Chapter 491: Chapter 490 - Arriving at Night Back to the Mansion

Viktor yawned.

Not politely. The full, jaw-cracking, arms-over-head yawn of a man who has spent the better part of two days doing things that would take a normal person considerably longer, and whose body was filing an honest report about it.

He stretched.

Both arms out, the crack of his spine settling, the cool evening air hitting his face as he stood outside the Hartfield Mansion gates and watched the last of the daylight drain from the sky over the city’s rooftops.

Night was coming in from the east. The particular dark blue of it bleeding into the orange at the horizon’s edge, the chimney stacks turning to silhouettes one by one.

He breathed.

The city smelled different now. Cleaner. Not literally — Hartfield’s streets were still Hartfield’s streets — but the , atmospheric weight of a place running on fear and corruption had thinned considerably in the last forty-eight hours.

He’d noticed this before. The way corruption had a smell.

He exhaled.

’Good enough.’

Helviana was home. He’d sent her back with the second compound dose and instructions for the third, her body warm and wrecked and holding his seed and milk-leaking all the way to her door, and her son had been standing when she arrived — actually standing, weight on both legs, looking at her with the bewildered joy of a child who had woken up fixed.

She had not sent word to him.

He hadn’t expected her to.

She was a practical woman. She’d do what practical women do — she’d put her son to bed, change her dress, wash her sheets, make tea, and then sit very still in the kitchen for a while trying to figure out what category to put the last twenty-four hours in.

Good luck to her with that.

He wasn’t abandoning her. She was his wife, which was a permanent condition, and he had the tail-mark on her hip to prove it. But there were things to do. He had a mansion in front of him, a mistress inside it who had apparently been convinced by one very dedicated maid to spread flower petals around her bedroom, and a list of powers he needed that was not getting shorter on its own.

He put his hands in his pockets.

Looked at the gate.

"Young master!"

The voice arrived before the person did — melodious, bright, with the , genuine quality of someone who is actually delighted to see you rather than performing delight.

Then the person arrived.

Rihana came around the gate post at a run.

Which meant everything moved.

The thick, heavy, unharnessed reality of her under the maid’s uniform — the , comprehensive jiggle of a woman who has not been built for running and is running anyway — her boobs leading the charge, the saggy, full, warm weight of them moving with the enthusiastic independence of things that have their own momentum and their own agenda.

She waved.

Still running.

The wave making it worse.

Viktor watched her approach with the expression of a man who finds several things simultaneously funny and is not bothering to hide it.

She arrived.

Jumped.

He caught her — the full, warm, generous impact of Rihana at velocity, her arms around his neck, her body pressed against his, the , soft, comprehensive welcome of a woman who has been waiting and is now accounting for the wait in full.

"I missed you," she said, into his shoulder. The direct, uncomplicated statement of someone who doesn’t do indirect. "Where have you been?"

He turned her once.

The way you turn something that is happy to be turned.

Set her down.

Her toes finding the ground, her face coming up to his — flushed, bright-eyed, the , warm glow of a woman whose body has just done the arithmetic of proximity to him and arrived at a predictable conclusion.

"What’s happening inside," he said.

His hand found her ass.

Not subtle. Not tentative. The full, direct, palm-against-the-curve grip of a man who has decided this is where his hand lives and is not particularly concerned about the gate guards — who were not, as it happened, present. Sent elsewhere. Conveniently.

She went up on her toes slightly at the grip.

"I convinced her," Rihana said, very pleased with herself.

"Convinced who."

"The Mistress." She beamed. "I told her how depressed you’ve been. How you’ve been carrying so much. How someone should really console you."

Viktor looked at her.

At the , entirely-self-satisfied expression of a woman who has done something she is extremely proud of.

He shook his head.

His hand squeezed.

She made a small sound.

"Come on," he said.

The mansion at night was a different animal than the mansion in daylight.

During the day it was a working building — the , functional activity of a household managing itself, servants moving through its corridors with the practiced efficiency of people who know every squeaky board and every shortcut.

At night the corridors went long and golden from the wall-mounted lamps, and the shadows of the tapestries moved with the drafts from the high windows, and the whole place settled into the , quiet dignity of old stone that has been standing for a long time and is comfortable with the dark.

The old woman was waiting inside the main hall.

She gave her bow.

The , deep, practiced bow of a head maid who has been giving this bow for thirty years — back straight, head at the correct angle, the geometry of long service encoded in her body.

Then she straightened.

And Viktor saw the flush on her.

High in her cheeks, in the location where a woman’s blood rises when she’s thinking about something she is not saying anything about.

She had been doing her job excellently, this one.

He passed her.

Slapped her ass.

Flat. Direct. The sound of it carrying in the quiet corridor.

She made a small, compressed sound.

"You performed well, old lady."

"Forgive me, Master Viktor—" Her composure reassembling immediately, the professional snap of a woman who has been managing her reactions for thirty years. "I am perhaps not as... satisfying... as I once—"

"I bet," Viktor said, walking, not looking back, "when you were young, you fucked more than a dozen men. Given how well your pussy sucked my cock."

Silence.

The old woman’s bow, behind him, was the bow of a woman who is not denying anything.

She followed.

He knew the arithmetic of her. The head maid of a great house, the position that made her invisible to the men who arrived as guests — invisible and therefore ’available,’ in the way that things are available when people have decided not to look at them. Count Hartfield had looked. Particularly when his wife had been pregnant with Elena, when the Countess’s body had been off-limits and the Count had been a man with the , practical appetites of a man who sees no reason for inconvenience.

She’d borne it. Done what maids do — composed herself, went back to work, kept the house running.

Viktor was, he reflected, considerably more interesting than the late Count had apparently been.

He looked at the stairs.

Began climbing.

The flower petals started at the third-floor landing.

He stopped.

Looked at them.

Rose petals. Pale pink, scattered across the corridor floor in the , deliberate pattern of someone who had been thinking about this for a while. Leading down the corridor toward the master chamber.

He looked at the old woman.

"What is this."