She stiffened and tried to walk past him. “That wasn’t a home. It was a rented flat we shared while we were working.”
He caught her arm. “We slept in the same bed at night. We cooked and ate together. We hung our laundry and bitched about who needed to clean the bathroom. We laughed and fell asleep in front of the television.”
“That isn’t—”
“It was a home. Our home. Or at least the beginnings of one.”
Renata said nothing. She didn’t even look at him.
“You keep coming back here, don’t you? Every Midwinter, you come. You keep looking for the same feeling you lost, but you won’t find it because it was never the building. It wasn’t these caves, even with all the history and love and magic I can feel lingering here.”
He drew her closer, linking their hands together. Renata’s face was blank, but she wasn’t running away. Not yet.
Max lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Home is what we could have together, but you’re too afraid to build it.”
She wrenched her hand out of his grasp and left him in the tunnel.
Max let her go.
He explored every nook and cranny of the library, studying the intricate carvings along the wall and the lists of singers and scribes whose names were carved into the walls. Next to the alcove was a list of the chief Irina archivists, ending with the name Heidi von Meren. In the reading room, the list of librarians ended with the name Giorgio di Lanzo. Were they Renata’s parents? Max guessed they were, but there was no way to be certain. If the Rending hadn’t happened, would Renata’s name have followed Heidi’s?
I was a little girl who sang songs about history and magic and thought they meant something.
Renata had been an archivist like her mother. She’d spent her whole life learning about Irin history and magic and could likely recite massive volumes of Irina history purely from memory. Prior to the Rending, she would have been a powerful and influential woman, valued anywhere in the Irin world for her magical skill and knowledge. Archivists were the kind of Irina who occupied the elders’ seats in Vienna. They were influential and feared.
But Renata lived in hiding, venting her rage on the Grigori who had stolen her life.
Stolen her love.
His name was Balien of Damascus. He was a great man. A warrior… a knight of Jerusalem, a Rafaene scribe, and my reshon.
Who was Balien of Damascus, and why hadn’t he protected this library? An Irin warrior with extensive training could fight off a dozen armed Grigori and not sustain injury. And why hadn’t he mated with Renata as soon as he knew she was his reshon? The only mark she wore was a single sign on her forehead.
If Renata wanted to be his mate, Max would abandon his own brothers to claim her.
He returned to the passageway leading to the classrooms where the children had fled. In the last classroom on the left, he found where they must have died. Max set his lamp in front of the longest wall and sat on a bench carved into the rock, staring at a lush scene painted on the limestone.
Mala.
Max remembered his cousin mentioning that the fearsome warrior was also an artist, but he’d never seen her work. Despite the darkness in the caves, the scene glowed with vivid joy. Children of every color and age ran toward a golden mountain, surrounded by animals. Elephants and lions guarded their path as birds sang in the trees overhead. Monkeys clutched flowers and ate vibrant purple fruit. Sheep and antelope lay sleeping at the feet of the lions while cattle grazed on the hills in the distance.
It was a scene of paradise and joy. Laughter instead of tears. A scene designed for loved ones to stop and linger and remember beauty. Renata, frozen in grief, had probably never seen it.
But someone had. Because in this room—and several of the others—there wasn’t a spot of dust on the table, and the lamp held a fresh beeswax candle. Childish drawings sat on a low school desk, and the smell of fresh bread lingered in the air.
Someone was living in the caves, and judging by the smell of bread, they hadn’t been gone long.
5
Did you ever let yourself grieve?
What a ridiculous question. Renata knocked back the dough she’d set out to rise the night before, kneading it a touch more before she began to shape the loaf. In the chilly air, it took a full day to bake her mother’s honeyed bread, but it was the only thing to do at Midwinter. She’d already chopped the dried fruit and nuts she’d sprinkle on top. She split the dough into three ropes, sprinkled more cinnamon, then began to braid.
Home is what we could have together, but you’re too afraid to build it.
She ignored the longing that twisted in her chest and thought about how she could get Maxim out of the house. Would it be too cold for him to sleep in the dairy barn? Probably. She didn’t have any fuel for the heaters out there. Conserving heat in a limited space was the only way she managed to survive on her own during the weeks around Midwinter. She had fuel and food, but only for herself. She would need to go hunting.
Or you could kick him out.
Impossible. Her traitor heart rebelled at the thought. Her traitor heart was the one who’d led her down the stairs the night before, longing for the comfort of Max’s arms. Her traitor heart would give the man everything if she let it.
She finished the loaf and put it in a long proofing basket. It would be ready to bake that night. Ready to eat in the days leading up to Midwinter.
Midwinter.
The night she’d finally lost everything.
Renata closed her eyes and clutched the edge of the counter. Why had he come? Hadn’t she hurt him enough? It was only going to get worse. She was weak and he knew it. If he pushed hard enough, she’d give him everything. Again.
And then what?
Force him to live a half-life with a broken mate? Unacceptable. Force her back into a world where all the rules she’d known were upended?
Renata was still coming to terms with the new order in the Irin world. Grigori—once their hated foes—had now proven that not all of them were murderous monsters. The Grigori Max had met so many years ago in Prague hadn’t been lying. Some Grigori even had sisters to protect, half-angelic daughters tormented by humanity’s soul voices because they had no control over their magic.
It wasn’t that she was unsympathetic. She had plenty of sympathy. For the women.
For the Grigori? How was she supposed to quash her instinctive, murderous impulses when she smelled the scent of sandalwood? Would their unnatural beauty ever cause her anything but cold rage? The scraping sound of their soul voices made her nauseous.
It might have been the mandate of the council that free Grigori who were living peaceful lives could be Irin allies, but no one had asked the Irina who survived their murderous rampage, had they? Was she supposed to forget two hundred years of training and go back to singing songs?