Page 44 of Maksym

At first, I thought I had paused because of the bond. It pulled at me constantly now, a low ache beneath the breastbone, not pain exactly but wrongness whenever walls stood between us. I had been prepared to endure that. My father’s voice remained in my memory: It will lie to you in the language of protection.

Then I heard it. A low, broken whimper. Taras rose from his seat outside her door, but I made him stop. Another sound followed: fabric twisting, sheets dragged tight, the scrape of a heel against the mattress.

Then Grace’s voice, small and wrecked.

“Stop.”

The word did not belong to waking. I moved. I opened the door and crossed the room in three strides. The chamber had been dimmed for sleep. The lights were out. Heavy curtains sealed the morning beyond layers of violet and black fabric, allowing only the faintest ash-colored line around the edges.

Grace was tangled in the bedsheets as if they had turned traitor.

The violet silk coverlet had wrapped around one arm. A sheet had wound tight across her chest and under her other elbow, pinning her in a shape that made panic feed on itself. One leg was trapped knee to ankle, the fabric twisted hard enough that another violent jerk might have wrenched muscle or bone before her new strength understood its limits.

Her body arched against the restraint. Her face was wet.

“Please stop,” she whispered. “You’re hurting me.”

The room narrowed to that. Not the conspiracy. Not my father. Not the crown. Not the centuries. Only Grace, trapped in silk, begging ghosts to stop touching her. I reached the bed and forced my hands to stay gentle.

“Grace,” I said, low. “It is Maksym. You are safe.”

She jerked harder. The sheet tightened around her arm.

I sat on the edge of the bed and took the fabric, not her wrist. Fabric first. Always fabric. I unwound the coverlet from her forearm, loosening rather than pulling, creating space before removing pressure. She thrashed again, and one hand struck my chest with enough force to bruise a human. The new blood was already making promises her sleeping mind could not understand.

“Good,” I murmured, though my throat felt carved open. “That is good. Fight if you must. But not the sheets, malen’kaya. They are beneath your dignity as opponents.”

The absurdity steadied me. Perhaps it steadied her, too. Or perhaps the nightmare had begun to loosen on its own.

I freed her first arm, then the second. The sheet had twisted under her shoulder. I lifted her only enough to draw it loose, careful not to cage her body beneath mine, careful not to pin, not to trap, not to repeat even the shape of anything done to her. Her trapped leg came last. Silk had knotted around her ankle. I tore it rather than make her endure one more second of restraint.

The sound of fabric ripping cut through the room. Grace gasped. Her eyes did not open.

“No,” she cried, so softly it nearly killed me. “No, please.”

I gathered her up because she would hurt herself if I did not.

The decision cost me. I had told her I would not reach unless she asked. But the nightmare did not ask. Panic did not negotiate. Her body was still fighting restraints that were no longer there, and the bed had become a battlefield she could not see.

So I took the sin and made it as gentle as I could. I drew her against my chest, turning her so her arms were free between us, not pinned at her sides. One hand settled high on her back, moving in slow strokes down her spine and up again, broad enough to anchor, light enough to withdraw if she woke swinging. My other arm curved around her shoulders without locking.

“Grace,” I said in her ear. “Listen to my voice. You are here. You are in the palace. No one is touching you but me, and I will let go the moment you tell me. You are safe. Devereux is not here. No one will hurt you.”

Her breathing came in broken gasps.

“Stop,” she whispered again, but there was confusion in it now. Less command to the dream. More remnant.

“I know,” I said. “It stopped. It is over. You are here with me.”

She shuddered so hard that her teeth clicked. I kept my hand moving. Up her spine. Down again. Slow enough for a frightened animal. Slow enough for a soul returned from hell without a map.

Grace’s fingers caught in my shirt. Not deliberately at first. They scraped at the fabric, then clutched. Her face pressed against my chest just below my collarbone. Tears soaked through linen to skin.

Her breathing stuttered. Then slowed. Then broke again when she began to wake.

It happened in increments. Her body softened first, not fully, but enough that the fight went out of her limbs. Her head shifted. Her fingers tightened once, then loosened, then tightened again with more awareness. Her breath caught on a small, humiliating sob she tried to swallow.

I did not speak. She needed the world to return on its own terms. At last, she went utterly still. I felt the moment she understood where she was. Curled against me. Held. Alive. Her shame arrived before her voice.