The blood.
Roman is barely conscious against an overturned chair with his bride kneeling over him in gore and gunpowder.
Chernov drops to one knee. “Pakhan. Tsaritsa.”
One by one, the others follow, eleven men kneeling on marble slick with the blood of the old regime, pledging themselves to whatever rises from the ashes.
The entire room is bowing except for Roman and Galina, and Luka, who stands guard at the door with his weapon still raised.
Galina steps forward from her position near the service entrance, and the captains watch her, registering the woman who has survived three generations of Volkov bloodshed and is still standing while men half her age kneel on marble.
“The old empire is dead,” she announces. “What rises from its ashes serves the Pakhan and Tsaritsa equally, or it doesn’t serve at all. Ponimayete?”
“Da,” the captains respond in unison, their voices blending into a single sound of submission. “Ponimayem.”
We understand.
* * *
I guide Roman to a chair that isn’t covered in viscera, easing him down.
Galina appears beside me with a medical kit.
“He’ll live,” she tells me quietly while I work to suture what I can reach, to pack what I can’t, to stop the bleeding that keeps trying to steal him from me. “Volkov men are stubborn that way. They survive things that would kill reasonable people because they’re too arrogant to admit they should be dead.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.” Her hand finds my shoulder, squeezes once with strength that belies her age. “But it’s true. He survived the crypt, the river, the factory. He’ll survive this, too, especially now that he has something to survive for.”
Roman’s hand finds mine, stilling the needle mid-stitch, and I look up to find him watching me with an expression that makes my throat tight with emotions I don’t have time to process.
“We did it,” he says quietly, only for me.
“We did.” I squeeze his fingers. “Vmeste.” Together.
“There’s no throne without you. There never was. From the moment you walked into my house, I knew. I knew you would either save me or destroy me, and I was right about both.”
His blood soaks into wood that has held this dynasty together for a century.
I stand beside him with my hand on his shoulder.
Galina moves to stand on his other side, completing the picture—Pakhan flanked by the women who will burn the world before they let anyone take what they’ve claimed.
“The old way is finished,” Galina says to the assembled captains. “What comes next will be different. Better, if they’re wise enough to build it that way. Worse, if anyone tries to drag us back to what we were.”
Her hand finds Roman’s cheek, and she blesses him.
“Your mother would be proud,” she tells him, and her voice breaks for the first time since I’ve known her.
Sirens wail in the distance.
Getting closer.
“We need to move,” Luka says from the doorway. “Interpol’s approaching the estate perimeter. Eleanor Keene, Roman, the one from Geneva, has warrants. We have to go now.”
Roman tries to stand.
Can’t.
