Page 20 of Maksym

Millie looked at the decanter. “Blood wine. Mild. Diluted enough not to overwhelm you, but strong enough to help. You need not drink it all.”

Grace’s fingers curled on the table.

“No one will force you,” Millie added.

The sentence entered the room and found me. I accepted the wound of it. I deserved it.

Grace listened. I watched it happen with a fascination that bordered on envy. Millie’s words did not make Grace calm, but they reached her.

I had commanded kingdoms. I could not make my mate believe a steak was only a steak.

“Majesty.”

Millie’s voice cut through my thoughts. I looked at her. She pointed at the chair opposite Grace. Actually pointed. One finger, direct and unforgiving.

“Sit.”

I sat. Millie seemed satisfied with my obedience, and Grace relaxed a small degree as well.

“You are safe,” she told Grace.

Grace looked up at her. The need in that look nearly drove me from the chair.

Millie touched her shoulder once. Briefly. Carefully. “I will be close.”

Then Millie turned to me. She did not say, behave yourself. She did not need to. The look accomplished more. I inclined my head. It was not obedience to a servant. It was respect to a woman who had earned it in countless ways since my childhood. Grace saw that too.

Millie left us. The door clicked shut, and silence entered behind her and took a seat between us. I reached for the larger steak. Grace went still. I slowed my movements until every gesture became visible, deliberate, harmless. I set the steak on her plate. Took the knife. Pressed the fork into the meat. Cut it into small, even pieces.

It was ridiculous, perhaps. A king carving dinner for a woman who would rather have fled the room than accept tenderness from him. But precision had saved me more than once when emotion threatened to make a fool of power. So I cut. One piece, then another. Bite-sized. Easy. No expectation that she use the knife herself while her hands still trembled.

The meat opened red beneath the blade. Grace stared at it. Then she stared at me.

“For me?”

The question was so bare that I nearly answered too quickly. Of course, for you, malen’kaya, little one. Everything here is for you.

Instead, I set the knife across the edge of the plate.

“Of course,” I said. “I want to take care of you.”

I knew the words had landed wrong before her expression changed. It was there in the way her chin lifted. Small motion. Immense consequence. Her shoulders drew back, not far enough to suggest strength, but far enough to remember pride.

“Like you took care of me when you turned me into a monster?”

The word monster did not strike where she aimed it. It struck lower.

I kept my hands on my side of the table. “I had no choice. You were dying. I told you I could help you, and you said please.”

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out at first. Her hands pressed flat against the table. The sound of her palms meeting the linen tablecloth was soft, almost nothing. Still, I heard the pressure in it. The tremor.

Her jaw worked once. Twice. When the words came, they did not emerge as a plea. They broke.

“I thought you’d go get a doctor.” Her voice cracked upward, raw and furious. “Not turn me into the same kind of monster who’d been torturing me for years.”

Years. The word carried more blood than the decanter.

Years of silence split open all at once. I saw it not as memory—I had no right to her memories—but as consequence. The way her fingers dug into the linen. The way the tendons stood out in her wrists, too stark beneath healing skin.