Kostas’s eyes flicked to Malachi, assessing him. “He is the one who returned?”
“Yes.”
“Who are you?” Ava asked.
The Grigori’s eyes shuttered. For a long moment, Ava waited to see what he would say, half of her tugging forward and the other half wanting to run. She lifted her shields and listened to the voices around her. Unlike the scratched voices she was expecting, these Grigori voices were touched with a resonance that reminded her of the Irin. But it was a jumble; her own mind was too scrambled to make sense of anything. She could only hear emotion.
Longing.
Anger.
Fear.
Ava looked around. She was surrounded by at least fifteen Grigori, but no one was coming after her. No one even approached. The normally seductive stares were wary. Cautious.
“As long as my people come to no harm, he may stay,” Kostas said, then he narrowed his eyes at Ava.
Malachi stepped forward, blocking his gaze. “What is this place?”
Kostas smiled and, despite the knot in Ava’s stomach, she reacted. He was so beautiful it was as if the sun had broken through clouds.
“Welcome to the heretics’ house,” Kostas said, giving them a deep bow. “The children of the Fallen your brethren have killed surround you.”
“Oh shit,” Ava said as Malachi tensed.
Kostas continued. “Allow me to officially extend my appreciation for your service.” The gleam in his eyes was lethal. “We very much appreciate it.”
“What the hell is going on?” Malachi asked Max.
“Wait.”
The Grigori named Pietro stepped toward Kostas. “Boris and Roman checked the perimeter. They’re alone.”
“Good.” Kostas looked toward a corner blocked off by crates. “Kyra, you may come out now.”
A woman stepped from the shadows as Ava moved forward. She felt Malachi’s hand on the small of her back; he stood steady and protective behind her.
She was tall and dark-haired; her long brunette mane was streaked with ebony. She turned her gaze, and Ava met eyes a mirror of her own. Glowing gold behind thick black lashes. She heard Malachi suck in a breath. The woman was beautiful. Incandescently beautiful.
Inhumanly beautiful.
Like the Grigori she stood beside.
“Ava.” Kostas took the woman’s hand. “I’d like you to meet my sister. Kyra.”
Of course.
Of course.
Sister.
The memory of a dark angel’s voice in her mind.
“Soon. You will know soon.”
It was a startling, beautiful clarity, fresh as the sky after rain.
Kyra smiled at Ava. Her gold eyes were shining. “Did you think the angels only had sons?”
II.
JARON STOOD ON THE ROOF of a warehouse near Barak’s son, watching Ava in his mind’s eye.
Of course.
“Did you think the angels only had sons?”
No.
There had always been others.
Barak appeared a second later. Vasu followed.
“She knows,” they said together.
“Soon she will go to their city,” he said. “And I will remove my protection.”
“Volund will be drawn out?” Vasu asked.
“He will come,” Barak said. “He has his own interest in the woman.”
Vasu curled his lip slightly. “I still do not understand your fascination.”
“Not fascination,” Jaron said. “She will draw him as nothing else can.”
Jaron opened his eyes to them as they watched the scene play out among the sons and daughters of angels below them.
The Irin. Children of the Forgiven, their power glowing not with the wild raw fury of Fallen children but the low, controlled burn of a well-tended fire. Their magic had been honed. Trained. Tested. Their blood farther from the angels, they had used the knowledge the Forgiven had given them to become more powerful than those they fought. Male and female. They were a balanced race.
The Grigori. Raw fury and terrible hunger. Slaves to the Fallen. Abandoned to ignorance, their children raged against the human world with the fury of a child denied. Their sons, predators. Their daughters, a secret.
Born in fear. Terrible with untrained power. Forgotten. Disposed of. They called themselves kareshta. The silent ones.
Their fathers called them nothing. Those who allowed their daughters to live usually abandoned them to the madness of the human world. After all, female offspring were rare.
He’d never turned his mind to them, because for Jaron, there had only ever been sons.
Until there hadn’t been.
“I sing sometimes when you’re not here.”
Broken.
His only daughter was so terribly broken.
“Your son, Barak,” Vasu said with dark amusement in his eyes. “Kostas would remake the world we have built. There is power in that one. Are you sure he thinks you are dead?”
“Yes.” Barak cocked his head. “He won’t hear me. Whatever magic Jaron has laid over the woman protects me as much as it does her.”
“Kostas is perceptive,” Jaron said, “But he is not more powerful than me.”
“Why do you shield her?” Vasu asked.
“I have my reasons.”
Reasons only Barak knew. And his oldest friend only knew because he’d found Jaron in a killing rage sixty years before. A rage that would have swallowed the world unless Barak intervened.
Jaron had not taken a human lover since, and his line was dying.