The Singer

Chapter Twenty-five

“It’s amazing, isn’t it? So perfectly balanced,” the Grigori said as they approached. “But of course, it was forged in heaven. Or hell. I’m honestly not sure what I believe at this point.”

Malachi said nothing, trying to place the blade. He knew he should know what it was. There was something…

“Don’t recognize it? I’ll admit, it was dark in that shit hole of a cistern,” Brage said, flipping the blade from the back of his hand to rest in his palm. “Maybe you couldn’t see it clearly.”

The knife pulsed with power. Its metal was dull, almost black. There was no decoration on it. No leather wrapped the hilt. Nothing to detract from the purpose of such a grim weapon.

Death.

“Your silence intrigues me,” Brage said.

Malachi realized that the Grigori wasn’t speaking to him. He was speaking to Ava. And Ava couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“You killed him with that,” she said softly, the air fogging as it left her lips.

“Yes, I did. Apparently it didn’t take.” Brage glanced at Malachi, then back to Ava. “My father wants you.”

“He can’t have her,” Malachi said.

“Was I talking to you, scribe?” Brage continued to stare at Ava, flipping the knife in his fingers. Handle. Tip. Handle. Tip. He didn’t fumble once. “Will you come with me? Or will I have to take you?”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you creepy asshole.”

Malachi approved of the disdain dripping in her voice. He stepped between Ava and Brage, his knives ready, his heart eager. Her power coursed through him. He could feel her song whisper in his mind.

Brage’s eyes flickered to Malachi. Then they closed briefly as a whisper left his lips. “Boring.”

He pounced.

The Grigori took Malachi by surprise, knocking him off balance and trying to slip behind him, the blade already raised to strike. Ava stuck her foot out and tripped Brage, distracting the Grigori and causing the blade to nick the side of his forearm as he stumbled back. There was a hissing sound as the smell of sulfur filled the air, then the wind swept it away.

Malachi sheathed one of his knives and circled his opponent as Ava braced her back against the brick wall of the stairwell. Brage swept a foot out and punched Malachi’s knee, causing him to slip on the icy bricks. He fell, the snow and slush soaking his back and side.

“Do you even know what she is, scribe?” Brage taunted Malachi as he climbed to his feet. “I’ll admit, I didn’t at first. I’m still not sure of the details. I do know that your kind won’t know what to do with her.”

Malachi rose with him, keeping himself between Ava and Brage. The Grigori’s lip was cut and the wound on his arm seeped a steady flow of blood. It was black and thick. When the snow hit it, it sizzled.

Brage continued to stare at Ava, cocking his head as if he were puzzling over a specimen in a laboratory. Malachi lunged in, hoping to catch him distracted, but Brage grabbed his wrist and pulled, switching the black knife to his left hand and trying to slice up at Malachi’s elbow. He could feel the pulse of magic as his talesm repulsed the Grigori’s strike. Stepping closer, Malachi hugged Brage to his chest and plunged the silver blade into his side. Blood gushed over his hand, but Brage pushed back, pressing a hand to his waist to stem the bleeding but never lowering his knife.

His lip curled. “I was told you lost your talesm.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

Brage lunged again, but his movements held an edge of desperation. Malachi knew he couldn’t let the black knife touch him. The cut on Brage’s arm was growing. The flesh around it was gray and the veins stood out black against his pale skin.

“You’re dying,” Malachi said. “Tell us why Volund wants her.”

Brage only laughed and dropped to the icy brick, sweeping a leg out again, catching Malachi’s ankle with his foot. He brought them both down and scrambled over to him, trying to climb atop Malachi.

Shit.

The Grigori had the upper hand, and Malachi couldn’t find purchase on the icy bricks. He was close to panic before a clang sounded through the air. Malachi blinked and Brage fell to the side. Ava was standing over him, clutching a copper urn smeared with blood.

“I couldn’t just stand there!”

“Good!”

Climbing to his feet, he almost slipped again, but Ava held him. Brage was shaking his head and blinking at Ava. A frown creased his eyebrows. Still, he persisted.

“Come with me,” he pleaded. “You can change everything. You have no idea—”

He stopped when she threw the urn at him.

“Are you nuts?” she shouted. “Why don’t you just die?”

Malachi ran and slipped across the roof as the snow swirled. There was a scream on the wind. Nothing human or even animal. Brage looked up, past Malachi. Over his head and into the black night. His mouth fell open in horror and Malachi halted.

A great gold eagle landed on the roof, and the snow exploded around it. It stepped forward and grew into Jaron. He glowed with light, and Brage raised a hand, pointing at him.

“You promised! You said you would not interfere!”

Jaron lifted the Grigori up by the neck. “I lied.”

Malachi turned to run to Ava, but found his feet were frozen to the ground.

“No,” he gasped. “Ava!”

His body was frozen. He could not reach her. Malachi twisted his neck around, but could barely catch a glimpse of her over his shoulder.

She stepped closer, her eyes locked with Jaron’s. Her face held no fear, only a grim fascination.

Malachi shouted again. “Ava, no!”

She didn’t turn toward his voice. And she didn’t stop.

It was quiet. So quiet.

Peaceful.

One minute she was frightened, watching Malachi and Brage slip across the frozen roof as they tried to kill each other. It held none of the terrible grace she remembered from Istanbul. It was dirty and bloody and cold. Then Brage had looked at her. Malachi was only steps away from killing him, and Brage looked at her with a terrible hunger.

Longing.

For a second, his voice smoothed out. The whisper did not rasp. It curled and twisted, seducing her. Softening her. Then—

Quiet.

Quiet like in her dreams. As if the world had been wrapped in cotton wool and the only sound she heard was his voice.

She saw him, holding the Grigori out to her like an offering. And when he spoke, the whisper came to her ear.

“Do you want him?”

There was nothing and no one on the roof except the three of them. The wind was silent. She was warm. Comfortable. She stepped closer.

“Why?”

“He is yours if you want him,” Jaron said, his voice for her ears alone. He held out the black knife as he raised Brage in the air. In his hand, the blade was not a dull black, but a swirling crystalline jewel, glowing with heavenly power.

“Why would I want him?”

The angel frowned. “Don’t you want to kill him?”

Of course she did. She’d imagined it countless times. But somehow, the thought of plunging a knife into the limp Grigori that Jaron held out felt wrong.

“I… I don’t know. Was he going to kill me?”

“No. In his own way, he very much wants to protect you.”

“Then wouldn’t it be wrong?”

Jaron cocked his head. “Does it matter?”

Did it? Ava blinked and tried to remember. In front of her, the glowing knife beckoned. She knew it would be warm in her hand. It would fit perfectly. She could feel it sink into the Grigori’s spine, and a soft voice whispered in her mind.

Yes…

Come with me…

Take what is yours…

She stepped closer. Brage hung limp in Jaron’s grip, like an offering presented to her.

An offering.

To her.

“He would kill your mate,” Jaron said. “He would take you to his father, but he would kill your mate to do it.”

He had killed her mate. In that moment, Ava remembered. The Grigori had killed Malachi. Ripped him from her. Torn Ava’s soul in half. The fury rose up and the black whisper grew louder.

Yes.

Kill it.

This is yours.

Ava looked into Jaron’s eyes, which held a softness she’d never seen before.

“Tell me what you wish, my daughter,” he spoke to her mind. “Tell me, and I will grant it.”

She didn’t know what to do with such a gift. It was too terrible to offer.

Ava was tired. She only wanted Malachi.

Jaron said, “I cannot grant to you what you have already taken.”

“If he would kill my mate,” Ava said, “then let my mate kill him.”

The angel smiled and closed his hand around the black knife. “I offer you a gift and reap an unexpected reward. How very interesting.”

In a blink, he was gone, and Malachi was there, holding Brage by the neck, plunging his silver blade into the Grigori’s spine as the monster screamed.

Then the screaming stopped as Brage’s body dissolved. The wind snatched his dust, whisking it away from Ava and Malachi, sweeping the snow off the roof in a violent flurry until there was nothing under their feet but black ice and cold brick.

The storm stopped, and everything was silent.

Malachi knew he had experienced it before. Change happened slowly and in the blink of an eye. The filthy smell of old water in his nose, the chaos of splashing and shouts and a sharp pain in his neck and Ava’s scream—and nothing. Sheer black, as if a veil had dropped over him. Then from nothing, he’d woken with a gasp and a need and the sharp yearning of unremembered dreams.

He was frozen in place, staring helplessly at his mate while she walked toward the fallen angel and the Grigori soldier.

And in the next breath, his hand was on the soldier’s neck, the silver blade plunged into his spine. Dust rose, and Brage was no more.

Jaron was gone. Ava was there, staring with haunted eyes at the place Brage had been. And Malachi had no idea how or when he had crossed the roof to kill his murderer.

The furious wind had stopped, and the moon reappeared.

“Ava?”

She blinked, as if coming out of a dream, but she did not speak.

“Reshon?” Malachi dropped his knife and put his hands on her shoulders to draw her close. He pressed his cheek to the top of her head and hugged her, but she did not respond.

“Canım,” he whispered. “Please.”

He finally felt her arms go around him and he let out the breath he’d been holding.

“I don’t hear them.”

Her voice was so soft he barely heard it, even on the now-silent rooftop.

“What?”

“The Grigori below. I think they’re all dead.”

“And the others?”

She paused, and he felt the tension leave her shoulders.

“I’m missing three. But none of our friends.”

He said nothing. His relief would be silent, for three of their number had been lost. Malachi might not have known them, but they had died—in part—protecting his mate and humans who would never know their sacrifice.

After a few more minutes, he asked her, “What happened?”

There was a pause before she simply said, “Jaron.”

“He was here, and I couldn’t move, Ava. I couldn’t hear. Then he was gone and Brage was in my hands. And I don’t—”

“He offered him to me,” she said. Her arms went tight around his ribs. “Like… a present. He offered me the knife and asked if I wanted to kill him.”

Malachi had killed hundreds of Grigori. Possibly thousands. They were predators. Monsters. In service to their Fallen fathers, they thought nothing of preying on human women, reducing them to nothing more than food for their unnatural hunger. Brage had murdered hundreds. Had even killed Malachi.

And yet the angel’s offer to Ava chilled him.

“You refused?”

“Jaron told me Brage didn’t want to kill me. That he wanted to protect me, but he would kill you to do it.”

“He would protect you by killing me?”

“And so I told him… I told him to let you kill him.” Her voice caught. “So you killed him, not me.”

“Good.”

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry, Malachi.”

He hugged her closer. “Don’t. You did the right thing.”

She started to sniff. “Then why do I feel like a coward?”

“Ava—”

“And the worst part… I wanted to. I wanted to kill him. So much. Not just kill him, I wanted to make him hurt. It was there, Malachi. It’s still there inside me. No one understands. There’s this black voice that wants me to kill and hurt and keep going until—”

“Stop.” He crushed her to his chest, whispering against her cheek and tasting her tears. “Stop.”

“Who am I?” she asked, her tears making her voice rough and swollen. “What am I?”

“You’re my mate,” he said, pushing her away so that her eyes met his. His hands cupped her cold cheeks, forcing her to keep her eyes on him. “Mine. My heart. My soul. That is all that matters to me.”

“But—”

“That is all that matters.” He pressed a kiss to her lips, but she froze.

Distant. She drifted away from him even as he held her in his arms. Malachi kissed her, but she was not there. She was lost in her own mind, racked with needless guilt for the death of a predator. Fearful of her own power.

Vashama canem, reshon.

He could feel his soul reach for her.

Come back to me, Ava.

Tentative hands came to his waist, then reached around and pressed to the small of his back. Her lips softened under his and she allowed him to pull her closer. He wanted to take the kiss deeper. Wanted to spirit her away from the cold killing ground where the scent of sandalwood and sulfur still lingered in the air.

He held her long after they broke the kiss, tucking her head under his chin before he steered her down the stairs, past their friends and the wondering eyes of Damien and Sari. He ushered her into a car someone had brought to the front of the building. It was near dawn, and shopkeepers were beginning to show themselves. Humans called to each other near the docks. The city was waking from the darkness of night, unaware that the silent threat that had been stalking it was gone.

For now.

Malachi took Ava to the scribe house and up the stairs to the room where he found her things. He lay down next to his silent mate and held her until she fell into fitful dreams. Then he followed her into sleep and held her there, too.

It was silent in the meadow, but the dark hedge was gone. Flowers dotted the edges where the forest stood, silent and watchful over its residents. He cradled her in the grass, her arms twined around his neck.

“There’s a darkness,” she whispered. “And it scares me so much.”

“Do not fear the darkness.”

“And when the darkness is in me? Should I fear it then?”

“No,” he said, lifting her hand from his neck, knitting their fingers together. “Look, my love, there is light, too.”

Glowing silver letters pressed against gold. Their arms linked in the moonlight. His dark skin was lit from within by pure white light. And her pale skin—almost white in the moonlight—was touched by burnished gold. Glimmering black lined the edges of her mating marks, and they burned with frightening beauty.

“We were meant to be like this,” he whispered. “Two halves of the same soul. Dark and light together.”

“How do you know?”

“I know because you told me.”

“I did?”

He bent to her ear and whispered, “Remember…”