“No,” he says. “It makes you untouchable.”
“Go upstairs,” he says. “Eat. Sleep. Tomorrow we begin.”
I stare at him, still breathing too fast. “Begin what?”
His mouth curves slightly. Not a smile.
“Dmitri’s humiliation.”
12
YAROMIR
I marryAnya Sokolova three days later in the garden behind my house.
Not the main garden. Not the one guests see when they arrive, with its trimmed hedges and stone fountain and the old statues my mother once hated because she said they looked like dead men pretending to be saints.
The ceremony happens in the smaller courtyard near the east wing, where the trees grow close to the walls and the morning light falls in narrow strips over the stone path.
It’s quiet there. Exactly what I want.
There are twelve people present.
Viktor stands near the gate with two of my men. Alexei stands beside me, wearing a dark suit and an expression he keeps trying to make serious. The lawyer waits near the officiant with the documents. Anya’s father stands on the other side of the courtyard, pale and stiff, looking like a man who knows he has survived by spending the last of his daughter’s trust.
Anya doesn’t look at him once.
She stands across from me in a simple ivory dress that was delivered to the house yesterday. No long train. No veil. No flowers sewn into her hair. Nothing like the spectacle Dmitri would have had her walk into.
Still, she looks more like a bride than she did in the leaked wedding photographs I saw from his estate.
Maybe because this time she’s not pretending.
Her hair is pinned low, a few loose strands framing her face. A faint bruise is still visible near her wrist, half-hidden beneath the sleeve. She holds her hands together in front of her, fingers locked so tightly her knuckles are pale.
She’s nervous. Angry too.
The officiant speaks. I hear the words, but only in pieces.
Marriage.
Witnesses.
Duty.
Consent.
Anya’s eyes lift to mine when that last word is spoken.
For a moment, the courtyard seems to hold its breath with us.
The night before, the lawyer read every line of the contract to her twice. When she signed, her hand did not shake.
Now she stands before me with a ring in her palm.
Not my mother’s ring. I haven’t seen it since she arrived at my home, and I don’t feel like asking her. The ring I give her now is new. Platinum, plain except for a narrow line of small diamonds set into the band. Expensive, but not loud. It suits her better than the old one.
It doesn’t carry another woman’s ghost.
