Page 181 of Maksym

His voice was quiet. The hallway heard it anyway.

Lucian’s eyes cut toward me, full of hatred and pain and something he would rather have died than show. Fear.

I looked at him. Maksym removed his hand and turned away as if Lucian had already become an administrative inconvenience.

“Bring him,” one guard ordered to another, though his voice held uncertainty. Council politics had just become less theoretical and more bloody.

Lucia stepped to my side, still smiling.

“Are you hurt?” Doc asked me.

“No.”

He looked unconvinced in the professional way of doctors everywhere.

“Any dizziness? Pain?”

“No.”

“Urge to do that again?”

I looked at Lucian. Then back at Doc.

“Manageable.”

Lucia’s smile widened.

Maksym’s hand moved to my back, light enough that I could step away if I chose. I did not. He guided me toward the Council chamber entrance, not shielding me from view, not hiding me behind him. Walking beside me. Returning me to the room where I had work still to do.

My shoulders felt tight. I rolled them once, then again, testing the body Lucian had thought he understood.

“He surprised me,” I said, voice even.

Maksym looked down at me.

Lucia fell into step on my other side, dark eyes glittering with open approval. Taras followed at a slight distance, and I heard Remy’s heels clicking somewhere behind.

“His mistake,” I said.

Chapter 22

Maksym

The Council chamber did not receive us as we had left it.

Recess had altered the air. Speculation clung to the stone like smoke, and every eye that turned toward Grace carried the same crude hunger: what happened, who bled, and whether the answer could be used. Supernatural politics dressed itself in protocol, but underneath the robes and titles, the polished benches and old carvings, it was still an animal leaning toward fresh blood.

Grace walked beside me without lowering her head. That mattered.

Her shoulders had squared again. Her face had returned to the still, dangerous composure that made men underestimate her only once. A faint dampness remained at her hairline from the water she had splashed on her face. One sleeve had shifted slightly where Lucian had grabbed her, and I wanted to tear the fabric from her body just to erase the memory of his hand touching it.

There were times when violence was the correct language. There were times when silence did more damage. I had already given Lucian one sentence in the hallway, and it had settled where it needed to settle. If I allowed my rage to speak further now, I would turn the room toward me, and this room needed to belong to Grace.

Nikolay stood as we returned to the defense table. Maddie turned too, her eyes moving quickly over Grace’s face, then to mine, then past us toward the chamber entrance as if she already knew the devil had not finished reentering the room. Lucia and Doc followed close behind. Lucia looked pleased in a way that would have frightened anyone with sense. Doc looked as if he had made several medical judgments and found most of them amusing.

My father remained on the dais.

Kazimir watched us from his throne with nothing readable on his face except the faintest narrowing of his eyes. It was not disapproval. I would have felt that. It was calculation, king to king, father to son. I returned to my throne next to my father.