“Krasótka…” he whispers, voice thickening with heat and affection all at once.
And when he captures my mouth again, deep and certain, it is unmistakably the start of something that will unravel both of us all over again.
Epilogue
Callie
I never thought I’d wear white.
Not because I couldn’t picture it…but because life always seemed to have other plans. Harder plans. Ones that involved working double shifts and aching feet and long nights praying Gran wouldn’t slip away while I was earning just enough to keep her breathing for one more day.
But here I am.
Wrapped in white silk and tiny stitched crystals that sparkle like they’ve been sewn from starlight. My hair is curled and soft around my shoulders. My grandmother’s locket is warm and steady against my heart.
The room smells like fresh flowers and a future I never dared dream of.
Because hope lives here now.
It’s only been two weeks since that night, the wrong door, the right man, but everything is different. Everything I feared would be the end of me but ended up rewriting me instead.
I’ve spent years surviving in a world that didn’t care whether I lived or died. A world that didn’t even know I existed. And now here’s this dangerous, possessive, man offering me a futurecarved from obsession instead of emptiness. I know the risks. I understand the cost. And I still step forward.
Gran sits in the front row, not slumped or glazed over, but smiling. Bright and present. Her eyes a clear blue again, like the storms have parted long enough for her to remember the parts of her life that matter.
The new medication is working. The move saved her. Dariy saved her.
I swallow hard as the music shifts, quiet and reverent. The double doors open and I step inside, ready to make my way to Dariy at the front of the small room.
He doesn’t look like a man capable of ending lives with a pull of his finger or the flick of his wrist. Not in this moment. In this moment he looks like my future.
A charcoal suit tailored to perfection. His tie matches the violet accents of my bouquet. His eyes find me instantly, like nothing else in this room exists, and my knees almost give way under the weight of the way he looks at me. As if I’m not just a bride. As if I’m a miracle.
I walk towards him slowly, my steps measured. I can see the tension in his shoulders, the wild thing inside him howling to touch me now. And when he takes my hands in his, that wild thing tames instantly.
Because I’m the one who calms him.
The officiant speaks. Words about unity, about promise, about choices that bind. But all I hear is the sound of our breathing, synced like it has been since the moment I stepped into that room. Dariy’s thumb strokes over my palm once in a vow all by itself.
When it’s time for the rings, I can’t look away from him long enough to admire the way the diamond catches the light.
“Callie,” he says, voice low and steady, “I vow to protect what I love. And I love you.”
My heart… God, my heart.
I whisper my vow back, not poetic, not flowery. Just true.
“I’ll stand beside you forever,” I tell him.
He slips the ring onto my finger, sealing every promise beneath the metal.
The kiss is soft, but the way his slides his tongue against the seam of my lips promises me of what’s to come.
When we pull apart, applause ripples through the room, staff, nurses, Adrik and Jasmine, his other brothers keeping to shadows because the Korolyov’s never truly relax. But it’s Gran’s shaky little cheer and the way she claps with her whole frail body that has tears stinging my eyes.
We walk to her together. She cups my cheeks and tells me I look like my mother. Dariy’s hand settles on my waist and stays there, a silent promise: she will never face anything alone again.
As Dariy guides me through the courtyard toward the waiting reception table, a man steps forward from the shade of an archway. I recognise him instantly, even though we’ve never met, something about the cut of his suit, the sharpness in his eyes, the way the air shifts around him.
