Page 131 of Maksym

“I trust my family has made you feel welcome?”

“Very much so, sir.”

“Lovely. More than anything, Grace, we want you to know that the Kozlovs stand with you. You do not fight alone, my dear.”

It had been so long since I had any kind of family. My grandmother had been dead for years, and I had been alone since. I simply nodded and fought the tears that tried to fall. He seemed to understand as he let go of my hand and settled into the chair behind where Devon sat on the floor.

I looked around the room at all of them.

The vampire king’s son beside me. His sister in black lace. Her hybrid wolf doctor. A fallen angel eating cheese with her fingers, and her husband, the King of Kings admiring her as she did. The shadow of a twin brother bowing with surgical precision. A warm-eyed prince pretending not to orbit a Texas wolf who clearly intended to be a problem. The voice of Bohdan, the charming youngest vampire prince, who held a crowd of monsters in a trance tonight filled the foyer as he strolled in.

Monsters, maybe. But not only monsters.

For the first time since Lucian’s name had returned to the room through a screen in Bohdan’s office, I felt the smallest, strangest possibility take root beneath my ribs.

There might be enough good ones after all.

Chapter 17

Maksym

Bohdan entered the sitting room, all loose shoulders and polished shoes and that dangerous, easy charm he used when the world had become too heavy and someone needed to insult it into breathing again.

He crossed behind the sofa where Nikolay and Maddie had settled together and dropped down beside them with no more ceremony than a man arriving late to a card game.

“So what’d I miss?”

Nikolay turned and slapped the back of his head. It was not hard enough to harm him. It was certainly hard enough to make a point.

Bohdan’s head dipped forward by an inch. He went still, one hand raised delicately as if he had been struck not by his brother but by the collapse of civilized law.

“I have been assaulted,” he said.

“Not nearly as hard as necessary,” Nikolay replied.

Maddie laughed, quick and bright, one boot tucked beneath her on the sofa, eyes alive with wicked satisfaction. “Honey, where I come from, that’s barely a love tap.”

Bohdan looked at her. “Your people frighten me.”

“My people ride bulls for sport and deep-fry things that nobody ever considered they ought to.”

Grace sat across from them, a plate balanced carefully on one knee and her glass of blood wine near her hand. She had been laughing at Maddie a moment before. Not loudly, but genuinely.

I watched her too closely. I knew that. Everyone in the room knew that. My family had the decency, or self-preservation, not to mention it.

Father sat behind Devon, who had taken up residence on the rug near the charcuterie board with the moral certainty of a queen who had decided furniture was optional. My father’s stillness was absolute. It did not compete with the room; it governed it. One hand rested loosely on the arm of his chair. Devon leaned against his leg as if the King of Kings were simply the warmest available tree and she had chosen him for shade.

Grace set her plate down. The shift was small. The room felt it. Her shoulders straightened. Her spine found the shape of a courtroom.

“We’ll need to meet at first dusk,” she said.

Her voice had changed. Still southern. Still soft at the edges. But the softness did not blunt it. “Not late evening. First dusk. I need uninterrupted time with Nikolay and Maddie before anyone starts arguing strategy of overlapping centuries.”

Bohdan’s brows rose. “That sounds directed at us.”

“It is directed at everyone with a pulse, functional or decorative.”

Devon pointed at her with a grape. “I like her.”