Page 39 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

I wrung out the wash cloth and held it up to my cheek.

I met my own eyes in the mirror and this time I did it without flinching. What ever was left behind after I wiped the goop away didn’t matter. Whether it worked or not, it didn’t matter. Good or bad, my face was my face and unless I had some plastic surgery then I was stuck with it.

And, in the end, it was superficial and, therefore, didn’t matter. I wouldnotbe one ofthosegirls and I would not be like Vivian. She would care about something like having a wicked looking scar on her face.

This time, I did flinch. Would there ever come a time where thoughts of that woman wouldn’t randomly pop up in my head? I sure hoped so. I’d had more than enough of that woman, even more so now after having read the majority of the letters in the box. I was starting to hate her.

I shook it off and, in a rush, pressed the wash cloth to my cheek.

I felt no pain.

How weird was that? I should have felt some kind of pain. There simply wasn’t any.

A thought slid through my mind, something Julian had said to me in the dining room. When he made me drink that cup of water he made me think about healing and being filled up with energy.

Weird.

Had it actually worked? I did feel like I had an absurd amount of energy for just having woken up from a nap. In all honesty, I couldn’t remember when the last time I felt this good was. Probably not ever.

Curious, I swiped at my cheek with the wash cloth. There was still no pain. I ran it across where the raised line of stitches was and felt absolutely nothing. I pressed the wash cloth flat against my cheek and my eyes widened in surprise. The swelling was completely gone. The tightness was gone.

Quickly, almost frantically, I pulled the cloth away from my face. There was still some white crusted to my face, but the stitches were plain to see.

The redness had been completely washed away, replaced by a white line tinged with the lightest of pink colors around the edges. The vicious line hadn’t gotten any shorter, it still curved around my cheek. I didn’t think there would be any cure for that save for a time machine. But it was thinner, a lot thinner. It was only raised a tiny bit. Makeup would take the color away, but the line would always be visible.

The stitches stuck out, looking out of place and awkward on my face. They were meant to be there to hold my torn face together. Now there was nothing for them to hold together and what they had originally been holding together had shrunk down considerably. The stitches had to go, I didn’t care what Julian had said about leaving them in until they dissolved. I had no desire to walk around with those suckers stuck in my face when I no longer needed them in there. They looked stupid and drew attention to the freshly healed scar.

I tore my eyes away from my reflection in the mirror. It was hard to do because Julian truly was something special and I was blown away by the things he was capable of. He’d used plants and his magic to heal my face and I was amazed by him and left in awe. The scar had been unavoidable, but I had honestly thought that when it healed naturally it would look a whole hell of a lot worse than this.

This I could live with. Easily.

Warmth spread through my chest as I filled up with gratitude towards Julian. I thought Quinton could live with this as well. Quinton’s reaction to my face had really bothered me, and Julian had just helped relieve some of the stress of that situation. If Quinton could look at my face and feel a lot less guilty, then I could most certainly be happy with it.

As quietly as I could, so as not to bang around and make a lot of noise that would wake up Dash, I pulled open drawer after drawer until I came up with what I was looking for. I found a pair of tiny scissors that would normally come with a sewing kit and some tweezers. I laid them out on the counter beside the sink.

I rewet the wash cloth, rinsing out the white goop already smeared on it. When it looked relatively clean again, I used it to scrub off the rest of the white stuff on my face. Once it was all off of my face, I moved across the room to the storage closet. I opened the door and dropped the wash cloth down into the hamper on the floor in there that had a couple of dirty towels at the bottom of it.

I would have to make a point to remember to wash the dirty laundry in there if I was going to add to it. Dash didn’t need to wash my dirty clothes. And I didn’t even mean that because he was injured. I was jobless with no prospects in sight because I hadn’t had the time to go looking for them. I was essentially a high school dropout and I had zero plans on ever returning. Hell, I hadn’t even looked into what it would take to get my GED yet. But I knew simply having my GED and that being the extent of my education wouldn’t get me very far in life.

I was jobless, penniless if you didn’t count Marcus’s money (And I wasn’t counting Marcus’s money), and I was now living with Dash rent free. I knew if I tried to offer him money he wouldn’t take it. None of them would take my money for any reason. So, no way would I allow Dash to do my laundry on top of all of that other bs.

I closed the closet door and moved back to the countertop. I picked up the little scissors and lifted them up to my face, up to my cheek. I gently snipped along the line, cutting away at the stitches as I went.

When I had snipped them all down the center, I laid the awkward little scissors back down on the countertop. I picked up the tweezers and went to work pulling the stitches out of my face. Each one I dropped into the small trash can under the sink.

When it was all said and done, I looked back at myself in the mirror and couldn’t stop the corner of my lips from tipping up.

Not bad.

The scar was obviously noticeable and always would be. But only because of it’s placement and it could have been a whole hell of a lot worse.

It made the big green eyes in my head look a lot less haunted. Instead, there was a hardness to them that was new to me. No more demons playing at the front for all to see. There was a guard in place now, something that made me look a whole lot older than I was. At the same time, it made me look a lot less fragile.

I couldn’t help the smile that bloomed to life on my face. It was big and happy.

A normal person wouldn’t have been so damned happy to learn they’d developed a layer of hardness around them, but I didn’t care about all that.

Fuck normal.

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