Page 41 of Marrying the Savage

What insult can be survived?

What alliance can be salvaged?

What does Sofia cost now?

Something inside me goes very still. Not calm. Something colder than calm.

I look past them, past the men with guns, past the flowers and the broken candles, and see the women crouched between pews. One girl no older than ten is crying silently into her mother’s side. Another woman shields a little boy’s face with her hands while he shakes against her lap. Katya has one arm around Anya and one around the twin beside her, all three of them pressed low as if making themselves smaller will make the bullets forget them.

This is because of me.

No. Not only because of me.

Because of all of us. Because of men who build cages and call them alliances. Because of pride. Because of old blood. Because I invited a monster into the room and every other monster decided to show his teeth.

But I’m the one standing in the center of it.

I look up at Damir. He’s already watching me.

Waiting.

Not begging. Not reassuring. Not promising safety, because at least he is not enough of a liar to offer me that.

Just waiting.

I take one breath. Then another.

“Okay,” I say.

My uncle turns toward me slowly.

Dmitri goes still.

Damir’s eyes sharpen.

I lift my voice so it carries past him, past the men with guns, past the ruined flowers and frightened guests. “I’ll marry you.”

The words move through the church like a second gunshot.

My uncle’s face drains of color. “Sofia.”

I don’t look at him. I keep my eyes on Damir because if I look anywhere else, I might lose my nerve. “I will marry you,” I say again. “But this stops. No more shooting. No more men bleeding on the floor. No more women and children cowering in pews because every man in this room would rather die than lower his pride.”

For a second, nothing happens.

Then my uncle says, “Are you insane?”

I finally turn to him. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like you have lost your mind.”

“No,” I say. “It looks like I found the only exit.”

His expression hardens. “You don’t understand what you are choosing.”

I glance around the church deliberately. At Damir’s men, standing steady. At my uncle’s men, pushed back and outmaneuvered. At Dmitri’s men, uncertain and angry. At the guests frozen in their seats.

“I understand enough.”