless chuckle. He would drive himself mad with such thoughts.

"Are you coming with me, then?" Calihye asked, drawing him from his reverie.

He lifted his head and looked at her again as she stood by the rack. She was still nude, though his eyes did not roam her body, but rather settled upon her face. By all measures, Calihye had once been a strikingly beautiful woman, with startling eyes that sometimes showed reflections of gray amidst their blue. At other times, depending on the background—the lighting, her clothing—those eyes glowed an exquisite shade of medium blue, and either way they always seemed striking because of their contrast with her raven-dark hair. Her face was symmetrical, her bone structure impeccable.

But that scar. It ran across her right cheek to her nose, then down through her lips to the middle of her chin. It was an angry scar, often inflamed and red. Calihye hid behind it, Entreri knew, as if in denial of her feminine beauty.

When she flashed her smile, though, so mischievous and dangerous, Entreri hardly noticed the tear in her lips. To Artemis Entreri, she remained beautiful, and other than to consider her motivations for keeping the scar and the deeper meaning it seemed to hold to her, he hardly noticed it. It did not detract in the least for him, so lost was he in the mysteries that simmered in her eyes. She shook her head and her thick hair rolled over her shoulders, and Entreri wanted to leap over and bury his face in that warm, soft mane.