Page 219 of Maksym

Me.

The word did not appear on the screen. It appeared in me.

“The attorney,” Lucian said, almost fondly. “Yes, that was unfortunate. But she was becoming inconvenient.”

My fingers remained still at my sides.

I had prepared for this. I had watched enough of the compilation before the hearing to know what Lucia had found, though not every cut, not every angle, not every way the truth would look when thrown large across stone before kings. A prosecutor did not walk into a courtroom and meet her evidence for the first time. That was incompetence dressed up as drama.

Still, preparation and experience were not the same.

I had known he said these things. Hearing him say them before the Supreme Council was another form of violation. Not because he named me, but because his voice made my suffering sound administrative.

On the screen, Alastair leaned forward. “She was a federal prosecutor.”

“She was prey who wandered too near the den.”

“A prosecutor can have files. Backups. Colleagues who notice.”

“And yet none of them found her,” Lucian lifted the glass and drank. “Humans are very good at mourning what they cannot explain. Less good at discovering what does not wish to be discovered.”

The Angel King’s light changed.

I did not look fully toward Archon Seraphael. I only felt the chamber alter around him, as if dawn had withdrawn a fraction from the edges of his golden form. Adramal’s large hands tightened over the arms of his throne. King Bridger Hardin had gone still in the wolf way, soldier-still, where the body seemed to become a weapon waiting for orders.

The recording cut.

A different angle now. Same office. Later date.

Documents spread across Lucian’s desk. Alastair pointed to a set of property schematics while Lucian watched him with bored attention.

“The Phoenix sites are stable,” Alastair said. “But moving product through Nevada is riskier. Kozlov’s son watches his territory more closely than Otero did.”

My gaze flicked, only once, toward the dais.

Maksym sat upon his throne, but sitting was too small a word for what he did. His face betrayed nothing. But the bond between us had gone cold and bright, not with anger alone, but recognition.

They had discussed his territory. His crown. His blind spots.

My near-dead body outside Amethyst had not been an isolated act of carelessness. It had been the visible edge of a system crossing his borders.

Lucian on the screen waved one hand. “Maksym has been king for months. He has inherited a throne and believes order is the same thing as omniscience.”

Something in the chamber chilled.

Not from Maksym. From the vampires who understood the insult within the assessment. A new king was not weak merely because he was new. Lucian’s arrogance had made that mistake in private. Lucia had made sure he made it again in public.

Alastair said, “His wards around Amethyst are not casual.”

“No ward is perfect when profit motivates the patient.” Lucian’s mouth curved. “Besides, this is not about marching a caravan through his front door. This is about discreet entertainment for friends who remember what vampire society was before Kazimir became sentimental.”

Kazimir did not move.

I had learned that the most dangerous thing in the world was not always rage. Sometimes it was a father, a king, a creature nearly a thousand years old, deciding not to interrupt the evidence that would later justify whatever he intended to do.

The recording cut again.

Holding room. My stomach forgot it was no longer human.