The Staff and the Blade: Irin Chronicles Book Four (50 page)

No wonder Damien ran to you.

“He ran away.” She smiled. “He didn’t run to
me
.”

Of course he did.
Mala winked and walked away.

※

She stared at him as he readied for bed. It was, Sari realized, the little things she had missed the most during their separation. The feel of his body next to hers in bed at night. The sound of him humming as he readied in the mornings. So much of their lives were lived for other people, but in their quiet moments, he belonged to her.

His broad shoulders stretched. He’d spent most of the day in the library with Leo, poring over the pictures they’d taken of Aurel’s compound and diagrams Rhys had secretly procured from the architectural firm that designed the house.

“Do you want me to rub your back?”

He let out a low, rumbling sigh. “Please.”

Scooting back in the giant bed, she made room for him between her legs. Damien crawled toward her naked, leaned back, and kissed her jaw before he sat up.

“Thank you,
milá
.”

She put her hands on the ink-marked shoulders. “You’re tense.”

“The compound is well designed. Leo and I agree that we’ll need at least a dozen men to breach the defenses if we’re to retrieve the women and children safely. I’d like you and Mala to go over the rough plan we made if you have time in the morning.”

“We do.” She dug her fingers in and felt him tense a moment before his muscles gave way under her hands. “Mala sparred with your mother today.”

“Who won?”

“Neither.”

Damien laughed.

Sari continued, “Then Mala told Katalin that I was the only one who could best her. The
praetora
developed a sudden twitch under her left eye.”

“I’m familiar with that twitch. It’s the same one she’s had since I was a child who didn’t obey.”

She stroked her hands along the ridges of muscle that lined his spine. “Was she a firm disciplinarian?”

“Yes.” He cocked his head. “But she never struck me. It wasn’t done in my family. It was seen as a sign of temper, and temper was to be controlled.”

“Always?”

“Always. Rage could be let loose in battle, but even then, it could not interfere with clear thinking.”

“No wonder you found my family so unruly.”

He chuckled quietly. “If I did something to displease her, Katalin made me muck the stables, which was not one of my jobs. The groomsmen knew me well by my tenth year. I became good friends with a few of them.”

Sari smiled. “I like this little rebellious boy you speak of. And your father?”

“If I disobeyed him, he laughed. Then he made me polish the armory.”

“The whole of it?”

“I didn’t disobey him very often.”

Sari smiled. “I think your father knew how to discipline you more wisely.”

“Yes, but Katalin got more labor out of me. So who had the better strategy, hmm?”

She kissed his shoulder and leaned forward, working strong hands down his muscled arms.

Damien took a deep breath but didn’t speak.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Do you want a child?”

Sari froze, her hands on the sensitive skin inside his elbow. Before she could pull away, Damien crossed his arms and grabbed her hands with both of his.

“I need to know,” he whispered. “I need… If you don’t, you don’t. But I need to know.”

Your children would be magnificent.

Sari banished the thought of Katalin’s voice from her mind. “I don’t know.”

The tension in his shoulders did not ease.

“I avoid thinking about children,” she confessed. “You know why.”

“I do.”

“But here… in this place, surrounded by your history and the legacy of your family, I know—”

“My desire for a child has nothing to do with legacy or history”—his voice was harsh—“or bloodlines or any other nonsense my mother is obsessed with.
I
want a child. Our child. But if you cannot—”

“I can have children,” Sari said. “According to Astrid, there was no permanent damage.”

“You interrupted me,” he chastised gently. “If you cannot bear the idea of having more children, I do understand. But it is something that I want. Maybe… I need it.”

Sari closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder, her hands still clasped in his.

“You need it,” she whispered.

Because the man in front of her, the mate she adored, was built to be a protector. Built to guide and teach and love. He had never sought the power that had been offered to him. Never taken the mantle of leadership his family had demanded.

“You are my home, Sari. I can wander the world for the rest of my life. The only home I need is you.”

Not a castle or a territory. People were his home. The lives and loves he protected, his legacy.

Her heart seized in fear. The thought of bearing another child, of allowing her heart and her body to be so vulnerable again, almost undid her.

“Sari.” He let go of her hands and turned into her arms. “Sari, speak to me. Was it too soon? Whatever you decide—”

“I’ll try.” Had her voice ever been so small? She hated the sound of it.

“No.” He wiped a tear she didn’t realize had fallen. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m impatient and—”

She cut him off with a bitter laugh. “Who has ever accused you of impatience?”

Damien said nothing, but he wrapped his arms around her and eased them down to lie in the bed. He pressed a kiss to her temple. “It was too soon.”

“Damien”—she sniffed—“it was always going to be too soon.”

He said nothing.

“I’m never going to be…” She took a deep breath. “I’m never going to be an easy mate. I’m never going to be the woman who dotes on her mate and her home. I thought once that I could be content in domesticity, but I wasn’t. I was miserable at the retreat. Miserable out of the fight. I didn’t want to admit that for the longest time because it felt disloyal to all who had died there, but it was not my home.”

“I know.”

“And even now, I feel as if I’d be giving up a part of myself to bear a child and raise it. But I do not want to deny you something that is so important to you. You’d be a wonderful father, but I don’t know if I would be a very good mother.”

“Sari, in what house do you think I was raised?” he asked, shaking her a little. “If you are not healed enough to bear the thought of a child, then I can accept this. Some wounds leave scars that last forever. But what do you think I expect of you as a mother? Baking and mending? Who do you think raised me?”

“Katalin. And clearly she was the epitome of warmth and love.”

He burst into laughter. “Indeed.”

“No child deserves to be neglected. No child deserves to question his worth.”

“My mother…” He sighed. “She was not the ideal nurturer. Nor was she a monster. We are who we are, Sari. And though you might have a temper fit for the battlefield, that passion also warms my bed and my heart.” He kissed her cheek. “You love me. You love me ferociously and fearlessly. You would sacrifice anything for those you love. Our child would know this. Any child of ours would know the ferocity and fire of her mother’s heart. You might drive a child to distraction, Sari, but she would
never
feel unloved.”

※

Sari was still thinking over what Damien had told her the next day as she and Mala looked over the plans Damien had drawn up.

A dozen warriors,
Mala signed.
Maybe more.

“That’s what Damien was thinking as well.”

We come from two sides.
She pointed at the road and the river.
One team to take out the Fallen, another to remove the women and children from the equation.

Days of observation had given Sari and Damien better intelligence about the numbers inside Aurel’s compound. There were three human woman—all pregnant—and at least ten children. Most were boys, two were girls. They ranged in age from toddlers to the oldest child, who looked to be around six years old. He was most often seen with the guards assigned to the children, and Sari guessed he was approaching the age when he’d be removed to a different location.

“The children might resist,” Sari said. “It may seem strange to us, but Aurel’s compound is their home.”

The women could resist too.

Sari put her hands on her hips. “We drug them if we have to. The priority is making sure they’re not harmed.”

And their guards?

“We’ll have to make that judgment call on the ground. My instinct is to kill them all, but if they’ve been protecting the women and children—”

Removing their familiar protectors could backfire.
Mala paused.
If they are true protectors, they will not object to our mission.

Sari pursed her lips. “Solomon’s baby? Let another have them so long as they’re not harmed?”

We try reason. Make it clear we mean the women and children no harm. If they still resist, we take them out. If their loyalty is to the women and children, we let them live.
Mala frowned.
In a sense, these Grigori are prisoners too.

“You’re being very reasonable about this,” Sari said. “About this new way of things.”

The majority of the Grigori are evil,
she signed.
Some are good. The majority of the Irin are good. Does that excuse those who are evil? There is no single truth in this world. That much I have known since my family disowned me.

“They were wrong to do it.”

From their perspective, they were right.
Mala smiled.
Their customs and traditions were set down centuries before Alexander and I met. They were set down for good reasons. We ignored them because we fell in love. Yet I would not have given up my mate for a thousand lifetimes of peace in my mother’s house. I have lived in competing truths for years. I’m quite comfortable with them.

“We’ll all have to become comfortable with competing truths if we’re going to survive this new world,” Sari said, glancing up as Katalin entered the room, grabbed a large tome from a lower shelf, and exited without saying a word. “How do you think she’ll do?”

Not well. But maybe she’ll surprise us both.

“Not likely.” Sari leaned her hands on the table and let the layout of Aurel’s compound sink into her visual memory. “We can’t get anyone on the inside, can we?”

The woman you saw the other night?

She shook her head. “There’s no way of knowing if we can trust her. She clearly cares for the child, but she might care for Aurel too. If she tells him or lets anything slip to one of the guards, the whole operation is compromised.”

We have a bigger problem than that.

“What?” Sari frowned at the satellite images of the road leading up to the compound. There were numerous cars in the images. A coincidence, or was the road frequently traveled? A busy road might make the initial approach easier, but it would also mean any guards at the gate were always on high alert.

Mala rapped on the table to get her attention.

“What?”

What the hell are we going to do with them?

“The gate guards? I’m thinking we bypass them entirely. We deal with the perimeter gate another way and take them out from the back. I want to scout a bit and find out how dense this forest—”

Not the guards at the gate. The woman and children. The ones we’re rescuing? What are we going to do with them once Aurel is dead?

“Oh.” She frowned. “Well, I need to call Ava about that.”

Ava?

“To get Kyra’s number. I figure if anyone is going to have an idea what to do with thirteen women and Grigori children—and any guards who might be attached to them—it would be Kyra and her brother.”

Do you have her number?

“No, but Ava does. That’s why I need to call her.”

Mala shook her head.
She won’t give it to you. She promised Kyra. But she can pass a message along.

Sari huffed out a breath. “Kostas is still that paranoid?”

There’s a saying about that.
Mala raised an eyebrow.
It’s not paranoia if they’re actually trying to kill you.

CHAPTER SIX

“F
IREARMS
.” Damien walked to the front of Katalin’s desk and started taking various small arms out of a backpack and lining them up. “You need”—two nine millimeters—“to be training your people”—a Russian submachine gun—“with guns.” The last thing he set down was an eighteenth-century flintlock pistol. Heaven knew where that relic had come from. “Honestly, Katalin. This is what the watcher in Prague has recovered just in the past few months.”

His mother curled her lip. “Disgusting invention. When did the Grigori start carrying them?”

“I would guess sometime in the past three hundred years.” He put his hands down on the desk. “This is no longer an option.”

“Bullets rarely kill scribes.” She waved a hand. “They are clumsy weapons.”