"Come on you guys! Let's not sulk about the future. The important thing is, that the Queen does not believe Aria to be her daughter!!" Helen cut in, and Aria forced out a smile as she squeezed her hand.
The boys grumbled, but let the topic go. The rest of the time before dinner passed in idle chatter, and the three took their leave when Miss Anhao walked in with Aria's dinner on a tray.
Two weeks later . . . .
Aria sat fidgeting with her hands as she waited for Joseph to come for their morning sessions. Miss Anhao had decided today that the blood clottings over Aria's burns were thick enough to prevent infection. She had thought it best to forego the bandages and only apply the ointment for quick healing.
Though Aria was glad to not constantly have bandages on her hands and back, she was also feeling a bit scared. She looked over her hands as she turned them on her lap, and had to avert her eyes. Even Aria herself couldn't look at her wounds right now, how could she expect other people too? She took a deep breath in as she picked up the small mirror beside her bed and stared at the scar stretching from her jaw to her ear. She was just glad that the scar was more on her neck than her face as she pulled her hair over her shoulders and covered the burn completely.
Wasn't she the one who was always saying that external beauty didn't really matter? No, that wasn't true. What Aria always said was, don't judge people by the power they have. She hadn't ever really thought about beautiful faces uptil now.
"Probably because I didn't have to worry about being ugly." Aria muttered as she turned to look out the window. As she stared at the tree outside the recovery ward, her mind began to wander. She started to question a lot of things she had taken for granted before. Her beauty, for one. Her powers, second. She had never really worried about being pretty or powerful because she of course knew that she was both. What she had always been worried about, her whole life, was not to reveal how powerful she was.
But that had never been a problem with her face. She couldn't very well hide her face, could she? Aria chuckled as she remembered how once she had wished she had been less pretty. It had been when she was about 11 and had been receiving too much unwanted attention from boys much older than her. Well, her wish had come true now. She was certainly less pretty.
Aria snapped out of her thoughts and looked at the door as the sound of it opening reached her ears. She let out a small smile upon seeing Joseph enter.
Aria didn't herself notice her hands dig deeper in her lap as he walked to the bed. What she did notice, was Joseph stop short in his tracks as his eyes fell on her hands. Her ugly, burned, scarred hands. What she did notice was how Joseph didn't seem to be able to take his eyes off them, and once he did drag his eyes away because he didn't want to be caught staring, how he couldn't even look at them again.