“I can protect you,” Renata said. “I have my staff.”
Balien winked at her. “Thank heaven.”
Despite his joking, she knew he adored her family. His own parents were formal and a bit distant. Not unloving, but it was not in their way to be familiar. The chaos and warmth of the library at Ciasa Fatima was welcome to him. It was a small library with only four or five families in residence at once. They were constantly running out of room for people in favor of making room for books, so rooms were constantly being added and construction never ceased. It was crowded and messy and highly unorganized in anything nonacademic.
And Renata thought it was glorious.
Her mother and father were the undisputed leaders of the small Irin community as others came and went, but those who left always came back to visit. Ciasa Fatima was a haven in the wilderness and free of the politics that often marked larger and more connected libraries.
They crested the last hill before the house and almost ran into Giorgio and Heidi.
“Father?” Balien asked. “What is it?”
Both her parents were frozen. Still as statues. They stared into the distance, and Renata could feel a deep surge of magic swirling around them.
Balien’s eyes followed theirs and he pushed her behind him. “Renata, stay back.” He drew out the twin silver daggers he always wore.
“Balien?”
Giorgio grabbed his own daggers and fell into step behind Balien. For though every Irin male was tasked with the protection of wisdom and knowledge, every scribe was also a warrior, trained in the killing arts to protect the vulnerable.
“Mother?”
Heidi grabbed Renata’s hand and gripped tight. “Raise your shields,” she choked out, lifting the staff she used for walking and for fighting. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”
Finally moving around her mother, Renata peered through the dense tree line along the meadow. She could see the house in the distance. For a second, everything seemed as it had before they’d left two weeks before on a trading trip.
But there was no smoke in the chimney. She could hear the milk cows lowing in pain. Goats and sheep wandered outside the pen, and not a single one of the shepherd dogs barked.
Renata lifted her shields, listening for the dozen familiar souls who shared their home.
Nothing.
“No.” Renata started forward, but her mother grabbed her and held her back. “No!”
“Hush.” Heidi slapped a hand over Renata’s mouth. “Be quiet!”
Balien and Giorgio moved through the grass, her warrior so stealthy she barely saw him. She could see his magic ripple around him. The grass barely moved as they rushed through it. Both scribes ran in complete silence. They split near the fence that surrounded the compound and disappeared from view.
Renata lowered every shield, desperate to hear anything.
A few minutes later, the low keening of her reshon’s soul moved Renata to run. Her mother was only steps behind her.
She ran straight to the house. She could hear no one and nothing but her intended mate and her father.
No, no, no.
Bursting through the kitchen door, she saw signs of struggle. Saw upturned chairs and blackened pots on the stove. She saw spatters of blood and a staff broken in half by the stove.
The first clothes she saw were the crumbled garments of Werner, the small boy who loved feeding the goats.
“No!” She knelt by the bench at the kitchen table, her fingers trailing though the remains of gold dust he’d left as his tiny soul rose to heaven. “Mother!”
Heidi had bypassed the kitchen and ran into the large living room. Renata could hear her sobbing. Clutching Werner’s small jacket, she rose and walked to the hearth.
More violence. More destruction.
More blood. More dust.
Empty clothes lay scattered around the room, some kicked askew and others lying neatly on the floor, as if their owners had simply set them out to wear in the morning. Renata wandered through the room in a daze. Her father rushed in and grabbed her mother, clutching her to his chest as they both wept. Renata had never heard her father weep like that. They were deep, gut-wrenching cries of grief and rage.
Every room had more empty clothes.
Every room had more dust. More blood. More horror.
Balien found Renata in the ritual room where the sacred fire of the library had been snuffed out. Linen robes from the two elders lay there, the scribe’s robes bunched by the door, lying scattered in smears of blood. The Irina robes were drenched with it, as if someone had cut the elder singer’s throat as she faced the fire.
“The elders,” she muttered. “The children…”
Balien stared at her, his face blank. “Everyone is gone. The whole house reeks of sandalwood.”
Sandalwood. The heady fragrance could only mean Grigori killers. Their mountain fortress had been invaded by the sons of the Fallen. Renata couldn’t even imagine them being a target. They were a library. Balien was the only warrior here. Their community was made of old men and women. Scholars and dairymen and farmers. Children.
She couldn’t fathom it. No, this was a bad dream. This was a horrible nightmare, and she’d wake up and Balien would be warm next to her in bed, and she would hear the songs from the kitchen and the children’s laughter outside. The house would smell like cinnamon again, and the scribes and singers would be cheerfully arguing among themselves in the library.
Renata closed her eyes, but she didn’t hear laughter when her legs went out from under her.
She only heard her father weeping.
Rome
Midwinter
Renata watched her mother light the candles with dead eyes. The songs that should have filled the house during the longest night of the year were absent. They hadn’t baked the honeyed bread that filled the house with warmth. They’d bought plain bread from the human bakers and hid in the small house on the outskirts of Rome.
Balien had kept them alive through the Rending, but it had not been easy. They’d fled Ciasa Fatima the same night they found the remnants of their community. They’d hidden in caves in the mountains for weeks, only coming down when runners from Vienna reached the library.
It wasn’t only their library. Irin communities around the world—even those across the ocean—had been destroyed by a burst of Grigori violence that had sprung up in the warm summer months. Northern warriors were desperately trying to reach Irin communities in the south, hoping to fortify their numbers before winter broke and Grigori attacked there too.
They’d had no word from Balien’s family. Rumors were rampant that Irina centers of learning had been hit first and fiercest. Thousands had been killed. Children were slaughtered. The girls, in particular, were hunted like animals.
“What are we celebrating?” Renata asked quietly.