Ciprian turns to look at his daughter as she poses, duckfacing alongside Agnes for a selfie. “Apparently, she prefers to spend married life with her husband beside her rather than locked in a cell. Go figure.”
“That might be overstating things,” I say while my mind still battles to accept that my long nightmare is finally over. The thing that I couldn’t do myself—that my friends couldn’t get Pavle’s authority to touch—has been granted by a man I hardly know. “Seward didn’t have the goods to lock me away.”
“Notyet,” Ciprian clarifies. “I did offer to hand the man enough evidence to ensure you spent the rest of your life in a prison cell. My daughter was not pleased.”
He speaks the words casually, like this is of no more concern than a conversation about the weather.
“With you behind bars, I imagine it would have taken all of six months before your team imploded.”
A chill settles in my lower back. Fury engulfs me as I stare at the man while he casually details how he would have ruined my life.
Warren shifts, moving a step towards me as I struggle to rein in my temper. I want nothing more than to choke Ciprian, make him beg for mercy, even though he just cleared my nemesis from my life.
“But Crimson decided she’d rather keep you,” he continues, oblivious to the war that’s raging within me. His blue eyes twinkle like winter sunlight striking off snow. I can’t imagine how such a warm woman came from this cold man. “You’re lucky my girl’s happiness is the most important thing in the world to me. This isn’t how I foresaw things going when you approached me with your ridiculously inappropriate request.”
I stare at the identification wallet in my hand. The dizzying sensation of escaping certain death by an accident of fate envelops me. Sweat beads on my forehead. The only emotion more powerful is the rush of love I feel for Crimson.
A love that I hardly dared to imagine would be reciprocated, not this early, but which I now find spilling out like the world’s warmest embrace.
Then Ciprian slaps me on the shoulder. “Welcome to the family, son. It’s our pleasure to have you.”
* * *
CRIMSON
I steal forbidden glimpses of Micah from the corner of my eye, guessing at the topic of conversation from the stunned expression on his face. Much as I’ve been avoiding him all morning, I’m glad to see him.
Gladder still to know that Dad has relinquished his awful plans.
Micah has an expression like my father stabbed him, but just realised it was only with a prop knife.
The moment Agnes catches sight of him, she rushes across the room, bundling him back in the hallway and explaining at a mile a minute the parts of his home where he’s allowed free range and the parts that are explicitly prohibited. At least until the wedding march begins to play.
Or the songI’musing for a wedding march.
I glance at the clock on the wall. Still a few hours to go, even though I’m clothed, hairdressed, and make-upped. I’m not sure I can wait that long. My stomach muscles are already pulled so tight that any more pressure and I’ll implode.
Greta heads my way and I offer an insipid smile. She holds out a small blue ribbon and I take it from her, wondering if this is a new way of tagging someone for later disposal.
“Thought that without your mother here, you might appreciate a few symbols to help you on your way into matrimony.”
Her eyes sparkle as she says the words, not pleasantly but as though she’s about to cross herself and recite a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God speech. Instead, she ties the ribbon around my wrist and pulls the cuff of my long sleeve over it to hide the trinket from view.
“It covers the something old, something borrowed, and something blue,” she says, patting my wrist absently as her attention returns to the men in the room.
From the moment she entered the house this morning, she’s kept each of them in her gaze unless they venture outside. A strange feat for someone who, according to Micah, has never shown much of an interest in the opposite sex.
“In what way?” I ask, forcing her attention back to me. If a girl can’t hog the limelight on her wedding day, when can she?
“Your father tied it around my wrist when he escorted me to our first formal dance. That feels like a lifetime ago, so it’ll do for the old portion. The borrowed is because I expect it back and the blue should be self-explanatory unless you need your eyes checked.”
“You dated Dad?”
She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, using the same gesture her son does but with a completely different expression in her eyes. “Is that all you heard?”
“Was I meant to hear something else?”
Her eyes crinkle at the sides and it takes me a moment or two to realise I might be staring at an honest-to-goodness smile. If so, it’s my first. I should treasure it.
