" Ah, beloved,” he murmured, his fingers caressing the faint lines in her brow, tracing the shadows at the sides of her lips. “How beautiful you are.”

She couldn’t help a chortle.

Inda heard the unsteadiness in her attempt at laughter, the disbelief, and beneath it, question.

“Joret was never beautiful to me,” he said. “Not ugly, either. She was just Joret. Pleased the eye, but beauty, it strikes you right here.” He closed a fist lightly and thumped it against his breast bone. “Joret was art. Tau was art. But to me, you were always beautiful. Before I really knew what beauty was. It was your face I saw when I was away. Awake and in dreams.”

She laughed again, even more unsteadily, but he heard the genuine humor there, then she wound her fingers in his wet hair, bumped up against him, and said, “Prove it. "

― Sherwood Smith , Treason's Shore (Inda, #4)