"Congratulations," he finally says, finding a new angle. "On the farce." He lets his gaze drag along the chapel stone and the iron fence and then back to my face like he is measuring.
"When you are ready to stop playing altar piece, I will be where the real city is."
"Keep it," I say, and the words arrive without ornament. "I already have a city."
I step around him and let the snow take some of the heat out of my skin. He doesn't touch me. There is a car idling at the curb with windows too dark for a January afternoon. The plate is a rental and the driver's hat is cheap.
The sight makes me think of the narrow room below our floors where metal sleeps and men learn to speak in short sentences. I don't look back. I don't give the car a second glance. But I count the seconds it takes for the engine sound to fade because habit is a religion.
The armory basement is square. Oiled steel rests in its racks with the hush of things built to obey. A ledger lies open to a page that welcomes a fountain pen. In the corner hangs a small brass icon. Men who count bullets don't forget to cross themselves before they carry them.
Dmitri is speaking Russian to two men. I know Misha by the weight of his consonants and Sasha by the careful echo he gives to orders. The words cut and settle.
This is not the language from the ballroom. This is for rooms where decisions have muscle.
I hearshape. Perimeter. Tail. Window. No heroics. Morozov. Misha answers with a sentence that sounds like a lock sliding. Sasha repeats a time and then shuts his mouth like a man learning.
Dmitri stands across the room, coat off, sleeves rolled just enough to show the edge of ink that lives in his skin. Even the tables sit square to the walls. A map is pinned flat with steel clips that don't slip.
He sees me and finishes the sentence he is in without urgency or haste. His hand goes flat. The men read it as dismissal without insult. They file past me and pretend not to breathe. I don't pretend. I breathe carefully because something is coming.
"I went to the chapel," I say. I don't sit. "He was waiting."
Something flickers along the angle of his mouth and is gone. He doesn't ask which he. There is only one whose presence turns the street into a camera. He meets my eyes, lines true up, and I keep my footing. That is his trick, and it is why I'm still standing.
"What did he want?" Dmitri asks. His voice is level, all record and no claim, like a ledger line waiting for ink. He stands a step away and leaves it there.
"To be seen," I say. "To tell me my engagement is a farce. To tell me my father is desperate and you are dangerous. To ask about the baby programs." I watch his face for that, because I want to see what control looks like when it is surprised.
He lets nothing break the surface. A beat. A count. The smallest tightening at the corner of his eye as if something in the machine acknowledges a new gear. "He asked about the program," he says, repeating, which is either a confirmation or a prayer. His hands lower to his sides. One finger taps his thigh once and then is still.
"He knows things he shouldn't. That is a leak. Someone is feeding him.” I kept my voice even.
"Good," he says. One syllable, flat and edged, not praise and not quite relief. He steps close enough that the distance thins, then stops because I'm the one who will decide how far this goes.
"Dmitri," I say, because I'm tired of rooms that require me to talk around the center. "He will keep coming. He thinks what he lost is a trinket he left under a chair."
He looks at the icon and then at me as if the two of us belong on the same wall. He holds my gaze until the seconds lose their place. The moment squares and waits.
"You shouldn't see him again," he says.
The sentence lands like a hand on a hot pan.
13
DMITRI
Isay it in the armory basement, steel and maps swallowing softness.You shouldn't see him again.The words sound like a field order in a room that smells of oil and cordite. I watch her jaw set. I feel the damage land. I have put a command where a vow should be. I clear the room, send the last report upstairs, and wash my hands at the slop sink until the water runs cold as repentance.
The service stair threads the bones of the house and trades iron and cordite for wax and myrrh. I take it to the undercroft that keeps its own hush. Tall tapers mark the icons. Red glass lamps hold their small planets of fire on dark wood. I send a message to Father Gavril. When he comes, I ask him to begin the rehearsal so I can turn what I broke with authority into something that lives under God. He studies me in silence, the way a craftsman tests a blade. Then he speaks. Rehearsals are not punishments. They begin only with the bride's willing presence. Invite her. Don't compel.
Lamp oil breathes honey into the stone. Father Gavril's hands move with the economy of a man who has folded grief into service. On the little table, beeswax tapers wait, their wicks trimmed and patient. A red thread lies in a neat coil, the silver crowns rest in their velvet box, and a small blade sleeps under linen. The Gospel carries a faint breath of myrrh and salt.
Here, the room is older than our passports and steadier than our politics. The saints look down with eyes that remember hunger and don't despise order. I touch my brow, chest, shoulder, and shoulder and ask for the discipline to make my mouth worthy of the work.
She steps in, her braid low, ribbon red as a mark that says, "I belong to my dead and to myself." The chapel lamp catches amber in her eyes. She bows to the icons, crosses herself with the small exhale of a woman who was taught to keep breath for prayer. Only then does she look at me, and what I see is not defiance for its own sake but the hard edge of a woman who will not be owned and who suspects I might try.
"I spoke as a guard, not as a husband," I say before the priest speaks. "It was the wrong shape of care. I will guard without closing your door."
