The Silent: Irin Chronicles Book Five(3)

Leo narrowed his eyes at the tiny terror. Her dark curls and sweet face were only a front for a master manipulator. “If you were hungry, you would have eaten your apples.”

Matti’s twin brother Geron sighed deeply and put his chin on his hands. His face was also covered in chocolate. His liquid grey eyes were pools of pleading, but Leo refused to be moved.

“No cake,” Leo said more firmly.

This did not suit Matti well. She raised her voice and shouted, “Baba! I want mo’ cake.”

Leo pointed at her. “That won’t work this time. Your father is in Vienna.”

Leo’s Irin brother Rhys walked into the kitchen and scooped Matti up in his arms. “What are you doing to the child, Leo? She’s hungry.”

“She doesn’t need more cupcakes. She barely touched her lunch.”

Rhys kissed the top of Matti’s head. “Poor darling. Why would she eat lunch when there are cupcakes? I wholly agree with you on this, Matti. Hold out for the sweets.”

Sensing an ally, Matti giggled. “Reez, more cake. Peez.”

Rhys turned to Leo. “She said please.”

Leo grimaced. “You’re not helping. Aren’t you supposed to be working on a new translation of the Hokman Abat?”

The pale British scribe walked to the bread cupboard and reached inside. “Well, I thought I’d take a break and have…”

“Don’t do it!” Leo yelled.

“Cake!” Matti squealed. “Want mo’ cake, Reez.”

Geron lifted his arms. “Lo!” he shouted at Leo. “More cake.”

“This is the problem,” Leo said, lifting Geron into his arms. “They gang up on you. And they have… chubby cheeks. And they’re very, very cute.”

“Relax,” Rhys said. “You take minding them too seriously. What’s the fun of being uncles if we can’t make them sick to their stomachs on sweets?”

Matti giggled, which made Geron chuckle. Soon the kitchen was filled with laughter, and Rhys was stuffing more cupcakes in both children.

Leo licked chocolate frosting from his thumb. “If they get sick, I’m blaming you.”

“I only gave them one cupcake, you gave them two.”

“Three cakes!” Matti yelled, her tiny fist raised in triumph.

“They’re frighteningly intelligent,” Rhys said. “Developmentally, they’re very advanced. Did you see Geron copying Malachi last week?”

Leo nodded. “He’s so quiet, but he can already write both old script and the Roman alphabet.”

“I wouldn’t think a child would have that much small-muscle coordination.”

“And Matti…” Leo trailed off as the little girl started to sing and dance around the kitchen table.

It was a childish song she’d learned from one of the Irina, a song intended to teach young girls control over their magic, but Matti had already mastered it. As she lifted her voice, the flowers in the vase on the center of the table bobbed along to the tune, dancing and nodding their heads when she called their colors in turn.

Rhys stared with wide eyes. “I haven’t seen children in so long, I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. But that seems very advanced for her age.”

“I’m fairly sure it is.”

Leo had no experience with children other than Matti and Geron. His mother had been killed during the Rending, the attempted annihilation of the Irin race, when he was no older than the twins. His father had been lost for years and was never really the same after the loss of his mate. He and his cousin, Maxim, had been lost for a year until they’d shown up at a scribe house in Vilnius. He had little memory of his life before his grandfather had taken him and Maxim in. Leo liked children, but he’d never spent time with any.

But now there was a baby boom in the Irin world. Leo would give anything to join in the numbers of scribes and singers starting their families, but he wouldn’t be satisfied with any mate. He wanted his reshon. His soul mate. The woman chosen by heaven to be his partner in life. He hadn’t practiced patience for two hundred years to settle for anything less.

“What about your own family?”

“I don’t know if that is possible for me.”

“How do you know it’s not possible if you won’t give us a chance?”

“Leo, you don’t know me.”

“Are you sure about that?”

A loud crash broke through his reverie, and Leo spotted the source of the racket in the doorway to the living room. Matti was sitting on a rug that Geron was pulling across the wooden floor. It was unfortunate that a side table was in their way. The glass lamp sitting on it had not survived.

“Oops!” Both children turned wide eyes to Leo before they raced out of the room and up the stairs.

“Come back here!” Leo ran after them just as his phone began to buzz. “Hello?”

“Are you on patrol?” It was his cousin, Maxim. “Are the Grigori hunting in daylight now?”

“I’m on twin patrol,” Leo said, pounding up the stairs. The two culprits would scatter, of that he was sure. They had excellent evasion tactics. But where would they hide? And did they have any glass shards in their little bare feet?

“I need you to go to Bangkok,” Max said.