Page 122 of The Scribe (Irin Chronicles 1)

“You’re immortal.”

“She was supposed to be, too.”

Ava whispered, “We’re all immortal, as long as our stories are told.”

The old scribe smiled, nodded, and turned back to the painting.

She staredat the fire someone had started in the sitting room. It didn’t warm her. She was cold to her bones.

“Brage?”

“Gone,” Max whispered. “You fell in the water, and you didn’t come up. He escaped when we ran for you. He’s not in Istanbul. We don’t know where he went. But we have his weapon. He lost it in the fight.”

“I want to kill him.”

“Good.”

“You don’t sound fine,”Lena said.

“I am. Or maybe I’m not.” She twisted the phone cord around her finger as she sat. “But I will be.”

“I want you to come home.”

“No, I’m fine here. I like it here. I’m staying with friends.”

“Do you need—?”

“I’m not the only woman in the world who’s had her heart broken, Mother.” She didn’t try to stop the tears, knowing her mother believed the lie. “Give me some time. I’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t a lie. He’d left her.

She told the truth. Just not all of it.

Damien cameto her room one night. She was looking through the pictures on her laptop, which had miraculously survived the fire at the scribe house in Istanbul. Pictures from her time with him before. When she’d still been human, and he’d still been her bodyguard.

There weren’t enough.

He knocked on the door she’d left cracked open, then slipped in the room, sitting in the corner chair where Rhys, Maxim, Leo, and he had all watched over her.

Like brothers. His brothers.

Damien sat and watched her in silence until she spoke.

“What’s up?”

“I’m going to take you to my mate. To Sari.”

Ava swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t want to leave yet.”

“You need to.”

“Are you going to force me?”

Damien took a deep breath and leaned forward. “Ava, when you screamed in the cistern, you burst your own eardrums, along with Max’s and mine. Blood was pouring from your nose when we dragged you out. We were crying blood. The only reason you survived the wound to your abdomen and healed yourself was because Malachi performed the mating ritual. Otherwise, I know you’d be dead.”

She choked back the cry. “I told him he was an idiot for doing it.”

“Even now, I can tell you struggle to control the power. The songs press against your mind, don’t they?”

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