We turn another corner. This house is insane. Wolves carved over half of the doors. Wolves on the wallpaper, wolves in the metalwork, wolves probably stitched into the damn bedsheets.
We stop at a heavy wooden door with two wolves snarling around a cross. Of course.
Luka knocks once. “Gospozha Volkova. Galina Ivanova is waiting.”
My new name stings.
Volkova.
It tastes wrong in my mouth, too many consonants, like I put on someone else’s skin. Anya Morozova wrote papers and argued about receptor binding over cheap wine. Anya Volkova belongs to the man who made her kneel on his office floor.
“Don’t call me that,” I mutter.
Luka gives me a quick sideways look. “You signed the contract.”
“I haven’t yet.”
“You will.” His tone is flat. “Better for everyone if you get used to hearing it.”
Before I can tell him exactly where he can shove his adaptation advice, the door opens.
A small woman stands there, blocking the doorway like a guard dog in house slippers.
She’s tiny—maybe five feet at most—but something about her makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Her spine is straight as a rod, her grey hair scraped back in a bun, and her eyes are the same grey as Roman’s.
“Devushka.” She takes one long look at me, from my scuffed boots to my tear-smeared mascara. “Pridyot. Tridtsat’ minut, chtob sdelat’ tebya nevestoy.”
The Russian hits me too fast. I catch “thirty minutes” and “bride,” and that’s about it. My brain is still stuck on the worddevushka. Girl. Diminutive. Not woman. Not doctor. Girl.
“I, uh… sorry,” I say. “My… Russian is rusty. I live in Basel now. Lived.”
Her mouth flattens. “Bozhe moy.”
She waves me inside and switches to English with a scowl. “Fine. English. You’ve been living with Germans too long. Come.We don’t have time to waste. I am too old to be chasing hysterical brides.”
Luka gives me a little nod and stays in the hallway.
The room is big, but it feels cramped because every surface is covered in something—linen, lace, boxes, old wooden wardrobes, a full-length mirror. There’s a faint smell of mothballs and tea and cigarette smoke, and underneath that, some heavy Soviet-era perfume.
The woman marches straight to a wardrobe, muttering to herself in Russian. She opens it and pulls out something long and white and horrifying.
A wedding dress.
My stomach drops so fast I have to reach for the nearest solid object, the end of a carved wooden bed.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
She ignores me. She shakes the dress out, and the silk falls in a heavy, glossy wave over the bedspread. It’s ivory, with a full skirt and lace sleeves and about a thousand tiny buttons marching up the back like a spine.
I want to set it on fire.
“Roman’s grandmother,” she says, like she’s ticking off a line on a form. “Galina Ivanova. I raised that boy after…” She makes a vague motion with her hand, like she’s swatting away a bad memory. “After everything. He was twelve. Too much blood for a child. Vadim wanted a weapon. I wanted him alive. We compromised.”
I don’t understand anything, as my brain is latched onto the cage she is holding.
“I can dress myself,” I say. My voice sounds thin and weird in here, like it doesn’t belong.
Her eyebrows go up. “Can you? There are forty-three buttons on this dress. Are you planning to grow a third arm? Or you wantto stand here and argue until Vadim comes himself to drag you to the chapel?”
