58

I had imagined my wedding day a hundred times. It was impossible not to, given the reason Alessandra had sent me abroad. I’d pictured it all so clearly—a gown, Daddy and Godmother Althea, a priest. Rings at Saint Christopher’s, candles in Arbor Hall.

In Stupka-Zamok, my wedding day meant no family, none of the rites of my religion. It meant dressing alone in the gown Baba Yaga had supplied, with its sheer gunmetal chiffon layers, its silver embroidery. It was a dress for an ash-girl.

It meant waking to Aleksei, his thin frame curled up across a pile of pillows, his hair a shock of black against the sheets.

We had both come of our own accord, for our own reasons, and seen and done and learned hard things.

Aleksei had found that this place was not who he was. And I had learned that I could be sharp, and fierce, without betraying the person I wanted to be.

While Aleksei dressed, I prayed the Rosary. My fingers longed for the comfort of my old prayer beads or the knotted fabric of my makeshift version—abandoned now in the cellar closet—but even without them, I knew the sequence of prayers, etched into my mind by years of quiet meditation.

When I was done, I offered my own requests.

I prayed for Torden and the Beholder crew, locked away, that their guards would not harm them. I prayed that the Rusalki would forgive Aleksei for what he had done, and that we could restore their children to safety. And I prayed for the servants and the children and my friends and the other innocents inside this tower, that the end of the day would find them safe and whole, no matter what came to pass.

A knock sounded at our door. Aleksei opened it and greeted our guards.

They led us upstairs—up, up, up we climbed, to the very top floor, Aleksei’s hand on my back—and beyond.

On the roof of Stupka-Zamok, fourteen floors above the ground, the tsarytsya waited for us. And below, all the city stood watch.

Men and women pushed and shoved for a better view on one side, and on another the little pestykk waited in their ranks. Their voices rose like a cold wave as I faced my groom.

I had pictured so many faces across from me, so many hands reaching for mine on this day.

Peter, with his bright laugh and his bright eyes and the gap between his teeth.

Bear, wry and smiling, a flower in his hands.

Torden, red-haired, red-bearded, steady and kind. His ring sat on my right hand, even now, but today I would swear on its rose-gold band to be faithful to someone else.

I’d never pictured facing Aleksei, gray-uniformed, his dark hair tied back with white. Kohl smudged around his eyes was the only nod to the occasion.

Aleksei. My sometime enemy, sometime ally, now friend. Would I have to kiss him at the ceremony’s end? I tried to envision it, tried to imagine being his wife. It felt like visualizing myself beside King Constantine in England: impossible. My mind rejected it.

I looked around, hoping despite myself that the Rusalki were already here, waiting to fight. But besides Aleksei, I saw only enemies; we stood before Baba Yaga, with Sunset and Midnight at her sides. Polunoshchna was watching my face, trying to decide if I had won today or if she had.

“Bow, Zolushka,” Baba Yaga said softly.

I bent, and the tsarytsya produced a crown from a cushion. Its arching sides and its base were crusted with diamonds, emeralds, and pearls, and it sat heavy on my head. A great murmur went up from the crowd.

“The Württemberg Crown,” she said lightly. “It looks well on you.” The tsarytsya’s own crown was as grand as mine, gold and red velvet and decked with two-headed birds of prey.

Polunoshchna looked murderous at this. But I wasn’t happy, either.

I was never born to wear a crown. And I did not want this stolen piece of finery that told the world I was heir to Grandmother Wolf, empress of the mortar and pestle and her armies of devouring teeth.

“Come you here of your own accord, Seneschal-elect Selah of Potomac?” she asked, her voice bubbling like a cauldron.

They were not the vows I had dreamed of. They were the nursery rhyme I had feared since childhood.

I ransacked the crowd with my gaze, searching, my vision blurring, pleading with the faces I saw to be the ones I longed for. But there was no one.

“Selah,” Aleksei whispered, reaching for my hands. He looked sorry, so sorry.

I had done my best to survive, had hoped to be rescued, had tried to escape. I had bargained to protect Torden, had schemed to deliver the city into the hands of those to whom it belonged.

Torden’s life was enough. I would marry Aleksei, and be grateful his brother would live.

There was nothing to be done but do this.

“Yes,” I answered Baba Yaga, certain as the stone beneath us.

“Rankovyy, come you here of your own accord?”

“Yes,” Aleksei said simply.

The tsarytsya turned again to me. “Will you be wife to this man?”

I nodded. My throat was tight.

Again, again, my eyes again combed the crowd for the Rusalki. But they were nowhere to be seen. I was all that stood between the Wolves and Torden.

How I wished he were standing across from me today. How I wished I were holding his hands instead, broad and warm. Aleksei’s fingers were cold as bones in mine.

The tsarytsya raised a stone-gray eyebrow. “The word, Seneschal-elect.”

“Yes.” I choked it out, trying to laugh, as if I were merely nervous and not on the brink of collapse. “Yes.”

Aleksei echoed my vow when it was his turn.

Baba Yaga turned one last time on me. “As a Wolf of the Imperiya Yotne, will you honor the pack in all your doings, sparing not even your mate, should its hunger require he be sacrificed?”

I drew back ever so slightly. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. This marriage wasn’t about Aleksei and me. It was about the tsarytsya, like everything else in her world.

I didn’t blame the Rusalki for not coming. I didn’t blame the Leshii and the Vodyanoi for abandoning Aleksei and me to our destruction.

“Yes,” I said for the third time, sealing my fate.

I stared down at the crowd, studied their curious faces, their squinting eyes.

I’d rolled the dice, played the tsarytsya for the city, and lost. I’d failed every one of these people.

Then, suddenly, at the edge of the gray slush of the crowd, I spotted a face. A face I knew.

I drew in a low, sharp breath.

Homer.

He wore a gray uniform but I would have recognized his ruddy face and iron hair and iron eyes anywhere. His arms were crossed over his barrel chest.

I thought he’d been captured. But there he was. My knees threatened to buckle.

Perrault pressed in beside him, slipping from a nearby alley. His clothes were plain and his hair was cropped close to his skull, but he was a fox among Wolves, as sure as I lived.

He wasn’t in prison.

And if he had not been captured, he hadn’t betrayed me. Polunoshchna was a liar.

Perrault stood outside Baba Yaga’s tower, waiting for it to turn and face him.

I didn’t see Lang. But Yu stood at Perrault’s side.

One face. Then another.

Bear. The prince of England, who had broken my heart by accident. His blue eyes were burned into my memory.

And another.

The girl—a girl whose name I did not know, but who had fought alongside Bear the day he defeated the Duke of Cornwall. Aleksei had just spoken with her.

Her breast pocket was stuffed with yellow cowslips.

My eyes raked the crowds, frantic. Dozens of women slowly drew near, forming rows close—so, so very close—behind the ranks of the little pestykk.

I turned to Aleksei, my eyes wide.

And then the explosions began.