13. Chapter 13 #4
The music moved beneath us. The purple light touched the sharp line of her cheekbone, the dark red of her hair, the faint silver marks at her throat no healing had fully erased. I wanted to kill again for those marks. I would. Later.
For now, she needed not rage but choice.
“Okay,” she said.
Only that. It was enough.
A bartender approached from the VIP bar carrying a silver tray.
Kyra moved with quiet competence, short spiky brown hair catching the light, olive skin warm beneath the purple glow. She gave me a slight bow, then Grace, her manner friendly without presuming intimacy.
“Your Grace,” she said. “My lady.”
Grace accepted the title with less visible calculation this time.
Kyra placed two glasses on the table between us. The blood wine was dark garnet, thick enough to hold light.
“For you both,” Kyra said. “A warm O-negative base, fortified with royal reserve from the western collection, blended with a 1923 Rhone infusion and a trace of black cherry tincture. Low iron bite, smooth finish. Good for travel recovery.”
Grace blinked.
I picked up one glass. “Thank you, Kyra.”
Her smile warmed. “Of course, Your Grace.”
Not dismissal. Acknowledgment. She had earned more than politeness from the Kozlov family, though that was not my story to tell Grace unless Kyra chose it. My father had freed her. She served him not as property, but as proof that loyalty could grow where coercion had been cut away.
Grace lifted her glass and inhaled cautiously. Then she took a sip. Her lashes lowered.
The reaction was brief, quickly contained, and nevertheless struck me low in the body. Hunger answered in her with elegance now, not desperation. The blood wine did what Kyra promised. Warmth returned to Grace’s face. Her shoulders eased by a fraction.
“Good?” I asked.
“Annoyingly, yes.”
“Kyra is exceptional.”
Kyra’s smile widened slightly. “High praise from a man who once rejected an entire shipment because the lavender note was presumptuous.”
Grace looked at me.
I kept my expression neutral. “It was.”
Kyra wisely withdrew.
Grace took another sip. “I have questions about your adjectives.”
“You have questions about everything.”
“And yet somehow never enough answers.”
I looked over the rail toward the main floor.
There she was.
Maddie moved between tables with a tray balanced on one hand and laughter already forming before she reached the patrons waiting for her.
Chestnut hair fell in thick waves over her shoulders, catching purple light in warm ribbons.
She wore black and lace and leather in a way that made softness look armed.
Small, curvy, alive with quick energy. A group at one table had clearly said something outrageous; Maddie planted one hand on her hip and answered them with a grin sharp enough to cut fruit.
The table roared with laughter.
She did not merely serve them. She held the space around herself and made strangers feel chosen for the length of a conversation.
“That is Maddie,” I said.
Grace followed my gaze.
I watched confusion gather visibly on her face.
“The Maddie?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Nikolay’s mate.”
“Yes.”
“The woman connected to a Council incident involving a dead Alpha.”
“Yes.”
“And she’s waiting tables.”
“She is working as a server.”
Grace looked at me as if I had begun speaking in one of the ancient languages Devon muttered when annoyed by kitchen appliances.
“She’s... a princess?”
“Not officially.”
“But effectively.”
“In principle.”
“And she’s working a service floor.”
“Yes.”
Grace looked back down.
Maddie leaned toward a seated witch, listening with apparent delight, then threw her head back and laughed.
Whatever she said in reply made the witch clap both hands over her mouth.
Maddie moved on before attention could turn hungry.
Perfect timing. Natural, not trained by the court.
She understood people because she liked them until they gave her reason not to.
“That is who Maddie is,” I said. “She insisted on keeping her job here because she loves it.”
Grace’s brows drew together. “No one stopped her?”
I almost smiled. “Several tried.”
“And?”
“And Maddie remains on the floor.”
Grace watched her for another moment. “Good for her.”
The approval came quietly. Stronger for it.
Then I directed Grace’s attention across the bar.
Nikolay stood near one of the black marble pillars, far enough from Maddie not to interfere, close enough that no man at any table could mistake the invisible line around her.
At six feet five, broad-shouldered and warm-eyed, my brother had always made size look gentle when he wished. Tonight, he did not bother.
His amber gaze tracked Maddie’s every move. Not discreetly. Not even with the dignity of a man pretending to have other concerns.
His expression was open in a way Nikolay usually controlled before strangers.
Hunger, irritation, longing, fear, tenderness, and offended aristocratic confusion all fought for territory across his face.
The scholar, the mediator, the brother who remembered ancient etiquette and diplomatic seating preferences from three centuries of Council gatherings, had been reduced to a behemoth watching a Texas wolf shifter serve drinks as if the fate of empires depended on whether she smiled at table seven.
Grace followed my line of sight.
Then went perfectly still.
“That,” she said, “is Nikolay?”
“Yes.”
“He looks like he’s guarding a nuclear launch code.”
“He believes he is being subtle.”
“He is not.”
“No.”
Maddie turned at that moment and looked directly at him.
Even from the VIP level, I saw her expression change. Sweetness vanished. Challenge sparked. She lifted two fingers to her eyes, then pointed at him in unmistakable accusation: I see you watching me.
Nikolay did not move. Maddie rolled her eyes so dramatically a vampire near the bar laughed into his glass.
“He drives her crazy watching her,” I said.
Grace laughed.
Not a careful sound. Not the dry little exhale she used when the world became too absurd to prosecute. A full laugh. Unguarded, bright, startled from her before pain could place a hand over its mouth.
It struck me harder than it should have. For one suspended beat, the room retreated.
The music, the blood, the purple light, my father’s throne, the politics below, Lucian’s name waiting like rot beneath every future plan—all of it moved to the edges.
Grace laughed beside me, alive in a way death had failed to prevent, and something in my chest answered with such force that I went still.
She looked at me, laughter fading but not gone. “What?”
I had ruled territories, broken rebellions, negotiated with demons, watched witches gamble years of spell work beneath casino lights. I had no prepared defense against the sound of Grace Marlow amused by my brother’s public failure at subtlety.
“Nothing,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “That was a suspicious nothing.”
“It was a private nothing.”
“Those are worse.”
“Usually.”
Before she could interrogate me further, the lights dropped.
All across Obsidian, conversation shifted but did not cease. The music thinned into a low, expectant pulse. Purple twilight deepened until the main floor became shadow and gleam, glass and skin and waiting breath. Servers moved toward the edges with practiced ease. Patrons turned toward the stage.
Grace’s posture changed. Not fear. Alertness.
I leaned slightly toward her. “Remember what I said.”
“If I want to leave, we leave.”
“Yes.”
She did not take her eyes from the stage. “I remember.”
A single spotlight cut through the darkness.
It found Bohdan.
My youngest brother stood at center stage.
Dark suit, subtle pattern visible only when the light caught it, hair styled with effortless calculation that had likely required intolerable attention.
His angular face held that practiced half-smile that made patrons lean closer and enemies underestimate him just long enough to regret it.
The room focused. Bohdan lifted one hand. Grace inhaled beside me. I watched her face, not the stage.
Whatever my brother was about to demonstrate would either send her out of the room or open a door I had been waiting, with more hope than wisdom, to walk through.