Page 164 of Maksym

He returned his attention to the Council.

“We will call witnesses who saw Miss Baucaum enter Ironwood territory without distress. Witnesses who saw her laughing among pack members. Witnesses who observed cordial and even affectionate exchanges between Miss Baucaum and Alpha Lynch.” His voice softened falsely at the dead Alpha’s name. “We will present communications indicating her stated intention to stay through the festival.”

Communications. My fingers rested lightly on the chair arm.

False messages. Contained messages. Answers sent from inside the compound by someone wearing the voices of those Maddie loved. A crude cruelty in one sense, elegant in another. The best traps did not always require iron. Sometimes they required only enough plausibility to make a victim doubt her own alarm.

Ironwood’s counsel set the page down. Then he changed his tone. The modesty dropped by a hair. Not enough for most to mark. Enough for me.

“We will also prove what everyone close to this situation already knew.” He turned toward Nikolay at last. “Prince Nikolay Kozlov had no interest in Madelyn Baucaum as a mate.”

The words struck the defense table without sound. Nikolay’s cheek jumped once.

Maddie did not look at him. That was worse, perhaps. Her eyes remained forward, fierce and bright, while pain moved through the set of her shoulders. The counsel had chosen his weapon well. The lie would not have cut so deeply if truth had not sharpened one edge.

“He did not claim her,” the counsel said. “He did not celebrate the bond. He did not treat her publicly with tenderness or respect. Instead, he treated her poorly in the very establishment where they both worked. Witnesses at Obsidian saw his coldness. His avoidance. His open displeasure. His failure to offer even the most basic dignity one would expect from a man confronted with the Goddess’s own choice.”

I wanted to stand. Not because the accusation was wholly false. Because it was not.

That was the danger in the room. Not lies alone. Lies were clumsy when properly handled. Half-truths wore better clothes. Nikolay had been cold. He had been arrogant. He had failed Maddie in ways I would have condemned in any man who was not my brother, and in him most of all because blood did not excuse cowardice.

Grace had understood that from the beginning.

We would not survive this by pretending he had been faultless. We would survive it by forcing the Council to distinguish shame from murder, failure from forfeiture, guilt from consent to atrocity.

The counsel took one step away from the lectern.

“It was only when Miss Baucaum informed Prince Nikolay she would remain one final night at Ironwood for the festival, only when he was confronted with the possibility that another man—an Alpha of her own species, of her own culture, of her own kind—might offer what he had refused, that the prince acted.”

Maddie’s fingers curled. Then flattened again. White knuckles against dark, polished wood.

My shadows stirred beneath my skin. Not visibly. I held them there. This room belonged to procedure for the moment, and procedure was Grace’s weapon. My interference would only blunt it.

“At the prospect of losing what he had not valued,” the counsel said, voice clipped now, each word placed like a nail, “Prince Nikolay Kozlov gathered force, breached Ironwood’s gates during sacred observance, entered the festival grounds armed with power and royal entitlement, found Miss Baucaum with Alpha Lynch, and viciously murdered him.”

A murmur passed through the gallery.

The Magistrate’s staff struck once. “Order.”

The murmur died reluctantly.

The counsel waited. Skilled enough, I would grant him that. He let the chamber sit with the image he had painted: a jealous vampire prince, a humble wolf Alpha, a woman caught between them, old rites broken beneath aristocratic violence.

Then he lowered his voice.

“This was not defense. It was not necessity. It was rage. Possession. The ugly violence of a man who would rather see a rival dead than admit his own failures had consequences.”

Nikolay’s jaw was locked so tightly I could see the line of strain from where I sat.

Maddie had gone pale enough that her lipstick seemed brighter by contrast. Her hands remained on the table, but one tremor moved through her fingers before she forced them still.

Grace sat like judgment not yet spoken.

She had not objected. She had not taken notes. She had not leaned toward Nikolay to whisper reassurance or toward Maddie to quiet the pain. She simply watched the prosecution counsel with the detached attention of a woman letting a man walk, voluntarily and at length, into the exact shape of the trap she had prepared.

I loved her then with a ferocity that had nothing gentle in it.

The counsel returned to the lectern.