Page 95 of Maksym

Devon laughed once, delighted and disbelieving. “Well. That’s new.”

Grace scratched Axiom’s head with solemn attention. “He’s a baby.”

“He is a hellhound,” I said.

“He is a baby hellhound.”

“He is not a baby.”

Axiom leaned harder into her hand, nearly overbalancing her.

Grace made a soft sound and braced her other hand against his massive jaw. “See? Baby.”

My father released my arm. Slowly.

I did not move closer. I did not trust myself not to embarrass every crown in our bloodline by hauling my mate away from a creature currently behaving better than several princes I knew.

Devon crossed to Grace.

Not quickly. Not with the careless cheer she had entered with. Something in her altered as she approached, the air around her faintly shimmering, the gold-and-white leathers suddenly less costume than relic. She crouched beside Grace and touched her shoulder.

Grace did not flinch. That mattered so much the foyer seemed to notice.

Devon’s hand rested lightly there, not gripping, not claiming. Her icy turquoise eyes searched Grace’s face with a depth that made even my father still. When Devon spoke, the lyrical chaos had gone from her voice. What remained was resonance.

Not loud. Unavoidable.

“Gracelyn Marlow,” she said, “you were broken by hands that mistook hunger for power. You were carried through rooms where mercy had been murdered and laughter wore the face of cruelty. Your heart learned the shape of devastation, and still it beat until now it is something new.”

Grace’s hand stilled on Axiom’s head.

Devon continued, each word precise as a bead of light placed on a thread.

“Let the old chains know they failed. Let the blood taken from you be answered by blood freely given. Let the body they used become your own again, not as it was, but as it chooses to be. You are not the wound. You are not the cage. You are the door opened after darkness, the blade lifted after silence, the life that rose where death had already written its claim.”

The foyer held its breath. Even Axiom went still.

Devon’s thumb moved once against Grace’s shoulder.

“May restoration find you without demanding that you forget. May your new birth be fierce. May every step you take from this house teach the world that survival is not permission to be diminished, but a blessing sharpened into justice.”

Grace closed her eyes. One tear slipped from the corner. Only one. She wiped it away with the back of her fingers.

Then she held Devon’s eyes.

“Let it be so.”

I could not speak.

My father could, because he had survived long enough to know when silence required a bridge before it became unbearable.

“Thank you my darling,” Kazimir said, smooth as dark glass, “and since Bohdan, Nikolay, and Maddie are all at Obsidian this evening, perhaps after you have had time to freshen up, we will go there.”

Grace turned. Axiom licked her wrist with a tongue the size of a weapon and left a smear of frosting behind. She looked down at it and up at me.

“I have been blessed by an angel and slimed by a hellhound in the same five minutes,” she said.

Devon smiled brightly. “That is actually a very good introduction to this family.”