The Secret Read online

  Contents

  The Secret

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  I.

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  II.

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  III.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  IV.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  V.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  VI.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  VII.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Letter from the author

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Also by Elizabeth Hunter

  Praise for the Irin Chronicles

  Only when the darkness falls can you see the light of the stars.

  THE SECRET

  Irin Chronicles Book Three

  For thousands of years, the scribes and singers of the Irin race have existed to protect humanity and guard the gifts of the Forgiven. They have lived in the shadows. They have kept their secrets.

  But the Irin aren’t the only race with secrets.

  Ava and Malachi have survived the darkness, but will they ever discover the light? A powerful cabal of the Fallen may hold the answers, but to surrender them, it wants the Irin race to finally face their enemies. Both those coming from the outside and those raging within.

  The Secret is the third book in the contemporary fantasy series, the Irin Chronicles, and the conclusion of Ava and Malachi’s journey.

  THE SECRET

  Irin Chronicles Book Three

  ELIZABETH HUNTER

  THE SECRET

  Copyright © 2015

  Elizabeth Hunter

  ISBN: 9781941674031

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art: Damonza

  Edited: Victory Editing

  Formatted: Elizabeth Hunter

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please delete it and purchase your own copy from an authorized retailer. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For information, please visit:

  ElizabethHunterWrites.com

  For my mother and father

  Thank you for showing me what love

  Looks like

  Sounds like

  And acts like

  Every day of my life.

  They took and brought me to a place in which those who were there were like flaming fire,

  and when they wished, they appeared as men.

  They brought me to the place of darkness,

  and to a mountain, the point of whose summit reached to heaven.

  And I saw the places of the luminaries and the treasuries of the stars,

  and of the thunder,

  and of the uttermost depths.

  The Book of Enoch, Chapter Seventeen

  Prologue

  SHE WALKED AS SHE always walked in these dreams. Slowly. With no thought of where she was going. She only knew that, within this forest, a dark angel walked on her right and her mate walked on her left. Sometimes she could smell the soft damp rot of the forest; sometimes she couldn’t. Sometimes she could hear her footsteps as she walked over leaves. Often the birds chirped and called, but this night they were silent.

  She might see his shape, but often the angel was only a presence lurking on the edges of her mind.

  This night, her mate was beside her and the angel’s dark form walked at her side, his presence tangible. His power muted.

  “Why do you visit me like this?” she asked him.

  “Because I want to.”

  “There is another reason.”

  “If I am here, then the other cannot be.”

  She glanced at the warrior beside her. “But he is here.”

  “He belongs here. The other does not.”

  A tendril of anger threaded through her dream. “I don’t understand you.”

  “You will.”

  “Why can’t he hear you? See you?” She glanced at the warrior. In the low light, his talesm glowed with a silver sheen. He didn’t touch her, but she felt his presence as if the whole of him were wrapped around the ephemeral thought of her, anchoring her mind to her body.

  She would drift away without him.

  “Your mate is not mine as you are.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You will.”

  “When?”

  The dark angel paused. “Soon. You will know soon.”

  They walked, and the night grew darker. Colder. She shivered, and her reshon reached out, taking her hand in his. That was all he did, but the cold fled and she was drawn into his light. The mating marks on her arms lit. Her shoulders grew warm, and the fog that surrounded them grew thinner.

  The angel stopped, so she did too. He stepped closer, until his face was lit by the light that glowed from her body. Her own marks. Before her, he grew. And he was not a man. He was more, but she was no longer frightened.

  “This is how it should be,” he said, one hand hovering over her rune-marked shoulder. “Thousands of years, and I finally understand.”

  She felt her mate draw closer, but the dark angel held up a hand. He was forced to retreat. The scribe said something she did not hear because her eyes were locked on the familiar gold gaze of a man who was not a man.

  “I want you to remember now.”

  Remember what?

  He sent an image to her, but it was not one of the visions that were familiar and frightening. It was a narrow room, and two men were there with a woman. With her. One sat next to her. The other in a corner.

  This is a memory. This is mine.

  “Remember, Ava.”

  “You are… Irin scribe house.”

  “Istanbul.”

  “What are you?”

  “…angels.”

  Angels? Her eyes closed. Her mind focused. Angels.

  “Did you think the angels—”

  “Ava!”

  SHE woke with a sharp breath, sitting up as her eyes flew open. Malachi was beside her, his hand on her arm. It was early morning, and grey light shone around the corners of the curtains in t
he house by the sea. The room was cold, but she was covered in a sheen of sweat.

  “Ava?”

  “I’m awake.” She cleared the rasp from her throat. “I’m okay.”

  “Was it Jaron again?”

  “Yeah.”

  She took a soothing breath as he pulled her into his arms. She no longer had to ask. He no longer hesitated.

  In the month since he’d come back to her, they’d grown more familiar, though they still handled each other with care. Malachi was cautious about certain topics. Their past in Istanbul was safe. Their months apart were not.

  Part of Ava felt as if she’d woken from a nightmare when Malachi came back.

  The other part waited in terror to wake from the dream of him being alive.

  “Better?” he whispered into her hair.

  “Yes.” She breathed again, closing her eyes and listening to the steady surf in the background. “Yes, better.”

  He held her against the solid wall of his chest, anchoring her to his body, holding her in the circle of his arms.

  Safe. Safe.

  Some mornings Ava woke feeling as if she could drift away. She was smoke on those mornings. The thin fog that hung over the ocean in the moonlight. They clung to each other in sleep, no matter what had happened during the day or how distant she felt.

  Sometimes she woke and he was watching her, frowning as if he was trying to remember.

  On the best mornings, she woke and Malachi was the man he had been, light in his eyes and a teasing smile at the corner of his mouth. They made love on those mornings with playful passion. The joy of new lovers in familiar skin, hiding away in his grandparents’ house on the edge of the sea.

  On those mornings, they didn’t speak of the other times he woke her. The hours when she cried in her sleep. Stifling screams. Weeping with remembered loss. In the bleak darkness of those nights, they held each other desperately.

  “I’m here,” he’d whisper. “Ava, I’m here.”

  Once, she bit his shoulder hard enough to break skin, and the taste of his blood had lingered in her mouth for days.

  “I’m here.” He said it over and over again.

  And in the mornings, she believed him.

  But the nights always came. The dark angel walked with Ava in her dreams, and she woke crying, seeing Malachi’s face dissolve into gold dust that rose in the damp air of the cistern where he had died.

  “HOW is she?”

  “She grieves.”

  Rhys paused on the other end of the phone call. “But you’re back.”

  “Her mind knows that. But there are moments when I think her heart forgets.”

  Malachi held the phone to his ear while he watched his mate take pictures near the shore. His grandparents’ house sat on the ocean north of Hamburg, hugging the edge of the North Sea. It was bitterly cold in the middle of winter.

  Malachi craved the warmth of southern waters, but Ava resisted a return to Istanbul no matter how Rhys and Leo reassured her.

  His brothers called every week and asked the same questions.

  How was Ava?

  Had Malachi remembered more?

  Had any more of his talesm returned?

  Malachi continued to remember in scattered bits, but nothing like the full recovery they’d hoped for when he and Ava reunited. His talesm were stalled. They were nowhere near a scribe house where he could perform the rituals correctly, and none of his previous tattoos had reappeared as they had for a while during their dream-walks.

  Ava refused to use her magic.

  “Have you asked her about going to Vienna?”

  “She keeps saying ‘later.’ She’ll go later. We were going to go when her father performed there, but she changed her mind at the last minute. Said she wanted to have more time with just the two of us.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  Malachi shook his head. “That’s not the reason, Rhys.”

  “No?”

  He took a deep breath and debated confiding in the scribe who had once been his closest friend. Though he couldn’t remember all of it, moments came to Malachi when he remembered how close he and Rhys had been. Years of history tied them together. He’d had to learn to trust the man he had been, even if he couldn’t remember the whole of himself. Even if it was possible he’d never remember it.

  He watched Ava as she looked out to sea. She hadn’t moved in minutes. She was letting the icy surf lap her feet as the wind picked up. It whipped her hair into a cloud of black waves. But even as the cold crawled up her legs, she didn’t break her gaze on the horizon.

  “She won’t use her magic.”

  “What do you—?”

  “She’s reading a lot. Has me help her with translations sometimes. She’s read through everything Orsala sent at least twice.”

  “But she’s not practicing spells?”

  “No. She mouths the words, but she won’t say anything aloud.”

  “Do you ever see her marks glowing?” Rhys’s voice was concerned. “Any sign?”

  “Dreams. Only in our dreams.”

  “And the visions?”

  “Nothing like what happened to her in Norway. She dreams, but she doesn’t remember it clearly.”

  Both men paused in the conversation, and Malachi looked up and down the beach as Ava continued to walk and take pictures. Scanning for threats. Always scanning. She was his to protect and always would be, even now that she had her own power.

  Ava looked up and smiled at him once before she went back to taking pictures of something in the water.

  Other than when she was reading, she was rarely without her camera, and he often glanced up to see her taking a picture of him with a shy smile.

  He loved it when she did.

  “Do you think she’s feeling unsure of using her magic?”

  “I think she’s terrified.”

  “Of what? You’re more than capable of shielding her at this point, even with your talesm diminished. Your bond with her—”

  “She’s terrified of what she can do. She hasn’t said anything, but you know she feels different.”

  Rhys was silent.

  “She’s not like the others, Rhys. Even Sari and Orsala know. They don’t say anything, but her magic feels… different.”

  “We’ve never understood where it comes from. That has to be disconcerting.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. “Disconcerting” didn’t even touch the surface of it.

  “Is there any sign of her grandmother?”

  “If the older Ava is still alive, Jasper Reed has hidden her so completely that not even I can suss out her location. We’ve torn through his financial records. Other than being ridiculously wealthy and spending money on enough drugs to intoxicate a small country, everything lines up.”

  “He’s that much of a junkie?” Malachi curled his lip. He’d spoken to Ava’s mother on the phone, even spoken briefly to her stepfather. They were polite. Her mother was warm but cautious. Her stepfather, disinterested. But it was difficult to imagine them allowing an addict—even a rich one—into Ava’s life.

  “I don’t know that I’d call him a junkie,” Rhys said. “He has many of the signs of bipolar disorder. The drugs he takes could be a form of self-medicating. He’s mostly functional, other than the typical artistic excesses.”

  Ava’s father was a world-famous musician and composer, but his offstage antics were legendary. He’d been a peripheral part of her life when she was a child, but they’d developed an affectionate, if distant, relationship as Ava had become an adult. Malachi knew they e-mailed regularly and were planning to meet when her father was on tour in Europe.

  “Any word from Vienna?”

  “Nothing since last week.”

  Orsala and Sari were in the city with Damien, quietly taking stock of the fallout from their confrontation with Volund’s Grigori in Oslo. The rumbles of discontent from the watchers over Europe had grown, and the Scribe Council in Vienna had been forced
to take notice. But for the almost-immortal elder scribes on the council, change did not come swiftly. It would take more than the concern from soldiers in charge of the scribe houses to make the politicians take action.

  The stated policy of the Irin Council had not changed.

  Protect humans from the Grigori, but do not engage further.

  Do not provoke the attention of the Fallen.

  Defense, not offense.

  But though the Irin Council remained silent, formerly hidden Irina around the world had been roused by the attack on Sarihöfn.

  Irina who had hidden themselves since the Rending were making their way to scribe houses around the world.

  And the Irina weren’t interested in defense.

  SHE watched him as he ate, marveling at even his simplest gestures. The way his full lips closed around the tines of a fork. The movement of his throat when he swallowed. The shadow of stubble that grew every day, only to disappear each morning when he shaved. It would rasp against her lips when she kissed him at night, an edge of coarseness against the soft strength of his mouth.

  He looked at her, the corner of his lips turning up. “What are you thinking?”

  She smiled back and took another bite of the stew he’d made. Ava was pleased to discover that Malachi was a very good cook. He’d never cooked for her in the scribe house in Istanbul. The quiet routine they’d fallen into when they came to the sea was nothing like what they’d ever had before. There had been the tumult and the ecstasy of their time in Turkey. The agony of their separation. The uncertainty of their reunion in Oslo.

  They had never just been.

  “You know what I’m thinking,” she said. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking we should finish dinner and clear the table.”