Page 128 of Maksym

Doc’s face stayed open, but something shuttered behind his eyes.

“They tortured me,” he said. “Partly for information. Partly because men like that enjoy finding out what new things can survive.”

Lucia went utterly still. Not calm. Still. The difference mattered.

Doc’s fingers closed around hers. “Kazimir, Lucia, and Archon came for me.”

“The Angel King,” I said, because apparently my life now required phrases like that to be clarified aloud.

Doc’s mouth twitched. “That’d be him. Tall. Golden. Makes you feel like you ought to stand up straighter even if you’re strapped to a table.”

A terrible laugh pressed at my throat. Not because it was funny. Because sometimes the mind rejected horror and reached for any available exit.

I did not let the laugh out. Not yet.

My hands had curled into fists on my knees. I looked at them and made myself open my fingers.

Femoral artery. No choice. Waking changed. Council scrutiny. Prejudice. War. Abduction. Torture. Rescue.

Not my story. Too close to mine.

Different cage. Different monsters. Same lesson repeated by the world with poor imagination: power loved to call its appetite law.

“I thought,” I said slowly, “that I was trying to sort creatures into categories.”

All eyes turned toward me. I hated that. I continued anyway.

“Human,” I said. “Vampire. Wolf. Demon. Witch. Angel. Monster. Victim. Perpetrator.” My gaze moved from Lucia to Doc to Maksym. “But that doesn’t work, does it?”

“No,” Lucia said.

I looked at Doc. “You suffered at the hands of supernaturals too.”

“Sure did.”

“And you are supernatural.”

“Unfortunately for everyone who liked me more predictable.”

I looked at Maksym, then back at the table. Blood wine in crystal. Cheese and figs. A room full of lethal beings discussing trauma like it were weather they had all survived from different directions.

“There are many evil players among you,” I said.

“Yes,” Maksym answered.

Honest. Always honest when it hurt most.

“I keep wondering if there are more of them that are bad than good.”

The question entered the room and changed the air.

Not dramatically. No thunder. No candle guttering. But it hung there, heavy as a verdict no one wanted to hear read aloud.

Lucia did not answer immediately. Doc looked down at his joined hands with hers.

Maksym’s silence beside me felt old enough to have buried several empires and still not found a satisfying response.

Were there enough good ones to matter?