16. Chapter 16
Nikolay
By the time the house surrendered to that thin, miserable hour before dawn, I had stopped pretending I would sleep.
The estate lay in a hush too elegant to be called silence, all old stone and dark wood holding its breath around me, while inside my chest the bond to Madelyn throbbed with a wrongness so profound it made every other sensation feel ornamental.
I was still dressed from the night before.
Same trousers. Same shirt, now creased and half untucked from having paced my rooms like an idiot since I got home from the club.
My eyes burned. My jaw ached from how long I had held it clenched.
Several times I had taken out my phone, stared at her last message, and told myself not to become melodramatic.
She was at Ironwood. She was among wolves.
She had said she wanted to talk to me when she returned.
She had said she might stay a couple of days.
Promising, I had called it.
I had actually stood in my room like a besotted schoolboy and called it promising.
Then I had tried to ring her an hour ago, and the call had gone directly to voicemail.
Madelyn never turned her phone off. Not for sleep. Not for work. Certainly not while away from Texas, where her brother might need her. She was pack to the bone in that regard. Reachable. Accounted for. Alert to anyone who might call her home.
I took the corridor to my father’s study with a speed I did not bother disguising.
The servants had not yet begun to stir. Dawn had only just started to leach the night of its authority, turning the tall windows into pale mirrors.
I caught a glimpse of myself in one as I passed and nearly laughed at the sight.
Amber eyes bloodshot. Beard shadowed darker than usual.
When I reached the study doors, they were already open.
Of course, they were.
My father sat behind the desk as though he had expected me, which perhaps he had.
Devon perched on the carved arm of his chair in one of her mismatched layers, pale hair an unruly cloud over one shoulder, turquoise eyes fixed on my face before I crossed the threshold.
There were times she looked heartbreakingly young.
There were other times she looked ancient in a way that had nothing to do with years. This was one of the latter.
“Nikolay,” she said softly.
That was all. My name and nothing more, yet it nearly undid me.
I did not sit. I could not have if commanded. I crossed to the desk and planted one hand flat against the polished wood to keep from putting it through the wall instead.
Father’s gaze moved over me once, cool and complete. “Report.”
I almost smiled at that. Not because anything in me was amused, but because I adored him enough to take comfort even now in his refusal to drape panic in softer language.
“I cannot reach Maddie,” I said. My voice sounded rougher than I liked. “And something is wrong with the bond.”
Devon straightened where she sat. Father’s expression did not change, though I saw the faint shift in his eyes that meant I had his full attention.
“It does not feel severed,” I went on. “If it were severed, I think I would know. This is...” I searched for something precise enough and found nothing that did not disgust me. “Bent. Strained. Like a limb pulled from its proper shape, but not yet torn free.”
The image made Devon wince. Father only steepled his fingers.
“For the past week,” I said, “it had been... quiet. Not weak. Merely unsealed. A low warmth. Constant. Sheer contentment at times. Irritation at others, naturally, because she is herself.” My mouth nearly betrayed me with the memory.
“Even when we were apart, I could feel her there. Not thoughts, exactly. More like weather. A warm current beneath everything else. I had grown accustomed to it.”
Accustomed. Christ.
Dependent was the truer word, and I was ashamed that I had only recognized the extent of it now that the sensation had turned inside out.
For days that bond had sat under my skin like a hearth banked low against winter.
I had gone about my duties at Obsidian, sat in meetings, endured Bohdan’s sarcasm, even spoken with clients while some hidden part of me listened for that gentle pulse of her existence.
She had been there in every hour, reminding me that for all my pride and stupidity and long-held prejudices, fate had chosen not to ask my opinion.
Now that same current scraped at me. Wrong. Distorted. Like her soul and mine had been put under tension by hands neither of us had invited.
“I have been calling since an hour before dawn,” I said. “Straight to voicemail every time.”
Father let the silence stretch. He had perfected that over centuries, using it not as absence but as pressure. Beside him, Devon did not look away from me once. Her hand settled on my father’s shoulder briefly, perhaps for him, perhaps for herself.
“What happened this week?” she asked.
The question should not have been painful. It was. I lowered my eyes to the desk because it was easier than saying these things while watched.
“I stopped fighting it,” I said.
Father made a low sound that might have been derision, if derision could ever sound paternal.
I ignored him because he had earned the right.
“I did not tell her plainly,” I said. “I should have. Instead, I behaved like an adolescent nobleman in a provincial romance and attempted to court her through gestures.”
Devon’s mouth twitched. My father looked as though he regretted having ears.
“The morning after...” I exhaled slowly. “I made her French toast.”
Devon smiled then, sudden and bright. “That’s so romantic.”
“It was French toast, Devon, not a sonnet.”
“It can be both.”
Despite myself, my mouth almost softened. Then the bond pulled again—hard, sick, wrong—and whatever warmth had threatened to appear died instantly.
“I brought her lemon pastries from Aspen’s bakery,” I said.
“The little iced ones she likes. She had once mentioned them in passing, and I remembered. I left a first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird on her desk because her own copy was dog-eared nearly to death and she spoke of that book as if it were kin. I...” I scrubbed a hand over my mouth.
“In the foyer last night I brushed icing from the corner of her mouth and tapped her nose like a fool.”
Devon made a soft sound of approval that, under any other circumstances, would have mortified me.
Father did not bother to hide his disgust. “My most intelligent son is also, it seems, the stupidest.”
I looked at him levelly. “I am aware.”
“She was in your house. Interested. Waiting. You chose pastries.”
“Father—”
“A nose tap,” he added, as though the charge required further support. “Goddess.”
Devon laughed under her breath, then immediately sobered when the bond gave another wrench through my chest sharp enough that I had to lock my knees against it.
Her expression changed first. “Nikolay.”
I swallowed. “Her last message said she wanted to talk to me about something important when she returned. She said she might stay at Ironwood for a couple of days.” I stared at the phone still in my hand as if I could compel a different outcome by force of will alone.
“I thought it meant she meant to meet me halfway. I thought...”
That I had not ruined this beyond repair.
That the softness in her around me had not been wishful fantasy on my part.
That perhaps she had felt the same absurd, trembling hope that had made me leave books and pastries rather than simply drag her into my arms and beg her pardon for all the ways I had failed her.
Father leaned back in his chair with that controlled stillness which, in any other man, might have looked calm. In him, it was a form of violence delayed.
“Have you tried Ironwood’s territory contacts?”
“Yes.”
“Directly?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Nothing.” My voice flattened. “No answer from anyone I should have been able to reach. No returned calls. No message. No assurance that she is merely asleep, drunk, or indisposed.”
Devon slid from the arm of Father’s chair then, graceful in that unconscious way of hers, and came around the desk. She laid her hand lightly on my forearm. Such a small touch, yet there was a strange steadiness in it, like cool water offered to a fever.
“Tell us what Amelia reported,” she said.
I turned my hand beneath hers and gripped the edge of the desk instead, because if I took comfort right then I might become unfit for civilized company.
“She told Bohdan and me yesterday that Ironwood had been making inquiries to the oldest covens in the country.” I forced myself to be exact.
“Verdant Hollow. Astral Spire. A few others she could not fully confirm because those circles closed ranks the moment they sensed her interest. None of them were speaking plainly. Which was bad enough by itself. Amelia said their silence felt intentional rather than merely protective.”
Father’s pale eyes sharpened by degrees. “And you did not wake me immediately because?”
“Because we did not know what the inquiries concerned,” I said. “And because at the time I was still trying to convince myself my distress over Maddie’s silence was irrational.”
There. Let him judge that.
He did. “I see.”
Devon’s fingers tightened once on my sleeve, not enough to comfort, only enough to remind me she stood there.
“Ironwood is wealthy,” I said. “Politically careful. Sage Lynch does nothing without strategy. If he is asking ancient covens for something obscure, it is not because he wishes to renovate a ballroom or improve his library.”
“That much was evident,” Father murmured.
Then he rose.
There were moments when my father’s age became visible not in weakness but in gravity.
The room itself seemed to alter around him, the old books and carved wood and dim gray light arranging themselves into something sterner.
His eyes darkened from their usual pale blue toward the color of deep winter ice over black water.