Page 84 of Maksym

Lucian made a soft sound of delight. “There is the truth beneath all that education.”

His mouth lowered to my neck. The first touch of his fangs was cold. Then he bit. Pain became total.

There was no body beyond it, no chamber, no law, no language. Only the white-hot tearing of flesh, the brutal pull at the vein, the wet pressure of his mouth feeding where terror lived closest to speech. The scream came out of me raw and high, dragged from some place beneath pride, beneath training, beneath every careful mask I had ever built.

I screamed until the stone cracked. Or the dream did. The chamber shattered.

Amber light broke apart into darkness. Iron vanished from my wrists, but the memory of it stayed like heat after a burn. I came up fighting for air, my throat torn open by a sound that still seemed to be happening.

“Grace.”

Arms held me. Real arms. Not chains.

I thrashed once before my mind could catch up. A large hand moved over my back, slow and firm, not restraining so much as giving my body a boundary it could trust.

“Grace,” Maksym said again.

His voice was low. Even. Close enough that I felt it in his chest before I understood it with my ears.

I was not against stone. I was across his lap.

He sat on the edge of my bed with me cradled against him, one arm beneath my shoulders, the other hand moving up and down my back in steady strokes. The room was dark, but I could see him. Not clearly at first. Tears blurred everything. Fear made the shadows lunge. But his face was there above mine, harsh and pale and controlled with an effort I felt more than saw.

“You are no longer in danger,” he said. “You are in your room. In my palace. With me.”

My hands had fisted in his shirt. I did not remember grabbing him. I did not let go.

The fabric was fine cotton, cool under my fingers, stretched over a chest that did not rise and fall with human need. He breathed anyway. Slow. Deliberate. As if teaching my lungs what rhythm meant.

“I will keep you safe,” he said. “No one touches you here. No one enters without my permission. No one reaches you while I live.”

I turned my face into his chest. I did not decide to. My body did. For once, I let it. The scent of him filled my next breath.

Cedar first. Clean and dark. Then something colder beneath it, like stone after rain. Clean skin. Old power. Blood, but not spilled blood. Not Lucian’s copper rot. Maksym’s scent carried strength without perfume, violence without display, some ancient shadow held under discipline because he chose not to let it loose in my room.

My breathing hitched. His hand continued its path. Shoulder blades to waist. Waist to shoulder blades. Again. Again. Again.

He did not shush me. I appreciated that dimly. Shushing had always seemed designed for the comfort of the listener, not the person breaking.

“You are here,” he said. “You are safe. He is not.”

My mouth opened against his shirt, but no words formed. Safe was too large for me to believe. Here was easier. I was here. Not stone. Not chains. Not amber light. Here.

Maksym’s thumb moved in a slow arc near the base of my spine, careful through the thin cotton of my sleep shirt. Not invasive. Not claiming. Repetitive enough that my nerves began to count it instead of the remembered iron.

My sobs turned into ragged breaths. Ragged breaths into shaking inhales. Shaking inhales into something almost steady.

The darkness in the room remained absolute, but it no longer belonged to Lucian. It belonged to drawn drapes, dying fire, and the vampire king holding me like I was not a burden, not an inconvenience, not evidence of failure. Like I was a person who had been afraid and had the right to be held through it.

I hated that I needed it. I needed it anyway. Maksym’s lips brushed my hair once. So lightly I might have dreamed it.

“Rest,” he murmured. “I have you.”

Those words should have frightened me. Instead, they loosened the last hard knot of terror in my chest.

My hands stayed tangled in his shirt. My cheek stayed against him. His hand kept moving on my back, patient as tidewater. Stroke by stroke, breath by breath, the chamber receded. Lucian’s voice lost its edges. The chains fell silent.

This time, when sleep returned, it brought no dreams with it. Only darkness. Only Maksym. Only the slow, impossible safety of being held.