“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…”

The city of Oslo would never understand why the sudden rash of attacks against women suddenly dropped off with no arrests by the police. There were whispers of organized crime but no complaints. The collapse of an old apartment building near Aker Brygge was only one more mystery that no one tried to solve. There had been rumors about the place for years. Suspicious men coming and going. Strange noises. Rumors of corruption during redevelopment.

The column Ava read in the English edition of the online paper held no answers, only question after question that she knew would never be answered. Not if the Irin had anything to do with it. She sat in the kitchen of the scribe house, drinking coffee and relaxing while everything was still quiet.

“What are you reading?” Malachi asked, sitting next to her with a mug of dark tea.

She snapped her laptop shut. She had no idea why Malachi had carried it while he ran around Europe looking for her, but she was grateful to have it back. “Nothing. Just some news online.”

“Anything that will give Lang a heart attack?”

She smiled. “Lang is paranoid.”

The watcher was convinced that Irin exposure was imminent. He’d been on the phone with every contact he had in Vienna, trying to figure out what was going on, but he was getting nowhere. The lines of communication were only getting more tangled, and Sari and Damien were no longer debating going to the city. They were planning on it.

“May I?”

Malachi held out his hand, and she passed him the computer, curious what he would do. It was password protected, after all. It wasn’t as if he could—

He typed in the password with rapid fingers.

“Hey!”

Malachi shrugged. “Remember how I said that some things just came to me? Well, that was one of them.”

“I don’t remember giving it to you in the first place!”

“I suppose I must be very observant, can?m.”

She ignored the sweet rush she felt with his endearment and tried to scowl. “That is my computer, Malachi,” Ava protested as he pointed and clicked. “You don’t have any right to—”

“This,” he said quietly, angling the screen toward her. “Will you tell me about this?”

He had the photo gallery open. Pictures of Topkap? 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.