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Koalitsia. It floated in my mind like smoke as he pulled back from me, my lips tingling from where he had pressed his against mine. His attractiveness didn’t matter in the wake of the fog beginning to clear. Nor did it matter how his thumb brushed the back of my hand, or how his eyes slid desirously to me as he led me out of the doors, still grinning.
Koalitsia. It was like a curse—repeating over and over. The knot of dread tightened since I had first seen my father standing under that tree. Koalitsia. The name was like a brand, burned into the recesses of my memory. I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout. Instead, I was being pulled round towards the front corner of the church, my groom stopping and spinning me about. He dipped as if to kiss me again.
This time though I was ready.
When his lips slanted over mine, I opened my own, my teeth clutching his bottom lip until I could taste the bitter tang of copper. His blood passed from his mouth into my own and that fury that filled me only grew sharper with his hiss of pain. I let go only when he jerked back, anger flashing over his features.
As if he didn’t know why I wouldn’t want his lips on mine. As if he were that innocent. My chest heaving, I lifted my hands to the broad expanse of his chest and pushed with every ounce of strength I had in me, holding down with my core so that it was him that stumbled back a half-step and not me.
“Your family killed my mother,” I hissed, a combination of pain and anger swirling through my words as he stared stupidly back at me. The betrayal settling beneath my ribs wasn’t caused byhim—but by his last name . . . and by the fact that my own father had married me off to him—a Koalitsia—as if the history of their crimes had just been erased.
I exhaled heavily, watching him look back up at me, and without another word I whirled away, my heels clicked against the concrete as I approached the waiting car. I opened the door and slammed it shut behind me with a deafening sound of metal on metal.
“Go,” I barked, my thoughts battering the inside of my skull like ricocheting bullets.
“But Mrs.—”
“GO!” I repeated, slamming a fist down on the lock button. I didn’t look behind me to see if I was being followed. I didn’t even allow the tears gathering behind my eyelids to escape. I just stared flintily ahead, trying to come the rest of the way out of the haze I had been operating under for the past few hours. “If you have any fucking decency in you at all, please,” I muttered, my voice breaking over the words, “Please, just drive. . . .”
The driver pulled away from the curb, his eyes on mine in the rearview mirror, and for the first time since seeing my father, I felt like I had some small iota of control.
