Page 82 of Maksym

I bared my teeth. The fangs did not descend.

“Figures,” I muttered. “Performance anxiety.”

My reflection did not laugh.

Drying my hair took longer than it should have, mostly because I kept pausing to inspect the texture, as if vampirism might have changed the follicle structure in addition to my entire nutritional plan. The strands dried into a thick fall of dark red wine, richer than before, glossy in a way expensive conditioners had once promised and never delivered. I did not bother with styling it beyond working a comb through the length and letting it settle around my shoulder blades.

The sleep shirt Millie had left was soft gray cotton, long enough to reach mid-thigh, loose enough not to touch me in ways I did not choose. I appreciated that more than lace, more than silk, more than any pretty thing carefully folded in the drawers.

When I returned to the bedroom, the fire had burned lower.

On the nightstand sat a crystal carafe filled with blood wine and a clean glass beside it.

Millie. Of course.

The carafe caught the lamplight, turning the liquid inside a deep ruby-black. There was no note. No instruction. No ceremony. Just provision. Need anticipated before it had to become embarrassment.

My stomach tightened with hunger the second I saw it.

Not human hunger. Not exactly. There was no hollow ache in the belly, no craving for bread or meat or coffee. This was lower and deeper and more direct, an instinctive pull in the mouth, throat, and blood. My body recognized what it required before my mind had finished objecting to the vocabulary.

I picked up the carafe and poured a full glass. My hand did not shake. That seemed important. I drank without hesitation.

The taste spread hot and dark over my tongue, richer than wine, less metallic than I feared, threaded with something spiced and faintly sweet. The first swallow went through me like a door opening. My shoulders dropped. My vision sharpened by some barely measurable degree. The quiet of the room became layered: fire settling, fabric shifting, my own unnecessary breath moving in and out because I still chose to perform being alive.

I finished the glass.

Then, because apparently dignity had limits but dental hygiene did not, I went back into the bathroom and brushed my teeth.

By the time I crawled into bed, the palace had drawn itself into the hour before dawn. The drapes were heavy enough that no light entered, but I could sense the thinning darkness outside them. Or imagined I could. Perhaps my body knew morning was approaching even if this room refused to acknowledge it.

The linens smelled faintly of cedar and something floral I could not place. Not rose. Not lavender. Something pale and expensive and not trying too hard. The mattress accepted me without argument. The pillows were cool. The sheets slid over my bare legs with a softness that would have made me suspicious if I had not been so tired.

I lay on my side, facing the door. Old habit. New room. Same instinct. For a while, I listened. No footsteps. No voices. No chains. No laughter through walls. Just the fire. Just the stillness. Just my own body, no longer dying, trying to understand what it had become.

I meant to stay awake long enough to think through Philadelphia, the Council, the King of Kings, fallen angels, hybrid doctors, wolf politics, and whatever procedural nightmare awaited me in monster Congress.

Instead, sleep took me like a hand closing gently over my eyes. I was gone before the last of the darkness thinned outside.

The nightmare did not begin like a dream. It did not gather itself out of symbols or old scraps of memory. It simply replaced the room.

One moment there had been cedar in the sheets and the low sigh of palace silence. The next, cold stone bit into my back, and iron held my wrists so wide my shoulders burned. My ankles were chained apart. No clothing. No cover. No sheet to clutch. No sleep shirt. No softness. Just the animal fact of my body forced into display against a wall that sweated damp beneath my skin.

I knew the chamber. Of course I knew it. Trauma did not require a floor plan.

Amber light trembled in wall sconces, low and filthy, more smoke than illumination. The stone floor beneath me was dark in patches where old blood had dried into the cracks and newer blood waited for gravity to decide its direction. The air smelled of copper and wet rock and Lucian’s cologne, that expensive, civilized scent he wore like proof that cruelty could afford tailoring.

The chains rattled when I pulled against them. Wrist. Wrist. Ankle. Ankle. Four points of lawless jurisdiction.

I jerked hard enough that iron cut skin. The pain flashed bright, but the cuffs did not loosen. They never loosened when panic asked. Panic was not a key.

“Still struggling,” Lucian laughed.

His voice came from my left, smooth and amused, wrapped in that condescending British drawl that made every sentence sound as if he were correcting a servant’s pronunciation.

I turned my head.

He stepped from the edge of the amber light with his long blond hair loose around his shoulders. He rarely wore it loose. That was how I knew, even in the dream, that this was not only memory. Memory had rules. Nightmares dressed men according to meaning.