Page 14 of Nikolay

My shoulders tightened further, though I made no other sign of the blow landing.

He had not exaggerated. I had built much of my life on that reputation—the patient son, the humane brother, the one who understood that force was most useful when spared. To be reminded of it now, in the ugly glow after I had used my voice as a lash against a woman half my size because she had looked desirable in public, was almost unbearable.

“It will not happen again,” I said.

“Will it not?”

“No.”

Bodhan’s expression did not alter, yet something in it closed another degree. He was weighing my answer and finding it wanting. I could hardly blame him.

I forced more steadiness into my voice. “I lost my temper. Briefly. That is all. I have it under control.”

The phrase sounded brittle even to me.

His eyes flicked once to my hands. I had not realized they were still partially clenched. I made myself open them.

“You have never needed to tell me that before,” he said.

The corridor seemed very still then. Beneath us, two floors down, Obsidian went on breathing its velvet vice into the night. Somewhere far off a door opened and shut. The iron sconces hummed faintly with hidden power. My office door stood at my shoulder, useless as refuge.

“I said,” I replied, each word placed too carefully, “that I have it under control.”

“And I am saying I do not believe you.”

There was no irreverence in him now at all. He might as well have been one of our father’s captains delivering intelligence from hostile ground.

Anger flashed through me then, welcome only because it was simpler than shame. “You are overreaching.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.” I took a step closer, lowering my voice. “Concern yourself with running the club, Bohdan. I do not require supervision.”

He said at last, “Very well.”

The words should have ended it. They did not.

Because he did not move. Because he continued to stand there with that same intolerably level regard, as if he had one more stone in hand and was deciding exactly where to drop it.

Then he said, “Father is asking for you.”

Everything in me went still.

Not visibly, perhaps, not to an untrained eye. I did not flinch. I did not curse. But some small muscle in my jaw locked so tight I felt pain spark up toward my temple, and the stillness that took me was too deliberate to pass for calm.

Bodhan watched that happen and offered no comfort.

“In his office,” he added. “Now.”

Of course now.

There were few phrases in our family more efficient at stripping a man down to the oldest version of himself. Not prince. Not diplomat. Not grown, and blooded, and centuries old. Merely son.

I drew one measured breath, then another. When I trusted my hands, I smoothed the front of my jacket, straightened one lapel, and made certain my expression had returned to something a civilized man might wear while walking toward judgment.

“Thank you,” I said.

Bodhan’s mouth almost moved, not toward a smile but toward something more conflicted. “Nikki.”