Page 36 of The Marked and the Broken
“Your eyes have shifted. They’re still the same green, but they’re wolf eyes right now, not your regular eyes.”
“Oh, well that explains this change in my vision then. Am I hairier?”
The three of them laugh.
“No, but you can probably make out the details of your body much better than you could before,” Torrez tells me, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
Time to magically shave again.
“Anything else different?” Valen asks. He bends over to get a better look at my new wolf eyes, and I snap at him for shits and giggles. He doesn’t even so much as flinch or make a noise of surprise. Lame.
“You don’t scare me, love,” he teases, and I don’t miss his use of that word again. It slipped out a few times when we were getting it on in the barn. I chalked it up to an in-the-moment term of endearment, but it seems I was wrong. I’ve got Chosen droppingLbombs like I dropFbombs, and I’m not sure what to think about all of that. Or maybe I do know what I think about all of that, and I just need to work on the logistics of what I want to do about it.
“What I smell has changed,” I tell them. “It’s more overwhelming than the eyes. I can pick up a ton of things I couldn’t before, but I’m not sure what everything is.”
Torrez brushes my cheek with the back of his hand, and I lean into it. “Yeah, that makes sense. It will take time for you to catalogue different scents in order to identify them later.”
“Does this mean I’ll be able to smell lies and emotions, too?” I ask, excited.
“Yup,” Torrez admits, and I can’t tell if he thinks that’s a good thing or bad thing.
“We’ll have to start introducing smells to you right away so you can learn. Your wolf eyes will be most useful at night. Our night vision is incredible, so that will definitely be a handy tool. What about your hearing, any changes there?”
“I already had runes for that,” I confess, and I hear Bastien and Valen both sputter out, “What?”
“Where are your runes for that?” they ask in unison.
I point to the helix of my ear. They both grow quiet with concentration, and I know they’re testing those tiny runes out. They’re easy to forget about, and I’ve been purposely not pointing them out to any of them.
“Holy shit,” Bastien blurts, his tone filled with awe. “I can hear Aydin and Evrin all the way in the house.”
I tap into the runes on the helix of my ear and focus on the main house where Silva, Evrin and Aydin are staying. I hear someone in the kitchen working and figure that’s who’s responsible for our tasty meals, even though I’ve never seen them. The table just seems to always be filled with food.
“That group that kept visiting that house just out of town has stopped. I’m not sure if they got what they wanted from there, or if somehow they spotted me, but we should probably check out what it is now that there’s less of a risk of getting caught and we’ve lost the trail of the lamia who were visiting there regularly,” Aydin announces.
“When do you want to go in? Tonight?” Evrin asks.
“It’s better to check it out sooner rather than later. It’s probably our best lead at this point. Is Silva back yet from his assignment? We’ll need him on this one for sure,” Aydin tells him, and then the room fills with the rustling of papers.
“He was here when I got back last night,” Evrin tells him. “I haven’t seen him yet this morning. I think he’s in the barn again.”
“Are the spells ready yet?” Aydin queries as he messes with more papers.
“I told him to have Knox look at them since that’s his area of expertise, but I don’t know if he has or not.”
Evrin and Aydin’s words niggle at the back of my mind. I thought they were surveilling with Silva, but it’s clear Aydin and Evrin were off on their own. Why would they separate?
“Earth to Vinna,” rings in my ears and pulls my focus, and Bastien steps into my line of sight. I let go of the magic in all of the runes I currently have activated. My regular vision snaps back into place. I’m no longer bombarded by different smells, and I realize that it’s easier for me to focus when my sense of smell isn’t so heightened.
“So, Bruiser, how often did you use this little skill to spy on us?” Bastien asks me, a naughty glint in his eyes.
I laugh. “Only a couple of times, and usually you guys weren’t saying anything interesting. I mostly use it to track where people are,” I admit.
“So that’s how you kept avoiding us,” Valen exclaims, and pieces of something that must have been bugging him come together.
I shrug.
Shouting kicks off behind the guys, and we all move to see what’s going on.
