The Secret

  “And”—Vasu crept to Svarog’s back, leaning his chin on the other angel’s shoulder—“now that he is gone, it does leave such a delicious vacuum of power.”

  Svarog stared out the window into the cold grey Viennese morning. “So it does.”

  “And what will you do with it?”

  “Nothing.” Svarog paused. “For now… nothing.”

  Vasu stepped back and smiled as he shifted away.

  “Liar.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  AVA AND MALACHI SAT in Damien’s study three days later with Damien and Sari. Renata, Max, Rhys, Leo, and Gabriel were also there. Orsala and Mala were still on the way from Prague.

  Kostas was nowhere to be found.

  “Where is he?” Rhys asked.

  Max said, “He’s taken his sisters and the women who were in Prague. They disappeared the night after the battle. I don’t know where they went. He left Sirius and some of his other men here in the city to try to round up as many of the Grigori children as they could.”

  “They just left?” Leo asked.

  Malachi wondered if Leo was more concerned with Kostas or his lovely sister.

  Gabriel cleared his throat. “Trust does not come overnight.”

  “And what does the council say,” Damien asked, “about the battle of Vienna?”

  “We won one battle, but some act as if we won the war.”

  Malachi shook his head but said nothing. He shouldn’t have expected miracles, even when they’d appeared in the sky over a major European city.

  “And the kareshta?” Ava asked.

  “They are drafting a mandate,” Gabriel said. “It’s still being debated, but it looks as though the scribe houses will be joining the hunt to find as many kareshta as they can. The elder scribes are not all in agreement, but the elder singers are unanimous. By next week, the daughters of the Fallen will be under the protection of the Irin race.”

  At least there was that. Malachi knew that ambitious watchers could use that mandate to go after the Fallen, interpreting the “protection of the kareshta” to mean freedom from the tyranny of their sires. He exchanged a quick glance with Damien and knew his watcher was thinking the same thing.

  “And the free Grigori?” Max asked.

  Gabriel’s mouth firmed. “Like I said. Trust takes time.”

  “And us?” Sari asked, reaching for Damien’s hand.

  Gabriel smiled. “You know politicians. I expect any resolution will be months—if not years—away now that the Irina have their voice in the Library. Until then, our sisters will do as they want.”

  Max smiled. “Just as they always have.”

  “Good,” Renata said. “I for one have things to do.” She looked around the room. “I can’t say that it’s been fun. But… I’ll see you when I see you.” Then with one lingering glance at Maxim, Renata left the room.

  Max bit his lower lip but said nothing.

  Finally Damien spoke. “Are my scribes ready to return to their house?” he asked. “The brothers from Cappadocia have kept our fire burning, but Svarog’s sons still live, and we have work to do.”

  Malachi was ready. So ready. Ready to hide away with Ava. Ready to rid his mind of the nightmares that met him every time he closed his eyes. For the first time since he’d returned, Malachi wanted to forget. But he knew the memories of the tiny lives he’d snuffed out would live with him for the rest of his days. He wanted to flee the city and never return, but he wasn’t the only one who mattered. He looked at Ava, and she nodded.

  “Ready, Watcher,” Rhys said.

  “Ready.” Leo and Max joined him.

  Damien looked at Malachi. He took Ava’s hand and nodded.

  “We’re ready,” Ava said. “Very ready to go home.”

  “And my mate?” Damien asked Sari with a smile.

  “I can’t leave Ava all alone with you males, can I?” Sari said. “Let’s go home, Watcher. As you said, we have work to do.”

  Ava pressed her face into Malachi’s shoulder, and he brought his hand up to cup her head, holding her close.

  He wanted to return to Istanbul. But no matter where they were, with Ava, he was home.

  Chapter Thirty

  “HOPE AND PURPOSE,” he said quietly as they lay in bed.

  It was early and the first call of the muezzin snuck in through the open window. Winter had passed. Istanbul hovered on the edge of summer. They woke every morning together, and Malachi never failed to ask Ava her plans for the day.

  She had never been in Istanbul in the spring. It was beautiful. It felt like home.

  He brushed the hair from her face, and Ava forced herself to open her eyes. She was lying nestled in the crook of his arm, one hand resting on his chest. She could feel his stubble catch in her hair and the warm, solid beat of his heart under her hand.

  “What about hope and purpose?”

  “It’s what we were missing. What we got back when the Irina returned. And what will make us better as we look for the kareshta.”

  Things were changing. Maybe not as fast as Ava liked, but change was coming. Damien and Sari were regularly in Vienna, though Malachi refused to go back. The watcher and his singer had returned the night before with more news about debates in the council and a new air of vitality in a city that had once lost its passion for anything more than the status quo. Irina were visible again.

  There were even a few reports of what Rhys called the Irin baby boom. Families were reuniting. Young scribes and singers meeting and mating. With all the changes, a new generation had begun. Ava hoped it was a safer and healthier generation that what had passed.

  For Malachi, the ghosts still lingered. She saw the slight flinch when he spotted a group of children in the street. The shadows when he remembered what he’d been forced to do. The well of grief he carried seemed endless some nights. It pained her far more than any scar he wore on his body.

  “The Irin needed hope,” she said.

  “Everyone needs hope.”

  Ava said, “And purpose? Protecting humans—”

  “Is important. But empty. The Irin lived for a race we could never be a part of.”

  “Do you have hope?” She would battle an angel for this man. Walk through the darkest forest of grief. Give up her own life if she had to.

  But she could not force his eyes to see the hope she kept wrapped in her heart if he didn’t want to see.

  “Talk to me,” she said. “Please.”

  “I have hope, reshon.”

  “I’m scared sometimes,” she confessed. “You scare me.”

  She pressed on even when she felt his body tense. “Not because of what you might do to others. I trust you more than anything. But what you might do to punish yourself for things you couldn’t prevent.”

  “Ava—”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Malachi.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  He paused and in the silence, she felt his body begin to relax.

  “You told me once that a wound doesn’t heal just because it stops bleeding.” She lifted her head and propped her chin on his chest. “And you gave me time.”

  “You needed it.”

  “And you need it now.”

  Malachi nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “But here’s the rule. Only one of us gets to be messed up at a time. Otherwise, we’re seriously screwed.”

  The slow smile she loved spread across his face.

  “Deal.”

  Yunan Province, China

  “STOP it.”

  “No.” She grinned when she said it, clicking the camera when she snapped the picture.

  Malachi had on his sunglasses, his face grim. He was in full bodyguard mode, every inch the overprotective mate, and he was trying hard not to smile.

  “You’re supposed to be working, Mrs. Sakarya.”

  “I told you, you’re too handsome to pass by.”

  She laughed as they followed the crew farther int
o the village. Dogs ran around their feet, and curious Chinese tourists watched them as the models and makeup artists arranged a small studio in the square.

  The fashion shoot was not the kind of job she would normally take, but it was a favor for one of the few editors who’d continued to give Ava work after the eighteen-month break in her schedule. Conveniently, she was from LA. An explanation like “nervous breakdown followed by rehab” was hardly the strangest thing anyone had heard.

  She and Malachi had been married in Malibu the month before, with her father and mother in attendance. Lena had been excited, thrilled to inform her friends about her daughter’s exotic new husband and home in Istanbul. Jasper had seemed… better. Slightly more stable, but still a giant mess. He’d also lost about ten years to his face, Jaron’s glamour dying with him. Luckily, he was in entertainment. Plastic surgery was almost expected.

  That would work for now, but Malachi knew a serious conversation was inevitable.

  Ava, by virtue of living in Turkey, was now on call for a lot more shoots in Asia, which kept her out of Los Angeles and away from curious eyes. Malachi was pleased. Ava… didn’t really care. She still enjoyed her job, but she could take pictures anywhere.

  And though they kept the mansion in Southern California, they lived in Istanbul, sharing a house with his four brothers and Damien’s mate. It was crowded, but Ava was growing used to it. And when they periodically left for his grandparents’ house in Germany or a random photography job, Malachi’s people said nothing.

  He watched her work, enjoying the sun on his face and the balmy air of Southern China. They were in the hills around Lijiang, and the weather was mild. The people were friendly, but he still kept an eye on the crowd. More were looking at the trio of American models posing with the old man in tribal costume, but a few had their eyes on his mate.

  Because she was electric.

  The anxiety, worry, and stress of living in danger had drained away, leaving Ava the woman she was born to be. Vibrant and curious. Funny and strong.

  She had drawn him back from the edge of darkness more times than he could count. He still avoided children. Still flinched when he heard them laughing. The guilt assaulted him at the most unexpected times. He hated his weakness. Adored her strength.

  “It will get better,” she told him, over and over again. “We have time.”

  If Malachi wasn’t quite healed yet from the mental anguish of the battle in Vienna, someday he knew he would be.

  His mate—his wife—had told him so.

  She spun as if she’d known he was thinking about her and captured the smile he couldn’t hold back.

  “Gotcha, handsome.”

  HE rolled her to her back and moved down the bed.

  “Yes,” she panted.

  “Yes?”

  “Mmmm.” Ava arched back, unable to say another word because the thing Malachi was doing should have been illegal. It probably was illegal in some countries.

  He smiled against the inside of her thigh. “You have to be quiet.”

  “When you say you want to take a break from work, you really mean a break.”

  “I was feeling tense.”

  “Oh yeah? How’s that going?”

  “Better.” Malachi’s tongue circled her belly button and she groaned. “Much better now.”

  “I live to help work out your tension.”

  “Such a supportive mate.”

  He laughed quietly and bit her thigh before he lowered his head again. Then his arm wrapped around her leg and his hand pressed down on her belly and Ava wanted to move, but she couldn’t and he—

  The door crashed open. “Malachi, did you borrow the—Gabriel’s bloody fist!”

  Ava screamed, and Rhys spun around to face the open doorway as Malachi roared and came off the bed, throwing a blanket over Ava’s body as she curled into a ball.

  “What are you doing?” he shouted.

  “Haven’t you heard of locks? Locks, Malachi!”

  “Try knocking, you bloody—”

  “Get out of our room and close the door!” Ava yelled.

  Malachi shoved his brother out of the room and slammed the door shut. Then he locked it and leaned against it for good measure.

  She pulled the covers over her head again and tried to get the image of Rhys’s face out of her mind. She pulled a pillow over her head too. It didn’t help much.

  Malachi sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry.”

  She burst from under the covers and battered him with the pillow. “You. Forgot. To. Lock. The. Door!”

  “I’m sorry!” She could tell he was trying not to laugh. “I’m so sorry. I was just… distracted. And there were a couple hundred years when privacy wasn’t an issue.”

  She fell back on the bed and covered herself with the blanket again. “I live in a supernatural fraternity house.”

  “It’s not that bad.” He peeled the covers away and spooned her from behind. Ava tried to hide her head under a pillow, but he stole it. “Canım?”

  “What?”

  He kissed the back of her neck. “Does this mean you don’t want to—”

  “Go back to work before I stun you.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Germany

  HE WOKE WITH A START, the face of the child in the front of his mind. He sat up and put his head in his hands. This time when Malachi had caught the small body, the boy hadn’t dissolved. Instead, his eyes had opened and he’d lunged toward Ava, leaping on her and tearing into her throat before Malachi could catch him.

  “Babe?” her sleepy voice asked at his side.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Come here.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Come here anyway.”

  He lay down next to her and gathered her into his arms.

  Maybe it was the winter wind that echoed outside the house, reminding him how it had shrieked through the Stephansplatz. Maybe it was the way the snow fell outside. He hadn’t had a dream of the boy in months.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered.

  “Canım—”

  “It’ll make the bad dreams go away. Promise.”

  Ava smiled up at him, so he kissed her, sinking into her mouth in relief.

  She was here. She was alive. No one was after her, and Volund was gone.

  His hands ran down her sides, cupping her hips as he brought her closer. And while the cold waves crashed outside, he made love to her. Long and slow with deliberate strokes that drew her pleasure out and forced his mind back to the beauty that was Ava and their union.

  “I love you,” she gasped as she came. “I love you so much.”

  Her mating marks shone on her skin and he read the words he’d written there.

  I am for Ava.

  Not for nightmares and death. Not for guilt and recrimination.

  “For you,” he said into her mouth. “I love you.”

  She held him after the pleasure wracked his body. Wrapped her arms around him and held on.

  For Ava.

  He was for Ava.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “YOU’RE BETTER,” AVA SAID, smiling at her grandmother.

  The woman looked more like her sister than her grandmother. The staff didn’t ask questions, but she could see their inquisitive looks.

  “A little more every day,” Maheen said.

  She’d asked Ava to call her by her new name the first time she’d visited after Jaron’s death.

  Why Maheen?

  Someone called me that once. I liked it.

  Ava didn’t ask more. If her grandmother had chosen a new name for a new life, it was more than understandable.

  She still lived in the hospital. Ava guessed she would live there for some time.

  “You don’t look like me,” Maheen said.

  “No. The eyes. I think that’s the only thing.”

  “Grigora are more beautiful than human women,” she said, her eyes drifting. “It’s good you look human.”
r />   Maheen was not an easy person to talk with. Brittle pain leached into the air around her, though Ava could occasionally see echoes of the woman she might have been before her rape and binding to Volund. She hated Malachi’s presence, and it had taken more than a little persuading to let her visit Maheen alone.

  Malachi didn’t trust her. Neither, if Ava were completely honest, did she.

  The hospital said she hadn’t been violent since the night almost a year ago when she’d started screaming and collapsed. She’d beaten her hands so badly they’d required surgery. She still struggled to hold one of the paintbrushes she was now allowed, but she was healing.

  Ava hoped it was more than her hands.

  “Is the scribe with you?” she asked.

  “Yep. Waiting in the living room downstairs.”

  She nodded, rocking back and forth a little in her seat.

  “He won’t come up.”

  “They were the monsters in the night, you know?”

  “Who?”

  “Irin scribes. My brothers would tell me stories. If I saw one in the market, I had to run. They never let me go anywhere alone.” She laughed. “Except…”

  Ava waited for a long while, but Maheen had drifted again. It was a pretty common occurrence.

  “Grandmother?”

  “You shouldn’t call me that.” Her head jerked toward the door. “You know they watch me.”

  Did they? Ava made a mental note to check. She couldn’t see any cameras, but you never knew. Maheen was highly paranoid.

  “Is he here again?” Maheen asked. “Did you bring him?”

  “Jasper?” Ava hesitated to say. Maheen had refused to see Jasper the other two times they’d brought him. Ava kept convincing her father to give his mother another chance, but she could see him spiral each time his mother rejected his attempts to speak with her. According to Maheen’s doctor, Jasper paid the bills, but he hadn’t visited since Ava—Maheen had attacked him three years before.