The Secret (17 page)

“So why should I trust you?” Malachi asked. “How many women have you killed?”

Kostas’s eyes froze. “Too many.”

Malachi leaned forward. “And why should I not execute you here?”

“Because my men surround you,” Kostas said. “They owe me their loyalty. And I cannot allow you to take my protection away from those who need it.”

“How do I even begin to trust you?” Malachi said. “You could lie—”

“I love my sister.” Kostas’s eyes softened as he looked to Kyra. “I have always protected her. Even when my father was alive. I am far from guiltless, but she is the reason I’ve never surrendered to the total rage most Grigori feel. Her touch. Her life. Our father allowed us to stay together because I was useful to him, and I’m stronger with Kyra near me.”

“Barak did not have an overly cruel reputation.”

“Some angels are more lenient than others,” Kostas said, turning back to them. “Some are negligent and don’t care. But all of us exist at the whim of the Fallen. Free will only came to me once my father was dead.”

Malachi checked on Ava again, but his mate was still huddled in the corner with the other two women, speaking in low voices. “Why have we never seen a female of your race before?”

“How do you know you haven’t?” Kostas asked.
 

Malachi had no answer.

“Kyra and I were fortunate,” he continued. “Barak doesn’t kill his daughters at birth like most of the Fallen do.”

A knot tightened in his gut. “Killed at birth?”

A hollow look came to Kostas’s eyes. “The females have always been harder to control. Most angels consider their daughters too dangerous to live.”

“Why?” Malachi asked.

“Think about it,” Max said. “If we draw the Irin and Grigori parallel out, Grigori would be able to work magic if they could write as we do. If they were taught the spells.”

“But the Fallen do not teach them,” Malachi said, still profoundly grateful for that fact. Kostas the heretic might be controlling himself, but that hadn’t changed his opinion of Grigori as a whole.
 

“Nor should it,” Kostas said, looking at Malachi.

He tensed, realizing the man had heard his thoughts. “You’re telepathic?”

Kostas shook his head. “Not truly. I hear whispers of thoughts every now and then. Barak’s children sometimes do. If I’d had training from my father, I might know more.”

“They offer you no teaching at all?” Malachi could hardly believe it. Knowledge was revered in Irin culture. Training started before children could speak. It was given in playful verses and songs from the time they were born. The teaching of magic was an Irin parent’s primary responsibility.
 

“They do not teach us, or they cannot,” Kostas said. “We don’t know. I’m certain they wouldn’t, even if they could. It would make us more powerful. And if we were more powerful—”

“You might be harder to control,” Malachi said. “But why are your sisters considered more dangerous than their brothers?”

“They hear things,” Kostas said, his voice low. “Sometimes they say things. Dangerous things they have no idea how to control. Many are unwell in their minds. Tormented by—”

“Voices,” Malachi said, glancing at Ava. “If they are like our women, they hear the soul voices of humanity.”

“Obviously your women have a way to control it. Ours do not. My sister… I try to keep her as isolated as I can. She wanted to come and meet your mate, though I advised against it.”

“Ava was the same.” Malachi offered that one comfort. “Before we found her. She survived.”

Kostas took a deep breath. “I love my sister. I cannot remember a time when I did not. Even when my father was alive. Barak was… negligent. He didn’t kill his daughters, but they were sent away. He had places that were mostly prisons. Those who escaped were left alone, but then they were at the mercy of the humans. Yet his negligence was still better than most of the Fallen. Many infant daughters, even if they aren’t killed, die of neglect when their mothers give birth to male children.”

“Why?”

“Because we kill our mothers,” Kostas said. “Simply by existing.”

Malachi tasted acid at the back of his throat.

“Don’t you understand?” Kostas continued. “Your ancestors were forgiven because they recognized the truth: Angels don’t belong here. Their children—all of us—never should have existed. We are abominations. They left because they knew that, so the Creator had mercy on the Irin. My people?” Kostas leaned back. “We received no mercy. We don’t deserve it. We’re all murderers before we can speak.”

The man’s self-loathing was so evident Malachi had a difficult time condemning him further.
 

Max leaned forward and said, “You fight to make things better, my friend.”

Kostas gave him a rueful smile. “I would call you my friend, Maxim, but for your willful ignorance of the truth.”

“It’s not ignorance. I simply don’t judge you as harshly as you judge yourself.”

“I saved Kyra,” Kostas said to Malachi. “I have been able to save a few others. I protect them. That is my penance for the lives I’ve taken. The harm I’ve done.”

“How many women?” Malachi asked. “How many do you protect?”

“I don’t trust you that much, Scribe. No matter who you are mated to.”

“When I finally discovered it,” Max said, “I knew I had to tell you. For Ava.”

Malachi narrowed his eyes at Max. “You think Ava is Grigori?”

“No. Yes?” Max said. “I don’t know. I see more in common than different.”

Malachi’s eyes turned to Ava and Kyra. He could see it, see the similarities, but he could also see profound differences. Ava didn’t look inhuman, as Kyra did. Her skin wasn’t as pale or as luminous. Her eyes were the same, but she was no ethereal creature. His mate had a delicate, yet earthy, beauty.

“I don’t think she is, Max.”

“There’s something…,” Kostas said. “Her eyes drew me at first. But I agree. Your mate does not look like our women.”

“She’s at least half human. Her mother is fully human, but her father is not. That may be the connection.”

“Is her father Grigori?” Kostas asked. “Some of us are able to father children with human women. Some have enough control.”

“He doesn’t smell it. Or look it. Though there is something different about him.”

“Reed’s mother,” Max said. “That has to be the connection. Ava’s grandmother must have Grigori blood.”

Malachi said, “We’ve been trying to find her, but we haven’t had much success. Could she be one of yours?”

Kostas took a deep breath and frowned. “If she is, I’d have no way of knowing without meeting her. No records are kept in our world, particularly for females. The ones who survive are mostly in the human population because they’re safer there.”

“Safer?” Malachi asked. “Among humans who think they’re insane?”

“They can’t hurt humans as the males do, so they can often blend in. It’s better than what faces them among the Fallen.”

“Do you have any idea how many might be out there?” Malachi asked. “How many… Grigora?”

“The Fallen call them Grigora. They call themselves
kareshta
. The silent ones.”

“Silent ones?”

“Those who make it through childhood learn to be silent. Not to use their voices. It’s their only chance of surviving in our world.”

Kareshta
.

Kostas continued, “I would estimate only two—maybe three births in ten are female. The Fallen tend to create male children. Some have no daughters at all. Whatever genetics are in play, women are rare.”

“Only four in ten Irin children are female,” Max said. “We have no idea why. It’s always been that way.”

Kostas said, “Of that twenty percent, more than half are probably killed at birth. There could be hundreds. Thousands, counting all the minor angels. We have no way of knowing. Most of them are in the human world. Free Grigori like us who shelter the
kareshta
will only shelter those whose fathers are dead.”

“What?” Malachi asked. “Why?”

“Security,” Kostas said with a grimace. “If our sires are alive, they can find us. It doesn’t matter where we go. Only those whose sires are confirmed dead are allowed. Almost all the women I shelter are my sisters. I cannot risk them. Too many of the Fallen are trying to kill me.”

“Why?” Malachi asked. “Barak is dead. Why do they care what you do?”

“My mere existence is heresy. I’m the one telling the Grigori they can live without reducing themselves to murderous animals. That there
is
another way.”

“But not a way the Fallen are happy about.”

“How could they be?” Kostas asked. “In order for the Grigori to be free, the Fallen
must
die.”

“I’M not
kareshta
,” Ava said later as they lay in bed. “I thought at first that I was, but I’m not.”

They’d avoided the scribe house in Sofia, not wanting to explain their presence if it might compromise Max’s promise of secrecy to Kostas and Kyra. Instead, they’d found a small hotel near the highway and taken two rooms. They were threadbare, but clean.

“You’re not
kareshta
, but…?”

“There is something. Kyra feels familiar. Her voice sounds right, if that makes any sense.”

“Her magic feels the same as yours.”
 

“Yes, I think that’s it.”

Malachi hadn’t said anything, but he’d sensed the same thing. More, Kostas’s sister gave off the same nervous energy that Ava had been drowning in before she’d learned to shield herself from the soul voices of the humans around her.

He wrapped her in his arms, shaken by the truths they’d discovered that night.

For Malachi, it changed everything.
 

He was forced to see the Grigori in a new light. Yes, most or all of them were still victimizing humans, but they were also victims themselves. And some, like Kostas, appeared to be trying to change things. His black-and-white world had been thoroughly washed in grey. But in the confusion, his scattered mind focused on a kernel of hope.

If Ava had Grigori blood, how different could they be?

“You’re not
kareshta
,” Malachi agreed. “But it wouldn’t matter to me if you were. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” She snuggled deeper into his side. “I can hear you.”

There was a dark edge to her magic. The visions that came to her were unlike anything Irina experienced. But Ava was good. Not perfect, but
good
. Her heart was warm and generous. She was protective. Courageous.
 

His.

She reached out with her magic, and it was as if small hands stroked him from head to toe. He shivered with wanting her, but Ava was too deep in thought.
 

“I think my grandmother must have been one of them. That might be why my father locked her away. Tried to hide her. Kyra said that many of the
kareshta
end up in mental institutions because people think they’re crazy.”

“That makes sense.” He’d come to the same conclusion, but he knew she needed to work it out in her own mind.

“Yeah, it makes sense.”
 

He felt her shoulders shaking before he heard her cry. “Shhh, Ava.” He stroked her back, pulling her so tight to his chest that he was worried she would bruise. Her pain was a stab in the heart.

“They’re out there,” she said. “Others like me. Those are the stars in Jaron’s vision. Out in the darkness, Malachi. So many of them. And so horribly alone.”

“I know, Ava.”

“We have to find them.”

Could finding the
kareshta
be a way out of this never-ending war? Could Grigori society turn into something like the Irin? Kostas had said that those Grigori who had contact with their sisters were more stable. Had more control. If they could find more of the female Grigori—teach them to protect their minds—would it change their enemies as Kostas hoped?

What was the alternative? Endless, blood-soaked war? Generation after generation caught in the same vicious cycle? His own son continuing the slaughter of a people Malachi was starting to believe were more like his own than he wanted to admit?

The Irin Council’s policy had remained unchanged for thousands of years. Scribes protected the human population from the Grigori, killing them any time they attacked. But with a few exceptions, the Fallen themselves were never targeted. Why? Malachi had always assumed they were simply too hard to kill. But could there be another motive for tacitly allowing them to exist?

What power would the council have without an enemy to fight?

“We need to go back to Italy,” Ava said. “We have to find my grandmother. I refuse to let Jasper stonewall me. If she’s like me, she’s been living with voices her whole life, Malachi. There must be something I can do.”

Ava’s conscience would never allow her to let another live in the torment she’d faced for over twenty years.

“We’ll go to Italy,” Malachi said. “We’ll find a flight to Genoa in the morning. I think it’s only six hours or so with connections. We can be there by tomorrow night.”