Page 230 of Maksym

For one dangerous second, joy moved through me.

It was not a clean emotion. It had fangs. It had claws. It had waited two years inside a room I had not known existed while my mate starved in the dark. It had waited through Council procedure, through evidence, through remand, through transfer, through every measured step required to make this moment lawful enough that no one could steal it from her afterward.

“With pleasure,” I said.

Lucian’s eyes snapped to mine. Too late. I let my power move.

Compulsion was often misunderstood by those who did not possess it. They imagined a voice, a command, a trick of the eyes. Lesser vampires needed such tools. I had learned centuries ago that command was less a spoken thing than an imposition of reality. A king did not persuade a door to close. He made the room understand it had never been open.

I looked at Lucian Devereaux and gave one quiet order.

“Silence.”

The word entered him. His mouth shut.

Not closed. Shut. The lips sealed as though the muscles no longer belonged to him. His jaw flexed violently. Tendons leaped along his throat. A muffled sound strained behind his teeth and died there. His eyes widened, first with fury, then with the particular panic of a man discovering that even his last weapon had been confiscated.

I smiled. Not much. Enough.

Grace looked at him then.

The dungeon seemed to lean toward her. She took one step forward, stopping outside the reach of his chained feet, though there was no need. He could not reach her. He could not command her. He could not touch her with so much as a syllable.

For two years, he had owned the rooms she stood in.

Now she owned the silence.

“Well,” she said, and there it was fully—the Tennessee in her voice, thick as honey and twice as dangerous. “That is so much better.”

Lucian shook against the chains. Grace smiled at him. It was not kind.

“I know you’re accustomed to hearing yourself talk, so I imagine this is uncomfortable. But you and I both know you’ve had more than your fair share of uninterrupted time.”

His eyes burned.

“Now it’s my turn.”

She clasped her hands loosely in front of her. It was such a familiar gesture that something in my chest tightened. I had seen her do it in the Council chamber. In legal argument. When organizing evidence. When preparing to dismantle a man who had mistaken her softness of accent for softness of mind.

“Your empire is coming apart as we speak,” she said. “Not metaphorically. Not eventually. Right now.”

Lucian stilled by a fraction. Grace noticed. Of course she did.

“Properties seized. Accounts frozen. Shell companies pierced. Warehouses entered. Wards taken down by people who know exactly what rot smells like once someone points them toward the cellar.” Her voice stayed almost sweet. “Brick by brick, Lucian. Dollar by dollar. Every office you hid behind. Every deed. Every transport invoice. Every payment route you thought was buried deep enough under lawyers and little men with clean signatures.”

Alistaire Crowe made a thin sound from his chains.

Grace did not look at him yet.

“It was never enough to kill you,” she continued. “That would have been satisfying, sure. Don’t mistake me, sugar, I have imagined your death with a creativity that would probably concern my former ethics professors.”

Bohdan’s mouth twitched.

“But killing you alone wouldn’t repair a single life. Wouldn’t house anybody. Wouldn’t feed anybody. Wouldn’t pay for doctors, therapists, ward specialists, lawyers, identification records, new names, old names restored, or whatever else survivors decide they need once they finally get to decide something for themselves.”

Lucian’s nostrils flared. The veins in his neck pulsed. Grace’s gaze sharpened.

“So every cent we can strip from you is going to them.”