Chapter 10 Lily
LILY
In thick thermal socks, with my wedding dress bunched up around me like an unmade bed, and a heated blanket around my shoulders, I sit on the cool stone steps outside the venue, fork in hand, a plate of half-eaten cake balanced on my lap.
The night air is a soft bite against my overheated skin, and for the first time all day, I feel like I can breathe.
Nadia drops down beside me with a low, tired grunt, the satin of her dusty lilac bridesmaid dress spilling across the steps.
Her hair is coming out of its pins, her heels dangling from her fingers, but she still looks effortlessly composed—annoying, really.
She sets her own plate of cake between us and, without a word, starts eating with the same kind of bone-deep exhaustion I feel.
I tilt my head back, staring up at the night sky.
The city glows faintly in the distance, but above that faint haze, the stars push through, sharp and cold.
My veil has long since been discarded inside, my hair is a mess, my feet ache, and my lipstick is gone, but I don’t care.
I don’t even care that I’m probably ruining this dress. It doesn’t feel real yet—any of it.
“I think,” I say quietly, mostly to myself, “this is the best part.”
Nadia glances at me, one brow arched as she shovels another bite of cake into her mouth. “Sitting on a step in a thirty-thousand-dollar dress, barefoot, eating sugar at midnight?”
“Exactly,” I murmur, the corner of my mouth tipping up.
“You sure fucking your groom right after the wedding wasn’t the best part?”
“Nadi!”
“Sorry,” Nadia laughs, stealing another forkful of cake. “You two were loud.”
“Oh my—” I put my hands over my face, peeking through my fingers like that might shield me from the heat climbing my cheeks.
She leans her shoulder into mine, all warm and sharp angles. For a moment, we just chew in silence, the sugar melting heavy on our tongues.
Then she says, softer this time, “Lils?”
“Yeah?” I say, my gaze fixed on a star that flickers and vanishes into the dark.
The sight knocks the breath out of me. It’s a strange ache—the thought that we only see them because they’re dying, that something so impossibly beautiful is already gone by the time it reaches us.
The idea presses into my chest, sharp and cold, like grief disguised as light.
Is that what we are, Aleksandr and I? A blaze so fierce it can’t help but consume itself, burning until there’s nothing left but the memory of light? Dying as we shine?
“You should hold onto this moment,” she says, in a voice too tender to be my murdery best friend.
“I hold onto every moment with you, Nadi-bear,” I bump my shoulder into hers, and she smirks, bumping right back into me.
“No, I mean this time with Aleksandr,” she corrects, and my skin goes cold.
The fork slips in my fingers, tilting against the plate with a small clink. Her words echo in my head like church bells—loud, slow, impossible to ignore. Time with Aleksandr. Not forever. Not a lifetime. Time. A span. A window that closes.
My throat tightens, and all at once I’m tumbling inward, my mind spinning out like thread pulled from a spool.
I think about the way he looks at me—like there is nothing else worth looking at.
Like I am his air. And yet, what if we’re just a star?
Bright, brilliant, but burning ourselves to ash while we try to hold onto each other.
Every kiss, every fight, every touch is gasoline.
I love him so much it hurts, but what if that hurt is the point?
What happens when the storm that is Aleksandr Petrov finally swallows me whole? Will there be anything left of me? Or worse, what if one day I wake up and he is gone—ripped away like everything else I’ve ever clung to?
I stare up at the stars, but all I can see is his face, that sharp, beautiful face, the cruel tilt of his mouth when he’s trying not to smile, the grey of his eyes that never quite feels safe.
Is that all we get? This flash of light in the dark? And if it is—am I strong enough to take it, knowing it will break me?
My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. “What if it’s not enough time?”
“There won’t be,” she says in that blunt tone, and my body goes stiff.
The words hollow me out. My heart races like it’s trying to hold on to every second, to every breath I’ve ever taken with him, terrified of how little of us might be left when the world decides we’ve had enough.
For a moment, I can almost see it—Aleksandr’s hand slipping from mine, not because he wants to let go, but because everything else tears us apart.
“They know officer Lyon is missing, and it is only a matter of time before they find the body,” Nadia adds, her voice quiet but sharp as glass, “then it’s done.”
Her words hang between us, heavy and sure, like smoke that refuses to clear. A chill runs over my skin that has nothing to do with the cool air.
I lower my hands slowly and look at her. “You think they’ll find it soon?”
“I think they always do.” She stabs another bite of cake with her fork, chews thoughtfully. “You married Aleksandr after the first time he was messy with a kill, malen'kaya. I assume he was only messy because you showed up.”
“I—I didn’t mean to—” I sit up straighter, panic scraping up my throat as my eyes fly to hers, wide and unsure.
But Nadia, loosened by a few glasses of Hugo Spritz, just waves me off, her hand slicing lazily through the air.
“I know,” she says with a soft chuckle, leaning forward to swipe a finger through the icing that’s pooling on the edge of the plate between us.
She licks it without shame, then shrugs.
“I know what it’s like—to be pulled to someone like a tide you can’t fight.
To have someone make a mess out of you when you pride yourself on control. ”
The word control hits me like a struck match. My pulse stutters, because Aleksandr is control incarnate. Every move, every breath of his life is measured like he runs the world with a ruler, and still I undo him.
I rest my plate on my lap, my appetite gone. “And you’re okay? With… all of this?” My voice sounds too small. “With me? With him and me?”
Nadia snorts like the question is ridiculous, but I catch the faintest curve of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “I always knew,” she says, not looking at me, just at the sky. “From the beginning. The way he looked at you? There was never another option. You were inevitable.”
The word pulls at something in my chest, something tender. “I didn’t want to take anything away from you.”
“You didn’t.” She says it simply, like there’s nothing more to discuss.
Her hand drifts over, fingers brushing my knee. It’s not often that Nadia touches anyone without purpose, and the small weight of it nearly undoes me.
Nadia’s gaze flicks toward me, a small, crooked smile tugging at her mouth, the kind she uses when she’s trying to make something easier than it really is.
“It’s not your fault that the person you can’t help but want is Aleksandr,” she says softly.
“Even if I’ll never fully understand why it has to be him. ”
“Aleksandr is just… I don’t know.” The words fall out of me, useless, because how do you explain a feeling that has no edges?
“I say the same thing about Sho,” she murmurs, resting her chin on her shoulder like the name alone makes her tired and alive all at once. “He’s everything. He’s who I want, and I don’t know why. God, I’d change it if I could. Life would be so much easier.”
I draw in a long breath, feeling every word she says settle deep, because I know exactly what she means. Nadia and I are two halves of the same terrible, hopeless coin.
“Loving Aleksandr is like breathing, Nadi,” I whisper. “It’s the only thing that’s never been hard.”
“I know,” she says, curling her arms around her knees, pulling herself in tight. “What I feel for Sho… it’s like finally being able to breathe after a lifetime of drowning.”
I smile at that, a slow, aching kind of smile, because this version of Nadia—unguarded, tender—is one she only lets out when no one else is looking.
It’s an honor to be trusted with it. To be loved like a little sister by Nikolai.
To be protected and claimed as family by Nadia.
And to be consumed, undone, and made whole all at once by Aleksandr.
It is the only honor I have ever kept for myself.
Nadia leans back on her elbows and lets out a long, jaw-cracking yawn. “You should go to bed. You’ve got an early flight in the morning.”
I blink at her. “A flight?”
Her mouth quirks. “Flight, Lils. Your honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon?” The word feels foreign on my tongue, like something meant for other people.
“Yuuup,” she says, dragging the syllable out. “Gwen packed for you, so check your bags. Make sure there’s more than lace in there, because she has… priorities.”
“Oh my—” I smack my palm to my forehead and hop to my feet, the cake plate wobbling dangerously before I set it aside. “Wait, what about King?”
“I’ll watch him for you. Now go.”
I hold a hand out to her, but she waves me off with that same careless flick of the wrist she’s been using all night.
“I want to stay here a little longer,” she says.
“It’s cold,” I protest, even though I know better.
“I know,” she grumbles, already tugging the heated blanket from the ground around her shoulders like a cocoon.
I let her be, because I know she needs this—this quiet, this sky.
She’s been like this ever since Sho, and even though I don’t know the whole story, I know enough to know there’s no clean break between people like them.
Somewhere on the other side of the world, I can picture him the same way: silent, staring up at the same moon, thinking of her.
They were perfect together. And devastating. They loved like wildfires, maybe even more recklessly than Aleksandr and I—if that’s possible. Two assassins with empires that bleed, and a love so heavy it cracked under its own weight.