Page 182 of Maksym

A stir moved through the gallery.

Grace did not look at me, but I felt her register my presence. She opened her portfolio and withdrew her notes. Not many. She had always needed fewer than anyone expected. A legal pad. A capped pen. A few marked pages. The rest lived in her mind, ordered and sharpened.

Then Lucian entered.

Two guards escorted him back into the chamber, though escorted was too polite a word for the careful handling of a snake no one had yet been authorized to kill. He had composed himself again. Of course he had. His long blond hair remained tied neatly at the nape. His dark suit had been straightened. Blood had been wiped from his mouth, though a thin cut remained at the corner, stubborn evidence no amount of breeding could erase.

His left wrist was held tight against his chest.

The other hand hung with too much care at his side, fingers slightly curled, as if even the air against them offended him. Elder vampires healed quickly, but not always instantly. Not from bones broken with righteous precision beneath Council wards designed to suppress certain powers. He would recover.

That displeased me. His smile had returned.

Cruel. Faint. Unnecessary. Designed for the room, not for comfort. A message to those watching: I remain untouched in all ways that matter. Liar.

Pain changed the rhythm of his breathing. Humiliation tightened the skin around his eyes. And when his gaze found Grace, the smile held, but the body beneath it knew better than to approach again.

I watched him take his place in the gallery. Watched him settle with the careful stiffness of a man arranging himself around injury. Watched his eyes avoid mine until avoidance became too obvious and he was forced, briefly, to look.

I gave him nothing.

No snarl. No fangs. No shadows spilling from beneath my chair. Only stillness. Predators understood stillness better than threat. A threat could be answered. Stillness promised only that the answer had been postponed, not abandoned.

Grace’s eyes lowered to her notes. Her hand paused for the smallest fraction of a second. Then she inhaled, deep enough that I saw her shoulders rise and settle.

The Magistrate’s staff struck stone.

The sound moved through the chamber with the cold authority of metal shutting over bone.

“All will attend,” the Magistrate said. His eyes moved once over the gallery, pausing nowhere long enough to suggest curiosity about the recess violence. “Proceedings are returned to order.”

Voices died in layers.

Robes settled. Benches quieted. Even the old quills near the record clerks seemed to resume their poised obedience. The truth spell, dormant but not gone, trembled faintly beneath the floor, a sleeping beast reminded of its purpose.

The Magistrate turned toward Grace.

“Defense may call its first witness.”

Grace stood. The chamber watched her differently now.

Before, they had watched a prosecutor. A novelty. A human-turned-vampire standing in supernatural court with Southern vowels and federal habits. Now they watched a woman who had left the room and returned with an elder vampire’s bones broken behind her.

She adjusted one page on the table. Then she looked up.

“The defense calls Sloan Lynch.”

The name did what I expected and more.

A ripple moved through the room, visible as wind over dark grass. The Ironwood side of the gallery stiffened first. Several wolves turned toward one another, not speaking, because silence was sometimes more revealing than sound. At the prosecution table, counsel went rigid. Not dramatically. He was too disciplined for that. But his shoulders tightened, and one hand slid over his papers as if he could rearrange the case by touching it.

On the dais, the wolf kings exchanged glances.

One of the witch sovereigns leaned back, eyes sharpening. The Demon King’s attention shifted with blunt interest. Even the Angel King’s luminous stillness seemed to alter, though perhaps I only imagined that because every creature in the room had begun to understand that Grace had not merely survived the prosecution’s witnesses.

She had used them to open a door. And now she intended to bring Sage Lynch’s sister through it.

Nikolay did not move.