VIVIAN
Weeks passed by since the executions and since we told Esmeralda about Jacob's world. We didn't discuss it much afterwards, but every so often I would catch Esmeralda staring at one of us with a pensive expression.
Even though Jacob changed our collars they didn't seem any different from before. My Ethereal Vision was advanced enough that I could see the individual threads that made up the collar spells, but only when I carefully scrutinized the precise locations that Jacob showed me did I find the slight imperfections he introduced that made the collars safe for us. A regular mage would never spot them unless he knew exactly what to look for and looked carefully.
Pregnancy didn't make me fat, but it did stretch my belly. Once my womb was empty my belly slowly shrank back to its normal size, although it wasn't fully there yet. At least I no longer looked pregnant.
