Page 196 of Maksym

The Magistrate looked to the prosecution.

“Cross-examination?”

The counsel stood.

Then stopped.

His eyes went to Sloan, who sat gripping the witness stand with tears still falling down her face. He looked toward the Ironwood gallery, where rage and grief warred with visible fear. He looked toward the Council, where no face offered him rescue. He looked, finally, toward Grace, who had stepped back from the lectern and waited with the patience of a woman willing to let him put his hand into a fire if he insisted.

He lowered his papers.

“No questions.”

A faint sound moved through the chamber, cut short by the Magistrate’s stare.

“Witness may step down.”

Sloan rose unsteadily.

One guard approached, but she descended the steps without taking his offered arm. Pride again, or penance. Perhaps both.

Then the guard directed her toward the side exit.

She went.

The doors closed behind her.

Chapter 23

Grace

The Magistrate’s gaze settled on me from the head of the chamber. His throne rose behind him in severe lines, less ornamented than the Council seats and somehow more final. The staff rested upright in his hand, its dark metal tip touching stone.

“Defense may call its next witness,” he said.

“The defense calls Madelyn Baucaum.”

Maddie rose.

Nikolay’s hand held hers until it could no longer. His jaw set hard, his hands returning flat to the table before him, fingers spread, knuckles pale against the polished wood.

Maddie stepped away from the defense table with her chin lifted.

She had dressed for war in the language she knew best: leather and lace, black fitted close to those beautiful curves she had refused to make smaller for any room, a flash of whiskey eyes beneath thick chestnut waves arranged with deliberate care. Her spiked-heel boots struck the stone in clean, bright clicks. Not hurried. Not hesitant. Each step landed as if the floor had made the mistake of assuming it could intimidate a Texas wolf in tall boots.

The chamber watched her cross.

Ironwood watched with a wounded entitlement that made my molars ache. Iron Valor, gathered in the gallery under Bronc Baucaum’s immense, silent command, watched with the kind of stillness that had violence sleeping beneath it. Bronc himself stood rather than sat, shoulders broad, face hard with a brother’s restraint. Beside him, Juliet Baucaum had one hand pressed against her middle, her expression held together by training and terror and love.

Maddie did not look at either of them.

She climbed the shallow steps to the witness stand and turned toward the Magistrate. The oath was administered in the same old form. She answered clearly. The truth spell settled over her.

It did not make her flinch.

I approached the lectern with my legal pad in one hand. I did not need it, but ritual mattered. In a human courtroom, a prosecutor’s pen could become a metronome. Here, it was something to hold instead of rage.

“Please state your full name for the record,” I said.