8. Chapter 8 #2
“This is troubling indeed. You're afraid she might go to human authorities? Expose us to the human world? This would be damning for you if so, Lucian. Damning to you and my kingdom. Do you have any idea where she might be? Any leads as to where she may have run?”
This was it. This is what I had to know.
“At this point, no. I have very good scrying witches looking. Her trail went cold near Amethyst.”
He looked me in the eye then as though he wanted to accuse me of something.
I laughed.
“I can assure you, I would have been informed if a renegade contracted human woman donor was on the loose at Amethyst. My people wouldn’t dare harbor such a creature.
If she'd made her way to us, I'd be validating the contract you have with her, I assure you.” I let my shadows climb the walls and cross the floor until they reached his chair before I continued. “And I’d be very fucking careful before I accused my king of violating Crown law, Deveraux.”
He tripped over his words then.
“Oh no my king, I would never! I was just hoping you might have heard something that might be helpful. And if not, I wanted to give the information so as not to keep something like this from you.”
I pulled my shadows back slightly.
“Your information is duly noted. This is something you'd better figure out before the human authorities get involved. It could end very badly for you, indeed. Now, I have other matters that need my attention. You've wasted enough of my time.”
His disdain for me was barely hidden from his face. But his fear outweighed his hatred.
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
That answered the question.
“At least we know he has no idea she’s safe with me. Let’s make sure it stays that way.”
I felt Grace before the knock came, before Millie’s gentle voice sounded on the other side of the door, before the latch turned beneath a careful hand. The bond moved through me like a blade warming near a fire—not pain, not comfort, but recognition insisting upon itself.
I stood before she entered. Then the door opened.
Millie came first, small and round and steady as an old bell tower, her black-and-silver hair pinned into its pretty bun.
Grace came beside her. For one breath, my office ceased being a place of war.
She wore a sea-foam green dress that moved around her like water that had been persuaded into cloth.
It should have looked too soft for what she had survived, too gentle for the raw edges of her mouth and the bruised shadows that lingered beneath eyes turned a clearer, deeper navy than they had been when she was human.
Instead, she was radiant. The wide waist gave shape to a body no longer collapsing in on itself.
She also stopped dead when she saw Remy.
Not frightened. Not exactly. Grace’s fear had shades now, and I was learning them the way one learned weather in hostile terrain.
This was caution sharpened by surprise. Her gaze moved from Taras at the conference table, to the spread of papers, to Lucian’s image frozen on my monitor, then to the woman seated at the head of the long table as though she had every right to occupy the place from which kingdoms were usually dissected.
Remy had dressed in black designer slacks, a cream silk blouse, and heels tall enough to make lesser women repent.
Her deep brown skin held golden undertones under the office lights, and her long black curls were piled in a loose knot.
Her eyes were dark when she entered most rooms. Now, with power close beneath the skin, they had gone amber-gold.
Grace stared.
I moved at once, not in front of her and not too near. Beside her. A place she could refuse if she wished.
“Grace,” I said, keeping my voice low. “This is Remington Duval. Remy to those who value their lives but not enough to use her full name. She is from New Orleans, right hand in most things that Taras is not. She has worked with us for decades.”
Grace’s head turned slowly toward me. I saw the calculation.
Her eyes moved back to Remy’s face. The smooth skin. The apparent youth. The elegance that looked no older than Grace herself, though Remy had been terrifying foolish men before Grace’s grandmother had lost her last tooth, most likely.
Remy caught the look and let out a short laugh.
“Oh, no,” she said, lifting one hand. “You better stop looking at me like I’m some Marie Laveau starter kit just because I’m a witch from New Orleans.”
Grace blinked.
Remy leaned back in the chair, one ankle crossing over the other, as regal as any duchess and far less likely to accept nonsense.
“I don’t kill any chickens,” she continued. “There’s no hoo dooly with my magic. I am magic.”
Taras made a sound. It was small. Almost dignified. Nearly hidden behind the adjustment of his cuff. I failed to do better.
The laugh escaped me before I could refine it into something fit for a king.
It was not loud, not careless, but it was real enough that Grace looked at me with a startled expression, as though I had produced a coin from behind her ear.
Taras lowered his eyes to his notes, which fooled no one.
His mouth had gone flat from the effort of not smiling.
Remy pointed at him. “Do not sit there pretending you are above this, silver menace. I have seen you laugh at far worse.”
“I have never laughed,” Taras said. “I have occasionally exhaled with judgment.”
Grace’s mouth trembled. Then she smiled.
The room loosened around that. It should not have mattered.
There were names on the table that would soon belong to dead men.
There were financial records glowing on screens, the smell of old paper and electronic heat, the faint hum of wards in the walls, the darkening Las Vegas skyline beyond the window waiting for night to deepen into its true life.
None of that altered because Grace nearly smiled.
Still, something in me eased.
Millie patted Grace’s arm lightly. “There now. Sensible people, mostly. I will bring coffee. You sit if you wish, dear.”
“If I wish,” Grace repeated softly.
Millie’s eyes warmed. “Yes.”
I gestured toward the chair nearest mine. A small nod. Permission enough. I drew the chair back. She sat carefully, gathering the skirt beneath her with one hand. I took the chair next to her.
Taras remained opposite, notebook aligned with military severity. Remy still occupied the head of the table because Remy had never in her life entered a room without annexing some portion of it.
For several seconds, no one spoke. Grace looked at the image on the monitor.
Lucian Devereux smiled back from the photograph, blond hair tied neatly, cruel mouth rendered charming by lighting and money. I watched Grace’s fingers curl against the arm of her chair. Only once. Then she flattened her hand on her knee.
Control, I thought, and something in me bowed to it. Remy followed Grace’s gaze.
Her humor faded, but not entirely. With Remy, levity did not vanish so much as step aside, leaving the blade visible underneath.
“We were just discussing how much Miss Marlow knows,” Remy said, turning not to Grace, but to me.
“If she had no meaningful exposure to supernatural society before Devereux, we are starting from a deficit. A dangerous one. She will not understand the structure of vampire courts, Elder privilege, donor law, Council politics, warded property—”
Grace went still beside me. I felt the error before Remy finished making it.
“—and if Lucian deliberately selected a human prosecutor, then he likely relied on her ignorance of our world as both shield and weapon,” Remy continued. “We will need to educate her quickly without overwhelming her. She cannot be dropped into crown business with no—”
“Excuse me.”
Grace’s voice did not rise. It did not need to. The room obeyed. Remy stopped. Grace placed both hands flat on the table. Not clenched. Flat. The gesture made me think of a lawyer rising for an objection, except she remained seated and looked directly at the witch at the head of the table.
“She is sitting right here,” Grace said.
Taras’s pen froze. I did not move. I wanted to. Every instinct in me rose with teeth bared, though against what, I could not say. Remy had not meant to wound. Intent did not matter much to wounds when they opened.
Grace’s mouth tightened.
“And I’m sorry if being locked in chains for two years, being a living blood bag for vampire monsters left me a little short on monster education.”
Silence fell so completely that the wards seemed to hush out of respect. The sentence did not echo. It did worse. It remained.
I had heard Grace say blood slave outside Amethyst. I had heard her ask what was happening to her.
I had held her through nightmare and hunger.
I had tasted the shape of her terror in every flinch.
Yet hearing her name it in this room, sitting upright in a sea-foam dress with a red mouth and a lawyer’s eyes, tore through me in a way no battlefield ever had.
My hands rested on the table. I made them stay there.
Taras’s face had lost every trace of dry amusement. He looked carved from winter stone. Remy did not blink. For one breath, perhaps two, the power in her eyes dimmed from amber-gold to something nearly human.
Then her chin dropped slightly. Her shoulders rounded—not in weakness, but in the unmistakable shape of a person accepting a blow they had earned.
She turned fully toward Grace. Not toward me.
Not toward Taras. Not to the crown in the room or the hierarchy that might have made apology complicated for lesser souls. Only Grace.
Remy placed both hands open on the table, palms visible, fingers relaxed.
“You are right,” she said.
Her voice had changed. The performance was gone. No drawl sharpened for effect, no sly warmth, no courtly polish. Only a woman speaking to another woman across the wreckage powerful men had made.
“I apologize, Grace. Sincerely. I spoke around you, and I had no right to do that. Not after what you survived. Not at all.”