Demon Forged

now. And I will never give you cause to regret.”
    Irena nodded, but he saw her vulnerability in the way she turned her face away from him. And despite his questions, he was not so oblivious to the answers.
    As both human and Guardian, he had only lived in spurts. Parts of his childhood. The initial dance with lovers. His first weeks of marriage. The intrigues of the court. The birth of his children, and the short time he’d had with them. But here, with Irena, he did not exist more in one moment than in another. Every moment, he lived.
    He left the forge with her, watched her wings form. Watched her rise into the dark clouds spitting their icy rain.
    Watched until he couldn’t see her anymore.

    “You are boiling.”
    At the sound of Khavi’s voice, Alejandro shook off memory’s hold, and glanced up. Steam rose in a column over his head.
    “The statue excites you?” She gave him a look that he might have given a ten-eyed dancing goat.
    “I was thinking of another statue.”
    Her expression cleared. “A good memory?”
    “Yes.” What did it say of a man that his best memories were more than four hundred years old?
    He’d felt so much then. Even moments of calm, of contentment, had been deep—his emotions had never remained on the surface. Their strength had surprised him, and he’d fought them, fought her . He despised fighting with Irena now, even though it dredged the depths he’d felt then, and for a moment . . . being with her was good. But then he remembered the bargain with the demon, and his failure. And how empty he was when the fight was done.
    He could not do it any more. He vowed not to fight with her again—and hoped his will would be stronger than his need.
    He’d made that vow before; he’d never honored it. He broke his promises, even to himself. When he fought with her, he left nothing of himself to be proud of.
    Headlights swept across the square. Khavi lifted her hand against the glare, watched the car disappear down the street.
    She looked back at him. “For more than two thousand years, I waited to leave Hell. Yet sometimes, when I see all that has changed, I want to return and hide.”
    Rain slid down the back of his neck. Alejandro vanished the drop. “Why not remain in Caelum, then?”
    “It is too quiet there. And there is too much to do here.” The whites of her eyes turned completely black. “I need to find Irena.”
    So she’d come to him? “Why?”
    “A woman needs protection.”
    “A human?” At her nod, he said, “I can—”
    “No.” Khavi shook her head. “No, I have seen. It cannot be that way.”
    Not seen, but foreseen , Alejandro realized uneasily. What had she seen that involved Irena?
    Irena . . . and a human who needed protection.
    He pushed away his unease and focused on duty. Irena had argued with him. Where would she go afterward?
    “You’ve tried her quarters in Caelum?”
    “Yes.”
    “She is probably at her forge in Siberia, then.”
    “Give me a picture of where that is.”
    “I’ll go with you. If you show up alone, she will—”
    “All right.” Khavi took his hand. Her Gift drew in a sharp draft, and she nodded. “Yes, this is much better. Your presence there will convince her to come.”
    Alejandro pictured Irena’s forge and projected the image. The world spun in a dizzying whirl. But there was sunlight, when the frozen Nenetsia region in northern Russia still lay under cover of night.
    He looked up, forcing himself to focus past the disorientation. He stood in the shadow of a brick building, partially hidden by the wall. Ahead of him, a crowd of humans gathered at the foot of a columned courthouse. On the wide steps in front of them stood a demon.
    Alejandro turned and searched for Khavi—but the grigori had already gone.

CHAPTER 6
    Irena didn’t need to spar with Olek to take his measure. She didn’t even need to see him fight to know how his strength and speed had increased over the past four hundred years. It was in every graceful movement he made.
    And she didn’t need the furnace or the hammer to shape his swords. Her Gift could have created the blades in seconds. But she needed the work of it, the heat and the precision of each hammer strike. She didn’t ask herself why she wanted to linger over them. They would not be better for her effort, and she would finish them with her Gift, removing every imperfection, refolding and strengthening the metal.
    Her Gift gave her pleasure, but so did working the metal in