Page 2 of The Silent
“Yourbrother—”
“My brother is not thereason.”
“Thenwhat?”
The farmhouse door slammed again, and she heard footsteps on the path to her cottage. Sirius. After one hundred years, she recognized his step. She’d watched him grow from a baby to a boy to a man. Now the tall warrior was the protector of the weakest ones. The ones whoremained.
AndKyra.
Sirius knocked quickly and opened the door, only to pause and fall silent when he saw her sitting beforeherfire.
“Give me a moment,” she saidquietly.
“I cancomeback.”
“Or you can wait.Patience.”
She breathed in and out for five more breaths, trying to ignore the frustration bouncing around the room. Sirius was usually the calm and quiet one, but something her sullen and serious twin had said must have riled him, and Kyra suspected it had to do with her. Sirius was constantly pushing her to be more independent. He’d trained her to fight with daggers when Kostas had refused. She’d learned how to fire a gun properly and even participate in hand-to-hand combat under hisinstruction.
The baby she’d raised after his mother’s death had become her teacher. He pushed, always gently, for her to go into the village more often despite Kostas’s objections. He regularly gave her tasks that would put her in the path of a variety of humans, from the local priest to the clerk at the village store. At his urging, she’d even learned to drive a car and taken a drawing class inBurgas.
She turned and motioned to the spot on the carpet next to her. “Come. It’ll do you good to meditate alittle.”
Sirius rolled his eyes a bit, but he came and satbesideher.
“What are you two shoutingabout,bata?”
He couldn’t stop the grin. “Should you still be calling me little boy when I’m tallerthanyou?”
“I wiped your nose when you were a baby. I can call you whatIwant.”
Sirius laughed and kicked his feet out, laying his head in Kyra’s lap as he had when he was a child. Kyra put her head on his forehead and let some of the nervous energy that had built up in her mind release against her brother’s skin. He’d been working in the sun, and his usually fair complexion had turned a pleasing lightbrown.
Sirius grabbed Kyra’s hand and pressed it to his cheek. “You’reupset.”
“No, just feeling anxioustoday.”
His forehead wrinkled. “Thevoices?”
“Not that.” She took a deep breath and imagined herself walking among the orange groves, smelling the heady fragrance of the pale cream blossoms. “I was thinking about a visit to Ava inIstanbul.”
Ava Matheson was akareshtawho had lived as a human for most of her life. She’d had no idea she was the granddaughter of a Fallen archangel; she just thought the voices she heard were the result of mental illness. When she met Malachi, an Irin warrior, she discovered a shadow world where angelic and human blood mingled. Now Ava and Malachi were “mated” in the Irin tradition, and Ava and Kyra spoke frequently by phone orvideocall.
Kyra suspected a visit to Ava might not be too objectionable as long as “that damn scribe” wasn’t there. Ava understood Kyra better than any other person she’d met. She’d lived with mental chaos and didn’t take silence forgranted.
“It’d be good to see Ava,” Kyra said softly. “I haven’t seen… anyone outside our family. Not inmonths.”
“What if I had an idea other than Istanbul?” Sirius asked quietly, his eyes closed, and Kyra stroked hischeek.
Her touch, and the contact with his sisters, was one of the reasons Sirius was nearly faultless in his interactions with humans. Offspring of the angels all hungered for soul energy. Irin males got it from their Irina, but Grigori who were starved of soul energy turned to taking it from humans since most weren’t raised with sisters. They were slaves to their angelic fathers and would stalk humans like a lion hunting his next meal. Kyra had no illusions about the Grigori. Most were evil. Only a few managed to live anhonorablelife.
But Sirius had been raised in Kyra’s arms. Never had the boy been hungry for love or affection. Instead of a predator, he’d grown into aprotector.
“What kind of idea?” Kyra asked. “You know Kostas won’t let me travel farwithouthim.”
“You could go back to the compound inSofia.”
Kyra shook her head. Two of her half brothers had found mates among the archangel Jaron’s daughters. Kostas’s men had once protected the women by hiding thekareshtafor Jaron, but since the angel’s death, the women were free and happy to find husbands among Kostas’s men. It wasn’t mating like the Irin had, but it was something, and the Grigori couples who found each other werehappy.
