I translate quickly.
Mother’s blood.
Not…it can’t be.
Mymother’s blood.
I gag. Retch, a hard rolling spasm from deep in my gut. My body flings itself forward, violent clutching horror, but something clamps me by the shoulders—two more girls flown to my sides.
“No!” I whip my face back and forth and back and forth, moving moving moving so it can’t get me, it can’t touch me, but a pair of hands seizes my jaw from behind, cold and so tight I can barely breathe, and they paint me.
One cheek, a slow cold circle. Then the other.
My throat burns. My eyes are hot and wet. A sob wrenches out of me, and Dasha seizes me roughly by the chin, holding me firm so she can drag the brush across my lips. Oh god. It's seeping into my mouth. I gag, I want to spit, I want to throw up, but I can't, I can't, I can't.
"She must be the last woman of her blood on earth," Alexei says simply. “
"No," I say. "No, you didn't. You couldn’t...”
I look around desperately at all of them. Dasha's face looming too close, the old women off to the side. The archmand—right, I have to look away. Father Maksim. Maksim.
Max.
The only one of them without a beard. The only one who speaks perfect English. Put him in jeans and a sweater and he could have blended in easily anywhere, anytime?—
"You," I gasp. "You killed my mother?"
He bows his head. “Her sacrifice will not be in vain."
Dasha steps away, hands off the vial and brush to one of the old women. Then she and Sveta seize me by the arms, lift me from the throne, and all but shove me towards the center altar.
I'm shaking my head. “No, I won't. I can’t.”
None of them is listening. They pick up their baskets again, singing all the while, their voices ringing out eerily bright andcheerful as they step before me, tossing flower blossoms at my feet.
"Walk," Moroslav commands. "Walk, bride."
I shake my head. I’m sobbing, hiccuping too much.
"Walk!” he cries, and this time lashes out with something. A sword, a blade, fine as a weapon, sharp, that stings the back of my ankle.
"Ah!" I cry in pain and step away from it, planting my foot down barely two inches from where I started.
"Walk!” he roars, and does it again, this time my other foot. It stings badly, and I stumble this time, almost falling with no way to catch myself, my hands still bound. My legs are shaking, my body weak, my mother's blood on my face, the garments heavy and strange on my body.
I take another step. And another. I don’t know what else to do, don't know how long I can walk in this circle, trudging as the singing girls drop flowers and flowers and flowers in my path, as the old women clutch their hands to their foreheads and pray, and as Moroslav watches, his blade in hand.
I don’t know how long it will take me to die.
I'm weeping now. An absolute wreck. Uncontrollable. And I look up, to avoid seeing any of them. Up into the face of the Virgin Mary and her icon.Please, I think,please, if you're real, if any of this has ever been real, please?—
“Enough.”
The doors crash open, wood splintering and a harsh metallic bang against plaster.
"Let her go."
Four silhouettes against the violet light of dawn. I make some sound—a scream, a strangled cry, I don't know—and fall to my knees as they rush forward. Moroslav's face contorts with fury and snaps the blade at my exposed bare feet, slicing me, and yet I barely notice the pain. Then he sees them—Kingston, Kai, Lanz,Callahan—and shouts something in Russian, harsh and clipped. From the shadows of the side of the church his team emerges, weapons drawn, frantic.
