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I knew that she was looking for me to speak, to offer her some form of explanation of the bloody specter that I had been the other night, or to unload on her the grief that she knew to be welling within my chest. Even the thought of talking felt foreign as I stood, pulling her up along with me.
So many of these people wanted to find an excuse to usurp my position as Pakhan. They watched me with weighted eyes and hungry mouths. Greed dogged their steps hand in hand with their false expressions of sadness, and I trusted none of them. Of the several hundred gathered in the ornate chamber of the church, there were only two who I held trust in: the woman clinging to my side with an ever-questioning gaze and the man standing up by the front of the casket we now approached.
Shura’s eyes were just as dark and suspicious as mine, daring those around him to dare publicly challenge me. I had not yet been named the next Pakhan, but that would come, and when it did, I would remember every faction that had displayed such thinly veiled disbelief.
They wanted to see weakness, and I would give them none. They wanted to find any reason to deny me the seat that my father had carved for me through his blood, sweat, and tears over the years . . . And I would not allow that to happen. Manya was uncomfortable with the silence and the distance between us. It felt like a chasm no matter how close we physically were.
But I could not afford but I could not afford to allow her fingers to temper my rage. I could not allow myself to soften, even the slightest bit, even for her. That would lead to distraction. That would lead to a chink in the armor that my enemies could exploit.
The whispers built behind the wails, all eyes on us as we walked down the central aisle. I did not pause, as I had at other funerals, to fall into a procession line according to rank. Instead, I walked past every person who stood waiting, my chin high and my anger leaving an acidic after taste on my tongue. I did not stop here, not anymore. I did not fall into the ordered line of people who had gathered. I no longer stood beneath any person here. I would be Pakhan.
I was Dmitry Koalistia, the last of the Koalistias, and they would regret besmirching my name.
