Page 201 of Maksym

“Were you frightened?”

“Yes.”

“Did you believe the ritual might succeed?”

Her eyes found mine. “For a minute, yes.”

“What did you do?”

“I screamed for Nikolay.”

Across the chamber, Nikolay went utterly still. I did not turn toward him. Maddie did.

Her face changed when she looked at him. The chamber could see it. I wanted them to. Whatever else Nikolay had been—coward, fool, arrogant prince with centuries of bad habits wearing fine tailoring—he was the man whose name she screamed when her soul was being pulled apart.

“Why did you scream for him?” I asked.

“Because I could feel him.”

“Through the mate bond?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Close. Getting closer. I knew he was near.”

“What happened after you screamed his name?”

Maddie’s gaze moved back to me, and the warmth vanished. “Sage hit me.”

Even after Sloan’s testimony, hearing Maddie say it herself changed the room. Sloan had told what she had seen. Maddie told what she had endured. The difference mattered.

“How did he hit you?”

“Open hand. Across the face. Hard enough, my head snapped sideways. My mouth filled with blood.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell the Council exactly what he said.”

Maddie drew herself taller on the witness stand. When she spoke, her voice was not Sage’s. She did not perform him. She simply delivered his words into the record and let them rot there.

“He said, ‘Do not mention that bloodsucker’s name in this sacred space.’”

The word bloodsucker hit the chamber like spit on marble.

I felt several vampires in the gallery grow colder. Not angry in the obvious way. Older than that. Offense in supernatural court had layers, and Sage’s insult, spoken while his handprint still marked a bound woman’s face, revealed more than contempt. It revealed ideology stripped of polish.

“After he struck you,” I said, “what did you feel through the bond?”

Maddie’s hands trembled once against the stand. She did not hide it.

“Rage.”

“Prince Nikolay’s rage?”