Caroline
I wake up happy.
That's the part I'll remember later, when I'm trying to make sense of this day. I wake up happy, for the first time in I don't know how long, because last night, after talking to Cass, I went to find Afon with my whole speech ready.
But I couldn't find him. The woman in gray said he was with Lukas and they should probably not be disturbed. So I went back to bed and figured I'd say it in the morning.
Today. The day of the wedding.
But as it turns out, I'm not going to get that chance.
Because when I roll over to stretch, my hand brushes something on the pillow.
Two somethings, actually.
I sit up. The room is gray with early light, the curtains glowing at the edges. The ivory dress hangs on the closet door like a ghost.
On the pillow next to where my head was, there's a ring. And a folded piece of plastic.
I pick up the ring first.
I recognize it instantly. It's the bronze band. Afon's ring. The one he's worn for twenty years. It's still warm.
My stomach drops. Slow at first, then all at once, like an elevator with a cut cable.
I unfold the paper with shaking fingers.
It's a granola bar wrapper.
Just a granola bar wrapper, the foil smoothed flat and folded into careful quarters, the kind of thing you'd find in the bottom of a backpack. And I know, the second I look at it, where it came from.
It's mine. The wrapper from the granola bar I ate the morning that Afon dumped me at the bus station in Pike Hollow.
He kept it.
He kept a piece of garbage I threw away, smoothed it flat, folded it, and carried it like a soldier wearing a locket in the war trenches.
For a long, dumb minute, I just sit there, holding the ring in one hand and the wrapper in the other, and I think, He left them for me. He took the ring off. He's ready.
And the happiness lasts about another half a second.
Because then the rest of it lands.
He took the ring off. He left it on my pillow with the most precious thing he owns. He didn't wake me and say anything to me—he did it in the dark, while I was asleep, without a word.
You don't take off a ring you've worn for twenty years and leave it on a woman's pillow because you're excited to marry her at noon.
You do it because you don't think you'll be there at noon.
You do it because you're saying goodbye.
"No," I say out loud. "No. No, no, no."
I throw the blanket off and leap to my feet.
My ankle screams—the dumb thing's still half-busted from the mountain—but I no longer give a damn.
I shove my feet into the first shoes I find, which turn out to be a pair of stupid little flats someone left out with yesterday's clothes, and I yank open the door so hard it bounces off the wall.
The hallway is empty. The whole house is quiet, that deep predawn quiet where it feels like you're the only person alive.
But I'm not the only person alive. I know where the men are.
I've watched Afon disappear into the war room every morning for two days.
Down the main hall, left at the painting of the dead king or whoever it is, double doors, the room with the long table where Lukas spreads out maps and folders and talks in his low voice about a coming battle that isn't my business.
Well, guess what?
It's my business now.
I run. The flats slap against the marble and my ankle protests every step. But I don't slow down, because there's a clock ticking and I don't know how much time is on it. I clutch the ring in one fist and the wrapper in the other so hard the foil edges bite into my palm.
I hit the double doors and shove them open without knocking.
The war room is already full. There are maybe eight men inside, including Lukas and his son, Kir, standing at the head of the table over a map.
Coffee cups everywhere, wreathed with cigarette smoke.
They all look up at once, and I watch every single hand in that room twitch toward a weapon before they register that it's just me.
Just the bride. Just the woman in the wrinkled t-shirt and the borrowed flats, hair everywhere, eyes wild.
"Caroline," Lukas says with mild surprise. "You should not be in here."
"Where is he?"
His face doesn't change, but his eyes seem to darken. "Where is who?"
I hold up the ring and the wrapper. My hands are shaking so hard I'm afraid I'll drop both items. "Don't treat me like I'm stupid, please. I don't have time and neither does he. Where is Afon?"
Kir looks at his father. One of the other men glances toward the window, toward the long drive, and that's all I need to see. That little flick of the eyes toward the place where a car would have left from.
"He's gone, isn't he?" I interrupt.
Lukas sets down the folder in his hand. Everything that man does is slow, like he's got all the time in the world, like the world will simply have to wait for him. Doesn't he see that, right now, I want to scream?
"We don't know that he's—"
I wave the ring in his face. "Do you see this shit? I know you don't know what the wrapper means, but I'm pretty damn sure you know enough about Afon to guess why he left behind this ring. He wouldn't give that back unless he didn't think he'd be coming home."
For the first time since I've met him, Lukas Lazarev looks his age. Just for a second. Just a flicker. Then it's gone and he's ice again, but I saw it.
"Sit down, Caroline," he says.
"No."
"I wasn't asking."
"I said no."
And then, because my legs are carrying me and my head hasn't caught up yet, I walk the length of the table.
Past the men, who part for me like they don't know what else to do with a barefoot-but-for-flats woman vibrating with rage.
Past the maps and the coffee and the gun someone's left lying casually next to a notepad.
I walk all the way to the head of the table, to the empty chair at the far end, opposite Lukas, and I pull it out and I drop down in it like his throne is mine for the taking.
I put the ring on the table in front of me. I lay the wrapper down flat beside it, smoothing it out the way Afon must have smoothed it a hundred times.
And I look down the long table at Lukas Lazarev, who has more money, more guns, and more dead men behind him than I can imagine, and I say, "One of you is going to tell me what's happening. Right now."
Nobody moves.
Fine then. We'll do this the hard way.
"He got a call last night, didn't he?" It's coming together as I say it, the pieces snapping into place. "Something happened. Someone called him." I look around the table at all their carefully blank faces. "It was Reznik, wasn't it?"
A man with the scarred eyebrow opens his mouth and Lukas silences him with one lifted finger.
"Yes," Lukas confirms after a moment. "We believe so. Afon's gone, his vehicle is gone, and the satellite phone is gone with him. He told no one. Which is exactly what I would have expected from him. To walk into the dark alone and let no one follow."
"Why?" I demand. "Why would he do that? Reznik wants him, I get it, but Afon's not stupid. He wouldn't just hand himself over for nothing."
"Not for nothing." Lukas exhales through his nose. He glances at Kir, then back at me, then sighs. "Reznik has Matvei."
Matvei.
Cass's husband. Afon's nephew.
The man who handed me my father's letter at a wedding six months ago, who's the whole reason I started down this insane road in the first place.
Lukas actually looks sympathetic, to my surprise. "Reznik will have made it simple. Afon comes alone, unarmed, and Mat goes free. If Afon chose not to come, or tried to strong-arm him somehow, Reznik would kill them both and come for you." He spreads his big, scarred hands flat on the table.
I stare at the ring where I dropped it on the table. This chipped, scratched little circle of worn bronze that he carried for twenty years for a woman who died in the snow, that he took off and left for me because he thought it was the closest he'd get to saying goodbye.
I can almost picture how he did it.
Standing over my bed in the dark. Whispering my own words back at me.
Eyes open. On purpose. I chose you, too.
And then walking out to go die.
A strange sort of alchemy takes place inside of me. The fear and the grief curdle into something else, something hot, clear, and almost calm. All the noise drops away and there's just the thing that has to be said and me to say it.
"No," I declare.
Lukas tilts his head. "No?"
"We had a deal." I'm not talking to Lukas, not really.
I'm talking to a man who's already an hour north of here driving toward a man who wants to kill him.
"Afon and me, we made a deal. He tells me everything, his way, his order, when he says so—and then I'd get to choose what happened next.
That was the whole point." I press my palm flat over the ring to cover it.
"He doesn't get to decide for me that he's not coming back. That's not the deal."
"Caroline," Lukas says, "I understand you're upset, but—"
"I'm getting married today." I look up and down the table at all of them, these dangerous men who've gone perfectly still.
"Do you hear me? At noon today, I'm getting married.
Just because the groom has decided to spend the morning getting himself killed instead doesn't mean that I'm cancelling this shit.
Look at me. Look at me! I am telling you, every single one of you, that is not going to happen, because I am not going to let it. "
A stunned silence follows.
Then Lukas says, "There are real lives at risk here, Caroline. These things cannot be rushed."
"Bullshit. I know exactly what I'm asking.
" I stand up. My ankle holds. "You said the price of your help is the rest of someone's life.
Fine. I'll pay it. Whatever it is, put it on my tab.
But you said something else, too, in your study.
You said you protect family." I lift my chin—my dad's chin, the one Lukas himself pointed out.
"I'm about to be his wife. That makes me family.
So protect us. Both of us. Go get my husband. "
Lukas Lazarev looks at me across the length of that table, this enormous old man with his scarred hands and his gray eyes. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he almost respects me now.
And when he speaks, it isn't to me. It's to the room.
"I want eyes on that logging road within the hour, far enough back that Reznik's sentries don't see us coming.
Nobody moves on the camp until I say. We do this clean, or we do not do it at all—but we are going to do it.
" He turns to Kir. "Work on getting satellites or drones over the camp so we aren't going in blind. "
The room comes alive all at once—chairs scraping, men moving, the map sliding across the table, a dozen different phones lighting up.
The stillness is gone, replaced by military purpose and violent poise.
I stand there in my wrinkled t-shirt and my borrowed flats in the middle of it, holding a worn-out ring and a folded granola bar wrapper, watching the machine roar to life.
Lukas looks back down the table at me. Just once.
"You'll stay here," he says.
"Like hell I will."
The corner of his mouth twitches—almost, almost a smile, the same ghost of one I've seen on Afon a hundred times now.
"I said that for the record. So that when you ignore me, no one can say I didn't try.
" He straightens. His gray eyes hold mine.
"But if I do bring you along, you are to stay in the vehicle and you do exactly what you're told, or I will have you physically restrained. Are we clear?"
I give him a sarcastic salute. "Crystal."
"Good." He picks up the folder. "Then go get changed. We've got a war to start—and apparently, a wedding to make on time."
Grinning as adrenaline surges through my veins, I turn to run back to my bedroom so I can prepare for war. I tuck the wrapper in my pocket and keep the ring in my hand. I'm not letting this thing out of my sight until I've put it back on his finger… and he's put one on mine.