Page 62 of Kazimir

I took the cup in both hands. The steam kissed my face and smelled faintly of mint and something floral. “If this is spoiling, I accept my fate. Also, if you're going to be impossible, please schedule it so I can watch. I love a good performance.”

Her mouth did that thing where it looked like she was about to smile and then chose a sharper expression instead. “You’ll have front-row. How are you? How is your… everything?” Her eyes flicked, a beat too long, to my back. There was no pity there. There was curiosity wrapped in respect.

“They’re beautiful and strong,” I said honestly, leaning a shoulder against the wall so I wouldn’t have to pretend I was less tired than I was. “They come when I ask and go when I ask now. I’m flying faster each day.” I let the memory flicker across my jaw and vanish. “Kazimir seems partial to them.”

“I would expect nothing less,” she said, dry as good gin. Then, more softly, “You should know you made the second-floor ward wake up when you unfurled. It liked you. Amelia came down off the bar with a look on her face like she had just solved a riddle and then refused to tell anyone the answer.”

I laughed into my tea. “That tracks.” I swallowed a mouthful that warmed me all the way to my fingers. “They are…not just for pretty. The base is very sensitive. If a hand knows where to touch, it is like a switch. Kazimir learned that very quickly.”

She arched an eyebrow in an amused motion. “I’m going to file that away into things I could do without knowing.”

I laughed. “Yes, well. I have so few women to talk to. Sorry if I over shared,” I said, cheerful in the face of my own blush.

She sipped her tea, went pensive. “You’ll make the rest of us look terribly dull if you start glowing every time you come,” she said conversationally, as if discussing the weather.

I choked on nothing and then laughed until one of the guards down the hall cut his eyes away to avoid smiling on duty. “I make no promises,” I managed when air returned.

“Good,” she said. The word was a blessing. “Promise me less and deliver more. The world expects the opposite.” She reached and adjusted a stray lock of hair behind my ear with the kind of care that made my stomach pinch with the ache of receiving something I hadn’t had since I woke up on a park bench. “Also, your notes on the patrols—Bohdan is already growling. That means he’s pleased. He only purrs when he’s furious.”

I made a face. “Then I’ll try for a growl score of eight out of ten. I don’t want to give him a complex.”

“You’ll know you have when he brings you a pastry and calls it fuel,” she said, amused. “Be warned.”

We fell quiet for a breath, sharing the kind of silence that meant nothing vital was at risk. Then she said, softer yet, “Thank you for letting him be happy.” She didn’t say my father. She didn’t have to.

“He did the work himself,” I said, honest to the bone. “I only…was.”

“Being is harder than bleeding out, some days,” she replied. The faintest line pulled between her brows the way it did when she thought of her own tightrope between here and Iron Valor. “Anyway—if you need anything—Doc would be insufferable if I didn’t say it. He’s very fond of damsels who are actually swords.”

“I’ll try to deserve his faith,” I told her honestly not wanting to disappoint her kind, yet scary mate.

She glanced down the hall, mind already running two floors and three hours ahead. “I have to brief a witch who uses adjectives I don’t trust. Are you coming down for a while or hiding up here with the old ghosts?”

“Both,” I said. “I’m developing a taste for multitasking.”

She grinned outright then—the kind that showed teeth and no apology—and flicked my braid with two fingers. “Dangerous woman.” She took the tray and lifted it one-handed again. “Try not to set anything on fire without me.”

“No promises,” I called after her, and earned a backward wave before she rounded the corner and disappeared into the machinery of the house.

I finished the tea and set the cup on the console, smoothing the little ring of moisture my cup had left with my thumb as if manners mattered to tables. The hall breathed around me. The wards had a taste—citrus-pith and ozone—Amelia’s signature, and they stroked the back of my hand as I passed under one as if they liked the flavor of my skin.

I rounded the corner toward Nikolay’s office. Maksym arrived like the weather. You felt him before you saw him—a pressure drop, air sharpening, the tingle that told your hair it might want to stand on end. He moved with that lethal economy some men learned when they had spent centuries having to justify every inch they occupied. His suit did what it was told. The scar on his jaw cut through his king-quiet like a line on a map, reminding everyone that sovereignty had a cost.

He didn’t slow when he saw me. He adjusted his trajectory half a step so I wouldn’t have to flatten against the wall to give him room. It counted as tenderness in a man like that.

“Devon,” he said, respect and honor were in the nod of his head. His eyes did a quick inventory of my face, my hands, the way I stood. “Your adjustments to the perimeter are being implemented now.”

“Good,” I said. “I like making bad guys’ nights difficult.”

One corner of his mouth moved in an illusive smile. He had a phone in his hand that kept vibrating. He didn’t look at it. “If Sariel comes here,” he said, the words precise and quiet and designed to carry only as far as he allowed, “he will regret it.”

It wasn’t theater. It was a vow shaped like a sentence. The part of me that had woken up under a sky that didn’t want me blinked hard behind my eyes. My tongue did the smart thing and didn’t make a speech.

“Thank you,” I said instead. I held his gaze so he would know I understood what he had just done: taken my threat and made it his. “I won’t make your job harder by doing anything stupid.”

“Good,” he inclined his head the exact amount a man allowed when he had already given you more than most men would in a lifetime. “My father sleeps lighter when you keep your promises.” The faintest reference to Kazimir’s rest life ticked something like humor behind his eyes. “Welcome to the House.” He was already moving again when he said it—as if saying it and doing the next ruthless, necessary thing belonged in the same breath.

“Thank you,” I said to the empty air he left behind and meant it to the soles of my feet.