“Vashama canem, reshon.”

He had come back for her.

But until that moment, Malachi hadn’t remembered what he’d given up to return.

He didn’t sense the tears on his face until Damien reached him.

“Brother?”

“I’m fine.” He wiped his eyes and dipped in the water again, brushing the wet hair back from his face and pulling the water from his beard. “I’m fine, Damien.”

His watcher held Malachi with his eyes. “Tell me.”

Malachi shook his head. How could he explain?

“I was in the heavenly realm for months, brother.” He wiped the water from his face and moved to exit the bath. “Some memories I wish I did not recover.”

“But why?” Damien followed him, and the men dried themselves with the linen towels provided. Their wraps had been placed on marble benches near the entrance to the ritual room. “You must have seen things—”

“It was perfect beauty. Perfect peace,” Malachi said quietly. “And I chose to give it up. It was my choice, and I’m glad of it. But at this moment, it hurts.”

He held the towel to his face and sat on the marble bench, staring into the steaming pool where the memory of heaven had been given to him.

Why?

“Choose.”

He’d chosen Ava. He would still choose her.

Perhaps this was the answer to his desperate prayer that morning. Perhaps it was only the assurance that, no matter what the future held for him and his beloved in the earthly realm, something even more beautiful waited for them should they fall.

“I think I’d pull down heaven if that’s what it took to keep you here with me.”

“And I’d abandon it if you weren’t there.”

The memory snapped into place next to his vision of heaven. He and Ava, lying in bed after they’d made love. A different kind of completion, but no less beautiful. His mate, a daughter of the Fallen. Malachi, the son of the Forgiven.

“We were meant to be like this. Two halves of the same soul. Dark and light together.”

Their union was a reflection of the peace he’d seen. Holy and wholly.

And Malachi finally realized what Jaron truly wanted.

Forgiveness.

He wrapped himself in linen and entered the prayer room, kneeling before the sacred fire and giving up the remnants of his pain as thousands of others had done before him. He left his sorrow and regret there. Burned slips of prayers in the fire. He let his soul mourn for what it had given up, while it caught fire with the vision he’d seen.

He’d left the heavenly realm for a reason. He was Mikhael’s son, and he’d returned to earth to battle for the soul of his people.

THE Irin Library was a palace of knowledge—every ritual, every rule serving a purpose that had something to do with its preservation. Malachi and Damien wore linen shifts and ceremonial robes that dated back thousands of years. The linen, pure and undyed, was worn because it would not react to the ancient scrolls or manuscripts the scribes preserved. Baths served a spiritual purpose but also cleansed the environment of any pollutants or molds that could harm the books.

The first time his father had brought him here, Malachi had been thirteen years old and on the precipice of starting his training. A child in awe of the ceremony and solemnity, he’d bathed with other boys his age from all over the world under the watchful eyes of their fathers, passing the traditions on to the next generation of scribes. He’d received his family marks only weeks before, the first tattoos that had signaled his passage from childhood to adolescence.

That morning, he’d seen no boys readying themselves in the ritual room with barely concealed excitement. No fathers introducing the next generation to the sacred fire. No awe-filled eyes as they climbed the wooden steps to the scribes’ gallery above the Library floor.

His heart hurt.

Malachi and Damien climbed the stairs in silence.

Seven scribes worked diligently below the gallery, assistants fetching them books or pens or ink, depending on what they were doing. Some were copying manuscripts. Others made notes in careful handwriting as they studied manuscripts or scrolls with silk-gloved hands.

Whispers filled the gallery. Quiet negotiations between secretaries and petitioners. While the work the scribes did below was sacred in nature, the Library was a political theater. Damien and Malachi were only two men in dozens who were visiting the Library that morning, hoping for an audience with an elder. They presented their petitions on paper slips passed to the secretaries. Those secretaries examined the petitions and decided which ones would be passed down to the elder on the Library floor.

The singers’ gallery, on the opposite side of the room, stood empty but for three silent figures standing at one end, watching the elder scribes working below.

“Who are they?” Malachi asked.

“The mates of three of the elders—Jerome, Edmund, and Rasesh. They’re the only Irina I’ve seen in the Library since I’ve been here.”

His mother had once stood there. Had once sung there, joined by the chorus of her sisters.

Now there were only three.

The women also wore ceremonial clothing. Long linen shifts and robes, high-necked to warm the voices that held their magic. Their hair was freshly washed and tied back in simple plaits or cut short and clean around their faces. One woman stood out to him as the obvious leader.

“Who is she?” Malachi murmured. “The woman with short hair.”

“Jerome’s mate.”