“HOW is she?”

“She grieves.”

Rhys paused on the other end of the phone call. “But you’re back.”

“Her mind knows that. But there are moments when I think her heart forgets.”

Malachi held the phone to his ear while he watched his mate take pictures near the shore. His grandparents’ house sat on the ocean north of Hamburg, hugging the edge of the North Sea. It was bitterly cold in the middle of winter.

Malachi craved the warmth of southern waters, but Ava resisted a return to Istanbul no matter how Rhys and Leo reassured her.

His brothers called every week and asked the same questions.

How was Ava?

Had Malachi remembered more?

Had any more of his talesm returned?

Malachi continued to remember in scattered bits, but nothing like the full recovery they’d hoped for when he and Ava reunited. His talesm were stalled. They were nowhere near a scribe house where he could perform the rituals correctly, and none of his previous tattoos had reappeared as they had for a while during their dream-walks.

Ava refused to use her magic.

“Have you asked her about going to Vienna?”

“She keeps saying ‘later.’ She’ll go later. We were going to go when her father performed there, but she changed her mind at the last minute. Said she wanted to have more time with just the two of us.”

“That’s understandable.”

Malachi shook his head. “That’s not the reason, Rhys.”

“No?”

He took a deep breath and debated confiding in the scribe who had once been his closest friend. Though he couldn’t remember all of it, moments came to Malachi when he remembered how close he and Rhys had been. Years of history tied them together. He’d had to learn to trust the man he had been, even if he couldn’t remember the whole of himself. Even if it was possible he’d never remember it.

He watched Ava as she looked out to sea. She hadn’t moved in minutes. She was letting the icy surf lap her feet as the wind picked up. It whipped her hair into a cloud of black waves. But even as the cold crawled up her legs, she didn’t break her gaze on the horizon.

“She won’t use her magic.”

“What do you—?”

“She’s reading a lot. Has me help her with translations sometimes. She’s read through everything Orsala sent at least twice.”

“But she’s not practicing spells?”

“No. She mouths the words, but she won’t say anything aloud.”

“Do you ever see her marks glowing?” Rhys’s voice was concerned. “Any sign?”

“Dreams. Only in our dreams.”

“And the visions?”

“Nothing like what happened to her in Norway. She dreams, but she doesn’t remember it clearly.”

Both men paused in the conversation, and Malachi looked up and down the beach as Ava continued to walk and take pictures. Scanning for threats. Always scanning. She was his to protect and always would be, even now that she had her own power.

Ava looked up and smiled at him once before she went back to taking pictures of something in the water.

Other than when she was reading, she was rarely without her camera, and he often glanced up to see her taking a picture of him with a shy smile.

He loved it when she did.

“Do you think she’s feeling unsure of using her magic?”

“I think she’s terrified.”

“Of what? You’re more than capable of shielding her at this point, even with your talesm diminished. Your bond with her—”

“She’s terrified of what she can do. She hasn’t said anything, but you know she feels different.”

Rhys was silent.

“She’s not like the others, Rhys. Even Sari and Orsala know. They don’t say anything, but her magic feels… different.”

“We’ve never understood where it comes from. That has to be disconcerting.”

He squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. “Disconcerting” didn’t even touch the surface of it.

“Is there any sign of her grandmother?”

“If the older Ava is still alive, Jasper Reed has hidden her so completely that not even I can suss out her location. We’ve torn through his financial records. Other than being ridiculously wealthy and spending money on enough drugs to intoxicate a small country, everything lines up.”

“He’s that much of a junkie?” Malachi curled his lip. He’d spoken to Ava’s mother on the phone, even spoken briefly to her stepfather. They were polite. Her mother was warm but cautious. Her stepfather, disinterested. But it was difficult to imagine them allowing an addict—even a rich one—into Ava’s life.

“I don’t know that I’d call him a junkie,” Rhys said. “He has many of the signs of bipolar disorder. The drugs he takes could be a form of self-medicating. He’s mostly functional, other than the typical artistic excesses.”

Ava’s father was a world-famous musician and composer, but his offstage antics were legendary. He’d been a peripheral part of her life when she was a child, but they’d developed an affectionate, if distant, relationship as Ava had become an adult. Malachi knew they e-mailed regularly and were planning to meet when her father was on tour in Europe.

“Any word from Vienna?”

“Nothing since last week.”

Orsala and Sari were in the city with Damien, quietly taking stock of the fallout from their confrontation with Volund’s Grigori in Oslo. The rumbles of discontent from the watchers over Europe had grown, and the Scribe Council in Vienna had been forced to take notice. But for the almost-immortal elder scribes on the council, change did not come swiftly. It would take more than the concern from soldiers in charge of the scribe houses to make the politicians take action.