The Staff and the Blade: Irin Chronicles Book Four (26 page)

Nothing will ever be the same. I don’t know what the future will look like. But know that I love you. I will never stop.

“You promised,” Damien whispered, holding her book to his chest. “You promised, my Sari.”

I never want to be parted from you again,
she had whispered once.
Never.

Tears burned hot on Damien’s cheeks as he remembered her whispered vow the night she had taken him as her mate. He fell asleep with Sari’s letter still clutched to his chest. He fell asleep and opened his eyes to dreams.

※

London, 1815

She stalked the Grigori from the tavern, following at a distance while he ushered the woman toward the street. The human, laughing coyly, didn’t hear the hunter. She didn’t turn, not even when the Grigori led the prostitute away from the bustling dockside and toward the room he’d taken in a dirty boardinghouse where no one would look too closely.

No doubt this woman thought the man she’d met would only be another paying customer. She didn’t notice his hands, carefully kept at his sides until he could isolate his prey.

Sari followed them, her heavy cloak pulled up to cover the gleaming blond hair she’d chopped off at the shoulder. With her stride and height, she was often mistaken for a male as long as she kept her face concealed. The humans cared about such things. Would note that a woman wore men’s clothing. Would worry that a female would traverse the dirty streets of London at night without a male to protect her.

Sari needed no guard. She wanted none.

She followed them and waited. She heard the woman’s cries of mindless pleasure. Heard the monster’s grunts and sighs of satisfaction as he fed from the human’s soul.

And still Sari waited, her silver-tipped daggers concealed beneath the cloak.

Hours later, when the dense fog of London had covered the moon, she walked up the stairs. This one was a solitary beast. From what she’d observed, he didn’t kill his prey. He lived quietly, away from others of his kind.

She didn’t care.

He was Grigori, and she was no scribe. She was Irina. The council’s mandate had died with her sisters.

As she walked, she let the nightmares come. Let the anguished sound of crying children touch her mind. During the day, she pushed the ghosts back. She cared for the ones who had sought protection with her. But at night, she let the dead steal into her mind and rage.

She tested the lock and found it secure. Bending down, she used the tools she’d brought to release it, then she eased her way inside. Noted the crumbled bedclothes and glowing coals in the fireplace. The simple valise by the small chest in the corner. Boots removed and set by the door.

The monster wasn’t sprawled across the human but had fallen asleep at her side, wrapped in sheets stained yellow with age. The human was bare, exhausted by her inhuman lover. Sari knew she wouldn’t wake until morning.

Sari drew her daggers and stood over the monster, who continued to sleep. She examined his face but saw nothing familiar. He possessed an unearthly beauty, like all spawn of the Fallen. In sleep, he almost looked innocent. Dark lashes brushed perfect, uncreased cheeks. His hair was a tumble of black silk around his shoulders.

The sobs grew louder. A boy mourning his mother and sisters. Old men praying. Women muffling infants too young to be wise.

To the bathhouse!

Abra!

The fire still burns…

No, no, no, no.

Sister, release me.

“Release me.”

Sari’s whisper woke the Grigori, whose eyes flew open, horrid recognition flashing on his face a second before he rolled to the ground and reached for something under the bed.

“
Yah domem
,” she whispered, paralyzing him where he lay. She turned him with the toe of her boot, then put one foot on his chest.

His beautiful, terrified face stared up at her.

“I didn’t take part in it,” he managed to say through clenched teeth. “I ran.”

“Do you think I care?” Sari stared at him and let the dead rise.

She flipped the monster over and drove her dagger into the base of his spine, letting out a long breath as the blade sank into his neck. She felt it pierce the wood of the floor and she twisted it, let the warm blood gush over her hands. His body began to dissolve in the silent room, the dust rising and choking her as it searched for the cracks around the window where cold air sucked it into the night. Within minutes there was nothing but traces of dust, one bloodstain, and an empty set of clothes beneath her.

Sari found the Grigori’s purse and put it on the small table nearest the bed. Then she gathered the monster’s clothes, his valise, and his boots. Dragging the rug over the bloodstain, she glanced at the human woman once more before she left the room, carefully locking it behind her. The woman was alive and would be paid for her services. It was more than could be said for most Grigori prey.

She dropped the monster’s belongings at the door of the nearest church, then straightened her cloak, making sure her hair and weapons were concealed. She needed to return to the safe house, but there would be another hunt. Another monster. Another kill. It didn’t matter. No matter how many she executed, the voices in her memory refused to let her rest.

Sari walked into the dark fog, the ghosts of her sisters screaming in her mind.

End of Book Two

M
EMORIES

※

H
IDDEN
FROM
Irin society, the Irina have learned to take their revenge on the Grigori. They answer to no one. They ask for no mercy. And forgiveness? That’s the last thing on anyone’s mind. Two hundred years after the Rending, Damien and Sari are thrown together to face a new threat, a girl who might be key to the healing of the Irin race. If they can survive the anger and grief that has separated them for two hundred years.

※

N
OW
REST
IN
the power of heaven, my love

Forgive me for my absence

I long for the jewels that live in your eyes

And the golden touch of your hand

—from
The Song of Uriel’s Fall

PROLOGUE

H
ELSINKI
, 1816

“Y
OU
need to stop looking for me,” she said. “It’s more than just my own safety at risk.”

“If you come back, I can protect you.”

Her caution was a wound she opened every time he found her. “Like the haven outside Rome was protected? Thirty Irina. Five children. Slaughtered. Gone because a singer sent a letter to her lover. They’re still hunting us. We cannot reveal ourselves. And every time you look for me, you could potentially lead Grigori to our door.”

He stood, anger coursing through him. “Do you think me an untrained youth? That I would lead assassins to my mate’s door?”

Sari refused to look into his eyes. For forty years, she’d averted her gaze, even the few times they’d come together. She only met his gaze in their dreams. There, she could not look away. It was the one thing he clung to. The one thing that gave him hope.

Her face that night was pale and cold. It grew colder with every year that passed. “There are too many Grigori. They are everywhere.”

“Why do you think we hunt them day and night? We want you back, Sari.”

She shook her head. “Not all of you.”

Damien was silent because he knew it was true. In the six years since the Rending, the Irina Council had broken, and now the elder scribes ruled the Library. Laws were set and protocols handed down with little debate. The Irin had become ever more militant and structured. While some on the council were actively petitioning to find the Irina and reform traditional Irin society, the more pedantic of their number seemed content to drive their race into an ever more isolated and militant position. The Irina, they claimed, would come back when the Grigori were fewer in number. When Vienna was safe again. When the threat from the Fallen was no more.

Damien knew it would never be safe enough.

“Come back to
me
then,” Damien pleaded quietly. “Come to Istanbul. The house there—”

“Do you think it is only me that matters?” she broke in. “I am one of the few who can safeguard them. Would you have me abandon the vulnerable who look to me for protection?”

“But you ask me to abandon my mate!” His voice rose. “You ask me to live without you beside me? To see you only in my dreams and be content?”

Her face betrayed nothing. “How long did you retreat from the world, Damien of Bohemia?”

“Two and a half centuries.” The words were bitter on his tongue. “Would you have me wait that long again?”

“Wait or don’t wait,” she said. “I am your mate—you know I have no other—but you must stop this mad hunt. Stop, or I will stop meeting you here or anyplace. Give me that, Damien. Give me time. Give
them
time. Most of them lost everything.”

“But we did not. We lost Tala. We lost our child. But we still have each other when so many do not.”

“Damien—”

“Gabriel’s fist!” He lost his temper completely. “Can you not be grateful that we are both still alive?”

She stood silent, a pale statue of the vibrant woman she’d once been. Then she turned and walked out the door.

※

London, 1860

He stopped hunting. She gave him no choice. Her magic had grown with frightening speed, honed and sharpened by trauma and sheer will. He knew she’d joined forces with her grandmother, Orsala. Against the two powerful singers, even Damien’s skills could not compare. He could have found her, but not without exposing those under her care. Not without hurting her.

It must have been mercy that led her to find him in London.

Their home there had never been sold. It had remained in the possession of one Irin scribe or another since they’d abandoned it before they left for Paris. Damien rarely checked on it or visited except for one week every year when, by silent agreement, he met Sari in London. The current occupant would leave, and the house would be their home.

For one week.

I miss you.
He didn’t speak the words as he watched her dress. For this one week, she was his again. One week, then she would disappear. She met him here for one precious week, and he agreed he would not hunt for her.

I miss you so much my bones ache with it. Your absence is a hole in my spirit and a wound on my soul. Only our dreams keep me sane.

They didn’t speak of the past here. Or the politics of the present. For one week, they ate and drank together. Made love with furious frequency. Saw a play or a concert as if they were ordinary citizens of London. They laughed together. Slept tangled in each other. For a few days, they were as they had once been.

But inevitably Sari’s eyes would grow dark again. Her face would lose its light. He would catch her staring into the distance, her head cocked at an angle as if she were listening for a voice in a distant room. Slowly she would withdraw into silence.

And then she would be gone.

Was it madness to keep meeting her like this? Damien wondered if her healing would come faster if he could somehow banish himself from her life. If he was gone completely, would her pain lessen? Would the wall between them grow weak?

It didn’t matter. They were mates. Every night, her bittersweet presence kept him company in his dreams. In them, she laughed and she wept. She rested in his arms and kissed his lips. Their souls were still one. In dreams.

And in the morning, she was the absence in his bed and the ghost that haunted his days.

“I miss you.”

He said it aloud, but she was already gone.

※

London, 1960

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Sari looked up and for a moment their eyes met before she looked away.

What did she see in him, after all these years? Damien had realized that morning that they had been apart almost as long they had been together. Theirs was a union marked by absence. In the decades since the Rending, they had fallen into a rhythm not unlike the few Irin mates who remained. They saw each other infrequently. They walked in dreams. When they were together, they avoided any argument because who wanted to fight when you had so little time?

Damien felt as if their life was in a holding pattern neither knew how to break. And every year that passed saw his mate, his wild girl, grow harder and darker and colder. Her eyes had lost their light, and Damien didn’t know how to bring it back. He didn’t even know if it was possible.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Come with me now. Or let me come with you. But I cannot do this anymore.”

She straightened from untying her shoe. “You would abandon your men?”

“Yes.”

“Defy the council?”

“Yes.”

She paused. “I don’t believe you.”