The Secret (24 page)

“Yes.”

Rhys smiled ruefully. “You’re almost panting for it.”

“And what if I am?”

“Yes.” He drained his coffee. “You definitely seem more like yourself.”

Chapter Fourteen

“WELCOME TO VIENNA,” Ava whispered to her reflection. “Your father is an angelic bastard. Your grandmother was driven insane by the angel who raped her. Your great-grandfather is an archangel who kills things for you as tokens of his twisted affection. And somewhere in the middle of this, you mated a four-hundred-year-old man with amnesia.”

She blinked and looked at the cat that had wandered into the apartment when she opened the door to its meow.

“How is this my life?”

The black feline only blinked guileless gold eyes.

“Do you come with the apartment?”

It gave a scratchy growl and jumped down from the dressing table where Ava had been brushing out her hair. It was clean and seemed well fed. She thought it must belong to someone in the building. As long as it didn’t trash her stuff, she was fine with him hanging out. She liked cats and dogs; she just couldn’t keep one herself because she traveled too much.

Ava sighed as she turned back to the mirror. She needed a haircut badly. And a pedicure. A massage would be a good idea, along with her regular medical checkups. She had a bunch of vaccinations that needed updating, and she felt like she’d put off the regular business of life for way too long.

She checked her phone. No e-mails from her mother or father, but one from Luis, asking how her grandmother was. Ava hoped he didn’t feel like he needed to be chatty with her now because she was engaged to the guy who’d threatened his life.
 

That would be awkward. And frankly a little disturbing.
 

She shot him back a quick response and checked her calendar, only to realize she had a job coming up. In fact, it was a job she’d booked eighteen months in advance, right before she’d taken the assignment in Cyprus that eventually led her to Istanbul. She remembered it because she felt like the magazine was being overly cautious, booking her so far in advance to cover their summer beach spread for the next year.
 

Now the shoot was approaching and Ava had some decisions to make. She still had three months before she needed to be on location, but she couldn’t cancel any later than six weeks out and not seriously piss them off.
 

She also realized that she and Malachi had officially been reunited longer than they’d originally been together in Turkey. She didn’t know why that seemed significant, but it did.

She heard the key turn in the lock.

“Ava?”

“In the bedroom.”

“Why do we have… a cat?”

“He wandered in,” she said as Malachi entered the bedroom. “Seemed nice enough. Probably belongs to a neighbor.” He leaned down to brush a kiss across her temple and flopped on the bed, only to have the cat jump up and sit on his abdomen.

“I don’t think it likes me.”

“Well, you are in his bed.”

“I’m fairly sure we’re the ones renting it.”

“That reminds me, I need to get some money transferred to Rhys to pay him back.”

He frowned. “Or don’t, because the scribe house is covering it.”

“Or let me do it, since I’m not worried about my budget? The house resources are probably strapped with the reconstruction.”

“Ava, you don’t need to do that.”

She spun around in her seat. “Is this going to be a macho alpha-male problem for you?”

“Am I a macho alpha-male?”

“Yes. And I’m loaded. It makes more sense to let me—or let’s be honest, my asshole of a father—cover the bill for stuff like this. It’s a better use of resources. Besides, I’d probably be paying for a hotel and a guide—possibly a bodyguard—if I were traveling on my own.”

He propped up on his elbows, his lips twitching. “Are you saying I’m your bodyguard and guide?”

“No.” Her face reddened.

“Because I am very fond of your body. So guarding it isn’t a problem.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

Now he was grinning. “You don’t have to pay me though.”

“Shut up!”

Malachi scooted off the bed and got on his knees, shuffling over to her as she sat at the dressing table. The cat gave an irritated yowl and abandoned the room. The stool she sat on was low enough that Malachi was level with her when he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind. She could see him laughing in the mirror.

“Am I your kept man,
canım
?”

“If you are, I feel like a lot more breakfast in bed should be happening.”

“Mmmm.” His lips trailed along her neck. “Now I feel this pressure to earn my keep.”

“Coffee in bed, at least.”

It was getting harder and harder to concentrate. The traitor cat had completely abandoned her. She should probably be getting ready for… something.

But he was playing with her. Teasing her. More and more of his personality was coming back. His humor. His bravado.

Ava fell in love all over again every time she turned around.

“All right, you’ve convinced me. I will take the job as your kept man. So…” He lifted her in his arms and turned to the bed. “Now it is time for work.”

TWO very work-filled hours later, they met the others in the back room of a coffeehouse off Bäckerstraße. It was dark and smoky in the front room, the walls plastered with movie posters and flyers for avant-garde art exhibitions, but the small back room was bright and clean. The smell of coffee, beer, and sausages filled the midday air.
 

And Ava’s friends, both scribes and singers, filled the room.

Suddenly she was fighting back tears.

Orsala sat in quiet conversation with a nodding Rhys. Mala was signing to both Leo and Sari, who was holding Damien’s hand as he read from a tablet computer with a frown on his face. Max and Renata were there, even though both were pointedly ignoring the other by checking their phones.

Malachi unwrapped his scarf and hung it with the others tossed over a bench near the door.

“Ava, give me your coat and I’ll—what’s wrong?”

She turned, smiling. “Nothing is wrong. Sorry. Happy tears, babe.” Her hands went to his cheeks. He’d let his beard start to grow, and she was getting used to it. It suited him. “You’re coming back to me. And everyone is here. I feel like I’ve lived with this knot of fear in my stomach for months now, but I just… I know it’s going to be okay. Somehow, it’s all going to be okay if everyone is here.”

He held on to her wrists and squeezed them as she smiled.

“I love you,” he whispered, and Ava realized the whole room had gone silent.

She turned, and everyone was smiling at her.

“Hello, Ava.” Sari stood and opened her arms. “It’s good to see you, sister.”

Sister.

Ava would only admit it to herself, but part of her had wondered whether the Irina would treat her differently now that they knew her blood was from the Fallen. She should have known better. Orsala embraced her. Mala pinched her bicep in mock disapproval. And Ava knew without a doubt that Karen would still bake her too many cakes and Astrid would still share a self-deprecating joke to break the tension.

They were her sisters. For the first time, her heart was light enough to enjoy it.

Malachi had his hand on the small of her back, guiding her to a chair near Damien, who looked up, tension plastered over his brow. Sari squeezed his hand, and he lifted her knuckles to his mouth, the easy affection between them another wound healed over in Ava’s heart.

They looked like love to Ava. Tested. Broken. Mended. Faithful. Forgiven. She didn’t know everything they had lived through, but if Damien and Sari could recover from it, she was certain she and Malachi had a better-than-average chance.

“What’s wrong?” Sari asked.

“Anurak has rejected my request for a meeting.”

Sari looked shocked. “What? But he’s been vocal about the reformation of the Irina council.”

“I know. Perhaps he’s feeling pressure—”

“If Anurak is the same scribe I once knew,” Orsala said, “he’s grown tired of
talk
. He’s a taciturn man by nature, and I doubt he wants debate. I have a feeling he and many other older scribes simply want the Irina to step forward and claim their role in the Library.”

“The Library?” Ava whispered to Malachi.

“The Elder Council meets in the Library. It’s symbolic but also practical, as their primary job is interpreting Irin scripture and history and using those interpretations to resolve disputes.”

“Where did the singers meet?”

“The same place. There are fourteen desks. Seven have been empty since the Irina elders fled after the Rending.”

“A library?”

He shrugged. “It’s a very
big
library.”

“I thought I heard something about council chambers.”

“I believe it is not unlike your court system. All the elders have their own offices and staff, but the actual decisions are made in the Library.”

Well, Ava supposed there were worse places to run an entire society.

“But wouldn’t meeting in a library favor the scribes?” she asked. “I mean, they’re all supposed to be equal, right? Seven scribes and seven singers. But that’s kind of a scribe thing, right? Written magic?”

Malachi frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I mean, doesn’t running the Irin world from a library mean the Irina are at a… tactical disadvantage?”

“No.” He was shaking his head. “Irin scribes
must
be in the Library. That is where we draw our strength. But Irina…” Malachi smiled. “Irina singers
are
the library.”

Oh. Well, that was cool.

Damien looked up with a rueful expression. “They can be quite superior about it.”

Orsala chided him. “Just because you males are forced to rely on books and scrolls doesn’t make your magic less powerful, Damien.”

The watcher gave her an affectionate smile before he turned his attention to Ava. “It did create a rather major problem when the Irina elders went into hiding, though. While they could take copies of our scriptures with them as references, we had no access to Irina knowledge. It’s one of the reasons there’s been so much division since the Rending.”

“I think Anurak is right,” Sari said. “We need to stop debating. Irina elders should just walk in and take their place at their desks. No more debate. No more talk of compulsion. We’d have a voice on the council, and no one would be able to question it.”

Mala shook her head and began signing. Sari translated as she signed.

“They would question anything not supported by the wives,” Mala signed. “Sari and her supporters are not the only Irina in the city now. Whatever elder singers take their place in the Library must have legitimacy among all the Irina—even if there is dissent—or we lose all rights to challenge the elder scribes.”
 

Max said, “I agree.”

“So do I,” Orsala said. “The problem is how we can elect our own elders when we’re still so scattered.”

“How are the elders chosen?” Ava asked. “I know they’re chosen by the watchers of the scribe houses, but it’s got to be more specific than that. I mean, we’re talking about the whole world, right?”

Malachi put an arm around her shoulders. “One from each continent, for the most part. And then one seat that changes depending on population.”

“So one from North America and one from South,” Rhys said. “One elder from Africa. One from Europe. One from Eurasia—that one is up for debate every single election—and one from Eastern Asia and the Pacific region. That’s six, and then when the seventh seat comes up for election every seventy years, it’s decided based on population. Right now, there is an additional European elder on the scribe council, but the time before that, there were more scribes in Asia. It changes over time.”

Sari said, “And the Irina are basically the same, but we tend to have different population concentrations. Our seventh seat has more often come from Africa or Asia.”

“Okay, I get that it’s complicated,” Ava said. “But Sari, didn’t you say the havens are mostly connected online?”

“We all have e-mail, of course.”

“So…” She held up her smartphone. “Have elections online. Do it over the Internet.”

“Online elections for elders?”

Max leaned forward, smiling. “You know, Ava has a good point. Human revolutions are fueled by social networks now. Don’t you think the Irina could organize their own revolution on the Internet?”

Damien and Sari exchanged a look that told Ava they’d be talking more about it later. Yeah, so it kinda made her feel like a kid at the grown-ups table, but she had to remind herself that to these people she
was
a kid.

“Hey,” she whispered to Malachi. “When are Irin considered adults?”

He was following what looked to be a quiet argument between Sari and Mala. “Full adults? Around sixty to seventy-five years. When we’re finished with our training. Why?”