Page 167 of Nikolay

She went quiet at that, though not sadly. Her fingers drifted over my chest, idle and sure. Outside the windows, the light had begun its slow descent toward evening. Soon the estate would wake fully again around us. There would be family. Food. Questions. Amusement. Plans. The long, practical unfolding of what came after fate had finally had its way.

I lay there with my mate in my arms and thought of my brothers, each of us shaped by inheritance and pride and loneliness in our own particular forms. I thought of my father, who had also been dragged at last toward grace by love he had not expected. I thought of the Goddess, patient beyond measure, setting us on paths we resisted until resistance became more painful than surrender.

Whatever she had waiting for each of us in turn, I found I could greet it now without fear.

Maddie tipped her face up for a kiss.

I gave it to her gladly, and the future did not seem like an abyss at all, but an open door.

Epilogue

Maksym

Thursday dusk bled through the slatted blinds in bruised bands of purple and old gold, striping the obsidian top of my desk and the crystal bowl of my glass while the bass from the club below moved through the floor in a low, steady thrum. Taras stood at the window with his arms folded, all clean angles and judgment, and I reclined in my chair with one ankle over my knee and the distinct satisfaction of a man enjoying, for one polished moment, a kingdom not currently on fire.

The office pleased me for reasons that had very little to do with vanity and a great deal to do with control. I had built Amethyst in a converted warehouse a few blocks off the Strip, close enough to drink from its traffic and vice, far enough to remain unstained by its vulgarity. Human eyes saw an ordinary industrial façade and kept driving. Wards did the rest. Behind those protections, I had carved out a place that answered to western appetites for every type of supernatural.

I swirled the blood-wine once and said, “My favorite thing about being King of the West is the distinct and refreshing absence of catastrophes.”

Taras did not turn immediately. He continued looking down through the slats toward the warehouse frontage below, where staff came and went through controlled entrances and two of my exterior guards changed position with the kind of discreet efficiency I paid for. “You should be careful saying things like that.”

I took a sip. Aged well. Dark, rich, disciplined. “Why?”

“You are tempting fate.”

That earned him the corner of my mouth. “Fate and I have an understanding.”

Now he turned.

“That,” he said, “is not how fate works.”

“It is exactly how fate works.”

He pushed away from the window and came toward the desk with the economical grace of a man who had spent centuries making himself useful in rooms where chaos entered overdressed and armed. “You say that because you are arrogant.”

“I say that because I am observant.”

“You have survived,” he corrected.

“Repeatedly.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“Close enough to be encouraging.”

He stopped across from me. In the fading light his silver hair caught the last gold from the blinds and turned it colder. “If catastrophe arrives tonight, I would like the record to reflect that I warned you.”

“The record,” I said, “may note whatever it likes so long as it also notes that every significant disaster of the last year originated in Texas and Philadelphia.”

That elicited a subtle shift from him. Not amusement exactly. A recognition that I was, irritatingly, correct.

I set my glass down and ticked the count off on my fingers. “First, our sister decided it was expedient to turn a wolf shifter; creating the first hybrid vampire/wolf in over a century, then, our father’s long-awaited attempt at emotional ruin came wrapped in a fallen angel with no memory and an archangel with delusions of unilateral authority. I crossed half the country to stand at Kazimir’s side while heaven attempted murder in formal language.”

Taras’s mouth moved by a degree. “A concise summary.”

“I strive for clarity.” I lifted another finger. “And after that, I was barely home before being hauled back east because Nikolay finally located the precise woman capable of forcing him into self-awareness, only for some polished wolf supremacist to decide bloodline purity required a sacrificial altar.”

At that, whatever trace of humor had lived in me flattened.