Page 130 of Maksym

The title struck differently from him. I set my glass down before I could fidget with it.

“Taras,” I said. “If I say Grace, will you pretend to consider it?”

His eyes warmed by half a degree. “I will genuinely consider it and then behave according to the needs of the room.”

“That is a very elegant no.”

“It is perhaps a conditional no.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You and Tilden are conspiring.”

“Tilden does not conspire,” Taras said. “He arranges inevitabilities.”

Devon pointed a piece of cheese at him. “That is exactly what conspiring is when you do it with napkins.”

Before Taras could answer, the doorway filled again.

Nikolay entered first, and even prepared as I was, he was a lot of man to have arrive in a sitting room already populated by royalty, trauma, and dairy products.

He was broad-shouldered and tall, with an open, expressive face that softened what should have been an intimidating frame. His amber eyes were warm in a way Maksym’s were not by default. Laugh lines bracketed his eyes and mouth even at rest, as if humor had lived there long enough to leave permanent evidence. Yet there was power in him, too. Enormous, old, restrained. He carried himself like a man who could make peace because everyone in the room understood what would happen if peace declined the invitation.

Beside him came Maddie.

And Maddie was exactly what she had appeared to be from the VIP level below Obsidian: small, curvy, alive with energy, and dressed as if leather and lace had entered a legally binding partnership. Chestnut hair fell in thick waves around her shoulders. Her whiskey-colored eyes moved over the room, took in everyone, and landed on me with immediate brightness.

Nikolay stepped forward first and gave a somewhat formal bow.

“My lady. I am Nikolay,” he said, his deep voice measured and warm. “And this is my mate, Madelyn.”

“Maddie,” she corrected before he had finished the final syllable.

His mouth tightened in a way that suggested this was not the first time.

“Maddie,” he amended.

She stepped around him as if no vampire prince in existence could block a Texas woman with a destination.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, her drawl quick and warm and edged with mischief. “I understand you’re the one who’s going to be able to save his ass.”

For one suspended second, no one moved.

Then my jaw relaxed.

All the tension I had been carrying—Lucian, the drive, the estate, Lucia’s questions, Ryder’s story, my own terrible arithmetic about good and evil—shifted inside me and found an exit.

My mouth curved. The first real laugh of the evening rose in my throat before pain could stop it. It came out bright, startled, and entirely mine.

Maksym turned his head toward me. I felt his attention settle there, quiet and fierce. But for once, I did not look to him to find out whether I was safe.

I looked at Maddie, who grinned like she had just walked into a royal sitting room and committed a public service.

“Well,” I said, still laughing softly, “I do have relevant experience with difficult men and impossible cases.”

Maddie’s eyes lit.

Nikolay sighed as if fate had once again arrived wearing spiked heels.

Then the air in the room had gone still at the arrival of Kazimir. He didn’t glide past me and Maksym on his way to his wife. He stopped and held his hand out to me. Unsure of the protocol, I gently placed my right hand in his. He covered it with his other hand.