“Safer?” Malachi asked. “Among humans who think they’re insane?”
“They can’t hurt humans as the males do, so they can often blend in. It’s better than what faces them among the Fallen.”
“Do you have any idea how many might be out there?” Malachi asked. “How many… Grigora?”
“The Fallen call them Grigora. They call themselves kareshta. The silent ones.”
“Silent ones?”
“Those who make it through childhood learn to be silent. Not to use their voices. It’s their only chance of surviving in our world.”
Kareshta.
Kostas continued, “I would estimate only two—maybe three births in ten are female. The Fallen tend to create male children. Some have no daughters at all. Whatever genetics are in play, women are rare.”
“Only four in ten Irin children are female,” Max said. “We have no idea why. It’s always been that way.”
Kostas said, “Of that twenty percent, more than half are probably killed at birth. There could be hundreds. Thousands, counting all the minor angels. We have no way of knowing. Most of them are in the human world. Free Grigori like us who shelter the kareshta will only shelter those whose fathers are dead.”
“What?” Malachi asked. “Why?”
“Security,” Kostas said with a grimace. “If our sires are alive, they can find us. It doesn’t matter where we go. Only those whose sires are confirmed dead are allowed. Almost all the women I shelter are my sisters. I cannot risk them. Too many of the Fallen are trying to kill me.”
“Why?” Malachi asked. “Barak is dead. Why do they care what you do?”
“My mere existence is heresy. I’m the one telling the Grigori they can live without reducing themselves to murderous animals. That there is another way.”
“But not a way the Fallen are happy about.”
“How could they be?” Kostas asked. “In order for the Grigori to be free, the Fallen must die.”
“I’M not kareshta,” Ava said later as they lay in bed. “I thought at first that I was, but I’m not.”
They’d avoided the scribe house in Sofia, not wanting to explain their presence if it might compromise Max’s promise of secrecy to Kostas and Kyra. Instead, they’d found a small hotel near the highway and taken two rooms. They were threadbare, but clean.
“You’re not kareshta, but…?”
“There is something. Kyra feels familiar. Her voice sounds right, if that makes any sense.”
“Her magic feels the same as yours.”
“Yes, I think that’s it.”
Malachi hadn’t said anything, but he’d sensed the same thing. More, Kostas’s sister gave off the same nervous energy that Ava had been drowning in before she’d learned to shield herself from the soul voices of the humans around her.
He wrapped her in his arms, shaken by the truths they’d discovered that night.
For Malachi, it changed everything.
He was forced to see the Grigori in a new light. Yes, most or all of them were still victimizing humans, but they were also victims themselves. And some, like Kostas, appeared to be trying to change things. His black-and-white world had been thoroughly washed in grey. But in the confusion, his scattered mind focused on a kernel of hope.
If Ava had Grigori blood, how different could they be?
“You’re not kareshta,” Malachi agreed. “But it wouldn’t matter to me if you were. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She snuggled deeper into his side. “I can hear you.”
There was a dark edge to her magic. The visions that came to her were unlike anything Irina experienced. But Ava was good. Not perfect, but good. Her heart was warm and generous. She was protective. Courageous.
His.
She reached out with her magic, and it was as if small hands stroked him from head to toe. He shivered with wanting her, but Ava was too deep in thought.
“I think my grandmother must have been one of them. That might be why my father locked her away. Tried to hide her. Kyra said that many of the kareshta end up in mental institutions because people think they’re crazy.”
“That makes sense.” He’d come to the same conclusion, but he knew she needed to work it out in her own mind.
“Yeah, it makes sense.”
He felt her shoulders shaking before he heard her cry. “Shhh, Ava.” He stroked her back, pulling her so tight to his chest that he was worried she would bruise. Her pain was a stab in the heart.
“They’re out there,” she said. “Others like me. Those are the stars in Jaron’s vision. Out in the darkness, Malachi. So many of them. And so horribly alone.”
“I know, Ava.”
“We have to find them.”
Could finding the kareshta be a way out of this never-ending war? Could Grigori society turn into something like the Irin? Kostas had said that those Grigori who had contact with their sisters were more stable. Had more control. If they could find more of the female Grigori—teach them to protect their minds—would it change their enemies as Kostas hoped?
What was the alternative? Endless, blood-soaked war? Generation after generation caught in the same vicious cycle? His own son continuing the slaughter of a people Malachi was starting to believe were more like his own than he wanted to admit?
The Irin Council’s policy had remained unchanged for thousands of years. Scribes protected the human population from the Grigori, killing them any time they attacked. But with a few exceptions, the Fallen themselves were never targeted. Why? Malachi had always assumed they were simply too hard to kill. But could there be another motive for tacitly allowing them to exist?