Ava giggled and squirmed as he held her. “We should get up.”

“I’m well on the way. Can’t you tell?”

“Clearly.” She managed to wiggle to his side. “But I have some questions.”

“Oh…” He groaned and buried his face in her neck, nipping at the soft skin with gentle teeth. “Do I get a prize if I answer correctly?”

“Not those kind of questions.”

“What kind then?”

“Last night…” She shook her head. “This morning. When we got here. The things they said… That meant something, didn’t it?”

“Yes.” His voice held an abundance of caution.

“What did it mean?” When he didn’t answer, she rolled over. “Well?”

She started to sit up, but he grabbed her and pulled her down, curling around her as he spoke.

“When we went to Cappadocia, the scribes there greeted us as guests. You might not have noticed, as they’re not as formal there.”

“You were speaking in the Old Language, too.”

“Yes. But here… When we arrived this morning, Damien greeted us as family. In the old way, the way the head of a household would greet a mated couple returning to a retreat. He called you sister. He called you my own.”

A quiet suspicion began to take shape. “They moved us into this room. Which is quite obviously intended for two people.”

“Yes.”

“And all your stuff is here. And my stuff.”

“Ava, I—”

“Are you telling me they think we’re married or something?” Her heart started pounding.

“Irin don’t marry,” he said, just a little too quickly. “So, no.”

“But they think something.”

“They know we’re together. That’s all. I told them we were together. Aren’t we?”

“I guess…” Ava felt like she was trying to find her way in a dark room that everyone could see but her. “Yes, we’re together. I just want to know what’s going on. This is all happening really fast. Do they think I’m going to live here forever or something?”

She felt him stiffen, and his face went blank. “Are you planning to leave?”

“Not right now. But… I don’t know.” She knew her words caused him pain, but they had to be said. “I have a life, Malachi.”

He drew back, and Ava hated the distance immediately. “Yes, you have a life.”

“And I can’t just—”

“A life where you travel from place to place every few months, never putting down roots.” His voice was brittle. “You don’t speak of any close friends. You have a mother who loves you but doesn’t understand you. A stepfather who protects you but doesn’t love you.”

His words stung, even though Ava knew they were true. “You have no right—”

“You were alone,” he said, grabbing her hand and stopping her from leaving the bed. “Like I was. Even more than I was. We were alone, but now we’re not.”

The urgency in his voice, the raw honesty of it, cooled her anger. “Malachi—”

“Why do you want to leave that? I need you, as you need me.” He drew her back down and placed a lingering kiss on her lips. “We can stay here. We can go another place. We can seek out the Irina who have hidden themselves and ask them to train you in magic. We can hide from the world if we must. I don’t know what we’ll do for money, but we’ll find—”

“I have plenty of money,” Ava said. “Money for a lifetime. I’m not worried about that.”

“Then why?” He kissed her again. “Why leave? I don’t care where we go, as long as we’re together.”

Her heart swelled, and she tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “Is this real?”

He smiled a glorious smile and kissed her again. “Of course it is. We can live forever. The two of us. Forever. Have a family. A life.”

“I love you.” Ava kissed him back, her heart pounding out of her chest with a mad hope. She believed him, and it scared her. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

He held her on the bed, rocking back and forth as Ava bit her lip and tentatively allowed the dreams he shared to take root in her heart. She could see it. For the first time in her life, she caught a glimpse of a life that didn’t end in loneliness and pain. She wanted to be cautious, but her reckless heart ran toward him.

“To be completely honest, however…” He glanced down. “Some might consider us… mated.”

Ava sat up. “That’s the Irin version of married, isn’t it?”

“It’s not exactly…” He was fiddling with the fingers on her right hand in what had become his own nervous gesture. “Yes.”

“I knew it!”

Ava and Rhys were looking through old record books, trying to identify the Grigori she and Malachi had seen in Kuşadası. Unlike police lineup books, which Ava had been acquainted with due to her kidnapping as a child, the Irin records were a mix of pictures and sketches. The profiles she paged through were only for the longest-lived and most dangerous soldiers, which meant it read more like an encyclopedia of evil than a suspect book.

Ulrich, son of Grimold. 1734. Took part in Rending near Stockholm.

Finn, son of Volund. 1856. Known kills in Barcelona, Madrid, and Rabat.