Page 5 of Maksym

Two words. Softly spoken. Taras heard everything inside them. Brother, forgive me. Advisor, obey me. Come closer, and I will forget your name for one unforgivable second.

His eyes sharpened by a fraction. Not anger. Assessment. Perhaps sorrow, though Taras concealed such things better than most men concealed weapons.

“She is afraid of you,” he said.

I smiled without humor. “Your powers of observation remain unmatched.”

“Maksym.”

My name in his mouth was a warning and a plea. Few others were permitted to use it in that tone. Fewer still survived, ignoring the king for the sake of the man.

I did not move.

She made a small sound behind me, more breath than voice. I turned my head enough to see her from the corner of my eye. She had gone impossibly still, watching the space between my back and Taras. Even terrified, she understood conflict. Perhaps captivity had taught her the weather of violence before it broke.

That thought did nothing kind inside me. Then a voice came from the doorway.

“Majesty.”

It was not loud. It did not need to be. The single word entered the room and did what centuries of diplomacy could not. It placed a hand on the back of my neck without touching me.

Millicent stood at the threshold in a dark dressing robe, her silver-streaked hair half-pinned, soft ringlets fallen loose around her face. She must have dressed in haste, though she somehow carried haste as if it were merely another household inconvenience. Her eyes moved over the room once: Taras near the door with his hands raised, me planted like a wall before the bed; the woman folded against the headboard with blood on her mouth and terror in every line of her body.

Millie made a small sound.

It was not a sigh. Not exactly. It contained exasperation, worry, and a certain weary fondness earned by four centuries of cleaning blood out of expensive fabric and sense into stubborn Kozlov men.

“Oh, you foolish boys,” she murmured.

Taras lowered his hands by an inch. “Millicent.”

She ignored him. She ignored me as well, which she had done often since I was a toddler.

Millie walked into my private chamber without asking permission. She had done so when I was a child with a fever. She had done so when I was a newly blooded warrior, too proud to admit I could barely stand. She had done so after the attack that almost killed her, when I had knelt in her blood and offered her a choice no servant of my house had ever been forced to make. She had accepted immortality with less fuss than some nobles accepted seating changes at dinner.

For four hundred years, she had continued to behave as if rank were something she dusted around.

I stepped aside. Not much. Enough.

Millie did not look triumphant. She simply moved past the line of conflict as if men and their instincts were furniture placed inconveniently in a hallway. Her attention settled on the broken woman and did not leave.

“There now,” she said, her voice warm and unhurried. “I know everything must feel very frightening.”

My mate’s eyes stared at her.

Millie stopped several feet from the bed. Not close enough to trap. Not far enough to seem afraid. The amber light found the softness of her face, the silver in her hair, the gentle fullness of her body. There was nothing sharp about Millicent unless one knew her well enough to fear disappointment more than knives.

“I can see you have been hurt,” she continued. “Badly hurt. I am sorry for that, my dear.”

Her fingers tightened on the sheet. Millie did not reach for her.

“Every person in this room is here to help you,” she said. “Not harm you.”

Eyes flicked to me.

I hated the answer she found there. Blood on my mouth. Blood on my shirt cuff. Her blood under my skin. My body still held too much tension to look safe, no matter how motionless I made it.

Millie followed her glance and then looked back.