Her chin lifts a fraction. The ribbon trembles once, then stills. She gives me no mercy in reply, only her quiet that saysearn it.
Father Gavril clears his throat, says the Pakhan will not crown his blood, that the honor belongs to two elders of theobshchakwho stand as witnesses, hands on the Gospel, hands on the iron key, while brigadiers hold the aisle. Hereminds Valentina that the red thread binds, the silver crowns bless, the salt cup seals, the black ribbon marks widows, the wax seal closes secrets, and the bell calls truth. Then he opens the service book to the marked page. "We rehearse words," he says. He reads the first line in Old Church Slavonic, consonants like river rock, vowels like open candles. He nods to me. "You know the cadence. You will carry her through it until it holds."
I answer the line with the weight it needs, not louder, not softer. The room receives it. He gives her the same line. She stumbles at the old shapes, tongue catching on a cluster that doesn't belong to modern speech. Her eyes flash irritation at herself. I stand half a step behind her and to the side. "Listen for the breath," I say softly. "Two beats here. The vowel opens, then you close it like a door against a draft." I show her with my mouth, not with touch. She takes the breath, opens the word, and the old syllable lands cleanly.
We move line by line, vow by vow, with the small and patient corrections that belong to work done honestly. Her voice grows sure within the antique grammar. Mine moves as if bone learned before muscle. I keep my hand at my side because she is not a soldier and I'm not a drill master. When she forgets to breathe, I breathe a measure where she can hear it. When she tenses at a word that cuts too close to an old wound, I say it first so the echo is mine, not Aleksandr's.
The red thread waits between us, the silver crowns asleep in their velvet box. Father Gavril gives the vow that lives nearest to my marrow, first in the church tongue, then in ours.To guard her life with my own. The syllables gather like storm light on the icons, deepening every color until evengold seems solemn. She looks to the icon of the Mother, then to me, a woman at a ledge searching for the next stone.
"I will speak it as truth," I say. My mother's hand is on my shoulder again, thin and warm with fever, three fingers pressing a cross into a boy's chest while a prayer turns his anger into a blade and not a stone. The vow is not new. Tonight, it has a name.
Valentina repeats the line. It breaks once on her tongue, then holds. She closes her eyes, and I see the past move through her like water.When she opens them, the silence is the kind that belongs in a temple and in a battlefield just before the first order. Father Gavril lets it sit. He doesn't hurry holiness.
We circle the rites. He touches the crowns but doesn't lift them, shadows crisscrossing his hands. He names the sequence for clarity—red thread at right wrists, shared cup, threefold circling, crowning by witnesses who will stand when we cannot. The small blood vow, a pinprick on each thumb, is because the Bratva insists that oaths tie families and not only lips. He says that any man who bends these words into leverage will be refused communion and protection both. Here, those are the same punishments.
I listen with my soldier's ear and with the part of me that kneels. I hear the policy in the prayer. The house will reduce access to the sacristy to two keys. Separate hands will fold the flower order and the choir list. The date will sit on no phone. Elders will sign the registry by initials, not by titles. Any mouth that repeats the altar's words for gossip will eat alone for a very long time. There is tact in this. There is steel in it. It honors the line between God's business and ours.
"To honor her heart above ambition." My throat tightens as if I have tried to swallow a dagger hilt-first. Ambition has always been the cleanest tool in my kit. To place her above it is a correction. I can see Anatoly in his office, silver hair bright against the window, deep lines cut by winters he refuses to name. He sees me as a threat. Still, he set his daughter above the seat, choosing a roof over a throne. I respect that choice. It mirrors my own.
Her voice quavers and then hardens. "To trust him with my secrets." She doesn't look at me. I don't ask for her eyes. Trust is a word I earn by refusing to pry where it would feel like trespass and by taking blows I could have avoided if I had chosen cowardice. I don't tell her any of that. She wants my discipline, not arguments.
When the last line closes, Father Gavril gives us the old Russian blessing that begins as a command and ends as an invitation. He ties the red thread around our right wrists without tightening, a rehearsal of binding with room to breathe. "You will carry this to the door," he says. "don't untie it until you touch the hall. Train your hands now not to pull away."
We walk the aisle with the red between us. It is such a simple thing. A thin strand that knows more history than I do, lying lightly over skin and pulse. She glances at me once, an angle of brow that asks whether I notice what she just learned. I do. She releases the thread first, at the line where the chapel ends and the house begins. I let it fall so the lesson belongs to her hand as well as to mine.
We cross the music room. Darkness clings to the walls, and the standing lamp beside the old piano keeps a small vigil. I go to it, drawn by the same unseen hand that lit a lamp inmy soul today. The brass casts a gentle halo across ivory and ebony. I sit, place both feet where they belong, and let a simple hymn loosen into a lullaby. The melody moves in slow, clean phrases, each note laying a path for the next.
She rests her palm on the back edge of the instrument and watches the rise and fall of my knuckles as they travel the keys, the motion steady as a river under ice. When a man watches a mouth, he seeks persuasion. When a woman watches hands, she seeks evidence.
She lowers onto the bench beside me, her heat settling through me without touch. I shift a little so the piano doesn't creak. She looks at my mouth then, perhaps to see whether the shape of the truth suits me.
I let my left hand hold a drone and draw a line with my right that moves like a slow path through new snow. Her breathing lengthens, and the circle of lamplight flickers in her irises, kindling the golden flecks of her eyes. Her eyes almost drop their guard. I keep the tempo patient, letting each phrase settle before the next arrives, until even the old piano seems to grow quiet. Outside the door, the house recedes, as if lenses had gone to sleep.
"Again," she whispers like the first hush of snowfall in a chapel yard, and I repeat the vow in Slavonic and then in English so that both parts of her faith can carry it. She mutters the second half under her breath. The sound wraps around the room like silk that remembers being a flag.
She turns her face toward mine. There is no snap or storm, only the small tilt of a woman deciding to find out whether a mouth can be a home. I stop playing with my right hand and let my left hand hold the last chord open until it fades. Then Itake her chin gently. Violence has taught me two kinds of strength, and the second is the one she wants. I kiss her slowly, with the certainty of a man who knows the floor will hold.
She makes a sound that lives somewhere between a prayer and a call to war. I answer it with my mouth, not with my hands. She tastes of clove and clean winter air and leans closer and doesn't flinch. I wait, and waiting turns into permission. My cross is a cool weight under my shirt, a reminder that reverence is a better teacher than desire ever was.
I rise, bring her with me, and don't break the kiss. The room beyond the music room is ours because I hold it so. The door stays open because secrecy is for strategy, not for love. I let her set the pace, and I keep it. When she steps back, I stop. When she comes forward, I meet her without taking the distance for free. Her fingers find the edge of my collar.
We cross a short stretch of shadow and lamplight toward the room that has a bed in it and no need for it to be an altar to anything except consent. I place my hand at the small of her back, light and steady, asking only.Yes, she answers with her body leaning into mine. Cloth yields. Skin finds air. I peel her blouse open, buttons scattering against the floorboards, and her breasts rise into my hands as if they were meant to be claimed there. Her breath stutters when my thumbs brush over her nipples, hard already, a sound catching in her throat that makes my cock ache.
She drags my shirt up and over, lips breaking from mine only long enough to tear it off me. Her nails trace the scars across my chest, sharp little reminders that I'm still flesh and not just steel. When her mouth follows her fingers,teeth grazing my skin, I growl low, the sound vibrating against her cheek.
I hook my hands under her thighs and lift her, pressing her back to the wall. Her skirt rides high, and I grind against the damp heat of her through lace, the friction making her moan into my mouth.
"Off," I mutter, yanking the panties aside until they tear, the sound loud in the quiet room. She gasps, half laugh, half outrage.
"You'll answer for that," she whispers, but she's already rolling her hips into me, already wet and open.
I sink to my knees again, this time not for patience but for hunger. My mouth seals over her, tongue driving deep, then dragging hard up to her clit. She cries out, hands flying to my hair, her thighs trembling around my ears. I lap at her, suck her, make her sob my name until her hips jerk and her slick runs down my chin. Before she can fall apart completely, I stand, grip her ass, and line myself up. Her eyes fly wide as I thrust into her in one stroke, burying myself to the hilt. Her cry tears through me, nails digging into my shoulders as her body clutches me tightly, hot, wet, greedy.
"Dmitri—oh, God," she gasps, back arching.
"Not God," I growl, pounding into her hard enough that the wall rattles. "Me."
Each thrust drives her higher, her cries turning ragged, wet sounds marking the rhythm of our bodies. I slam her down onto my cock, again and again, her cunt gripping me like afist, dragging me deeper. "You feel that?" I rasp, teeth biting her throat, marking her. "That's mine. Say it."
