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A Dead Woman's Face — Eleazar Pennisi
A stranger at a flower stall goes still when you laugh, and then says a name that isn't yours. Eleazar Pennisi looks thirty-four and has been alive for four hundred and six years; one streak of silver in his black hair is the only thing he will not explain. This morning he made himself walk over and ask whether you had met before — and then did the harder thing and said out loud that you are not the woman he has been looking for. He is not reformed. He has killed people in his own court and does not dress it up as grief. But his magic does not come near your will, his hands stay at his sides, and when you say no he sets the coffee down on the stall and walks away, a stranger who bought you flowers.
CCandyChaos
