Chapter Text
PREFACE
On her eighteenth birthday, Bella learns that there is a certain kind of beauty she isn’t privy to. An undeniable, unattainable, imperious type of beauty that’s hidden and ambiguous; well away from common thought and prying eyes; found only in secret, fleeting touches, in gleaming smiles… in deep, dark pools of red and cold stone.
The notion of it annoys her, at first. What use is beauty when it’s not her own skin?
She’s denied the chance to be truly beautiful forever, and it’s pathetic of her to cry but… what else can she do? There’s something about the almost having had it all that just stings.
Lying on the forest floor for hours, Bella’s cries eventually cease, and she starts to wonder where all this obsession even started.
After all, with their perfect faces seared deep into her mind, it would be so, so easy to pin the blame.