“I need to go get ready.” Ivan gave my shoulders a squeeze before breaking away to speak with Rayko.
“Hi!” a sweet voice called out. “Poppy? You’re here.”
“I am!” I grinned at Katerina.
Brady gave her a spastic hug. “Can I hold Myla?”
I was about to tell him the infant was too small, but Katerina nodded eagerly. “Just like I showed you, okay?”
My little guy plopped onto the grass, crisscrossed his legs, and then cradled the bundle.
I stared.
Out in Carrington, my cousins would never have let Brady hold one of the newborns.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” Katerina gushed and then gave me a big squeeze. She was comfortable with my tiny human ball of fire holding her even smaller bundle of snuggles. Truly astonishing.
I hugged her back. “I am going to come visit you. I would have! But no one told me.”
“Pshaw, it’s not your fault,” Katerina let out a short laugh. “We were under orders to keep our distance until Ivan decided what to do with you.”
That sounded ominous.
It also explained a hell of a lot.
“That’s why I was allowed to come today,” I surmised, realizing that this kind of gathering must be frequent for this throng of people to be this close.
“Yeah, you accepted his hand in marriage.” Katerina gave me a confused look. “You’re one of us.”
“I did.”And if I hadn’t?
Ivan was never going to kill me. I knew that, the same way an animal knew they could trust a human. But what was the alternative? To be kept in the pretty little cage?
That was worse than death.
Shivers raced over my skin. I was suddenly very,verycold.
A drumbeat began. The booms were deep, steady—insistent.There was a primitive call to the tune, old and steeped in mystery.
“It’s starting!” Katerina whispered, voice full of excitement.
“What is?” I looked around.
The crowd made a semi-circle around the middle of the church lawn. Katerina scooped up Myla and gestured. A pipe joined the drum. The shrill notes clawed its way into my bones until I felt the eerie spell it cast.
People pressed close, murmuring prayers under their breath, their expressions somewhere between reverence and fear. Theywere staring at a patch of ground that was black. A few of the Made Men used rakes to pull at the earth.
Only…it wasn’t dirt.
It was a bed of coals, the remnants of a mighty bonfire.
Boom. Boom. Boom,sang the drum.
Ivan appeared without fanfare, slipping from the church like a shade. Barefoot, clad in white linen embroidered with scarlet thread, he seemed…distant. His gaze was unfocused. In his left hand, he carried a gun, red flowers wrapped around the muzzle, the trigger guard, and even stuck in the barrel. His knife, held in his good hand, was equally swaddled in crimson blooms.
Shock rooted me in place. I knew exactly what this was.
Nestinarstvo.
