The Staff and the Blade

by Elizabeth Hunter

  He held out his arms and looked up, rain tracing through the mud that marred his noble face.

  Here.

  Eagle eyes met her own.

  I am right here, they said.

  I am coming to you.

  Take me.

  Sari dropped her staff and went to her knees before him. She pulled his mouth down to meet her own. She was hungry, and he was half her soul. She didn’t care how or why he had returned. She only knew that she’d been starving for decades and her mate was before her. No other existed. She was lost in the memory of his body; his arms embraced her, and she felt whole again.

  His hands were at her back; she could smell his skin.

  A hint of sandalwood at his neck.

  Sari shoved Damien away, reality wiping away the strange spell that had overtaken her. She had allowed her rage to rule her and struck before asking questions, too stunned by his appearance to form words. She’d reacted like a scorned lover instead of a leader.

  Why was he here?

  Who was this woman?

  She no longer had the luxury of selfishness. There were others who depended on her for protection. While she knew Damien would never knowingly put her or the others at risk, she had no idea who the strange woman was. Her magic felt like no other Irina she’d known in over five hundred years of life.

  Sari pulled away from him and stood, ignoring the pain on Damien’s face and the anger that flashed in his eyes. She would have words with him later, but for now…

  “Yah tichen,” she commanded her staff. Mend yourself. The piece Damien had been wielding flew from the ground and joined with its mate. The staff settled in her hand, whole and unmarred. Sari spun and walked toward Mala and Astrid who were holding the slight woman between them. The woman’s eyes held fear and not a little anger.

  “Take them to the guesthouse,” Sari barked in Norwegian. “And put guards on them both.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “WELL, that went as well as I expected.”

  Astrid raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing else as she checked his knee. His face had healed, but the knee needed to be looked at. Sometimes joints could mend before they’d been straightened. It had happened to Damien before in battle, and the subsequent re-breaking was something he would pay to avoid.

  “Who is she?” Astrid said.

  “A brother’s widow,” Damien said, grateful for the presence of an old friend. “Malachi was killed weeks ago in Istanbul. I decided to bring Ava here.”

  Astrid and her mate had been stationed in London under Damien’s watch before the Rending. Before everything had gone to hell. He found out years later that Marten had been killed protecting a retreat in Ireland while Astrid was working at the scribe house in Dublin as the Irin fought the Grigori there. The healer had disappeared after losing her mate. It didn’t surprise him that Sari had found her.

  “Why here?” Astrid said. No judgment. Simple curiosity. “You knew she would not react well.”

  “Ava’s magic is unlike any I’ve felt before. She is one of us. Mated and marked. But she was raised among humans and has no training. My archivist could find no record of her true parentage.”

  Astrid frowned. “Unusual. Maybe you need a better archivist.”

  “Rhys is the best. He’s still working on it. Ava needs training. She could hurt someone without meaning to.”

  “Unlike other singers we know, who fully intend their blows to wound.” Astrid finished wrapping the knee. “You still should have known better, Damien. You were looking for a reaction.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You got one. Just like you always do. You’re the only thing in Sari’s life that can make her lose her balance like that. You know that, don’t you? Keep the knee wrapped for an hour or so. You know the spells to mend it.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m sorry her mate was killed.” The healer looked up. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

  “Others have lost more than I.” Damien refused to feel grief. Not when he’d survived and others hadn’t.

  “Would you like me to break both arms then?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  The healer wound the rest of her bandages and placed them on the table. “Perhaps your knee would stop hurting if you felt a greater wound.”

  He couldn’t stop the hint of a smile. “Stop being so wise, Astrid.”

  “Impossible.”

  He squeezed her hand. “It’s good to see you.”

  “And you.” She rose and walked to the door. “I’ll explain about the girl. Lie low for a few days. Talk to Orsala, but leave Sari alone for a bit.”

  Damien stared at the wall where a picture of his mate and some of her sisters hung. They were smiling and laughing on a beach somewhere. Damien didn’t think he’d ever seen a picture of Sari laughing.

  “I don’t know if I can, Astrid.”

  “Try.”

  ※

  “Why did you fight with her?”

  Damien heard his brother’s mate as he was finishing in the washroom. The girl had been patient so far. She was a patient kind of person but exhibited the mercurial, almost excessive energy of an Irina too long in isolation.

  “Because she needed a fight.” Damien stepped out of the washroom. “And I give my mate what she needs.”

  When Damien and Sari used to meet in London, she exhibited the same erratic power. Ava had been raised among humans and was still trying to get a grip on her magic, which was unlike anything Damien had felt. He was doing his best to help her even if he had to take a beating for it.

  He donned the modern clothes he felt most comfortable in: worn denim pants and a short-sleeved cotton shirt. There was much about modern life that he enjoyed, like indoor plumbing and finely woven clothes. He didn’t enjoy electric lights. He’d never rested as well once they’d been developed, and he was grateful for the more primitive conditions in Sari’s valley.

  He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of damp earth and Sari’s magic.

  “Where are we?” Ava asked him.

  “Norway.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  Damien tried not to smile. He supposed he was too long out of feminine company. His brothers at the house in Istanbul didn’t seem to mind the curt answers he gave. He sat down by the fire and waited for the scent of the smoke to drown the familiar trace of Sari’s power that permeated the air.

  “We’re in the Nordfjord district,” he elaborated. “Sari’s family has had this property for hundreds of years. It used to be just a small cottage they used for holidays. Very private. Her family was always very private. They liked their own space and never took well to living in retreats. After the Rending, after we lost… so many, she left me and came here. I knew she’d gathered other Irina but didn’t know how many.”

  It wasn’t the whole story. But then Ava didn’t need the whole story. She had enough to deal with.

  She looked out the window at the setting sun, and the rays touched her face, making her skin glow.

  How many years did she have? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? She was a child in his world. Yet the Creator had seen her mated to one of his own brothers. A fierce wave of protectiveness rose. He hadn’t been exaggerating to Astrid when he said she could hurt others without even meaning to. She did need to be trained. But more, she needed to be kept from harm. The honest part of Damien knew that protecting Ava had become about so much more than honoring his brother Malachi.

  This young human girl had become every child he had lost. Every Irina under his watch who’d been butchered by his enemies.

  She looked back at him. “This is your first time here?”

  “No. I came here before. When we were first mated.” Waves of memories threatened to drown him. “We spent time here together. I’m one of the few Irin scribes who even knows this place exists. We’re safe here; I’m sure of it.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  He leaned toward the fire, enjoying th
e heat on his neck. “It’s been years. We used to try to meet in other places. But it was too… It’s complicated, Ava.”

  “You would abandon your men?”

  “Yes.”

  “Defy the council?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  The memory of her bitter words still made him angry. Sari and her sisters had abandoned everything. The villages. Their seats on the council. The halls of the Library that were once bathed in song. Centuries of tradition and learning had been lost, and without the tempering influence of the Irina, Damien saw the leaders of his race becoming cold, corrupt, and insular.

  But even more painful, the singers had abandoned their scribes. Their brothers. Their colleagues. Their sons. Their mates.

  “Does she really hate you so much?”

  Yes.

  And yet, even in his anger, he couldn’t escape his fierce pride at the memory of their fight, which echoed so many training sessions in the past. His Sari had not held back a single strike.

  “She hates me as she loves me,” he said ruefully. “Wholly and completely. Sari never does anything by halves.”

  “Are they all angry? Are all the Irina angry like Sari?”

  “No. Maybe. There’s not a simple answer.”

  “Try. I need to understand.”

  Ava knew about the Rending, but how could Damien explain a two-hundred-year-old wound that still bled? And the centuries of mistakes that led to a horror he still saw in nightmares? And he hadn’t seen the worst of it. He’d witnessed Tala’s death, but Sari had borne witness to so many losses Damien didn’t know how she ever closed her eyes.

  “You can see how powerful they are. The Irina, I mean. An Irina singer at the height of her power, trained by her elders, can wield frightening magic. With a word, they can change the course of the wind. Render a strong man weak or a weak man strong—”

  “Break a stick in half and then mend it?”

  That was a new one. He hadn’t seen her do that before.

  “All Irina have different powers. Seers. Healers. Elemental magic. Some of that is natural and some depends on how they train. In the past, they used their magic for mostly creative endeavors. Healing. Building. Teaching the young. Scientific discovery. These were always their greatest strengths. The more… martial magics were not valued. The oldest Irina derided offensive spells. ‘Male’s work,’ my grandmother would sneer at my father and me.”

  His paternal grandmother kept to politics and manipulation, as obsessed with bloodlines as his grandfather had been. She’d scorned battle training as much as she pursued warriors’ blood. She’d been pleased by Damien’s placement with the Templar order because of their political power, not their battle prowess.

  Damien continued, “All Irina knew some protective spells, of course. And many to help themselves blend in with the human world, but it was the Irin scribes’ job to protect them. And for our part, we didn’t encourage our mates to learn offensive magic.”

  Thank heaven, he hadn’t been able to keep Sari away from it.

  “Why would they need it? They had us. And we…” His throat threatened to close on him. “We would never leave them unprotected.”

  “Except you did.”

  He tore his eyes from the fire. “We did. And we learned how desperately wrong we were only after we had lost everything.”

  “Not everything. You and Sari still have each other. Lots of people—most of the Irin—lost their mates.”

  “I am one of the lucky ones. We aren’t exactly a peaceable pair, but then we never have been.”

  Ava frowned. “Will she ever forgive you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  You’re the only thing in Sari’s life that can make her lose her balance like that. You know that, don’t you?

  Hope pushed past the bitterness in Damien’s chest. “But I’m tired of being patient. And as I give Sari what she needs, so she will give me what I need. If meeting you has taught me anything, it’s that there are things in this world that are not as they appear. We lost half of ourselves during the Rending. Then we allowed this wound to fester. We’re dying from within, and it needs to stop. Change must happen.”

  “Do you think they’re ready for change?”

  He had to believe they were. Had to believe it or he’d go mad.

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But look at you, Ava. You shouldn’t exist, and yet… you do. Change has already come. They just don’t know it yet.”

  ※

  He felt his shoulders burning. His thighs were on fire.

  “Too many days in the car,” he grunted at Mala.

  His sparring partner raised a single brow but said nothing, tapping his forearm with the flat of her sword and nodding toward the row of staffs laid out along the far wall of the barn Sari and her sisters had turned into a training facility.

  “You’re a better sparring partner for me than Sari is,” he said. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

  Mala’s face broke into a grin. Her shoulders are too narrow for the sword. But she can beat me with the staff, the woman signed.

  “She can beat me too.”

  I know. I saw.

  Damien chose his weapon and turned. The tall warrior he faced carried some of the most ancient blood of their race, her people coming from the Nile basin in Central Africa where the archangel Uriel had once dwelled. Mala’s skin was dark and flawless; high cheekbones planed her face. Her hair was closely cropped, her profile regal.

  Mala was beautiful. So beautiful Damien’s brother Alexander—a scribe so devoted to battle he’d been a warrior-monk during the Crusades—had abandoned their order to run away with her, despite the objections of both their kin. Mala had not even reached one hundred years when Alexander mated with her, a child bride in her clan. The couple had lived in isolation for centuries until Alexander had been assigned to London. Damien had renewed his friendship with his old comrade, and Sari had made a lifelong friend.

  Alexander had been killed during the Rending, and Mala had lost her voice, but not before she’d killed a dozen of their enemies. A vicious scar ran up from her collarbone, across her neck, and up her jaw. To Damien’s mind, the jarring scar only made her beauty more vibrant and dangerous.

  They worked in silence for over an hour, Mala stretching old muscles long out of use and forcing Damien to use skills he’d abandoned. He’d become accustomed to fighting with daggers. Dirty, quick street fights that were over too easily. This practice session was as refreshing as the northern air.

  Once she’d beaten him thoroughly, they stopped. His knees and calves felt the sting of her blows, his blood was flowing, and his talesm shone with a low light. He stripped off his shirt and dunked it in a barrel of water in a corner of the barn, then squeezed the water over his head. He turned when he felt a towel hit his shoulder. Mala motioned him to sit on one of the benches and took a seat across from him.

  Have you come back to end this ridiculous exile?

  He frowned. “What exile?”

  Your mate’s.

  He took a deep breath and pressed the towel to his face. “She wants to be here.”

  No she doesn’t.

  “Why do you say that?”

  Mala pursed her lips and shook her head.

  “Mala, if there’s something I need to know… Is it Orsala?”

  Don’t be an idiot!

  “Then tell me what’s going on.”

  You’re both so foolish, Mala signed. To have your reshon and keep away from her exhibits the most infuriating self-control on the planet. You’re both guilty of it, and neither of you will budge.

  “Do you think I don’t want her back?” Damien fumed. “Giving her time and distance is killing me.”

  Then why have you left her alone for so long?

  “She couldn’t even look at me,” he said quietly. “After it happened. Two hundred and fifty years later, and she still won’t meet my eyes. We’d meet in London f
or a week and it would be like tearing open a gut wound, Mala. Every time. That’s why I stopped. I’ll never give up on her, but she needs to come to me when she’s ready.”

  Mala threw her hands up and clenched them before she started signing furiously. Wasteful! How you and Sari waste time incenses me. Life is unforgiving and brutal and violent. It has always been so. We hold on to those we love because they are the ones who help us survive it. You of all people know this.

  “That’s why I’m giving her time, Mala. After the Crusades—”

  After the Crusades, you and all your brothers were walking dead men. Her hands and face spoke fury. Do you think I don’t know this? Alexander healed when he chose to heal.

  “When he met you.”

  And when did you heal, Damien?

  “When I met her,” he whispered, closing his eyes. Mala’s staff reached out and knocked his knee. “What?”

  Don’t ignore me. I love you both.

  “I know you do.” He dug the heel of his boot in the sawdust. “You said she doesn’t want to be here.”

  He saw the coiled tension in Mala’s shoulders.

  This has gone on for far too long, she signed. We’re isolated here, but we still get news. The scribes’ council is out of control. The Fallen powers are shifting. The Irina need to go back, and I’m not the only one who feels that way.

  “Sari?”

  It’s an awful thing—Mala leaned forward—to know where you want to go. To know you must get there. And to not know the way. There is no compass for this journey.

  “Since when has Sari needed a compass?” Damien asked. “If there is no path, she makes her own.”

  I think she’s forgotten that, Mala signed. That’s why she needs you.

  ※

  “My beautiful one,” he whispered in their dream, playing with her hair as she lay on his chest. “My proud girl.”

  “I am no girl.” She sighed. “I have not been a girl for a long, long time.”

  “You are my girl.”

  Sari said nothing but buried her face in his neck. He put his hand on the back of her head and held her.