"I don't need a bodyguard," I say, and I hear how thin the sentence is the moment it leaves me. The memory of a hand on my hip last night is not the one that answers. The memory that answers is a different hand from years ago, taking something I did not understand I could refuse. I lift my chin. "I need my life." My thumb finds the edge of thecrucifix, as it always does when my father corners me with his decrees.
He looks at me. For a moment, he looks old, eyes gone opaque like river ice, mouth loosening at the corners, the polish thin enough to show the grain. "This marriage is not about love," he says. "This is about salvation."
"For whom?" I ask. "Me, or your name?"
"Both," he says without apology. "I will not lie to you."
A dozen arguments line up on my tongue. I'm not an ornament. I have work that matters beyond these walls. Even Dmitri deserves a choice. Behind them come quieter truths, candlelit. I respect vows. I believe in a God who sees. I'm my grandmother's blood, and I wear tradition like a necklace because it feels like protection. I remember my mother sitting with folded hands and a polite mouth while men engineered safety out of her house. I swore never to sit like that. I also remember when Dmitri corrected the night and met my eyes. He did not save me. He set the ground so I could stand on my own.
"This is not a cage," my father says, more softly than I expect, which is how I know he is afraid. "It is a roof. When the snow comes hard, you will be glad for it."
"I'm not cold," I say, which is pointless. Heat stings my eyes. Fury keeps it from falling.
He steps past me to the little side table where the candles rest between tubs of beeswax and boxes of matches that have seen more winter than I have. There is a worn leather prayer book there, the one my grandmother used. The spine is cracked, the corners rounded by the pressure of a thumbthat knew how to insist and how to praise. He picks it up, and for a second, I remember being small and watching those hands lift me out of a pew.
"Valya," he says, and when he uses the endearment in this room, I want to leave. He places the book in my hands like it is heavy and I'm strong. The leather is warm from his palms. I open to the page he has already marked with a bit of red ribbon that looks enough like blood to count as symbolism. The line waits there in a script that is not mine and will be if I consent.
I read it. The words lay themselves across my tongue like a dare and a promise, and they are very simple and very impossible.
I come to you with no secrets between us.
7
DMITRI
Iwant you to marry my daughter.My Pakhan's sentence settles in the room like ash after a fire. I refuse the comfort of looking away and let the silence press on the walls. Then, I place my palms flat on the desk, empty, so he knows the decision is not something I'm gripping to win a fight.
"Does she know?"
His mouth barely moves. "She will." He keeps his eyes on the window as if the winter could answer for him. Then he looks straight at me. "You will marry my daughter on Christmas Eve," he says, his voice flat. "The Vigil. A sacred rite with blood vows. Father Gavril will stand. The council will attend."
The quiet after that is not empty. It is a ledger where we both write.
"Did you ask her or inform her?" The room listens. Grammar is a kind of law.
"Inform her, then persuade. She will comply."
I draw the breath that lives in my spine and let it out without heat. "I will not force her. If she doesn't consent, there is no sacrament to speak of. I will not put my mouth to a vow and turn it into leverage." He takes his glass and sips. Once.
Lamplight draws a low ember out of the oiled grain. The muted polish of the wood keeps still as judgment. Anatoly doesn't answer for a count of four, which is how I know he is irritated, not surprised. He takes another small sip, sets the glass back with the same care, and looks at me fully.
"You are romantic," he says, making the word sound like praise he doesn't intend.
"I'm orderly." I let the truth sit bare. "I will take the engagement if she agrees. If she doesn't, I will still hold the roof and keep her name clean and settle the lines that need settling. My work doesn't change."
He tilts his head so slightly, most men would miss it. "She is my daughter. The house needs this."
"The house needs truth spoken in a church," I say, and my voice stays level. "If she comes to the altar, she must walk to it because she has decided to keep what she says there."
"You will discover I'm not wrong about her," he says, and now the corner of his mouth offers a thin version of what other men would call humor. "She is her grandmother's blood. She knows what a vow is."
"So do I," I say, and my hands are still and open. I'm not here to win an argument. I'm here to choose the terms under which I can keep breathing without lying.
He leans forward the width of two fingers on the desk, and I see the moment his body remembers its edges. "You want the seat.Everyone with eyes knows this." His eyes narrow. "You think you have earned more than I have given. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps it is not. If you marry her…" He leans back. "You will be closer to it than any man alive. Are you prepared to choose her when the seat demands a pledge? She is the vow."
I feel a private vow stir the way a river stirs under winter skin. "The seat can learn to live with being second." I deny him an answer.
He watches me with the evaluation of a craftsman tapping a blade.
