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“That’s horrifying,” I said slowly. This was news to me. “How often does he lose limbs?”

Dom looked thoughtful. “Not often, but a few times tends to leave an impression.”

“I imagine it would.”

The remaining slayers were disposing of the two dragons they had managed to slay, so it was me, Henri, Corbin, and Caleb going through the property with a fine-toothed comb.

It was on the third sweep that Corbin sniffed out a break in the trim along the floor of a study, and we moved half of the things in the room from one side to the other until a piece of the wall opened up. Secret passage. Jackpot.

I went first down a dank, creepy stairway into a dark, foul-smelling passage that led to an underground dungeon.

I had to pause and collect myself as I took it all in.

God, my father was a bastard.

Several people were chained to the wall, and some were even still alive. If we hadn’t been looking for Lynn’s eyes they likely would have rotted here.

Henri, Caleb, and Corbin started freeing and checking the pitiful creatures while I searched for the eyes.

I found them pretty swiftly since they were just sitting on a metal tray next to a collection of bloody torture devices. By the exact shade I knew they were my sister’s right away.

God, I hated my father.

The eyes didn’t look great, not to mention the unsanitary conditions I’d found them in, so I spent some time finding a proper container to store them. For some reason I wanted them in liquid but not in an airtight container. They needed to breathe? I didn’t know, but I went with my gut and hoped I never had to do anything like this again. I washed them and put them away in a leak proof pouch with water but didn’t close it tightly. It was beyond strange to deal with eyes that I was used to seeing exclusively in my sister’s face, but I muscled through it by sheer will alone.

Someday we’ll tease each other about this, I told myself, a form of self-comfort.

“Why didn’t her eyes just grow back?” Caleb asked when I had them secured.

“I’m not sure if it was an active spell or if it’s just that the hammer was used on her when it happened. She’d have to walk me through how she lost them and there’s been no time. Villi was the one that took them out, though, so if I had to guess I’d say it was some combination of the two.”

It was beyond strange to be carrying my sister’s eyes around, and I did so with excruciating care.

I texted the number that had originally contacted me that we had them and hoped that she saw it.

There were three survivors in the dungeon and six dead bodies. The druids were healing them and trying to figure out what they were—chances were it wasn’t strictly human—but they were too traumatized to communicate much.

“What will you do with them?” I asked Dom when we were finally traveling home again, our surviving task force and new guests in tow.

“We’ll take care of them. Rehabilitation, therapy, whatever’s needed.”

That was the upside to the druids. They were elitists, but they had the infrastructure in place to take care of whoever was in need in the supernatural community when it was necessary. Certainly no one else was organized enough to do it as well.

“What color was my dragon?” I asked out of sheer curiosity. I remembered catching a glimpse of a blinding light when I’d glanced at my wing but that was it.

“You were like white but like shiny,” Christian said. He was wired and jittery and way too cheerful, and on top of that he’d taken on most of the burden of dragon body disposal so he was still covered in gore. It was nasty.

“Pearlescent,” Dom said quietly. He was sitting next to me and had his eyes closed as though sleeping. “A kaleidoscope of colors reflected off of you as you moved. It was exquisite.”

Christian tried to ruin it by making retching noises. I stuck my tongue out at him. “I was always wondering if you could remember things when you came back from being a man-bear-pig,” he just had to add.

I laughed, glancing at Dom and even he was smiling a bit, eyes still closed.

“It sounds like you have a crush on my dragon form,” I said quietly, teasingly, into Dom’s ear. He smiled wider, eyes still closed. “I can’t say the same about your new druid form. That thing is terrifying. What’s going on there?”

“I’m experimenting with it. You don’t think it’s cute?” he asked, deadpan.

I laughed harder, hugging his arm. What a roller-coaster of a day.