4. Chapter 4
Maksym
Irose, and all the old discipline I had forged over four centuries narrowed to a single command: do not go to her.
Grace stood in the doorway beside Millie, wrapped in a robe too large for her diminished frame, her wine-dark hair damp against her shoulders.
Clean. That was the first mercy. Not healed, not completely.
Not yet strong enough to understand what had happened to the composition of her own body. But clean.
My blood had done what vampire blood did when given with enough force and intent.
Color had returned beneath her skin in a fragile wash along her cheekbones.
Her lips no longer carried that gray-blue tint that had been death’s signature when I found her on the sidewalk.
Her navy eyes were brighter now, too bright perhaps, lit by pain and shock and new senses trying to recognize a world that had become cruelly loud.
She looked like a woman dragged from the grave before the grave could close its hand.
She looked like my mate. My body moved toward her.
Not far. One step. Perhaps only half of one. But Millie’s head turned, and the look she gave me had stopped wars in my childhood nursery more effectively than my father’s punishments ever had.
I froze.
Every muscle in me objected. The bond pulled with a violence I had no language for. It wanted proximity. It wanted my hands on her pulse, my body between her and the door, my mouth against the places her captors had marked until no inch of them remained.
My fists clenched at my sides.
Millie saw that, too. Of course she did. She had seen me blood-mad at nineteen, arrogant at one hundred, grieving at two hundred, and every shade of unreasonable since. She did not soften her look. If anything, she sharpened it.
Grace noticed.
I knew she did because her shoulders lifted by the smallest degree, as if she were bracing for the consequence of another person daring to deny me something.
Her gaze moved from Millie to me, quick and wary.
She expected wrath. A reprimand. Some proof that kings did not tolerate being handled by elderly women in dressing robes.
I gave her none.
Instead, I turned my head toward the small round table set against the far wall in the small adjacent room.
“Please,” I said, forcing the word to remain gentle. “Sit.”
The table had been prepared while Millie bathed her.
I had heard every movement from the adjoining room: the soft placement of plates, the muted chime of crystal, the whisper of linen over polished wood.
Two steaks waited beneath the low golden light, seared only at the surface, still rare enough to glisten when the knife touched them.
Beside them stood a crystal decanter of deep red blood wine, its color dark as garnet in shadow.
It was not enough.
Nothing on that table could account for what had been taken from her. Still, the body had its own brutal laws. She needed blood. Meat. Salt. Rest. Instruction. Patience.
And I needed to keep my hands to myself.
Taras stood near the door, posture exact, face unreadable except to me.
To anyone else, he would have looked like a court blade waiting for a command.
To me, he looked furious, which was only a warmer variety of afraid.
His hazel eyes moved over Grace, over Millie, over me.
He assessed risk with the cold devotion that had made him invaluable to me and occasionally unbearable.
He did not want to leave me alone with her.
He did not want to leave her alone with me.
Both were insults. Both were reasonable.
I lifted one hand. No words. Words would have made it an order, and I did not want Grace to hear more orders from me. Not yet.
Taras’s jaw tightened.
For one moment, my twin held his ground.
That, too, was familiar. We had shared a womb, a childhood, a thousand secrets, and enough bloodshed to make obedience between us more complicated than rank.
His eyes flicked to Grace again, and I felt the protest he swallowed.
You are not steady. She is terrified. I should stay.
I did not lower my hand.
He inclined his head at last, not quite a bow. “I will be just outside.”
His voice was smooth, controlled, and carved thin around the edges. Grace’s gaze followed him.
Taras opened the door and stepped through. Before he pulled it shut, he looked at me once more. Then the door clicked shut, leaving his presence on the other side like a blade laid across the threshold.
The corner of my mouth lifted before I could stop it. Not amusement, not exactly. Relief, perhaps, absurd and brief.
Millie made a small sound. I looked at her.
“Come, dear,” she said to Grace, as if neither kings nor twins existed unless useful. “The chair there. Slowly. There is no hurry.”
Grace obeyed her.
I stood where Millie had left me standing and watched the woman who had become the center of my existence within the span of an hour cross my room as if every step required negotiation with memory.
Millie kept one hand at the middle of Grace’s back without pushing. Grace let her. The shame of that settled behind my sternum.
She had known Millie less than two hours and accepted touch from her.
She had known me less than two hours and had every reason to recoil.
It did not matter that I had dragged her back from death.
It did not matter that my blood even now moved through her marrow, sealing wounds, knitting tissue, awakening strength.
The body remembered hands before it understood intention.
Mine had held her down. Mine had forced blood into her. Mine had compelled her to swallow. The truth was not made less true by necessity.
Millie drew out a chair and guided Grace into it. “There. Good. Sit back if you can. Your body is doing quite a bit of work just now.”
Grace’s hands went to the edge of the table. Thin hands. Lawyer’s hands, I thought suddenly. Hands that had held pens, files, arguments. Hands that had once belonged to a woman who expected the world to answer questions in orderly sequence.
Grace looked at the steak, then the decanter. Her throat moved.
Millie followed the direction of her gaze. “You will need fuel. More than you’d expect. The meat is rare for a reason. Your body will prefer it that way for a while.”
Grace’s face tightened.
“It is only food,” Millie said gently. “You do not have to like the reason tonight.”
Grace glanced at her. “And that?”
Her voice was still rough, but cleaner than before. The sound of it moved through me.
Millie looked at the decanter. “Blood wine. Mild. Diluted enough not to overwhelm you, but strong enough to help. You need not drink it all.”
Grace’s fingers curled on the table.
“No one will force you,” Millie added.
The sentence entered the room and found me. I accepted the wound of it. I deserved it.
Grace listened. I watched it happen with a fascination that bordered on envy. Millie’s words did not make Grace calm, but they reached her.
I had commanded kingdoms. I could not make my mate believe a steak was only a steak.
“Majesty.”
Millie’s voice cut through my thoughts. I looked at her. She pointed at the chair opposite Grace. Actually pointed. One finger, direct and unforgiving.
“Sit.”
I sat. Millie seemed satisfied with my obedience, and Grace relaxed a small degree as well.
“You are safe,” she told Grace.
Grace looked up at her. The need in that look nearly drove me from the chair.
Millie touched her shoulder once. Briefly. Carefully. “I will be close.”
Then Millie turned to me. She did not say, behave yourself. She did not need to. The look accomplished more. I inclined my head. It was not obedience to a servant. It was respect to a woman who had earned it in countless ways since my childhood. Grace saw that too.
Millie left us. The door clicked shut, and silence entered behind her and took a seat between us.
I reached for the larger steak. Grace went still.
I slowed my movements until every gesture became visible, deliberate, harmless.
I set the steak on her plate. Took the knife.
Pressed the fork into the meat. Cut it into small, even pieces.
It was ridiculous, perhaps. A king carving dinner for a woman who would rather have fled the room than accept tenderness from him.
But precision had saved me more than once when emotion threatened to make a fool of power.
So I cut. One piece, then another. Bite-sized.
Easy. No expectation that she use the knife herself while her hands still trembled.
The meat opened red beneath the blade. Grace stared at it. Then she stared at me.
“For me?”
The question was so bare that I nearly answered too quickly. Of course, for you, malen’kaya, little one. Everything here is for you.
Instead, I set the knife across the edge of the plate.
“Of course,” I said. “I want to take care of you.”
I knew the words had landed wrong before her expression changed. It was there in the way her chin lifted. Small motion. Immense consequence. Her shoulders drew back, not far enough to suggest strength, but far enough to remember pride.
“Like you took care of me when you turned me into a monster?”
The word monster did not strike where she aimed it. It struck lower.
I kept my hands on my side of the table. “I had no choice. You were dying. I told you I could help you, and you said please.”
Her mouth opened, but nothing came out at first. Her hands pressed flat against the table. The sound of her palms meeting the linen tablecloth was soft, almost nothing. Still, I heard the pressure in it. The tremor.
Her jaw worked once. Twice. When the words came, they did not emerge as a plea. They broke.
“I thought you’d go get a doctor.” Her voice cracked upward, raw and furious. “Not turn me into the same kind of monster who’d been torturing me for years.”
Years. The word carried more blood than the decanter.