The Silent: Irin Chronicles Book Five(65)

We’re all murderers. We kill our own mothers when they give us life.

Her brother’s bitter words never left her. Kyra’s own mother was dead, of course. All the human mothers were. Looking at Niran and Sura, Kyra wondered if they carried the same guilt that Kostas carried like a yoke around his neck.

“Can I help?” she asked Alyah.

Alyah nodded to the nearly dead woman. “Do you speak any French?”

“I do.” Kyra approached the woman, who began to cry and reach for her baby.

“Please,” she said in broken French. “Please, my son.”

“What is your name?” Kyra asked, bringing a blanket and a bottle of water to the woman. “Look, my friend is being so gentle with him. I promise—”

“He’s my son,” the woman said.

“She’s from a hill tribe,” Alyah said. “I tried to explain to the others, but I don’t think she understood me.”

Kyra put the blanket around the woman’s thin shoulders and helped her into the back of the van while Leo and the others helped the other women into the middle seats.

“Sit next to us with the baby,” she told Alyah. “She’s not going to listen unless you bring him close enough for her to see him.”

Through rudimentary French, Kyra tried to explain to the human woman why her own child could be making her ill, but Kyra didn’t know how much the woman understood. Eventually, as the van bumped back to the country inn, the human woman fell asleep, her bronze skin sallow and her cheeks hollow with sickness.

“I’m hoping Ginny brought Kenneth,” Alyah said.

“Kenneth?”

Alyah smiled. “In another life, he’s a linguistics professor at the university. Kenneth is originally from Hong Kong. He speaks and writes almost every language in Southeast Asia fluently. Preserving local languages is his passion. I think this girl might be from the Wa people. Part of her tribe lives in Yunnan Province, and Kenneth has probably studied them.”

“How likely is Ginny to have brought him?” Kyra reached for the baby wrapped in a colorful pink cloth. “She’s clearly attached, but she can’t continue to care for him as she has been or she’ll die. I don’t think she really understood what I was trying to tell her.”

Alyah happily handed the baby over to Kyra. “I’m hopeful,” she said. “Kenneth is incurably curious. If Ginny told him she was going into Burma to get some women out, he might have volunteered.”

Kyra wrapped the swaddling more tightly around the sleeping baby. Despite his mother’s sickness, he was round-cheeked and blooming with health, sleeping peacefully with two fingers stuck in his mouth.

Perfect. All the babies were so perfect.

Her heart twisted.

What would it be like to have a child of her own? Was it possible if she and Leo mated? Her mind supplied the dream of a round-cheeked, blond baby with vivid blue eyes and milk-pale skin. She glanced up to see Leo watching her with an expression she couldn’t read.

Longing. It might have been longing. Or that might have been her own.

She kissed the silky black hair of the boy in her arms and held him as they bumped over the country roads.

For now, the little boy was the son of a Fallen angel.

For now, his fate was balanced on the edge of a knife.





Prija IV





She could hear the traffic in Mandalay and knew that, were it not for her damaged mind, she would have gone insane. Perhaps the city was a punishment for killing their Irin friend. The Grigori who took her had not been pleased.

They knew what had happened as soon as they opened the door. Prija expected them to search her, but they didn’t. In fact, not a single one touched her from then on. They did drive through more populated areas though. They must have thought of it as a punishment.

So Prija killed the scribe, kept his knife, and nothing happened to her. She was not unpleased with that outcome.

She was unpleased with the conditions in Mandalay.

The human women there were kept in filthy quarters and near starving. Prija was thrown in a large room with a dozen of them. She did not have her saw sam sai. She didn’t have any privacy. She was given a tin bowl, and twice a day, a large basket of rice was brought to the room. The women fell on it, starving. There was a shower in the corner and a pit toilet, but that was all. Most of them were thin and wan from the Grigori who were slowly draining their lives, but when the guards opened the gate and called their names, the women went to the door smiling. They came back unconscious or nearly so. The other women laid the girls on their pallets and went back to gossiping or sewing or braiding each other’s hair.

It disgusted Prija even though she understood the women were drunk on Grigori power. They couldn’t help themselves.

It still disgusted her. The black shadow had become thicker and stronger. A fog hung around her mind.

The second night, one of the Grigori called her name. She sat in the corner, staring at the wall, and pretended not to hear.

“Prija.”

Fools.

She stood and walked to the door. The smirking guard led her down a hallway and took her to another shower. This one had a door and was equipped with warm water. It was nearly luxurious. A clean set of clothes was laid on the bench by the shower, and fresh-scented soaps were by the sink.