6. Chapter 6 #3
“You will fail in small ways. Apologize quickly. Learn faster. Do not make your pain larger than hers. Do not mistake the bond for love, but do not dishonor it by treating it as an inconvenience only. It chose both of you. That means both of you must survive what it has interrupted.”
I breathed once. Slowly.
“And Devereux?” I asked.
“Find the body before you cut the throat.”
It was a blessing and a command.
“Yes, Father.”
“But when the time comes, son?”
The old country sharpened the last word.
“Yes?”
“Leave enough of him for me to recognize.”
The line went dead.
Exhaustion pulled me toward my bedchamber. I had given Grace my room and taken the one across the hall. I stopped before I intended to.
At first, I thought I had paused because of the bond.
It pulled at me constantly now, a low ache beneath the breastbone, not pain exactly but wrongness whenever walls stood between us.
I had been prepared to endure that. My father’s voice remained in my memory: It will lie to you in the language of protection.
Then I heard it. A low, broken whimper. Taras rose from his seat outside her door, but I made him stop. Another sound followed: fabric twisting, sheets dragged tight, the scrape of a heel against the mattress.
Then Grace’s voice, small and wrecked.
“Stop.”
The word did not belong to waking. I moved. I opened the door and crossed the room in three strides. The chamber had been dimmed for sleep. The lights were out. Heavy curtains sealed the morning beyond layers of violet and black fabric, allowing only the faintest ash-colored line around the edges.
Grace was tangled in the bedsheets as if they had turned traitor.
The violet silk coverlet had wrapped around one arm.
A sheet had wound tight across her chest and under her other elbow, pinning her in a shape that made panic feed on itself.
One leg was trapped knee to ankle, the fabric twisted hard enough that another violent jerk might have wrenched muscle or bone before her new strength understood its limits.
Her body arched against the restraint. Her face was wet.
“Please stop,” she whispered. “You’re hurting me.”
The room narrowed to that. Not the conspiracy. Not my father. Not the crown. Not the centuries. Only Grace, trapped in silk, begging ghosts to stop touching her. I reached the bed and forced my hands to stay gentle.
“Grace,” I said, low. “It is Maksym. You are safe.”
She jerked harder. The sheet tightened around her arm.
I sat on the edge of the bed and took the fabric, not her wrist. Fabric first. Always fabric.
I unwound the coverlet from her forearm, loosening rather than pulling, creating space before removing pressure.
She thrashed again, and one hand struck my chest with enough force to bruise a human.
The new blood was already making promises her sleeping mind could not understand.
“Good,” I murmured, though my throat felt carved open. “That is good. Fight if you must. But not the sheets, malen’kaya. They are beneath your dignity as opponents.”
The absurdity steadied me. Perhaps it steadied her, too. Or perhaps the nightmare had begun to loosen on its own.
I freed her first arm, then the second. The sheet had twisted under her shoulder.
I lifted her only enough to draw it loose, careful not to cage her body beneath mine, careful not to pin, not to trap, not to repeat even the shape of anything done to her.
Her trapped leg came last. Silk had knotted around her ankle.
I tore it rather than make her endure one more second of restraint.
The sound of fabric ripping cut through the room. Grace gasped. Her eyes did not open.
“No,” she cried, so softly it nearly killed me. “No, please.”
I gathered her up because she would hurt herself if I did not.
The decision cost me. I had told her I would not reach unless she asked. But the nightmare did not ask. Panic did not negotiate. Her body was still fighting restraints that were no longer there, and the bed had become a battlefield she could not see.
So I took the sin and made it as gentle as I could.
I drew her against my chest, turning her so her arms were free between us, not pinned at her sides.
One hand settled high on her back, moving in slow strokes down her spine and up again, broad enough to anchor, light enough to withdraw if she woke swinging.
My other arm curved around her shoulders without locking.
“Grace,” I said in her ear. “Listen to my voice. You are here. You are in the palace. No one is touching you but me, and I will let go the moment you tell me. You are safe. Devereux is not here. No one will hurt you.”
Her breathing came in broken gasps.
“Stop,” she whispered again, but there was confusion in it now. Less command to the dream. More remnant.
“I know,” I said. “It stopped. It is over. You are here with me.”
She shuddered so hard that her teeth clicked. I kept my hand moving. Up her spine. Down again. Slow enough for a frightened animal. Slow enough for a soul returned from hell without a map.
Grace’s fingers caught in my shirt. Not deliberately at first. They scraped at the fabric, then clutched. Her face pressed against my chest just below my collarbone. Tears soaked through linen to skin.
Her breathing stuttered. Then slowed. Then broke again when she began to wake.
It happened in increments. Her body softened first, not fully, but enough that the fight went out of her limbs. Her head shifted. Her fingers tightened once, then loosened, then tightened again with more awareness. Her breath caught on a small, humiliating sob she tried to swallow.
I did not speak. She needed the world to return on its own terms. At last, she went utterly still. I felt the moment she understood where she was. Curled against me. Held. Alive. Her shame arrived before her voice.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
The words were muffled by my shirt. I closed my eyes.
“No.”
“I woke you.”
“I was not asleep.”
Her shoulders trembled. I moved my hand once more down her spine, then stopped as the truth of what I had done reached the waking room.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I touched you without permission.”
She shook her head against my chest. The motion was small, exhausted, and devastating.
“You were tangled,” I continued, because confession required facts. “You were going to hurt yourself. I should have called Millie, but I heard you and came in.”
Her fingers gathered more of my shirt.
“I’m glad you did.”
The words were barely audible. For a moment, I could not answer. There were victories too fragile to celebrate. This was one. Not trust, not forgiveness, not acceptance of the bond. Only a frightened woman relieved that one specific touch had not become harm.
It was enough to make my entire body ache.
I began to ease back. “I will get Millie.”
Her hand closed around my forearm. The strength of her grip stopped me.
Yesterday, if time still had any meaning, she had been skin and bone and failing heartbeats.
Now her fingers pressed into muscle with enough force to remind me what royal blood had made of her.
She noticed too. Her eyes, still wet and shadowed, flicked to her own hand as if it belonged to someone else.
But she did not let go.
“Please,” she said.
I went still. Her face remained turned partly away, hair loose across one cheek, lashes clumped with tears. In the dim room, her navy eyes looked almost black.
“Stay,” she whispered. “Until I fall asleep again.”
Every instinct in me answered with such force that I had to hold the response behind my teeth until it was fit to give her.
Then I said, “Of course I’ll stay. I’ll do anything you ask of me.”
Something moved across her face at that. Pain, perhaps. Disbelief. Or only exhaustion too deep to interpret. She released my forearm, but only to curl her hand against my chest again.
I shifted slowly, giving her time to object, and settled back against the pillows with her held beside me rather than beneath me.
She chose the final distance herself, inch by inch, until her face rested against my ribs and one arm lay across my abdomen.
Her body remained tense for several breaths.
Then the tension began to drain, not all at once, but in small, reluctant surrenders.
I kept one arm around her shoulders. No more than she had asked.
No less than she needed. The room went fully quiet.
Outside the curtains, morning strengthened.
I could see it only in the faint whitening at the edges, thin lines of day trying and failing to enter.
The wards held. Her breath brushed my shirt. Uneven at first. Then slower.
I counted the changes. Inhale. Pause. Exhale. A tremor. Another breath. Less tremor. Her fingers loosened where they held the linen. Her cheek grew heavier against me. Sleep returned carefully.
I meant to remain awake. That had been my intention.
I would sit with her until she slept, then call Millie, then leave before Grace woke and regretted having asked.
I would do the disciplined thing. The honorable thing.
I would prove, quietly, that comfort did not have to become a claim.
Instead, the night took its due. I closed my eyes.
Sleep came without ceremony. Not the guarded rest I had practiced for centuries, one ear tuned to threat, one hand never far from a weapon. This was deeper. Rarer. A fall rather than a choice. I slept with my arm around my mate and no crown between my body and the bed.
When I surfaced, the room had changed. Not much.
The curtains still held the sun at bay, but light had gathered more insistently at the edges, silver-white instead of gray. The air had cooled further, or perhaps sleep had made my skin more aware of the absence of fire. Somewhere beyond the door, the palace remained in its daytime hush.
Grace was no longer against my chest. I sensed her breathing change, and that woke me fully.