Page 12 of Maksym

Not cautiously, exactly. Not as if she feared me. Not as if she feared the men, either. She entered like the room belonged to her because someone in it needed care, and care was its own jurisdiction. Her eyes moved once over Maksym and Taras. I saw an entire scolding pass through that glance without a word. Then she looked at me.

Only me. That nearly undid me.

For two years, being looked at had meant assessment. How much blood could be taken? How quickly bruises were healing. Whether I had become too thin to be pretty or just thin enough to remind Lucian of his control. Even before that, in courtrooms and offices, men had looked at me and made decisions based on my accent, my suits bought on sale, the Appalachian poverty they thought they could smell under my Vanderbilt polish.

This woman looked at me as if I were not evidence, not property, not a mistake. A person.

“Hello, dear,” she said.

Dear.

My throat tightened around nothing.

“I imagine everything feels very frightening right now,” she continued. “I will not insult you by pretending otherwise.”

My fingers had been locked around the carved edge of the cracked headboard. I had not realized how hard until one nail bent backward and pain flashed clean through the fog. Her words did not make me safe. Words could not. But they did not demand that I perform belief for her, and something in my grip loosened by the smallest measure.

Maksym remained between me and Taras. The woman ignored him. That was the second impossible thing.

She crossed the room at a steady pace, not looking to him for permission, not pausing when his shoulders tightened. I watched him from the corner of my eye, expecting command, correction, some display of rank. He gave none. His jaw worked once. That was all.

The woman came to the side of the bed. I flinched before she touched me. She stopped.

The pause was so complete that it stole my breath. She did not sigh. Did not tell me not to be afraid. Did not reach anyway because she knew better than I did what was good for me. She simply waited with her hands visible, palms open and empty.

“I am Millicent,” she said. “Most call me Millie. I am going to sit, if that is all right.”

No one had asked me before sitting near me in two years. I did not answer.

She seemed to accept silence as an answer. She sat on the edge of the mattress, far enough that the dip in the bed did not pull me toward her. She smelled faintly of lavender soap, linen, and something warm underneath that my new senses recognized as blood, but my exhausted mind refused to examine.

“May I take your hand?” she asked.

I stared at her.

My hands were disgusting. Blood under the nails. Skin split at the knuckles. Wrists circled with bites in every stage of healing and not healing. I wanted to hide them, but there was no hiding anything in that awful, bright room.

She waited.

I did not give permission so much as fail to refuse.

Millie reached for me slowly and took my left hand in both of hers. Her palms were warm and dry.

That detail lodged in me with ridiculous force. Warm. Dry. No slick hunger. No bruising grip. No thumb pressing into the pulse point to feel what could be stolen. She held my hand the way my grandmother had held it when fever made me little again, as if the hand itself was not the point. As if she meant to hold me steady through it.

“There now,” she murmured. “Only that. Nothing more.”

My eyes stung.

The men had gone quiet enough to become furniture, though I felt Maksym’s attention like the heat of a flame. He was not looking away. I knew it without checking. It made the back of my neck prickle.

“What may I call you?” Millie asked.

My mouth was dry, though I did not think dryness meant the same thing anymore.

Withholding my name made no difference at this point. “Grace,” I whispered.

Millie’s fingers squeezed once. The squeeze was not demand. It was invitation.