Page 57 of Maksym

Silence fell so completely that the wards seemed to hush out of respect. The sentence did not echo. It did worse. It remained.

I had heard Grace say blood slave outside Amethyst. I had heard her ask what was happening to her. I had held her through nightmare and hunger. I had tasted the shape of her terror in every flinch. Yet hearing her name it in this room, sitting upright in a sea-foam dress with a red mouth and a lawyer’s eyes, tore through me in a way no battlefield ever had.

My hands rested on the table. I made them stay there.

Taras’s face had lost every trace of dry amusement. He looked carved from winter stone. Remy did not blink. For one breath, perhaps two, the power in her eyes dimmed from amber-gold to something nearly human.

Then her chin dropped slightly. Her shoulders rounded—not in weakness, but in the unmistakable shape of a person accepting a blow they had earned. She turned fully toward Grace. Not toward me. Not toward Taras. Not to the crown in the room or the hierarchy that might have made apology complicated for lesser souls. Only Grace.

Remy placed both hands open on the table, palms visible, fingers relaxed.

“You are right,” she said.

Her voice had changed. The performance was gone. No drawl sharpened for effect, no sly warmth, no courtly polish. Only a woman speaking to another woman across the wreckage powerful men had made.

“I apologize, Grace. Sincerely. I spoke around you, and I had no right to do that. Not after what you survived. Not at all.”

Grace’s jaw remained tight. She did not look away. Remy held her gaze without demanding forgiveness.

“I have spent too many years in rooms where information moves faster than courtesy,” she said. “That is an explanation, not an excuse. You are not a file. You are not a problem to be managed. You are here, and I should have asked you directly.”

The silence shifted. Not lighter. But less dead. Grace’s fingers flexed once against the polished table. I saw the fine line of strain through her knuckles, the new strength resting beneath skin still remembering chains.

Remy continued, quieter. “Would you be willing to talk about what happened to you?”

Grace’s breathing changed. I turned my head slightly toward her, but did not speak.

Remy’s eyes remained steady. “We are in the earliest stage of taking apart Lucian Devereux and every creature connected to him. Not only punishing him. Dismantling him. His houses, his accounts, his allies, his protections, his influence on the Elder Council, every hidden room and false ledger that allowed him to keep human beings in bondage under a law that should have killed him for even dreaming of it.”

At that, Grace’s gaze flicked to me. Only for a heartbeat. Then back to Remy.

“What you know could be the foundation of everything,” Remy said. “Not because we want to use your pain. Because you saw what none of us saw. Because he trusted your captivity enough to become careless around you. Because men like Lucian always forget that the people they hurt are listening.”

Grace swallowed. I heard it. A small sound. Dry. Painful. Human enough that my hand nearly moved toward the glass of water that was not there.

I said nothing. I had promised silently to learn the difference between care and pressure. The lesson was proving vicious. Grace looked down at the table.

Lucian’s photograph still glowed on the monitor beyond her shoulder. I reached out and turned the screen away, angling his face out of her direct line of sight. She noticed. So did Remy. Grace did not thank me. I did not want her to. Her lashes lowered once, then lifted.

“If I talk,” she said, “I talk like a prosecutor.”

“Good,” Remy answered immediately.

Grace’s mouth pressed thin. “That means I may sound clinical.”

“I understand.”

“No,” Grace said. “You probably don’t. But you may listen.”

Remy inclined her head. “I can do that.”

Grace leaned back a fraction. Not relaxed. Never that. But deciding. Measuring the room. Measuring us.

Her eyes moved to Taras. He sat still, hands folded now over his notebook, every line of him disciplined into silence. Then to me. I met her gaze and let her find what she wished there: fury, grief, guilt, restraint. I had no clean face to offer her.

“I want coffee,” she said at last.

The sentence nearly undid me. Not because it was dramatic. Because it was not. Coffee. A mortal ritual in an immortal office. Cream in a little pitcher. Something warm to hold while making the record of hell.