Page 86 of Nikolay

I leaned forward, forearms on my thighs, and clasped my hands together lest they decide to break something independently of me.

“If this becomes something,” I said, “I do not know yet what shape that takes.”

Bohdan’s answer came without hesitation. “Whatever shape it takes, I have your back without question.”

I looked up.

There it was again, that particular Kozlov form of love. No performance. No sentimental excess. Only certainty, offered as simply as a blade handed hilt-first.

“Thank you,” I said.

He inclined his head once, accepting gratitude as if it were unnecessary.

“If it escalates,” he continued, “we pull Maksym and Taras in.”

The prospect settled over the room with immediate weight. Maksym meant strategy sharpened to command. Taras meant logistics, intelligence, and the efficient closing of every avenue one had failed to notice oneself. Between them, problems ceased being local.

I said, “I would rather not.”

“So would I,” Bohdan replied dryly. “I love our brothers, but I hope it does not come to that. We have all had enough war to last the better part of the next decade.”

That was true enough to darken us both for a second.

Sariel. Obsidian blood. Our father standing against heaven itself for the woman fate had given him. The Creator’s intervention. The whole impossible violence of it. We had only just come through one catastrophe stitched with divine intent. None of us were eager for another.

Before I could say so, a brisk knock should have announced itself.

It did not.

The door opened.

Amelia Voss never entered a room as though she were arriving in it for the first time. She came through Bohdan’s door like somebody stepping into the next logical sentence of a problem she had already been solving elsewhere—copper hair pulled back, green eyes sharp, a worn leather satchel slung over one shoulder, a ward-sigil token turning between her fingers in quick, restless revolutions.

“Charming,” she said by way of greeting. “You’re both here. That saves me from repeating myself in two separate atmospheres of masculine concern.”

Bohdan tipped his glass toward the empty chair. “Do sit, Mel. Insult us efficiently.”

“I always do.”

She dropped into the remaining chair without waiting to be invited a second time, set the satchel at her boots, and continued spinning the token over her knuckles. It was a flat silver disc etched with layered ward-lines, worn smooth at the edges by habitual handling. Another person might have fidgeted with a pen. Amelia worried sigils the way soldiers checked knives.

“I pulled on every string that might hold a secret,” she said. “Most of them snapped back unhelpfully. A few didn’t. Here’s the part you’ll dislike.”

“Sounds not super helpful,” Bohdan said.

She ignored him and looked at me first, perhaps because I had requested the information and perhaps because she had read enough of my face already to know where the pressure sat.

“My sources confirm Ironwood has contacted two of the oldest and most insular witch covens in the country,” she said. “Verdant Hollow and Astral Spire.”

I felt my body go still in a different register than composure required.

Bohdan’s eyes narrowed by a shade.

Amelia went on.

“Wolves and witches do not mix. Not socially, not politically, not ritually, if anyone can help it. That isn’t just custom. It’s near-law in supernatural circles for a reason. Their magic does not play cleanly with wolf hierarchy, blood inheritance, or territorial compulsion. It tangles. It leaves residue. It starts feuds that last generations. So the outreach itself is notable.”

Her thumb pressed once against the sigil token, halting its turn.