Page 242 of Maksym

My brother had always needed someone who could look him in the face when he was being imperious and say, with that soft Tennessee accent, “That is not how jurisdiction works, Your Majesty.”

I cherished those moments. Privately. With discipline.

Shad was still watching me, waiting for the rest of the thought.

I let the corner of my mouth rise. “This is exactly why one never tempts the Goddess with idle declarations about being in control of one’s fate.”

His brow furrowed. “That sounds specific.”

“It does.”

“Are you going to explain?”

“Briefly enough to be annoying.”

“That tracks.”

Below us, someone tested a line of enchanted sconces along the aisle. Pale fire rose in sequence, white-gold rather than orange, each flame catching within crystal and throwing light across the marble. The hall brightened by degrees.

Maksym would love it. He would pretend he found it excessive. Grace would know he was lying.

I said, “My brother once believed he and the Goddess had reached a private understanding about the shape of his future.”

Shad’s gaze sharpened with interest. “Did they?”

“No. But Maksym spent centuries mistaking silence for agreement. Many kings make the same error.”

Shad looked back down at the hall. “And then?”

“And then a dying woman landed at his feet outside Amethyst and unmade every certainty he had arranged so neatly for himself.”

The words left my mouth more lightly than they felt.

I remembered that night too clearly for humor to cover it entirely. The scent of fear and human suffering outside our own doors. Grace’s body in his arms, too thin, too cold, too close to gone. The way my twin had looked at her hand where he held it, as if the universe had split open beneath his palm and shown him both salvation and ruin.

Mate bond. Blood slave. Dying.

Three facts, each catastrophic alone. Together, they had become the axis around which the last four months had turned.

Shad said nothing for a while.

He had not been with us in Philadelphia for every moment, but he had run Amethyst through the aftershocks. He had kept the club clean, the court moving, the information flowing, the staff silent when silence mattered and responsive when action mattered more. Loyalty was often spoken of as though it were grand enough to need poetry. Most days, loyalty was a man answering his phone at three in the morning and making certain no fool bled on the wrong carpet.

Shad had done both.

“Well,” he said at last, “if that was divine planning, I’d hate to see divine improvisation.”

“You manage a supernatural pleasure club attached to a royal court in the Nevada desert,” I said. “You see divine improvisation every Thursday.”

“That’s not divine. That’s drunk witches with access to credit.”

“Distinction noted.”

His mouth curved, then faded. The expression did not vanish so much as fold itself away. “He’s different.”

I did not need to ask who he meant.

“Yes,” I said.