"Before tomorrow, Scar, I'd like you to have this. May you never lose it. It's a token of my affection and trust."
She handed him the Vey family emblem, the 'reaching hand,' with Purple's name imprinted on it with care. Scar had never seen it before, and looking at it now, he could appreciate the elegance of it.
But appreciation and suspicion weren't mutually exclusive, and the latter had arrived with it uninvited. A badge of trust and affection?
He hadn't been a noble long enough to understand all of it, but that particular gesture struck him as strange regardless.
Even with the suspicion, refusing wasn't easy. Purple had a way about her, a charm that shared something with Julien's but was softened by an innocence that was harder to measure.
Turning her down felt wrong in a way Scar couldn't quite justify, like refusing a lost child something simple and harmless.
