Page 67 of Kazimir

Ryder exhaled through his nose. “That’s a number I hate.”

Lucia was already pulling her phone from the inner pocket of her jacket. “Doc, get with Amelia when we adjourn. I want medical stores split between floors and hidden redundancies. Nothing all in one place.”

“I said that already,” Ryder told her mildly.

“Yes,” she said, not looking at him. “And I’m repeating it because panic makes fools of listeners.”

A corner of his mouth twitched. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me all week.”

She glanced at him then, kissed him, quick and efficient. “Don’t get soft.”

“Too late.”

For one absurd second, I could have laughed. The room smelled like old paper, expensive wool, ward-smoke, and the iron tang of anger being put to work. I had just told this group of new family and others I’d only known for a few weeks that an archangel had ripped my life apart because I refused to let him touch me. Sariel wanted me erased. A war might break out over my body, my memory, my bond. And still Lucia and her impossible hybrid mate found room to flirt in the middle of tactical preparations.

It steadied me more than any speech could have.

Yuri peeled away from the wall so quietly I almost thought the shadows themselves had decided to go hunting. He bent once toward Kazimir, close enough that I couldn’t hear what he said. Kazimir gave the smallest nod. Yuri was gone before my eyes could follow the path of him to the door.

I watched the absence he left behind and thought, with a strange little bloom of gratitude, Thank God he’s on my side.

Archon placed both hands on the table. He was beautiful in the way storms over the sea were beautiful—too large to argue with, shot through with power that did not care whether you found it lovely. But there was kindness in him too, and it kept him from being unbearable.

“There is one practical matter that cannot wait,” he said.

The room reoriented.

“The bond between you two,” his gaze passed from Kazimir to me and back, “has altered her celestial signature.”

My stomach tightened.

Kazimir’s hand became a firmer weight at my back. “Clarify.”

Archon folded the first scroll, then the second, aligning the edges with a precision that reminded me of a ritual. “Ordinarily, Sariel would have difficulty locating a fallen he cast blindly. He acted without proper record, without mapped descent, without judicial witnessing. He severed her from the Host and expected the earth to bury the evidence for him.”

I thought: that sounded very much like a man counting on shame to do what knives couldn’t.

“But,” Archon continued, “your exchange of blood and completion of a mate bond will have made her… more distinct. Not less hidden. The power between you is unusual. It shines.”

Bohdan’s expression soured in a way that made his handsome face dangerous. “How poetic.”

“Can he track that?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Every face in the room turned toward me. Not hostile. Not impatient. Simply attentive, which felt almost worse because I had to swallow once before my voice settled.

Archon answered me directly. “Not as one follows a scent in a forest. More as one sees a lamp through fog if he is already looking in the correct direction.”

“And are we the correct direction?”

“Yes.”

Honesty had never felt so clean and so annoying.

“All right,” I said, because I was not a vase to be handled around. “Then make me less a lamp.”

Amelia actually smiled at that, quick and feral. “I like her.”

Kazimir’s thumb brushed once, small and deliberate, against the line of my spine. Approval. Reassurance. Maybe both.