Page 40 of Nikolay

“No. He accepted elevation when it was offered.”

Meaning he had been sufficiently notable, wealthy, or useful to be brought upstairs on his own merits. Again, unsurprising. Again, not unwelcome.

I heard my own next question before I fully decided to ask it.

“Has he inquired about any specific member of staff?”

Amara’s fingers stilled for a fraction of a second over the folio.

She was too discreet to give the pause drama. It was still answer enough.

“Yes,” she said.

My jaw locked.

“Whom?”

“Madelyn Baucaum.”

Even prepared for it, I felt the name like a low blow.

The desk’s edge pressed into my palms. I had not realized I had leaned in again until then.

“What form did that inquiry take?”

“General conversation at intake first,” she said, businesslike and exact, which was perhaps the only thing that kept me from overturning something expensive. “He noted that a wolf from Texas had joined staff recently and asked whether she worked tonight. The question did not breach policy. I answered only that our staffing assignments are internal matters.”

“I want the rest of the file delivered to my office,” I said.

She said, “I will prioritize it.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome, Your Highness.”

I did not go back to the floor. Not immediately. If I looked up and caught another sight line toward the lounge, I was uncertain what I might do with the information. Instead, I took the private stairwell up.

By the time I reached the third floor, fury had braided itself so tightly with shame that I could no longer distinguish one strand from the other. Only the direction remained clear.

My father’s office.

I raised my hand to knock and did not reach the wood.

“Enter,” my father said from within, his voice carrying through walnut and iron as if doors were merely decorative gestures in a house built around his awareness.

For one foolish instant, I considered turning away anyway. Then pride, desperation, or some uglier alloy of the two drove my hand to the latch, and I stepped into the old-world hush of his office, feeling less like a prince than a man arriving late to the scene of his own undoing.

Father sat behind his desk, though not alone.

Devon had been perched across his lap, one pale hand still braced on his shoulder as she began to rise the instant I entered. Her white-blonde hair spilled in untidy waves around her shoulders and down her back, catching the lamp glow like moonlight drawn through water. She wore some soft gray thing that should have looked ordinary and did not, because nothing on her ever quite submitted to ordinary. Her turquoise eyes landed on my face and changed at once.

Concern moved through them so openly it made me feel abruptly more dangerous than angry.

She saw too much. That was the trouble with Devon. As an angel, she lacked the civilized instinct to pretend otherwise.

“Nikolay,” she said, and the way she said my name held no caution, no calculation, only immediate attention. “Oh.”

She eased fully off my father’s lap before I had taken two steps inside. Father rose more slowly, unhurried as always, one hand trailing briefly along Devon’s arm as if to steady her though she clearly needed no such thing. Then she was crossing the room toward me with that unconscious grace of hers, all fluid certainty in motion and slight disarray in effect, as though the physical world accepted her on terms it granted no one else.