Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“Because you should not be sleeping on the floor!” He threw up his hands. “Will you try and see if it works?”
A slow nod.
Exhaling, he moved on to a far more problematic topic. “You know we have to talk about what happened this morning.”
Her spine grew stiff, her features a plastic caricature of Silence. “You know I have mental problems,” she said at last, her tone flat. “You saw that when you first met me.”
“This was more than that.” Remi could still taste the distasteful metallic layer to her scent even though it had vanished after she had her seizure. “You didn’t know who I was, and you smelled wrong.”
Frown marring her brow, cracking the plastic, she turned toward him. “What do you mean I smelled wrong?”
“Smells are powerful identifiers to changelings. I can recognize people from scent alone—it’s like an ID. Each one unique.” When he saw he had her full attention, he continued, “Your scent changed. It wasn’t perfume or body lotion or anything surface level. It was your base scent, the scent that is you no matter what else might layer itself on top. You had two. This one and another.”
* * *
• • •
AUDEN had no idea what Remi was talking about, and told him so. “I can’t think of any reason for a shift in my scent, but I’m not changeling. I don’t know what can alter a scent signature.” She worried at her lower lip with her teeth. “Could it be the baby?”
“No. Babies don’t develop their own scent until after birth. Until then, it’s the mother’s.” Remi rubbed his face, his hand scraping against the beard shadow that darkened his jaw.
“But I don’t know how Psy work well enough to guess why your scent might have changed.” Shifting so that he faced her, his body on a right angle to hers, the warmth of him a near-physical touch, he said, “Even if we leave that aside, you were a whole different person—and you didn’t remember any of our conversation afterward.”
Auden struggled to think back, only to come up against the same black wall she’d already faced so many times after these incidents. “No one’s ever reported a personality shift…but it’s possible they didn’t notice. I’m not this emotional at home.” The words had escaped her mouth before she realized what she was admitting.
“I get that,” Remi said. “I’ve heard that a lot of the older and more entrenched families prefer to continue on as if nothing’s changed.”
Auden gave a curt nod, her lips pursed.
“Do you want to know what you were like?”
No, Auden wanted to scream, no, she didn’t want to know. Because the more she knew, the more she had to confront the fact that her mind was broken in ways that couldn’t be fixed. She’d gotten lucky with what capacity she had now; this was never going to get any better.
But…She stroked her belly, a fist in her throat. This wasn’t just about her. She needed to know so she could make decisions about her baby. So she swallowed the lump of fear in her gut and said, “Yes.”
“Remote and cold enough to make me question if it was even you.” Remi’s words rumbled with the leopard’s growl. “Silence so perfect it was unbreakable.”
The hairs rose on the back of Auden’s neck, her tongue going dry. She’d never come close to perfect Silence. Being a psychometric made that impossible. Even the best of the best among Ps-Psy only passed the Silence tests at around seventy-five percent—which was considered an acceptable score but one with plenty of room for improvement.
She’d barely scraped through with sixty-two percent.
Her father had put her in remedial school for Silence, and she wasn’t sure he’d ever shared her results with her mother. As for the remedial school, their drills had pushed her scores up to seventy percent by the skin of her teeth, and that had been good enough for her to graduate to adulthood, leaving behind the lessons of Silence.
“Auden?”
Her hand clenched the chair arm. “I need to think about this.” Needed to figure out if she’d gone beyond neural damage and into instability so bad that her personality had split in two.
Bile burned her throat.
She couldn’t do that kind of life-altering thinking with Remi here, his presence so big and wild and dominant that it pushed against her senses in primal demand. “Please go. I need to be alone.”
“I’m going to send patrols this way to check on you.” His tone said she had no choice in the matter.
And since she’d had not one but two seizures in the past twelve hours, she had no will to argue. “Fine. They can look in the window if I’m not outside.”
Expression dark with a scowl and eyes leopard, Remi nonetheless rose to his feet. “One more thing—thanks for sending the indi-mech deal our way. That was you, wasn’t it?”