“This,” he said quietly, angling the screen toward her. “Will you tell me about this?”
He had the photo gallery open. Pictures of Topkapı Palace littered the screen. There were hundreds of thumbnails, but he’d opened the one she’d taken of him while he sat near the cafe, drinking a cup of tea and watching her from behind his sunglasses. He was wearing a linen suit and the sun caught streaks of red in his hair. She put her fingers to the picture, touching his serious face. It was when he was still pretending to be her bodyguard. Before she knew… anything.
“Why this one?”
“I’ve looked through them all. I tried to start at the beginning, but I still don’t remember much. Will you tell me?”
“Yeah.” She blinked back the tears. “I can tell you about it if you want.”
“I want.”
He looked like her mate. Felt like her mate. But in many ways, Malachi was still a stranger to her. This quiet man held only hints of the arrogant, reckless warrior she’d fallen in love with. He was different. More serious. But then, Ava imagined that she was, too.
“You kept following me around the city.” She started to smile. “I was pissed, but I can’t deny I was enjoying the scenery.”
He smiled back. “And you weren’t suspicious?”
“You have to understand about my stepfather. I thought he’d hired you.”
“Why would your stepfather hire someone to follow you?”
“Carl… he has this accountant who worries…”
He peppered her with questions until she started yawning. Then he guided her up the stairs and into their small room. She let him hold her because she slept better in his arms. So did he. Because, even though her mind didn’t know him, her heart and her body did. She let him hold her because Malachi kept the worst of the darkness away.
It still haunted her. She worried about using her magic for more than the most basic protection. Worried about the marks on Malachi’s arms that he told her appeared when she sang to him in their dreams. She worried about the strange visions Jaron had given her. And she worried about going to Vienna.
Malachi didn’t like the idea either, but if Damien, Sari, and Orsala were going, they both agreed they should follow. She still needed lessons from Orsala. They both needed the protection of friends. Vienna was a hotbed of politics, but it was also the repository of ancient secrets Malachi felt sure would shed light on Ava’s origins.
Plus, her father had a concert there in two months. And according to Rhys and Malachi, Jasper Reed might be the one human who could answer questions about the strange blood that made her an Irina.
And why she’d attracted the favor of a powerful fallen angel.
“Tell me what you wish, my daughter. Tell me, and I will grant it.”
Ava worried. But for the first time in months, she also hoped.
She drifted to sleep in Malachi’s arms, surrounded by the comfort of her mate. And as she drifted, her shields fell. His soul’s voice whispered to her, soothing murmurs of love and desire. They wrapped around her heart, fed her soul, and carried her when the darkness beckoned. In her mind, she saw them as they’d been in her dream, light and dark, bound together by heaven.
Not even death had been able to part them.
In her dream, the great circle rose, like the sun after a long night. Gold and silver twisted together, it climbed the sky until it shattered and a thousand points glistened in the darkness. Endless stars lost in blackest night.
And Ava stood below it, staring into the darkness, with Malachi at her side.
Epilogue
Jaron sat in a corner of the cell, staring at the woman with tangled hair. Like all her kind, she possessed an ethereal beauty. Her unlined skin was the color of sunset over the desert. Her hair was black and streaked with ribbons of red and gold. When it wasn’t tangled, it lay in sumptuous waves over her shoulders. Her lips were the color of ripe berries, and her gold eyes were rimmed by thick, curling lashes.
The woman in the cell knew none of her own beauty. Not anymore. She was lost in her mind.
The humans didn’t call it a cell, but that’s what it was. They’d given her paints with no brushes, because she would use the brushes as weapons if she could. But she’d used the paint to decorate the bleak walls with the visions that still came to her. Vivid hues surrounded her even though her clothes were an offensive white.
At one time she would have scoffed. As a child, she’d hated any dull color, and he had indulged her.
He’d indulged her audacity, and it had led to this.
She blinked her eyes open in a moment of lucidity and stared at him. “You.”
Her voice was hoarse from disuse. He hadn’t visited in a long time.
“Yes. It’s me.”
“Imagining?”
“No.”
She closed her eyes and let out a sigh of relief. He assumed it was difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy. But then, fantasy had always been real to her.
He felt the energy before she started to hum, and he flashed to her side, putting a finger over her lips.
“Shhh,” he soothed. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her to his side. “No singing, remember?”
“Why not?” Her voice held the petulance of her childhood.
“You know why.”
She laughed, but there was no joy in it. It was a dark laugh. Strange and frightening. If Jaron had been human, he imagined it would chill him to his bones.
“I sing sometimes when you’re not here,” she said, taunting him.