Page 54 of Maksym

Remy leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her tailored jacket. Her dark eyes swept the room—Taras’s meticulous notes, the glowing screens, Lucian’s smirking photograph—before settling on me. That familiar blend of loyalty and skepticism sharpened her gaze.

“Majesty,” she drawled, the New Orleans cadence softening the formality. “You said it was urgent. Smells like war in here.” Her nostrils flared slightly, probably catching the lingering scent of Grace from my sleeve. Her eyebrow arched. “And something else. Something... new.”

I didn’t flinch. Remy missed nothing. I gestured her toward the conference table. “Sit. We have a viper in the garden. It involves Elder Lucian Devereux and blood slavery.”

Her posture shifted instantly; the casual lean replaced by coiled readiness. She pulled out a chair opposite Taras; her gaze sharpening. “Blood slavery.” It wasn’t a question. The scent of ozone, faint but unmistakable, whispered around her—her magic reacting to the ugliness named.

“Confirmed,” I said, tapping the monitor displaying Devereux’s gala smile.

“He held a woman captive for two years. Starved her. Used her. Her name is Grace. She’s upstairs with Millie.”

Remy’s eyebrow arched, a silent demand for context. I gave it to her, stripped bare: the blood slave Lucian had used and who had somehow escaped and made her way outside Amethyst.

“She is also my mate.”

Her dark eyes locked onto mine, not with surprise—Remy Duval didn’t do surprise—but with a sudden, blade-sharp reassessment. She leaned back slowly in her chair; the leather creaking under her weight.

“Your mate,” she repeated, the words deliberate, tasting them like unfamiliar wine. “Lucian Devereaux’s blood slave is your mate.”

Taras didn’t look up from his laptop, but I felt the shift in him—a tightening of focus, like a predator scenting weakness in the hunt. His pen still scratched across paper, but slower now, waiting.

“Yes,” I said, the word scraping raw in my throat. I didn’t soften it. Didn’t dress it in royal detachment. The bond thrummed beneath my ribs, a live wire humming toward the room above us where Grace stood under Millie’s care. “She collapsed outside Amethyst. Dying. I turned her.”

She nodded slowly.

“Check your email, Highness, and you’ll find that our boy Lucian stopped by Amethyst just last night and asked Shad for an audience with you. I can only assume it must have something to do with his missing slave.”

I grabbed my phone and immediately called my operations manager. His voice filled the room from the speaker.

“Good evening, Your Majesty.”

I did not waste time on formalities.

“Shad. I understand Lucian Devereaux is asking for an audience?”

“Yes, sir. Quite insistent, in fact. He came in with a few men last night and all but demanded to speak with the king. I, of course, told him he could make an appointment like everyone else. But that I’d pass the message. I included his contact info in the email.”

“Call him, tell him I have a fifteen-minute window now. I’ll meet him in the club conference room, not at the palace.”

“Right away, sir.”

I hung up the phone and headed for the door with Remy and Taras on my heels. I needed to know what that fucker knew about Grace’s whereabouts. On the short drive to Amethyst, I discussed the chances of Lucian’s witches scrying for Grace’s location. She felt that once my blood entered her system, tracking her would become nearly impossible.

“I want you setting anti-scrying barriers around the palace and Amethyst. And Remy, while I’m talking to Lucian, I want him to tell me the truth, whether or not he knows her location. Nothing else. We’re trying to set a trap for him. I don’t want him to be tipped off to the fact that Grace is with me.”

“Done.”

Shad showed Lucian in at precisely the time I had allotted him. The conference room at Amethyst was not designed to comfort visitors. Dark paneled walls absorbed the light from iron sconces. The carved table ran long and black down the center, eight high-backed chairs arranged with the kind of precision that reminded men they had been expected. Relics and rare weapons lined the credenzas—not decorative, simply present. I sat at the head. Taras to my left, still as a blade laid flat. Remy to my right, dark-eyed and unhurried. Lucian’s gaze moved across the three of us and did not find anywhere safe to land. He sat and placed his folded hands on the table.

“What brings you to Las Vegas, Mr. Devereaux, and why does it concern your king?”

He cleared his throat. “I had a few business matters to attend to. But, I’m afraid, in the process a small issue has arisen that I feel I must report.”

When I said nothing in reply, he continued.

“It seems the blood donor I travel with decided to leave me without being officially released.”

“Let me see if I understand this correctly. Your contracted human blood donor... decided they no longer wanted to be such and just... left. I’m at a loss for how that’s even possible. Those contracts are held through blood magic. Remy, help me here. It’s been a while since I read a donor contract.”