Page 65 of Maksym

I stared at the fire for a moment. Then I began.

“When Lucian brought me to Las Vegas, he put me in a rental house.”

Maksym’s gaze snapped toward me.

“Not far from Amethyst,” I added. “I don’t know the exact address. I was not exactly invited to review the lease terms.”

Remy’s mouth flattened, but she said nothing.

“It was expensive in the way temporary luxury is expensive,” I continued. “Too clean. Too hard. Travertine tile floors, white walls, rented furniture that had never belonged to anyone long enough to collect a memory. There were thick curtains over every window. Wards, I assume, though at the time I just thought the house felt wrong.”

“Sound-deadening,” Remy said softly. “Spatial fold, perhaps. Privacy work.”

“I suppose, since I honestly have no idea what any of that is,” I said, because honestly the magical terminology was Greek at this point. “I was kept in a bedroom at the back of the house. The bed frame was wood. Heavy. Decorative. The kind of thing chosen by someone who liked the appearance of warmth better than warmth itself.”

Maksym’s hands were flat on the table again. The wood did not groan this time. Barely.

“Lucian was in a mood,” I said. “That’s the best way to describe it. Excited, maybe. He liked Vegas. Or he liked being near danger in Vegas. He spoke about Amethyst several times.”

The name settled over the room differently when I said it.

“He hated it,” I continued. “Not in a careless way. Personally. He called it a perfumed little throne room for a lesser son playing king.”

Taras went very still. Maksym’s face did not move.

I looked at him anyway. “His words, not mine.”

“I know,” Maksym said.

The softness of his voice frightened me more than rage would have.

“He said your club was arrogance dressed as legitimacy,” I said. “He said your father had made the world weak by outlawing old customs, and that you were worse because you believed discipline made you noble. He said one day you would learn that all order rots from beneath if enough hungry men are patient.”

Remy’s eyes had gone amber-gold again. I did not look at her too long. There was something intimate about witnessing a person’s magic stir because of your testimony. I had already been witnessed enough for one life.

“Lucian had business that night,” I said. “Or pleasure. I didn’t always know the difference with him. He had brought me because he wanted to feed from me while he was here. He liked symbolic things. He liked thinking himself poetic. He told me I was proof that your laws had failed right under your nose.”

The room grew colder.

“I had been weaker than usual for several days,” I said. “That may have been deliberate. He liked making me travel badly. He liked the contrast between expensive rooms and what I looked like inside them.”

I paused there. The words sat beneath my skin with all the good judgment of a wildfire.

“Two years is a long time to learn routines,” I continued. “People underestimate the usefulness of being underestimated. That may be the only consistent advantage I had.”

Taras’s pen moved again.

“Lucian thought captivity made me stupid. Or obedient. Or too tired to be dangerous. Sometimes I was too tired to lift my head. Sometimes I was stupid with hunger. Sometimes obedience was the only way not to make the next hour worse.” I looked down at my hands. “But I listened. I counted. I memorized footsteps. Door sounds. The timing of meals. Which guards took instructions literally, and which ones liked improvising cruelty into their day.”

“The one in Las Vegas?” Remy asked.

“One guard,” I said. “Lucian left one guard.”

Maksym’s eyes sharpened.

“He believed that was sufficient?” Taras asked, quiet and deadly.

“He believed I was half-dead,” I said. “He was not wrong. That was his mistake.”