The Staff and the Blade: Irin Chronicles Book Four (28 page)

Orsala shook her head.

“Grandmother?”

“I can’t see them. I only feel… I have not felt this magic before.”

Sari didn’t wait for more. If it was anyone familiar, anyone with a right to visit the haven, Orsala’s magic would have recognized them. Her grandmother was a singer of Chamuel’s line, empathy her greatest weapon. While singers of the past had not seen empathy as an offensive ability, Orsala had honed her magic in the fire of the Rending. She’d learned to use other’s emotions against them. Any unwelcome visitor with angelic blood would feel an inescapable urge to run.

But this visitor was not running.

She felt him as soon as he crossed the boundary line she’d marked with her magic half a century before.

I am coming to you.

Damien was here. But so was another. Soft, feminine magic whispered over the land. Foreign heat and the smell of sandalwood came to her senses. Old magic. New magic. Sari didn’t know what she was sensing.

Every nerve went on alert.

“Mala!” She yelled for her most trusted. “Astrid!”

Both singers came running as Sari left the clutch of buildings in the small valley, crossed the gravel road that led to the modern highway, and strode up the path her mate was following. Mala had her sword, but Astrid carried nothing.

“What is it?” the healer asked, her eyes wide and worried.

Sari couldn’t speak.

He returned to her like this? No word of warning, with an unknown singer at his side? There was something so strange about the woman’s magic, so foreign, fear rose up and clutched her throat. What was happening? Could someone have coerced her mate? Could the Fallen be playing a trick? Was it truly Damien at all?

She thought of the dozens of families in the haven. Orsala would be moving the children into hiding places while each rogue scribe and singer took defensive positions drilled into them over decades of preparation.

“
Ya kazar
,” she whispered into the wind, letting the air carry it over the land she commanded.
Turn back.

“Sari, who is coming?” Astrid asked again.

The magic kept coming. It raced over the earth and leapt to her senses. The magic tasted of him. Of Sari’s mate and lover. It knew his scent, recognized his step, and welcomed him. And that welcome enraged her. This was
her
land.
Her
safe haven. He had no place here. He’d abandoned her for his precious council. Abandoned it when he’d abandoned her.

Unlike foreigners, Damien had come to the valley before Orsala’s safeguards were in place. He had loved her here. The earth would not turn him away even if Sari commanded it with her magic. Damien’s soul was too old. Too familiar.

She felt Orsala’s voice on the wind, knew that whoever was coming with him would feel the cold rush of air from her grandmother’s power.

The strange magic did not turn away. And neither did her mate’s.

Sari turned her face to the sky and called down the rain. “
Vared gesham!
”

If she could not make him stop, she’d at least slow him down.

Mala and Astrid followed her as she raced up the hill, stopping at the top of a rocky outcrop that overlooked the old trail. Sari saw two figures, both struggling up the hill. Damien’s form was achingly familiar. Her heart leapt in her chest and her pulse pounded.
 

But the small woman with him held out her hand and cried out, “You’re hurt!”

The woman was beautiful and delicate, reaching for Sari’s mate with both hands. Their words were muddled in the roaring wind of her anger. Her heart stopped, and the wind died down.

Damien’s eyes rose and locked with hers. She could barely stand the pain of it. Beautiful and wild, his eyes pierced her. After decades, she heard her mate’s true voice.

“Now you’ll see why they are feared,” he said.

Icy claws dug into her heart.
Fear this.

“
Kazar vash!
”

Damien flew from his feet and tumbled backward, rolling down the hill.

Leaving Mala and Astrid to deal with the female, she strode down the mountain, anger eating up the ground between them. Decades of abandonment, and he returned in the company of a foreign woman with magic unlike anything Sari had ever felt? She raised her staff without thinking and struck out, realizing that Damien had grabbed a branch when she felt it strike her own.

Why?
her heart screamed.

He was her
reshon
. The mate of her heart. They walked in dreams together.

She swept him from his feet and brought her staff down next to his head.

Fear that, my love.

He had returned after decades apart, but not for her. She saw him glancing at the woman over and over, even as he rolled to his feet. His care for her was as clear as the eagle eyes that had once looked on her as if she was his world. Had this been why he’d stayed away? Had he found comfort in another’s embrace?

She whispered a command to her old staff, and the wood split in two. She tossed half to her mate. Sari was not finished venting her rage. He was holding back. Damien was not allowed to hold back. She was as much a warrior as he was.

As they fought, she remembered his first lessons. Here, on the land where her grandmother had been born, he’d taught her to hold a sword and use it to slay their enemies. Insisted she never pull a punch. He had made her a warrior, fought beside her, but left her when she needed him most.

Flashes of training exercises and hunts together. Night after night of fighting. Passion. Release. Joy. Camaraderie. Then the sight of his horse leaving the retreat in the gathering dusk. Leaving her behind. His last kiss before the world had turned to nightmares and her sister turned to dust.

She fell. He fell.

Where were you?

She rose and struck again.

Where were you!

She was crying and fighting in the mud. He was everything. Her mate. Her teacher. Her lover and her betrayer.

The rain continued to fall around them as he fended off her brutal attack. She had become a creature of raw emotion. She hated him and she loved him. She saw her opening and struck. Damien’s knee bent to the side and he came down, kneeling before her.

Where were you?

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

“W
ELL
, 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.”