Pride moved through my chest. Not asking for comfort. Not asking for promises. Asking for the tools to save her sister herself. That was my girl.
“We’ll all train you,” I said. “Aelindor for magic. Caspian for hand-to-hand combat. Drakken for swords and battle strategy.” I studied her. “What I’ll teach you is different. I can’t give you the gift of draining an enemy from a distance. Only the most powerful of my kind can do that, and you aren’t a vampire.But I can teach you the art of disguise and deception. How to disappear into a shadow. How to stand in a room full of people and be seen by none of them.”
The warmth that crossed her face made my heart pick up.
“That’s exactly what I need, prince.”
“Then you’ll have it.” I swept her up, and she flushed with delight at how easily I took her weight. “But first, you eat.”
I carried her to the dining room, where warm bread and thick stew waited.
Chapter 15
Max
Islipped into the barracks, Nikolai’s scent still on my skin.
I’d held the line tonight. Just barely. The vampire prince had taken less than he needed, respected every boundary I’d set, and sat with me in the quiet afterward like it was enough. LikeIwas enough. The part of me that had spent a decade in the underground mine learning not to need anything from anyone had sat there absorbing all of it and wanting more.
The guilt had teeth. Nikolai’s blood bargain. Aelindor’s kiss in a tent. Caspian’s arm around my shoulders in front of an assembly. And Drakken, who couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me but had brought my bedroll and stayed anyway.
Every head turned.
Over a hundred women in various states of undress or mid-routine—cards, tablets, low conversations—and the room went silent the moment I walked in.
I kept walking.
“Max!”
Bryn launched herself off her top bunk with the reckless confidence of someone gifted with super strength, landed without a stumble, and crossed the room in four strides. She hitme like a small freight vehicle, arms around my ribs, squeezing hard.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said into my shoulder, her voice muffled.
She’d thought I was dead. There were grief lines around her eyes.
“I came back.”
She pulled away and did a damage assessment.
“I wasn’t injured,” I said. “Scratches and bruises. Nothing more.”
“You look different,” she said.
“People change.” I moved toward my bunk and she followed.
“Tell me everything!”
We stopped at my bunk. I was acutely aware of every set of ears in the room, even as everyone kept their eyes down and pretended to mind their own business. They all wanted intel from my mouth.
“If I tell you everything, I’ll have to kill you,” I said.
Bryn stared at me for a long moment, then let out a chuckle. She thought I was being funny.
“Classified, Bryn.” I held her gaze. “I’m serious. Some of what happened out there? I can’t talk about it.”
“We all heard about the train attack,” she said. “That wasn’t classified.”
“True.” I chose my words carefully. “It was a demon attack. They came out of the DarkVeil. That’s all I can say.”