Page 157 of Maksym

“I know,” I said.

And strangely, I did.

The plane descended through a layer of cloud, and the cabin lights dimmed by degrees, reflecting in the windows until our faces floated faintly over the dark outside. Vampire kings. A fallen angel. A witch. A hybrid doctor. A Texas wolf. Princes. Monsters. Survivors. Evidence stacked between us in printed columns and locked files.

Maksym’s hand found mine again as the landing gear lowered with a muted thud beneath us.

I held on.

After a night at the Kozlov Chicago estate, we were as ready as we’d ever be.

The city thinned as we approached. Glass towers surrendered to lower buildings, then to stretches of dark land where the last bruised light of dusk lay flat across winter-bare fields. The SUVs carrying us moved in a tight line, black and silent, the kind of procession that made human traffic part around us without knowing why.

Then the building appeared.

Twelve stories of black stone stood where the city’s edge bled into open countryside. It had no welcoming façade, no grand windows lit from within to suggest civic purpose or transparency. The only openings were narrow slits near the roofline, too high and too thin to offer comfort. From a distance, it looked less built than unearthed, a monolith dragged from beneath older soil and forced upright.

Taras rode in the passenger seat. His presence had become a welcome and calming inevitability.

Our car stopped at the base of broad stone steps.

The air smelled like cold stone and exhaust and something metallic beneath.

Around us, doors opened. Kazimir emerged with Devon at his side. Nikolay helped Maddie from the car behind us, though she gave him a look that suggested she could exit a vehicle without royal intervention but permitted it for the sake of morale. Remy stepped out with a long coat moving around her legs, elegant and watchful. Lucia and Doc followed, their shoulders aligned in that silent, paired readiness I had begun to associate with people who had survived attacks together and did not intend to be surprised twice. Bohdan came last, expression pleasant enough to be illegal in hostile territory.

We climbed.

The stairs were wider than necessary. Buildings like this did not merely accommodate bodies; they instructed them. Above us, a colonnade of marble pillars guarded the entrance, pale against black stone. Runes and glyphs had been carved floor-to-capital into every pillar, worn smooth in places by centuries of hands that were not gentle. Some marks had softened into shallow scars. Others remained sharp enough that my eyes resisted lingering on them.

At the top, two guards waited.

Both wore identical dark suits. Both had identical earpieces. Neither looked like any courthouse security officer I had ever known, though I suspected both could have rendered a metal detector unnecessary by tearing a threat in half.

One was a vampire. His skin had the color of old paper stretched over a steel frame, fine and pale and entirely without warmth. His eyes moved over our group and paused on Maksym, then Kazimir, with the careful neutrality of someone who understood hierarchy and preferred his continued existence.

The other was a demon. I knew in an instant.

Not in full infernal form, if my limited education served, but not hiding enough to pass for human either. His face was bluntly handsome in a dangerous way; his skin a rich dark brown, his irises ringed with molten orange that shifted faintly when he turned his head. As we reached the top step, his nostrils flared.

Then his attention snapped to me.

There it was.

That small twitch at the edge of his mouth. Not quite a grin. Recognition denied by confusion. Something in my scent was wrong for the categories he knew: human no longer, vampire newly, mate-marked by a king, carrying trauma, venom, restored blood, and whatever else supernatural noses pulled from the air like gossip.

His gaze drifted lower, assessing.

My fangs pressed faintly against my gums.

The impulse to show them surprised me. It came from somewhere younger than thought and older than law. A warning. A refusal. A body saying I was not cargo, not prey, not silent.

I held his gaze and did not show my teeth.

That restraint felt like winning a small battle.

The demon’s almost-smile faded first.

Good.