Crimson awoke in the arms of the cloaked stranger at dawn. She was used to taking the first watch of the morning and came awake automatically. It was gray and grim in the greenhouse, but Crimson got a better look at the man she had fallen completely in love with the night before. He still wore his black mask, just as she still wore hers. Otherwise, he was as handsome as she had fantasized, but older than she expected. He was in his mid-twenties, maybe older, while she still stood at the beginning of adulthood.

  The sudden knowledge embarrassed her. What right did she have to fall in love with a man who was actually a man? And just as suddenly as her discomfort had come, it multiplied by dozens. What if he saw her eyes? What if he was afraid of her? After their courageous promises to each other the night before about love and death, she suddenly feared that she couldn’t bear it if he saw her eyes and withdrew everything he had said.

  There wasn’t much for Crimson to gather up. They had not endangered her virtue when they fell in love the night before. So, she knelt beside him, kissed the tips of each of his fingers, before rising and turning to leave.

  “You’re leaving without saying goodbye?” he said.

  Her back was to him, and she didn’t dare to turn around. “Goodbye,” she whispered.

  “Aren’t you going to see me again? What’s so different this morning that wasn’t bothering you last night?”

  “Nothing. I’ll meet you tonight, here, with my mask on if you want to meet me.”

  “I do,” he said firmly.

  “Then I’ll be here.” She left without turning.

  “Daylight makes her chilly,” she heard him whisper behind her as she skipped down the garden lane.

  He didn’t say her name.

  He didn’t know her name.

  Crimson changed out of her cheap dress in the barracks and then hustled to the western watchtower. It didn’t matter so much that she was late. As a matter of fact, the soldiers on guard were delighted, since they were the same soldiers who tried to be her fairy godfathers the night before.

  “Did you meet a man?” one asked.

  “Yes,” she said sweetly, giving them what they wanted with bravado.

  “Did he kiss you up against a wall?” another pressed.

  She nodded.

  “Did he kiss your neck? Tell us he kissed your neck!” a third begged.

  She nodded.

  “Did he leave any marks?”

  Crimson put an alarmed hand to her throat. “He can leave marks?”

  They nodded. “If he gets too into it and kisses you too hard. Sometimes girls leave them, too.”

  “Well, did he?” she asked, stretching out her bare throat.

  When the soldiers couldn’t stop giggling, she supposed that her masked man had left the marks the soldiers were so eager to see.

  “Are you going to meet him again?”

  She nodded.

  Then came the question on everyone’s mind. “Who is he? Do we know him?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t have the little twelve midnight unmasking ritual.”

  “I don’t like this,” one of the soldiers said, interrupting the merrymaking. His name was Kai, and he was absolutely not in love with Crimson.

  “Why?” she wondered, brought down a little by Kai’s tone.

  “If he’s not a soldier, then he’s just some sissy man with no muscles, no strength. Why does he deserve to be with you? There’s no way he’s good enough.”

  “What about it, Crimson?” another soldier named Len asked. “Were his muscles up to scratch?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “He wasn’t all bones, and he did not have the fine kind of muscles my grandfather has,” she said. Her grandfather was a blacksmith, and the comment was intended to irritate the soldiers, and it did, since he was not a soldier, and he had bigger muscles than all of them.

  “Nobody has muscles like those,” Len said with a grin, defying his brethren.

  “So, he doesn’t know who you are either?” Kai continued.

  “I tried to avoid the unmasking. I don’t think he noticed my eyes,” she said wistfully before saying forcefully, “and I don’t want him to. Won’t it all be over if he sees my eyes?”

  The soldiers looked in different directions, avoiding her gaze.

  Crimson didn’t pursue the question further, but turned to look at the area of field and forest they were supposed to be watching. She heard several sets of steps head down the ladder. Some were going for breakfast, and some were going to bed.

  Len, a soldier and a special friend to Crimson, leaned against the rampart next to her and whispered, “Maybe it won’t go that way.”

  “Are you saying that he might be able to overcome the horror of my gorgon-like gaze in order to love me once he discovers the beauty of who I really am inside?”

  “I’m saying that if you were blindfolded and were always destined to keep your eyes covered, there is no man in the world who wouldn’t find it a pleasure to love you.”

  Len had been better at hiding his cowardice when the force of Crimson’s gaze was directed toward him, but that didn’t mean that he was in any way confessing some sort of love for Crimson. He was already wrecked for having stared into her eyes that spoke of hellfire. Yet, even with that knowledge, he didn’t view her as a monster. It was a sweet compliment, which made Crimson find a way to suck the sweetness out of it without tasting it for herself.

  “Are you saying I should keep my eyes covered? I should choose to hide half of myself because half of me is lovable, and the other half is not? I should become half a person?”

  Len shrugged. “I’m saying that maybe you were made this way for a reason. No one has any clue why those fairies cursed you, and you alone. If you had been left to grow the way you were supposed to grow with blue eyes, I would have married you, and you would be destined to lead a very small life here.”

  Crimson couldn’t stand to hear what he was saying. She knew it was true. It wasn’t just true for Len, but true for most of the other men her father had trained. It didn’t hurt her that she couldn’t be Len’s wife. He was a gentleman (for a soldier), and what he said was completely true. Because of what happened to her, she could never live like other women. That was fine. She didn’t want to live like them. What hurt the most was that the objections Len had toward her would probably be shared with the man she had met the night before. That was what she couldn’t stand.

  She had meant every word she said when she said love was what she felt. It hadn’t mattered that she hadn’t seen his face. She wanted love. He said love. There was love.

  Everything was going to come crashing down on her.

  That night, Crimson met the man she loved in the greenhouse. No one worried about where she was or what she was doing. No one, not her father, or her grandfather, or her mother, thought she was in a greenhouse wearing a mask, playing at the game of love with her hair falling around her like a blessing of beauty.

  “I need your name,” he said into her ear after a particularly breathless kiss. “I need to be able to call you by a name.”

  “If I tell you my name, you’ll be able to find me,” she said in objection.

  “Don’t you want me to find you?” he breathed into her hair. “I would go anywhere to find you.”

  She hesitated. “I’m scared. If you come after me, find me, realize who I am, then not only will all of this stop, but you’ll discard me.”

  “Why would I do that?” he asked brazenly.

  “Because I’m cursed. I told you before that I am.”

  He brushed his lips with hers. “So what if you’re cursed? I’m cursed. The whole world is cursed.”

  She turned her head to speak, while he worked to enlarge the mark on her throat. “I’m not talking about a little thing. My curse has shaped who I am and changed everything about me.”

  “You mean it’s made you beautiful? Made you desirable? Made me desire you?” He kissed her again, and she thought she would die.

  She mumbled into the hair beside his ear. “It has broken me, like broken glass, and there is nothing but sharp edges left. If you must call me by a name, it will have to be one you give me yourself. I’ll answer to it. Whatever you decide to call me, I’ll answer to it.”

  He took a step back. “I can’t name you!”

  “Can you give me your name, then?” she challenged.

  “I’m not trying to hide who I am. Not last night and not tonight. My name is–”

  “Don’t say it!” she interrupted in alarm. “Sorry,” she panted. “I’m just not ready. Can’t I have a little time to decide about all this?”

  He huffed a breath in frustration. “There isn’t as much time as either one of us might like. I stopped here for supplies. I’m not from Frondwick. I have no plans to live in Frondwick. I need to be moving on in the next day or two. I want you, and I want you to come with me. Think about that while you think about whether or not you want to show yourself to me for real. If you want my name as your own, I’ll give it to you. I’ll marry you tomorrow if you’ll have me, and I’ll show you death like you’ve never seen.” He abruptly withdrew from her, and she felt cold as his body heat was removed from her.

  Crimson could have asked him for practicalities. She could have asked him more about himself. She could have been brave. Told him her name, learned his, and unveiled what she really looked like without the mask, but she could not.

  “I’ll think it over tomorrow and meet you here tomorrow night. Will that suit you?”

  Even through his mask, he looked unhappy.

  That second night, they didn’t talk. They kissed and touched and managed to fall even deeper in love than they had been that first night. When it came time for Crimson to take a shift at the watch, she went, though it felt like she was severing an arm to leave him.

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  As she looked out at the countryside and the morning light moving warmly over it, she knew she couldn’t let him leave without experiencing the heartbreak that came with it. She would have to take off her mask, show him her face and her eyes, and let the rejection that was destined to come, arrive.

  As she came off duty, her father was having a meeting in their hall. She could hear him having a disagreement with someone. Most of the soldiers had gathered. Undoubtedly, they had been invited to the meeting.

  “You must take guards with you,” her father insisted.

  Crimson ducked between the soldiers to see who had the nerve to make her father insist on anything. He was usually immediately obeyed. She peered over a shoulder to see the man on the other end of the disagreement.

  It was a plague doctor. It was her plague doctor! He held his beak mask under his arm, but he still wore the black mask over half his face. His cloak was not black as it had seemed in the blackened greenhouse, but gray, and under it, he was wearing the white coat of a doctor. It had a line of buckles instead of buttons, and he was shaking his head wearily at her father’s request.

  “I can’t pay you, nor can I insist that anyone accompany me on my way to Marshgate. The message I received said the plague has a strong hold there. One wrong move, one unclean head, and I will have killed your soldiers with something they weren’t prepared to fight. I must go alone.”

  Crimson moved without her permission, stepped forward without thinking, and spoke without meaning to. “I’ll go with him,” she said clearly.

  The plague doctor turned and saw her. For the first time, their eyes met, and he saw her red eyes sparking like fire.

  He seemed unaffected and waved his hand as if to dismiss her. “If you must send someone with me, can’t you at least send me someone who has seen more winters than her? Someone seasoned, whom I won’t feel guilty if I have to bury.”

  The captain of the guard looked at Crimson like he felt vaguely annoyed that her appearance did not have a stronger impact on the doctor.

  “This is my daughter, Crimson Crosshair,” the captain said, turning the doctor to face her. “She’s an excellent guard, and she has never been sick or hurt a day in her life. I don’t ask that you allow her to escort you all the way. I’m asking you to allow her to take you to the edge of the marshlands. Brigands and mischief makers won’t venture as far as the borders. When she brings you that far, she can turn around and return here. I just want her to confirm that the supplies were delivered.”

  The doctor looked disgusted, even through his mask, but he turned to look at Crimson. He looked her over three times before he said slowly, “She’ll have to submit to a medical exam. Does that suit you?”

  “Then you’ll have to look me over too!” Len said, stepping forward. “I’ll come too.”

  “Fine,” the doctor said, looking bored. “I’ll get my doctor bag and meet you, where?”

  “My office will do,” the captain volunteered.

  After the explanations, Len and Crimson went into the captain’s office to wait for the doctor.

  “Why did you say you’d come?” Crimson hissed once they were out of the common area.

  “In case anyone attacks you,” Len replied, looking confused.

  Crimson snorted. It wasn’t to defend her. “Why would that interest you? It isn’t like you don’t escort people around the kingdom and see how that plays out every other week.”

  “I want to see you,” he said. “I want to see you fight someone when the gloves are off.”

  “What?” Crimson shot.

  Len took a breath and continued patiently. “When you fight here, you always fight with serious restraint. You never do what you’re capable of. If you did, you’d kill us all. I need to see you fight for real. I need to see what you do, so I can do that too.”

  Crimson sighed. “I’m not volunteering because I want to fight. The plague doctor is the man I’ve been meeting.”

  Len looked over her shoulder in alarm. “Does he know you are the girl he’s been snorting at night? All I’m saying is that if he’s acting like he doesn’t know you so you two can run off together, I completely bought it.”

  “He doesn’t know,” she admitted sadly. “I haven’t introduced myself to him properly.”

  Len smiled. “I’m even happier now. This is going to be very entertaining.”

  The plague doctor came back into the room, and Len pulled his shirt over his head, showing his impressive physique.

  “This isn’t that kind of test,” the doctor said squarely.

  Crimson felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. If she hadn’t figured out who he was already, hearing his voice that close to her head would have spelled it out for her. “Unless you have a lesion you need me to look at, you may put your shirt back on. But since you’re so willing, let’s start with you.” The doctor took out a miniature spyglass and crooked it into his eye socket like a monocle. “I’m going to look at your feet and your head. If the plague doesn’t start in one place, it starts in the other. Sit down.”

  Len sat down on the desk and sat still while the doctor looked in his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Len admitted. “I was on duty when they introduced you.”

  “I’m Doctor Reign.”

  Len’s eyes fixed on Crimson. “No first name to go with that?” he asked the doctor on Crimson’s behalf.

  “No. It’s just one name. You can even drop the doctor part if you like. Your ears look fine. Get your boots off.”

  Len untied his boots and let them clunk to the floor. His socks had not been washed recently, and Crimson, who was not normally disgusted by similar sights, felt faint. Reign was not going to put his face near that mess, was he?

  As if to answer her question, the doctor took his beaked mask from his bag and hooked it behind his ears. Len started chuckling.

  “What’s funny?” Crimson asked.

  “He’s wearing two masks. Hey, doctor, why are you wearing two masks?”

  Using a metal pointer and gloved fingers, Reign looked between each of Len’s toes, then he stood up with an air of annoyance. “I can’t tell whether you have the plague or if you have extra toes. Go wash up and return here for a second inspection, or I will not allow you to accompany me. Shoo!” he said with a wave of his hand.

  Len bent and picked up his boots and socks. “But why are you wearing the black mask?” he dared to ask before he left.

  “Don’t annoy me,” Reign said firmly, though not unkindly. “Go wash up.”

  Crimson should have been nervous to remove her shoes for Reign, but in the grand tradition of women across the world, she had groomed herself in places he wasn’t likely to see before she met him the previous night. She still smelled of roses and apricots. With grace she had never intentionally used, she slid herself onto the table and then bent to untie the buckles that held her boots in place.

  When she was finished, she lifted her eyes to look at the doctor. Reign had allowed his beak mask to fall, and it was now lying against his chest. He adjusted his monocle and began by looking in her ears.

  “Your father said you had never been hurt in your life,” he said, his already familiar voice by her ear. “Yet, I see a mark on your throat. Looks like a hickey.”

  Crimson covered the spot with her hand, not because she was embarrassed, but because she was slightly charmed that it was there in the first place. It brought back pleasant memories. “Does it?”

  “Can’t you get your lover to be more careful?” he asked briskly.

  From his tone, Crimson felt certain he wasn’t aware that he was looking at his own handywork. As he moved to check her other ear, she felt certain he was congratulating himself on having not marked his woman, because he had been so gentle with her. Then, a second later, he slapped the side of his leg irritably. He wished he had thought to kiss her hard enough to leave a mark. Then he would have been able to find her among the townspeople.

  She stifled her smile. He would have known it was his mark if it hadn’t been so very dark in the greenhouse.

  “It doesn’t feel like he’s that rough with me,” she said, looking up.

  “Hold it right there,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Just keep looking in that direction while I look in your eyes,” he said, leaning in for a better look.

  “Got any ideas as a doctor to explain why my eyes are red?” she asked, trying to sneak in a few questions like Len.

  “It could be a number of things. Do they hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Then exactly why they are like that doesn’t really matter. There probably isn’t anything we can do about it now.”

  “And if I told you they did hurt?” she asked curiously.

  “I’d ask if you wanted me to cut them out to stop the pain. I’m not a normal doctor. I’m a plague doctor. Half of what I do is stopping the plague from spreading from patient to patient. The other half is cutting it out. So… next time you have a problem, you should consider asking a different kind of doctor. One who is less likely to chop it off.”

  She chuckled, enjoying his frankness and his nearness. Then she remembered that she shouldn’t look at him too closely, as it often made people uncomfortable for her to look at them. “So… even though you can’t stop my eyes from being red, what are the things that could cause a person’s eyes to turn red?”

  “Could be witchcraft, so a curse, or something more serious. I’m betting it’s one of the more serious options, considering your place among the soldiers and your father’s willingness to allow you to accompany me on a dangerous journey. Open your mouth.”

  Unable to get the light in the place he wanted, he touched the sides of her face to move her so he could see better.

  When he let go, she asked saucily, unaware that it made her eyes look even scarier when she seemed playful. “Everything okay in there?”

  “Yes,” he said, completely unaffected. He crouched down and looked at her feet. He looked at them for a tenth of the amount of time that he had used to examine Len’s. “Your feet are in perfect condition, so at least I can swear on my life that you were not afflicted with the plague before we departed. Pray that it stays that way.”

  “So, you’ll take me?”

  “Not that I want to. You probably heard what your father said. I came here for supplies to take to Marshgate. Your father is unwilling to part with any unless some sort of guarantee can be made that they will arrive.”

  “There are a lot of bandits on the road these days,” Crimson said as she replaced her stockings. “Do you really think they won’t bother you?”

  “Yes,” he said dispassionately.

  She cocked her head curiously. “Why?”

  “They never have before.”

  She smiled. “Maybe your mask scares them off. They see you and think that no respectable man would wear a mask; therefore, you’re one of them. Courtesy among thieves and all that.”

  He didn’t seem like he heard her comment or understood that she was flirting with him. “You should go and get ready. It’s a four-day ride to Marshgate, and we will not be taking a route with any towns on it. You’ll need to bring everything you’ll need for eight days, so you can go and come back again.”

  Crimson nodded and left the room, just in time to meet Len coming back in. He shucked off his boots only for the doctor to exclaim that the insides of his boots were dirty, so there was hardly any improvement.

  That night, Crimson sat in the greenhouse and waited for Reign to come. When he finally did stride through the door, he dropped a heavy bag at the doorway before he said grouchily, “You’ve decided not to come with me, haven’t you? Someone told you I’m a plague doctor, or you figured it out yourself, and you don’t want to go with me into the land of the critically ill. Go ahead! Tell me that! I want to hear it so all this can be over. I’ll stop dreaming of you, and I’ll leave knowing exactly what went wrong.”

  Crimson stared at him. He was pacing, striding in swift, angry steps. How long had he been outside the greenhouse thinking those thoughts?

  “Will you pass back through here after you are finished treating the plague in Marshgate?” she asked quietly.

  “Why? What will it matter?”

  “I wish we had more time, but since we do not, and I am not selfish enough to keep you from your duty, I ask that you come back here when you’re finished.”

  “And if I don’t finish? This isn’t a small epidemic. I could be there working for years. What then?” Reign asked.

  “Whatever the consequences, I need more time,” she said firmly.

  “How much more time?”

  “I need four days. If you can send me a message after four days, I’ll find a way to come to Marshgate to be with you.”

  “How can I send you a message?” he asked. “I don’t even know your name.”

  Crimson had not thought it through that far because even if he didn’t know it, she would already be in Marshgate with him. She was flustered. “Just get someone to leave it here in the greenhouse, and I’ll come get it.”

  “How will you know it’s for you if I can’t write your name on it?” he pondered, already accurately deducing that the note was a trap.

  “You’ll just have to give me that code name we talked about earlier. Make it cute,” she encouraged.

  “I don’t know,” he said, taking two steps backward. “I don’t know if I can name you.”

  “What’s your favorite thing to eat?” she asked simply.

  “Olives.”

  “Then call me Olive.”

  He sighed in relief. “That wasn’t so hard. If you don’t mind my asking, Olive, what is going to be different in four days?”

  “I’ll be different,” she said, her voice a soft hush across the air and against the glass walls.

  “How?”

  “I will have had time to figure out if our kisses meant anything special. A lot of people seem to experience the kind of high we’ve had these past few nights. The four days we’ll have apart will clear my head, and I’ll have that chance to decide if we can be together.”

  “Four days is exactly how long it takes to get to Marshgate. Why did you decide on four days?”

  “I didn’t. Fate did.” Crimson fretted her fingers in her lap. “I’m so excited and scared at the idea of marrying you. The idea that you would want to marry me is thrilling. No matter what happens, you have to know how happy you have already made me. I never thought a man would ever want to kiss me, let alone want me to marry him.” Her bottom lip trembled, and for a moment, she thought she might cry.

  He took the seat next to her and slid his arms around her.

  “And you don’t think you’ll get the plague in Marshgate?” she worried aloud.

  “It’s possible that I could, but I’m careful. I look for early signs in myself. I can treat it with herbs if it’s caught quickly enough, but I’ve never had even the light symptoms. I’m careful when I operate and when I treat my patients, but you never know. I could make a mistake. Being a doctor is risky.”

  “I trust you won’t get sick. You’re very clean. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

  He kissed her then and many more times before they fell asleep intertwined on the floor of the greenhouse. Neither one of them noticed how odd it was that neither of them seemed to need a bed to be comfortable.