Page 35 of Kazimir

“Name?” I asked, hoping to get her actual name.

“They’re calling her Nemesis,” Maksym said. “But nobody can agree what she did to warrant expulsion. It’s the first time I’ve seen an entire cabal of Seraphim keep their mouths shut. Which tells me whatever she’s guilty of, it scares even them.”

I stared out at the bloodless dusk trickling through the oaks. The urge to smash something, to kill and destroy until nothing threatened her, was old as I was. “Sariel does not hunt for justice,” I said. “He hunts for pleasure.”

Maksym grunted. “He’s already killed two intermediaries. Tore a witch’s heart out in the middle of the Smetana Hall. He’s on his way to the States.”

My vision tunneled.

“Father, what is the significance of this?” he asked, concern lacing his voice.

I took the door frame in my hand and applied pressure until the wood protested. “She is mine, Maksym. The fallen Sariel hunts—she is my mate.” I said, and the admission landed in the world with the density of a stone thrown into deep water. There was no retrieving it. There was no wishing it unsaid. “The Goddess has ordained it. She is mine to protect.”

“Does she know?”

“She knows nothing,” I said. “Not who she is, not what she was. She remembers only waking up naked in Bartram’s Garden Park. The rest is a blank.” I forced the fangs away with effort, let my voice return to something resembling human. “I need answers before Sariel finds her. I need her safe.”

“Understood,” Maksym said. He did not ask whether it was wise. He did not ask what would happen if I failed. He simply asked, “What is your plan?”

I flexed my free hand, watching the claws retract under my control. “We bring in Archon. He’ll meet with us at the estate, tonight after sunset. He will release Devon’s memories. In the meantime, I want Obsidian under maximum lockdown, and I’d like your help to make it so. No one in or out without your direct clearance. If Sariel enters the city, I want to know before he draws his first breath here.”

I heard him inhale. The smallest static of breath through teeth he did not show to anyone he did not intend to kill. When he spoke, his voice had changed. Not much. Enough that a man who did not know him would have missed it. “Da, I understand,” he said. “I’ll coordinate with Nikolay, Taras, and Bodhan.” The old language, a sign of absolute agreement. “You have my hands and my name. I will not let harm pass.”

“I’ll escalate Amelia’s lattice wards and tie them into the house nodes,” Maksym said immediately. “I’ll have Bohdan move his teams to the outer ring.” Another faint rustle; more notes. “Time?”

“Dusk,” I said. I glanced back into the room. Devon’s shoulder rose and fell with mechanical perfection. “When the house wakes.”

“Understood,” he said. He paused again, then added, softer, “Father. Congratulations.”

The call ended on its tidy little click. I stood a moment longer and let the unspent violence pool low and cold, then exhaled it through my teeth until my body was fully under my control.

I made the phone call to my new ally, the Angel King Archon Seraphael. He agreed to meet Devon tonight. Once her memories were restored, we’d know what exactly we were dealing with.

Devon had not moved. Sleep held her lightly now. Her mouth had softened at the corners into something that threatened me with hope. I took my chair again and reclaimed the quiet task I had chosen just before dawn: bearing witness to the first peace she’d had in months.

When the sun slid behind the clouds and the lamp’s weak circle seemed brighter by comparison, I reached for the old habit that had saved me in palace halls and killing fields: order. I made a list in my head and walked it forward. Inform security. Refresh the thresholds. Call down the old wards I had not used in two lifetimes because they offended my sense of modernity. Offense had its uses.

I folded my hands and watched the minute muscle by her eye twitch as a dream crossed it and was gone. I wanted to wake her to tell her everything. I had learned patience by waiting at gates until emperors died and their armies forgot to guard the back door. I could wait an hour longer.

She made the sound again—tiny, raw, not pain. My hand went to her shoulder before I had thought to move it. She settled. I rubbed through cotton in small, steady circles above the scars, not touching them directly now, not until she consented to show me in her own time. The ridges waited under my palm all the same, incontrovertible and obscene.

“Why did he do this to you?” I asked the empty room in our oldest tongue, the one we used to call God and death and sometimes, love. The walls, unhelpful, declined to answer. The day kept its distance. I kept mine, a man with a controlled voice and a body that remembered monsters on command.

The dining room had always been a room for other people’s appetites. I kept it because houses like mine were expected to have them. Tonight I stood at the head of the long table and let the lamps make a gentler dusk of the one outside. Tilden had set out a stack of plates and a shameful variety of pastries like a bribe. I rarely ate regular food, but admitted to enjoying the taste even if I didn’t need the nutrition. Now that Devon was here, the idea of sharing meals with her held some appeal.

I caught myself straightening a fork that needed no straightening and stopped. It was an old tic—order for order’s sake, a way to disguise anticipation as labor. My hands did not shake. They had not shaken since I learned to lie convincingly to men I planned to ruin. And yet the room felt a half-degree warmer than it had a minute ago, as if the house understood what approached.

She entered barefoot.

The purple linen fell past her ankles in an honest line that forgave nothing and flattered everything. It made her hair look like winter sunlight. The lamplight caught her face and erased the little ghosts of exhaustion that had lived around her mouth since I’d first seen her. She wore no makeup. Her eyes were clean and bright in a way that hurt me. She looked like the kind of happiness children draw when asked to picture a castle: simple, improbable, complete.

I had rehearsed a dozen greetings that sounded like sovereignty making space for a guest. None of them fit. I stepped to meet her halfway down the table and touched her hands first, as if to prove she were real. I kissed her like a man surviving on temperance—soft, brief, with nothing to frighten her away. She smelled like soap and sleep. It felt obscene to bring even the thought of hunger into that fragrance. I placed my hand at the small of her back and guided her to the table.

“Eat,” I said. I heard my own voice and nearly smiled at its careful plainness. “Please.”

She did not need telling twice. She claimed a plate with both hands, like a marauder in a story who had suddenly discovered mercy in the form of pastry. “Is this all for me?” she asked, like she expected us to be joined by an army of others.

“It is,” I said. “And there is more.”