12. Chapter 12 #4
Instinct moved before thought. I bent again and licked the punctures. Once. Twice. The wounds closed beneath my tongue, sealing as if my body had known this mercy before my mind did.
Then I collapsed against his chest. There seemed to be no bones left in me. Only warmth, blood, embarrassment, and a strange shimmering quiet where terror had been. Maksym’s arms closed around me loosely again. I breathed against him.
After a long moment, I said, “That doesn’t seem quite fair.”
His chest moved beneath my cheek.
“It is perfectly fair, my love.”
My eyes closed at the endearment. I was too tired, too full, too wrung out to object properly. I filed that failure for later. His lips brushed my hair.
“You will be strong when you meet my family,” he said. “Just as you should be.”
Several hours later, I stood in a private terminal wearing navy wool, knee-high boots, and the expression of a woman trying very hard not to ask whether vampires had opinions about TSA.
The travel dress Millie had chosen fit as if she had threatened the fabric into obedience. It was deep navy, fitted through the waist without making me feel trapped, the skirt falling with enough weight to move properly when I walked.
Maksym stood a few feet away, speaking quietly with Taras.
He wore a tailored three-piece suit in charcoal, the vest cut close, the coat hanging from his shoulders with the sort of precision that made tailoring look less like clothing and more like architecture.
His dark hair was controlled. His face was unreadable.
If one had not seen him holding a woman through a nightmare or offering his wrist in a dark room, one might have mistaken him for nothing but crown and command.
I had seen too much for that now.
Taras wore a nearly identical cut in near-black, which should have made them look matched.
It did not. Maksym carried authority like weather.
Taras carried it like a blade concealed beneath a sleeve.
His silver hair fell neatly away from his face, and his eyes scanned the terminal with such calm thoroughness that I pitied any threat made against us.
Neither of them moved like men accustomed to waiting in line.
The private terminal was all glass, pale stone, and quiet staff. Beyond the windows, the runway stretched silver-gray under a sky not yet fully committed to dusk. The air smelled of coffee, jet fuel, and expensive neutrality.
Remy boarded last because, I suspected, Remy understood the value of an entrance.
She arrived in winter-white wide-leg trousers, a rust-colored silk blouse, and a smart scarf draped over one shoulder. Her black curls were piled high, her heels were tall enough to qualify as structural defiance, and her eyes swept over me with warm approval.
“Look at you,” she said. “Navy suits you, cher.”
“Millie has exquisite taste.”
“Of that, there is no question.”
Taras took my rolling suitcase before I could reach for it.
“I can carry that,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, already turning toward the plane.
“That was not agreement.”
“No.”
Remy leaned closer. “You will learn, baby. Fighting Taras over luggage is how people lose years of their lives.”
We crossed the tarmac with Maksym at my side, not touching, but close enough that the bond hummed like a wire beneath my skin. The jet waited under the falling dusk, sleek and white and much larger than I expected, with stairs lowered and a discreet crest near the door.
Of course, there was a crest.
I climbed the stairs and stepped inside. Then stopped.
The cabin did not look like an airplane so much as a very wealthy room that had agreed, under protest, to fly.
Cream leather seats faced one another in pairs, each wide enough that a normal person could sleep in them.
A polished walnut console ran the length of one wall, its surface gleaming beneath soft recessed lights.
A bar cart had been secured near the back, stocked with crystal decanters that caught the light in amber, garnet, and clear fire.
A low table held fresh flowers in a shallow vase bolted discreetly to the surface, because apparently even floral arrangements required aviation compliance.
There were no cramped aisles. No overhead bins waiting to assault the unwary. No smell of stale pretzels and collective despair.
I turned a slow circle. Maksym watched me from just inside the doorway.
Taras passed us without comment, stowing my case somewhere invisible with the solemn efficiency of a man burying evidence. Remy swept toward one of the seats and claimed it immediately, arranging her scarf before accepting a glass of something from no one I saw.
I looked back at Maksym.
“I guess when you’re a king, you travel like royalty.”
He guided me toward a pair of cream leather seats near the center of the cabin. I sat by the window because if I was going to have an existential crisis at altitude; I preferred visuals.
Maksym settled beside me, his arm resting along the back of my seat, not touching my shoulders but close enough that the offer was there.
He answered without a flicker of irony.
“You’ll need to get used to it, my dear. You are, after all, my queen.”