She plunged forward, eyes focused on the man’s neck, but he dodged to the side and grabbed her, tearing the crowbar from her hands as he tried to lift her from the water. She resisted for a few moments, her boots stuck in the thick mud, but eventually he tugged again, and her feet came free.
“No!” she screamed as he threw her over his shoulder. “NO!”
“Ava!”
Malachi saw the Grigori lift her, tossing her over his shoulder like baggage. He started trudging toward the exit, moving as quickly as he could in the heavy water. He was fighting two soldiers, feeling weaker by the moment, but he saw Max spot Ava as Damien sliced his way through the Grigori who swarmed them.
“Max, get Ava!” he yelled as loud as he could. The cistern was filled with the sounds of splashes and grunts, blades ringing against the stone pillars and men crying out in pain. Through it all, Malachi didn’t think. He kept going, his single focus to move toward the soldier with his mate.
Get Ava. Escape the cistern.
Something tugged at his leg, but he kicked it away, losing one of the boots and a shoe at the same time. Sharp stones dug into his foot when he set it down again, and he could feel them pierce his flesh.
Damien moved toward him, throwing off the soldier who had attached himself to Malachi’s back and was trying to grab his weapons. Most of the Grigori had lost their knives in the fight, the blades falling into the water as they struggled.
Malachi held on.
“Max, she’s there!”
“I see her!”
He saw his brother head toward Ava, slicing through two Grigori, dusting one and throwing another into the darkness with a roar.
Almost there.
The lights flickered. Went out.
Ava screamed.
On again.
She’d been stabbed in the fighting. Blood poured from her belly, and he saw her face pale.
“Ava!”
Their eyes met in the flickering light as Malachi raced toward her as fast as he could, his heart beating out of his chest and blood dripping into his eyes.
“Hold on!”
“Malachi, no!”
Just then, a large soldier tackled him from behind a pillar. He knocked Malachi down. The water enveloped him as a painful scream filled the air.
The magic raged through her, closing the wound on her belly, and Ava’s soul rose in fear and fury. Through the pain, her voice lifted, echoing against the ancient stones.
The songs rang in her mind. The magic called her.
Speak, the seductive voice whispered.
More. Higher. Louder.
Ava’s voice rose in pain and anger. She screamed out against the voices in her mind.
The soldier holding her faltered. One hand came up to his ear as he stumbled. She saw others clutching their heads. Blood poured between their fingers.
The lights went on. Then off. On again.
Finally, the one holding Ava dropped her, and she splashed in the water as the soldier ran. Everything was dark and silent for a moment before she surfaced, spitting out the foul water that had filled her mouth. She blinked her eyes, looking for danger. The Grigori who had captured her was pushing for the exit even as Max cut him down. She couldn’t see Malachi, but she saw Max. Blood ran from his eyes and ears, but he kept coming toward her.
More Grigori ran past, two scrambling up the stairs as she brushed the damp hair from her face and blinked the mud from her eyes. Max finally reached her.
“You’re fine, Ava. You’re all right.”
“Where’s Malachi?”
A voice from the darkness. “I’m here, Ava.” He emerged from the shadows, wading through the waist-deep water with a crooked smile. “What was that, love?”
Ava burst out with a sobbing laugh. “I have no idea.”
She saw Damien and Malachi on the other side of the cistern. Damien smiled, even as he killed another Grigori with a dagger to his spine. The dust hung like a fog over their heads, wafting toward the exit where the rest of the soldiers had fled. Malachi stood, clutching his side, leaning against a pillar and panting. Blood ran from his eyes and nose, but he smiled anyway, staring across the water.
Come to me.
For a split second, she could hear the thought in his mind.
Ava stood and started running toward him as fast as she could, barely noticing the shadow moving in the corner of her eye.
The shadow rose from the water, blue eyes gleaming in the darkness and blade glinting in the light.
Ava’s heart stopped.
Silence.
Malachi stilled as the blade pierced his spine, his eyes locking with hers.
Grey eyes wide in the darkness.
She fell. Her knees gave out.
Cold water rose to her chest.
Her mate’s mouth dropped open with a silent cry as Brage’s blade plunged in, then his face shone gold.
“NO!” Max’s voice behind her.
Gold. He was gold. Shimmering in the darkness. Beautiful. Radiant.
Malachi’s visage flickered as the dust began to rise.
Ava’s heart beat once, then she heard another long scream.
Silence as her eardrums burst. Her vision went black as the gold dust rose like a ghost in the darkness.
Then the water enveloped her and everything was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Blackness. Silence.
She heard groans and knew they came from her throat.
Her chest ached. Her ears hurt. Everything hurt.
Someone was carrying her, but it wasn’t him.
“What happened? What happened?”
“Gone,” she whispered when she heard his brother’s voice.
She saw it again. Her mate’s radiant face before it dissolved into gold dust and drifted to the sky. The hollow feeling in her chest rose and enveloped her.
She closed her eyes.
Ava ran through a dark forest, thick with fog. He was there. He had to be.
Where was he?
She tripped over roots in the path and the ground rushed toward her. Black leaves slapped her face.
Darkness.
“Do not fear the darkness.”
She slept.
She was in Cappadocia. She didn’t know how. They put her in a bed that smelled of him, and she slept.
Warm, wrinkled hands forced her up in the bed.
“Drink. You must drink.”
No.
“Please, Ava.”
Small hands led her through the forest. Soft hands clutched her fingers. Childish voices whispered in her mind.
“Come back.”
No.
“We need you to come back.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ava woke in the blackness, in the cave where they’d first made love. She was wrapped in his scent, but not his arms.
Everything was gone.
She lay still, staring at the chisel marks in the ceiling, wishing the mountain would close in and crush her.
“I know you’re awake.”
It was Rhys. She turned her head to the side and he was there, sitting in a corner of the room, staring at her with bloodshot eyes. They filled with tears as he watched her.
“Ava.”
He reached over and caught her when she started to sob. The cries wracked her body, wringing her out as he held her. She shouted into his shoulder, beating at his back, but he only gripped her closer, rocking back and forth.
She cried for hours, and then the blackness enveloped her again.
Damien was there the next time she woke.
“You need to eat, sister.”
“I don’t want to.”
“He wanted you to live.” Damien continued, even when she curled into herself, trying to shut out the words. “More than anything, he wanted you to live.”
“Go away.”
“Not till you’ve eaten.”
“No.”
“It’s been over a week. You’re dehydrated. E
vren is hours away from putting you on an IV if you don’t drink something.”
“I don’t care.”
Damien knelt beside her, holding out a soft roll and a cup of water.
“Do not let his sacrifice be in vain.”
She started to cry again, silent tears rolling down her cheeks, but she sat up. Damien helped her, placing more pillows behind her back after Ava took the roll from his hands. She bit down, and it tasted like dust.
Whispered thoughts circled her mind as she stared at the mural in the library, the bucolic scene of families in the village. The ancient scribe she remembered sat across from her, staring silently with pale blue eyes.
She was his companion now.
Ava sat in the library for weeks, staring at the painting as the scribes fed her, forced her to drink. Her body grew strong again.
She slept in the bed she and Malachi had shared. The sense of him lingered for a time, and when it started to fade, Rhys showed up at the door with a blanket that held her mate’s scent. Ava silently took it and wrapped it around her before she shut the door.
“You grieve,” the ancient scribe said one afternoon as the sun lit the rich colors on the wall.
“Yes.”
“As do I.”
She glanced over. “How long?”
He shrugged. “Just a little while longer.”
“You’re immortal.”
“She was supposed to be, too.”
Ava whispered, “We’re all immortal, as long as our stories are told.”
The old scribe smiled, nodded, and turned back to the painting.
She stared at the fire someone had started in the sitting room. It didn’t warm her. She was cold to her bones.
“Brage?”
“Gone,” Max whispered. “You fell in the water, and you didn’t come up. He escaped when we ran for you. He’s not in Istanbul. We don’t know where he went. But we have his weapon. He lost it in the fight.”
“I want to kill him.”
“Good.”
“You don’t sound fine,” Lena said.
“I am. Or maybe I’m not.” She twisted the phone cord around her finger as she sat. “But I will be.”
“I want you to come home.”
“No, I’m fine here. I like it here. I’m staying with friends.”
“Do you need—?”
“I’m not the only woman in the world who’s had her heart broken, Mother.” She didn’t try to stop the tears, knowing her mother believed the lie. “Give me some time. I’ll be fine.”
It wasn’t a lie. He’d left her.
She told the truth. Just not all of it.
Damien came to her room one night. She was looking through the pictures on her laptop, which had miraculously survived the fire at the scribe house in Istanbul. Pictures from her time with him before. When she’d still been human, and he’d still been her bodyguard.
There weren’t enough.
He knocked on the door she’d left cracked open, then slipped in the room, sitting in the corner chair where Rhys, Maxim, Leo, and he had all watched over her.
Like brothers. His brothers.
Damien sat and watched her in silence until she spoke.
“What’s up?”
“I’m going to take you to my mate. To Sari.”
Ava swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t want to leave yet.”
“You need to.”
“Are you going to force me?”
Damien took a deep breath and leaned forward. “Ava, when you screamed in the cistern, you burst your own eardrums, along with Max’s and mine. Blood was pouring from your nose when we dragged you out. We were crying blood. The only reason you survived the wound to your abdomen and healed yourself was because Malachi performed the mating ritual. Otherwise, I know you’d be dead.”
She choked back the cry. “I told him he was an idiot for doing it.”
“Even now, I can tell you struggle to control the power. The songs press against your mind, don’t they?”
She could do nothing but nod. The music had grown louder each time she slept. The whispering voices more persistent. Ava worried that she cried in her sleep, that she said the words that haunted her, but she didn’t know what she said.
Damien ignored the tears that dripped down her nose. “Your magic is growing stronger, but you have no outlet. You must learn how to control it. You could hurt yourself or someone else without even meaning to. I can’t teach you, but Sari can. You must go to other Irina.”
For some reason, the thought of leaving the scribes angered her. “So you’re just going to dump me with strangers?”
“No,” he said. “I will not. I will stay with you. Though Sari might be angry, my mate will not turn me away. Malachi was my brother, and you were his mate. From this day, I vow to protect you.” He paused and took a deep breath. “As a brother guards his sister, Ava, I will watch over you. You will never be alone.”
Her shoulders were shaking when Damien crossed the room and closed the computer on her lap, taking her in his arms as she cried in loss. Relief. Confusion.
You will never be alone.
He finally whispered, “Will you go, sister?”
“I’ll go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
She packed her things in a bag Max had found for her. Leo would drive Damien and Ava to the airport, but even she didn’t know where they were going. Damien trusted no one. He only told Max to find warm clothes for her, and somehow, the clever scribe delivered, even at the end of a Turkish summer.
She had new documents, a new name, and a new mobile phone with an untraceable number, according to Rhys. She was Ava Sakarya, the name Malachi used on documents when he needed them.
The dreams still haunted her. She stumbled over and over through the dark forest, trying not to be afraid. On the wind, whispers in the Old Language teased her.
But one refrain, the mourning cry, echoed over and over again.
It was the cry she’d heard since childhood. The voice of every heart who had lost. Only now, it was her soul that spoke it.
The day before she and Damien were supposed to leave, she wrote it down as best she could on a piece of paper and went looking for Rhys in the library.
Ava found him working on the computer. She stood behind him, watching as he typed an e-mail in some language she didn’t recognize. Farsi, maybe. It didn’t matter.
She placed her hand on his shoulder, taking comfort from the contact. She’d learned not to hold back. Malachi’s brothers needed to hold her hand. To hug her. To offer her whatever comfort they could. She knew their hearts ached, too.
Rhys leaned over, pressing his cheek to the back of her hand before he turned. He pulled over a chair, taking her hand as she sat in it, and pushed up her sleeve. With soft fingers, he brushed them over her forearm to reveal the glowing gold spells Malachi had written on her during their mating. They lay hidden in her skin until the touch on another Irin made them visible.
Weeks ago, the very sight of them caused her to burst into tears, but now, looking at the soft smile on Rhys’s face, she forced herself not to cry.
“Malachi always was messy about that letter,” he said, rubbing his thumb over a twisting character near her wrist. “Never practiced enough. Always in a hurry to go beat something with a sword.”
“I think it looks perfect.”
“So do I.”
He kept her hand in his until she tugged it away and reached into her pocket for the slip of paper where she’d written the words. She knew writing the letters wasn’t dangerous for her, only speaking them. Still, she felt like she’d done something forbidden when she handed them over.
He took them with a frown. “What’s this?”
“I just…” She cleared her throat. “I need to know what this means.”
He looked at them, then he cocked his head. “Why?”
“I hear it.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. She wouldn’t cry. She was out of tears. “
This phrase. All the time, I hear it now. I’ve heard it for years. When I pass a funeral. When I hear someone who’s grieving.” She lowered her voice as she nodded toward the old scribe who still sat in front of the mural. “I think it’s the only thing I’ve ever heard from his mind. I just… I need to know what these words mean.”
“Ava, I’m not your teacher.”
“But you are my friend.” She forced out a smile. “Please? Please, just tell me. It’s not that long, right? And it’s driving me crazy.”
Rhys shook his head. “You’re right, of course. There’s no reason you can’t know what it means. It’s not even complicated. It’s just…” He cleared his throat. “Vashama canem. In the Old Language it means ‘Come back to me.’”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.” He squeezed her hand and tossed the paper in the wastebasket under the desk. “I guess that makes sense for someone who’s lost someone.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Still leaving tomorrow?”
“Like you said, you’re not my teacher.” She smiled. “But I know I need one.”
Rhys knit their fingers together, palm pressed to palm. “I’ll see you again someday, Ava.”
It wasn’t a question.
Damien and Ava drove to Nevşehir the next day, leaving the last pieces of the familiar back in Göreme with Evren and the remnants of the Istanbul scribes. She stared at the twisting rock formations as they drove, then closed her eyes as the plane took off, trying to imagine Malachi’s arms wrapped around her as she slept.
That night, Ava stared out the window of her hotel room near Atatürk Airport, watching the moon shine over the city. She draped herself in the blanket that barely held his scent and remembered the night they’d watched the moon rise behind the Galata Tower, huddled under the blanket on the roof of the old wooden house.
“There’s no going back. I know that. I…I don’t even want to. You were right about what you said before, even if the truth hurt. I was alone.”
She wasn’t alone anymore. No matter what. She knew that.
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