Chapter 8 #2
Hundreds of glasses rise among the trees.
Tess stares at Galina with damp eyes, deprived of speech again, and Amina grips my hand under the table.
No one has asked my friends to hide the clinic or behave as though they grew up around this kind of wealth.
They are being welcomed exactly as they arrived.
Konstantin lifts his glass last. His attention remains on me as the crystal touches his mouth.
Across from them, Irina's husband, Anton, pours her tea before checking the service-drive report on his phone. Larissa has seated herself beside one of Konstantin's uncles, whom she torments by asking whether the ceremonial saber is intended to compensate for anything.
The saber appears after dinner under the supervision of two guards.
Its owner wants to use it on the wedding cake. Galina refuses on the grounds that buttercream shouldn't require armed security. Mikhail produces a smaller silver knife from the cake table, while the saber returns to its case amid protests about family tradition.
Tess leans toward me. "I thought your grandmother was the only person who could silence a room with one look."
The mention tightens my throat. Grandma believes I'm safe at a private wedding after an impulsive engagement.
She hasn't seen this room or the armed men near every door.
The photograph I send her will show the dress and the roses, with the husband whose full world I'm still keeping away from her house.
"She would like Galina," I say. "Then they would organize everyone within reach."
Galina hears her name and asks what we're discussing. Tess tells her that my grandmother has opinions about proper cake storage.
Within a minute, Galina wants her telephone number.
I redirect the conversation toward the cake before Galina can ask for Grandma's number and expose how carefully I have kept them apart. The decision leaves a bitter taste behind the sweet icing when Konstantin offers me the first bite.
His gaze sharpens. "What happened?"
"Nothing I can explain at a table full of relatives."
He sets down the fork without pressing. "Later."
The simple answer gives me room while making it harder to pretend the secrecy protects only Grandma.
After the meal, the pavilion floor clears around the trees.
Konstantin takes me into the first dance under hanging crystal, with snow turning beyond the glass.
His hand returns to the bare skin above my waist. Mine rests on the black cloth over his shoulder, feeling the muscle shift as he turns me into the first slow step.
We move slowly because of the train on my dress. He guides me around it without looking down, one hand at my back while the other holds mine against his chest.
"Tell me your prize," he says. "I have a wife who spent yesterday making promises about my wedding night, yet she refuses to explain what she won."
"You lost. Waiting is the remaining consequence."
His fingers spread against my skin.
The hard length of him presses briefly against my stomach when he turns me through the lights. My breath catches. He watches the reaction with pale eyes gone darker at the rim.
"Soon," I tell him. "It's the only answer you're getting while your aunt can see us."
Across the floor, Galina has stopped the port patriarch beneath one of the trees, her cane planted between his shoes.
His mouth tightens whenever she pauses, though he is apparently too proud to interrupt.
Larissa catches my eye over Konstantin's shoulder and raises her champagne glass in a slow salute.
She has noticed exactly where his hand is, and I am getting no rescue from her.
My phone is still with Amina at the table.
She sees the dating-app alert before the dance finishes and starts toward me, weaving between guests with the lit screen held close to her chest. Near the glass wall, the security technician straightens over his own device.
The observation flag has reached him too.
Amina gets to me first.
The new message sits below the two from last night.
You look beautiful. I wish I had arrived on time.
I read beautiful, then arrived, and my fingers go numb around the jeweled case.
Only one photograph from the wedding has been released. It has been public for less than two hours, yet this man has already found my face among all the other news in the city. The orchestra keeps playing behind me. People laugh beneath the crystal lights. My body has gone cold anyway.
He could be following a news alert from miles away, or he could be somewhere beyond the estate with the photograph open in his hand. The message gives me no way to know, and the uncertainty dries my mouth.
I hold the screen toward Konstantin. "He saw it already."
His expression barely shifts as he takes the phone, but his fingers close around it until the tendons rise across his wrist. "Did he text your number?"
"No. Only the app."
The security technician reaches us before Konstantin calls him. When Konstantin offers the phone, the man looks to me instead.
"Permission?"
"Yes."
His frown deepens as he captures the message, then he touches two fingers to his earpiece. Guards turn toward the doors and the snowy grounds beyond them, each movement small enough that the dancers continue around us.
The technician listens. "No unknown vehicle has stopped near the perimeter, and no one is waiting on foot. The observation stays live." His thumb moves over his own screen. "The first photograph is already out. I can stop the rest."
Konstantin looks through the glass, where our security is reflected among the trees. "He won't reach you here."
I want to borrow his certainty, but the pavilion that dazzled me an hour ago is all light and transparent walls, every guest visible from the dark beyond them. My reflection lies over the snow in a white dress, holding a phone against her chest.
I step close enough for Konstantin's arm to touch mine. He turns at once, placing himself between me and the nearest wall.
"Do you want to leave?" he asks.
Across the room, Tess is dancing with Galina after admitting she never learned the steps.
Amina has Dasha's sleeping daughter against her shoulder, and every offered hand draws my friends deeper into Konstantin's loud, affectionate family.
The stranger with the dating profile does not get to end my wedding with one message.
"Not yet."
Konstantin keeps one hand at my back for the rest of the reception. He never asks again.
Near midnight, Konstantin leads me back through the old conservatory, where only the winter roses remain lit. Staff clear the pavilion behind us while new snow covers every footprint beyond the glass, restoring the grounds to an untouched white no guest can claim.
At the upper floor, two guards take their posts at opposite ends of the private corridor. Konstantin stops before the wedding suite, keeping his hand on the door rather than opening it for me.
"You may sleep alone," he says. "The marriage doesn't change that."
My gaze drops to the silver band on his hand, then rises to the severe older man who has spent two days wanting me without taking what fear placed within his reach.
My fingers close around the front of his shirt. I press the handle, open the door and then pull him through it.
"It is time to collect my miniature-golf prize."
Konstantin closes the suite door with his heel, and the latch shuts the wedding outside.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
Unlike the temporary palace below, the room belongs to the old estate.
Around a wide bed dressed in white linen, dark carved posts catch the firelight after it crosses the cream walls.
Beyond glass doors overlooking the frozen lakeshore, snow passes through blackness over the water and appears only when the flakes catch the room's reflection.
On a silver tray, two bottles of water stand beside a covered plate. Someone has turned down the bed, leaving the upper sheet smooth in the low lamplight, while cedar from the fire mingles with winter roses near the windows.
Konstantin stands between me and the only exit, though I'm the one holding his shirt.
His gaze moves from my fingers to my face. "Tell me what you chose."
The desire I've carried since miniature golf tightens low in my body. My mouth dries despite the damp heat inside the dress.
"My prize is the same rule I offered you." I keep my eyes on his. "I want you to fuck me without a condom, and I want you to come inside me."
His fingers tighten at my waist, gathering the silk while his breath leaves through his nose, slowed by the effort it costs him.
"You could become pregnant tonight."
"I know." The words come easily now that we're alone. "I could get pregnant. I want this anyway."
He studies my face for any retreat. I give him none. "That's your decision?"
"Yes."
Konstantin reaches behind him and turns the lock.
"Then your prize begins now." He catches me at the nape, bringing my mouth to his with none of the restraint he showed in the conservatory. The kiss drives me against the door. Wood meets my shoulders through silk while his body closes over mine, hard from chest to thigh.
Into his hair, I drag both hands and ruin the neat sweep from the wedding, leaving dark strands loose through the gray. His mouth opens mine with the taste of coffee and mint served after dinner, while cedar rises from the warmth inside his collar.
One broad hand moves down my side, following the fitted dress until it reaches my hip. His fingers gather the skirt without concern for the silk. When he lifts it, cool air reaches my thighs before his knuckles brush the narrow band of ivory underneath.
Konstantin tears his mouth from mine to look down. "You wore this through the ceremony?"
"Larissa helped."
"I may have to kill Larissa."
"She would consider that poor gratitude."
The last word breaks when his palm covers me through the thin fabric. I'm already wet, the silk clinging between my folds as he presses two fingers along my shape.