Page 96 of Maksym

My father’s mouth moved with restrained amusement.

“A light meal has been taken to your wing of the estate,” he continued, as if the household had not just rearranged itself around prophecy and pastry. “You should eat before Obsidian.”

Grace moved slowly. Axiom made a dissatisfied sound low in his chest. She patted him once more on the head.

“I’ll see you later, murder baby.”

Axiom’s tail struck the floor once. The sound was like a mallet hitting stone.

I offered Grace a hand. She accepted it, though she did not need help moving through the foyer.

She looked toward Devon.

“Thank you,” she said.

Devon’s smile softened. “You’re welcome.”

Tilden stepped forward with the quiet precision of a man who understood aftermath.

“If you will follow me, my lady, Your Grace, I will show you to your rooms.”

We entered my father’s office at Obsidian to find him near the long glass wall overlooking the main floor. Devon was perched on the edge of one of the leather chairs, now changed from battle leathers into something soft and pale beneath a dark coat, one boot swinging slightly as she watched the floor below. Remy stood near the bookshelves, already speaking with Amelia, my father’s witch in charge of Obsidian’s security. They constantly checked the wards. Taras took up position near the door with the ease of a shadow returning to its corner.

Grace stepped inside and slowed again.

The office absorbed sound differently from the club. Old rugs softened the floor. Tall bookcases flanked the walls, holding grimoires, legal ledgers, bloodline records, religious texts annotated by creatures who had outlived the men who wrote them, and objects my father had collected because no one else could be trusted not to misuse them. His desk dominated the room, dark wood carved by a master long dead, its surface orderly enough to be military and personal enough to be dangerous.

Along one wall stood the curated blood collection.

Grace’s gaze caught there for a moment. Not hunger, exactly. Or not only hunger. Recognition of a world where blood had categories, value, history.

Then she saw the glass. Ten feet high. Twenty feet long. Untinted. The wall looked straight down onto the main floor of Obsidian.

From there, the club became composition: purple light moving over bodies, servers weaving between tables, the stage dark for now, the bar alive, private staircases guarded, the VIP lounge visible at an angle below us. Pleasure and politics beneath glass. Desire made legible to a king who trusted nothing he did not oversee.

Grace approached the window.

Her reflection appeared over the scene below: a black cocktail dress, wine-dark hair, sharp eyes, a face too composed for the hunger I knew still lived beneath her skin.

“I expected something else,” she said.

My father did not speak. Neither did I.

Grace looked down through the glass. “Something seedy, I guess. Crass. Sticky floors. Bad lighting. Men with too much cologne and women pretending not to count ceiling tiles.” Her fingers touched the glass lightly. “I’ve never been to a sex club.”

The sentence landed without embarrassment. She offered it as fact, not confession.

“Nothing about this is any of those things,” she continued. “It’s extreme. But elegant.” She glanced toward the blood collection, then the office, then down again. “Controlled. Which is either comforting or terrifying.”

“Both,” Kazimir said.

Grace turned.

My father held her gaze calmly. “It should be both. Any place designed for appetite that does not frighten you a little is lying.”

Grace considered him, then nodded once. “That may be the most honest mission statement I’ve heard all year.”

Devon smiled from the chair. “He is nothing if not painfully honest.”