7

A knock interrupted their banter, and one of Malakhov's men enter.

 "Tsar, this was delivered here this morning." The man reports, their banter halting.

A body. Not fresh—no. This one had been missing for three weeks. The smell announced its arrival before the guards opened the crate. When the lid came off, even the marble floors seemed to flinch. The man inside—half rotted, mouth sewn shut with piano wire—had once worn Malakhov's crest.

Now, he was a message.

Malakhov didn't blink.

Citrine floated in the corner, arms crossed, glitter dimmed in the sterile light of Malakhov's inner sanctum. His wings beat just enough to keep him aloft, a shimmer of lemon-gold and derision.

"This your version of a get-well basket?" he said, nodding at the corpse. "Because if so, it's missing a bow."

No one responded. The men in suits looked anywhere but at the fairy. Even they knew better.

The Pakhan moved.

One step. Two. Then his hand gripped the crate's edge. No words. Just observation—the way scientists regard diseased tissue. He reached in, retrieved a silver ring from the corpse's finger, and slipped it into his pocket.

The room waited.

Then, without turning, Malakhov spoke.

"Clean it and compensate the family."

No hesitation. The crate was gone in seconds.

Citrine hovered closer. "He was one of yours?"

"Yes," Malakhov answered.

There was a pause, heavy as smoke.

"Did he fail," Citrine asked softly, "or did you just stop needing him?"

Malakhov turned then—slow, deliberate. "Does it matter?"

And that's when one of the underbosses made a mistake.

"Why do you let it talk like that?" the man muttered, too low for humans to hear.

But Malakhov wasn't just human.

He heard. He always heard.

He moved so quickly the man didn't flinch until the gun was already pressed beneath his chin.

Citrine, oddly quiet now, hovered a little higher.

Malakhov didn't pull the trigger. Not yet.

Instead, he spoke. Low. Calculated. For everyone to hear.

"I allow him to speak," he said, "because he's the one thing in this empire I cannot control."

He lowered the gun, slow and lethal.

"In a world where everyone obeys or dies, he does neither. That makes him useful."

The man opened his mouth. Malakhov raised a brow. He closed it again.

"I don't keep him for amusement," he continued, now addressing no one and everyone. "I keep him because unpredictability is the only true intelligence test. He speaks when others won't. He mocks what others fear. And he sees the rot before it reaches the roots."

Citrine blinked. Once. "Are you calling me your rot detector?"

"I'm calling you the shadow I watch for shifts in light."

Then, quieter—only for Citrine. "And because... monsters like company."

The room didn't breathe.

Citrine's mouth curled into something between horror and awe.

"You mean you like me."

"No," Malakhov said, pouring himself a drink as if they hadn't just weaponized trust in front of a dozen men. "I'm just using you."

The room broke—tension snapping like a string pulled too tight. Conversations resumed in hushed tones.

But Citrine? He floated a little lower, lips still curled.

"At least I'm of use, and I'll allow you to use me, this is entertaining more than a lemon field." He whispers, the room falls quiet...as if witnessing an evolution.

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Beneath the chandeliers and velvet shadows of his mansion, the walls listened. The floorboards groaned from secrets too fat to stay hidden. And somewhere—always—something buzzed: the static hum of surveillance, the whisper of knives being sharpened, or the muffled sob of someone learning the price of crossing the wrong line.

Citrine hovered in a hallway lined with oil paintings of dead czars and colder ancestors, wings barely beating, but glitter trailing like scandal. He was wildly out of place. On purpose.

Malakhov walked beside him like a cathedral of control—black-on-black suit, gloves tighter than morality, expression carved from Siberian frost. He said nothing as they passed the guards, who saluted him like one might salute Death itself and flicked nervous glances at the hovering fairy.

Citrine blew a kiss to one of them. "Relax, darling. I only bite emotionally."

The guard flinched.

Malakhov didn't look back. "Stop harassing the staff."

"I'm an equal opportunity menace. You should be proud."

"I'm not."

"Liar," Citrine whispered, his tone lilting, wicked. "You keep me around."

Malakhov stopped at a massive iron door etched with strange grooves—like scars that healed wrong. He didn't knock. The door opened anyway.

Inside: darkness. Real and wrong.

Not the shade of night. The kind that grows in cellars beneath countries. The kind you feel between your ribs.

This was his war room.

Monitors lined the walls. Blueprints, dossiers, grainy security footage—some showing borders, others showing basements. A long table sat in the center, blacker than oil, set with enough weaponry to declare a private war and win.

Three men were already inside. Powerful. Well-fed. Quiet.

But they stood when Malakhov entered. Not from respect. From instinct. From fear.

Citrine followed behind him like a storm pretending to be a breeze.

The fairy hovered beside Malakhov's chair at the head of the table, arms folded, expression smug. One of the men frowned.

"He's still here?" he asked, nodding toward Citrine like he was vermin in couture.

Malakhov's tone didn't rise. It didn't need to.

"Speak about him like that again," he said, "and I'll feed you your tongue."

The man went silent.

Citrine's lips parted in mock awe. "Aww, Daddy defends me."

"Don't push it."

But he didn't flick him away. Didn't banish him. Didn't deny the fairy the right to hover beside him like a crown of thorns and glitter.

Because Malakhov needed him.

Not for magic. Not for power. But for the rupture Citrine brought. For the way he walked through a room and made it remember it had once laughed. Once felt.

Malakhov's empire wasn't just made of bricks and blood. It was built on grief. On revenge. A kingdom for a king who had nothing left to lose—until the orchard breathed again. Until that damn lemon-born creature flitted into his silence and tore it like lace.

One of the other men cleared his throat. "We found two more bodies by the east dock. Branded. Same mark."

Citrine's smile faded.

Malakhov's didn't shift. He only leaned forward. "Find the source. Cut it. Leave the limbs for the crows."

No hesitation. No mercy.

Citrine drifted down to the table, toe-tapping the surface, trailing sparkles across a map of smuggling routes. "So many shadows in your house, Tsar. When do we open the windows?"

"We don't," Malakhov said. "Light only reveals the rot."

"And yet you keep me," Citrine said, eyes narrow. "What does that say about you?"

No answer. Just a gaze—sharp and tired and ancient.

Then, in the corner of the room, a soft whimper. A sound no one else heard.

Citrine turned his head. There was no one there. But he felt it. The echo. The haunting. This house was not just full of enemies—it was a mausoleum.

He glanced at Malakhov.

"You built a throne from graves."

"And you," Malakhov muttered, "planted flowers on top of them."

A soft chime buzzed through the room. One of the men checked his phone. His face blanched. "They're here."

"Who?" Citrine asked, eyebrow arching.

The man looked at Malakhov. "The ones branding the bodies. They're outside. Armed."

Malakhov stood. "Let them in."

"Are we negotiating?"

"No," Malakhov said. "We're reminding."