Not her face. But the shape of her. The way the ivory silk catches the light the same way it must have caught it twenty-five years ago when Marina Agapova stood in front of a different mirror and smoothed her hands over the same fabric and tried to steady her nerves.
I press my palm flat against my stomach and breathe.
"You look incredible," Grace says from behind me. She's sitting on the edge of the bed with Lorcan on her lap, already dressed in a soft blue dress with her hair pinned up. Lorcan is in a tiny suit looks more adorable than ever.
"She's right." Iris appears in the mirror behind me, holding a pin between her teeth. She's in dark green, her hair loose, looking so much like Connor that it makes my chest ache. "That dress was waiting for you."
"Don't make me cry," I say. "I just did my makeup."
"She's been doing her makeup for an hour," Katya calls from the bathroom, where she's been sitting on the edge of the tub eating a cinnamon roll and supervising. "If she cries now, westart over, and I am not sitting in this bathroom for another hour."
"You've been eating, not supervising," Tanya says, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed. She's in a deep burgundy dress that makes her look sharp and elegant, which is exactly what Tanya always looks like.
"I can do both."
There's a knock at the door and Saoirse steps in, and the room goes quiet.
She's wearing pale pink. Her eyes are bright and glassy, and when she sees me, her hand comes up to cover her mouth.
"Oh, Anya."
"Don't," I say, blinking hard. "If you cry, I cry, and Katya will kill us both."
"I will," Katya confirms, hoisting herself from the side of the tub and appearing in the doorway.
Saoirse crosses the room and takes my hands. She looks at me the way I imagine she looked at my mother on her wedding day, with love and pride and a grief that's gentle enough to sit alongside the joy without ruining it.
"Your mother is here," she says softly. "I can feel her. She's in every stitch of this dress."
My throat closes. I squeeze Saoirse's hands and nod because I can't speak.
"Right." Saoirse straightens, gathering herself with the efficiency of a woman who has managed a Bratva family for decades. "The sapphire bracelet?"
I hold up my wrist. It catches the light from the window.
"Grace's veil?"
Grace produces a short, simple veil from behind her and stands to pin it gently at the crown of my head. It's delicate and pretty and perfect.
"And Iris's contribution?" Saoirse raises an eyebrow at her daughter; her mouth pulled in a tight line of mock disdain.
Iris grins. "Handled."
I don't elaborate on what's underneath the dress. Iris chose well. White lace, simple, the kind of thing that looks innocent until it's all you're wearing. I put it on this morning and stared at myself in the mirror and thought about Connor's hands and how big they are and how carefully he touched my face last night and how I want him to stop being careful and tear this lace to confetti.
"Then we're ready," Saoirse says. "Diomid is waiting downstairs."
My brother is standing in the foyer in a charcoal suit, looking like he slept about as well as I did, which is to say barely. Beside him is Elizabeth, his wife, dark-haired and beautiful and so heavily pregnant that she's holding her lower back with one hand and their daughter's hand with the other. Yelena is two, with Diomid's serious dark eyes and Elizabeth's soft mouth, and she's wearing a white dress with tiny flowers embroidered on the hem that she's already managed to get grass stains on.
"Yelena, don't eat the flowers," Elizabeth says, gently extracting a petal from her daughter's fist.
Diomid looks up when I reach the bottom of the stairs. His expression goes through about six things in two seconds, pride and grief and protectiveness. He clears his throat and adjusts his cufflinks.
"You look like Mom," he says.
"Yeah," I agree on a breath, because I do, and I’ve never felt more beautiful.
He offers me his arm.
