Page 203 of Maksym

“Was he armed?”

“Yes.”

“With what?”

“A knife.”

“Did you want Prince Nikolay to rush the altar?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Maddie’s eyes flashed. “Because I thought Sage had reached the point where, if he couldn’t have me, he damn sure wasn’t going to let a vampire have me.”

The chamber fell into a heavy silence.

There were truths that did not require legal vocabulary. Any woman who had survived a certain kind of man knew the shape of that sentence. Possession did not always want to keep. Sometimes it wanted to destroy so no one else could hold what it had decided to own.

“What did Prince Nikolay do when you warned him back?”

“He stepped away from the altar.”

“Toward Sage?”

“No. Away. He put space between Sage and me.”

“Did he attack Sage Lynch then?”

“No.”

“What did he do?”

“He talked.”

That answer, simple as it was, nearly broke something in the prosecution’s case all by itself.

“Tell the Council what you remember him saying.”

Maddie took a breath. “He called Sage a coward.”

A flicker moved through Ironwood’s gallery.

I asked, “Anything else?”

“He said Sage had dressed his cowardice in words like purity and heritage.” Her mouth tightened. “He said Sage wanted to call it tradition because tradition sounded prettier than theft.”

Nikolay’s eyes had fixed on her.

“Did those words draw Sage away from the altar?”

“Yes.”

“How did Sage respond?”

“He got angry.”

“Was he already angry before Prince Nikolay arrived?”