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.
“Plus, I’m stupidly in love with you… so I guess we’ll have to figure this out together.”
“I love you, Ava.”
Then the whisper from his mind. From his heart.
Reshon.
Ava buckled over, and sobs wrenched from her gut as the pain hit her again. She was walking through darkness, having lost the one love she’d ever dared to trust. Rage battled with grief as she knelt on the floor of the sterile hotel room, clutching the last piece of him she had.