I glance back.
Lukan Ashomicht steps inside, shoulders squared beneath the weight of reputation and ruin, his jaw set in a line that used to intimidate far more than it does now. But he isn’t what catches my eye.
It’s the young woman beside him.
His daughter.
Elizabeth.
I’ve heard her name a hundred times in my uncle’s voice. Spoken with greed, with certainty, with the smugness of a man who believed the world owed him a bride less than half his age. He liked to talk about her. Liked to imagine she was already his. He never elaborated on what he did to secure her. Men like him only brag about the spoils, never the cost.
But the young woman in the doorway is nothing like the fantasy he painted.
Her face is pale under the candlelight, but her eyes are steady, her spine is straight. She stands beside her father because she has to, but she holds herself apart. It’s as if she’s learned that staying close to men like Lukan and Piotr only leads to burial plots and broken promises. There is something in the stillnessof her, something deliberate, as if she’s building a fortress out of quiet.
And suddenly the prickle at the base of my skull sharpens.
I’ve seen that look before. Not grief. Not innocence.
Resolve.
They walk forward. The room watches them. Lukan bows his head as the priest murmurs another verse, but Elizabeth’s gaze moves cleanly, cutting across icons, chandeliers, mourners, never staying anywhere for long.
Certainly not on Piotr.
Her expression doesn’t waver when her eyes skim the coffin. I know what fear looks like. I know what disgust looks like. I know what grief does to a face, how it breaks people open against their will.
She shows none of it. She’s unreadable in a way that has nothing to do with shock and everything to do with control.
And that’s when something in me shifts.
Because Piotr told me once, after too much vodka, when he enjoyed sounding like a king, that Yelena had agreed before she died. He said it as if the woman’s death was an inconvenience rather than something he’d caused, which I’m almost certain he did.
I used to wonder how Yelena really died. Used to wonder why Lukan broke so quickly after. The puzzle twists again, the pieces rearranging themselves into a pattern I can almost see.
Elizabeth steps forward when the priest calls the family for the last kiss.
She moves like a woman walking toward her execution, but there’s no fear in her steps. Only certainty. The candlelight slides across her cheek, catching the glossy dark sweep of her hair. Her engagement ring sparkles almost obscenely. Her black dressbrushes the stone floor with a soft sigh, and for a moment, the church doesn’t feel cold anymore. It feels tense. Expectant.
She stops at the coffin. Places her fingertips on the edge.
A girl promised to a man like my uncle should look devastated, or at least conflicted. Hell, I’d even take relief. She should be trembling, or angry, orsomething.
But Elizabeth is none of those things. She’s composed and collected. Almost peaceful in her grace.
She leans in and touches her lips to the icon lying on Piotr’s chest. It isn’t a kiss of grief. It’s ceremony. A gesture emptied of emotion.
Beneath the incense, I smell something faint on her skin when she straightens, earthy and rich. A scent I recognize from childhood gardens and women’s kitchens, from remedies whispered down through generations.
My uncle carried that scent on his breath in his final weeks.
The puzzle clicks harder, a soft, inaudible snap in the back of my mind.
Elizabeth steps back. She turns. And for a single breath, her eyes meet mine.
It hits like heat through frost.
There’s no guilt in her gaze. No apology. No plea for understanding.
