Page 23 of Arranged for the Russian Pakhan

Rejoice, O Isaiah, the people fill a holy place with holy song once more. The Virgin was with child, and bore a son, Emmanuel, God and man.

Irina and I walked those circles with our eyes locked, once. Even as she kept blinking through her tears, she absorbed the promises my eyes made her.

I can’t look at Darya.

Irina and I almost had a daughter. Her name would’ve been Anfisa; our flower. Who never bloomed. With her, Irina too had withered, crushed by complications I should’ve seen coming and hadn’t. Both losses haunt me. What’s the weight of a crown in front of that boulder on my back?

Here, the crowns are removed from our bent heads. The priest anoints us with a final blessing, as if those save anything or anyone. In tandem, my bride and I turn to face the congregation.

It’s done.

What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.

But God can, can’t He? He has before.

***

I try to roll the agitation off my shoulders, and it doesn’t work. This day is fucking endless. Such an exercise in torture that one wouldn’t think it’d be possible to make it worse—but it is.

“Introduce us to your lovely bride,” a man says, gesturing to the woman by my side. The woman who has remained by my side since we descended from the altar, as a matter of fact.

What do I say? I’d love to, you moldy motherfucker, but I don’t know your fucking name right now. Yeah. Somehow, I don’t see that going over too well.

My mouth opens, then closes, like a fish.

Another voice fills the vacuum, “Oops. He’s too dazzled by his bride right now to fathom introductions. Luckily, his lovely bride can produce herself, Mr. Belova.” Darya holds out her hand, allowing him to take it and press his wilted lips to her knuckles. The black diamond weighing her hand down winks in the afternoon light. “I’m Darya Yuri.”

“Zakharov,” I correct automatically.

“I was getting there, malysh.” She clucks her tongue at me. She’ll have to come up with the cover for why my jaw drops over her casual issuance of an endearment. “I’m hyphenating.”

What... the actual fuck?

“A representation of two great families,” Belova commends.

“Absolutely.”

I tune out for the rest of the exchange. When the waiter swirls around with a tray our way, fucking finally, I pluck a flute of champagne from it. And then another so that I can hand the first to my unexpected savior. Her pristine smile never falters. It still makes my teeth clench in annoyance at the surprise that flashes in her eyes.

Jesus, I’m not that much of a bastard, am I? It must not matter to her, regardless. Her gaze slides back to a different guest, seamlessly replying about some recent addition to Belova’s art collection, and she still manages to shock the hell out of me by guiding my hand to her hip.

Never—never would I have believed you if you were to tell me that Darya Yuri would lead my hand around her body and stake my hand in a spot like it’s mine to claim. And still, that’s reality today.

It helps a little to discover within minutes that it’s meant to be a leash. One she utilizes deftly, guiding me through the party, and digging her talons into the inside of my wrist when she lines up the pathway for my response. Every time, it undoes me. I’m sure I’m failing to school my features, too, no matter how adept I typically am at the task.

I expected a production from her today. All month, she’s given me enough previews and my cards enough of a workout to assure me of that. Even some frigid disdain is warranted, given how this has come together. Not for a second have I mistaken Darya’s enthusiasm for planning as excitement about being bound to me.

It’s safe to say I couldn’t have predicted she’d carry me through this event like a yoke on her back, without complaint, with a fucking gun to my head. Not in a million years.

It just about cuts me off at the knees.

To the point that it’s a sick kind of gratitude that burns me blue when Darya, at last, deposits me with Anastasia with a private, withering look and goes off with a gaggle of her sisters.

An hour and a half into this marriage, and I’ve already failed her.

In theory, this tuxedo is tailored to the most specific measurements. But it feels like a strange and suffocating garment. It occurs to me in the middle of the spectacle of a reception that it’s my skin I feel this way about: too tight around my bones, squeezing in protest as it’s stretched beyond its limitations.

Stasi doesn’t get much of a chance to talk me through it before the music cuts off, and I startle at a hand slipping into mine.