I don't answer, which is an answer, and Ma knows it. She sighs, the long, slow kind that means she's already given in but wants me to know it cost her.
"If Diomid agrees," she says. "And only if Diomid agrees. This goes through Liam and through proper channels. You don't get to barge into my conservatory and claim a girl like she's a prize at a carnival."
"I didn't claim her. I offered. She accepted."
"Connor."
"Ma."
We stare at each other. After a moment, she shakes her head softly in resignation, and I know I've won this round.
I push off the wall and walk back into the conservatory. Anya is exactly where we left her, perched on the edge of the sofa with her hands wrapped around a teacup that's probably gone cold. Iris is hovering in the doorway, eyes wide, clearly dying to know what's happening.
I catch Iris's eye and she mouthswhat the hellat me.
Anya looks up when I sit down across from her. The same steady gaze. The same refusal to flinch. Up close, in the lamplight of the conservatory, she's even more beautiful than she was in the foyer, and I have to remind myself that beauty isn't the point. The point is that the Council wants marriages and Diomid's sister needs a husband who won't kill her. The bar is underground and I'm still barely clearing it.
"So," she says. "Connor."
"Connor," I confirm.
She nods and takes a sip of her tea. Cold, judging by the face she makes, but she drinks it anyway. "Are you going to ask me anything? Or did the eavesdropping cover it?"
Something pulls at the corner of my mouth. She's got a bite to her. I didn't expect that, not from a woman who walked in here shaking and desperate. But the desperation is settling now, hardening into something sharper, and I realize that what I mistook for fragility is actually just a woman who had to hold herself together long enough to get through the door.
Now that she's through it, the spine is showing.
"You said yes without thinking,” I say, “but I know the position you’re in, and I want you to know that Rafferty isn’t married yet either. So, there you have options, is what I’m trying to say."
She sets the teacup down. "No. You offered, I accepted. I’ve made my choice. Unless you’ve decided you don’t want a bride with as much baggage as I have."
She's looking at me again with those gold-flecked eyes, steady and unflinching, and I think,fine.I'll be the better option. I'll be the lesser evil.
"Liam's calling your brother," I say. "If he agrees, this happens. If he doesn't..." I trail off because I don't know how to finish that sentence. If Diomid doesn't agree, she goes back. She becomes the fourth Mrs. Kuznetsova, and I marry whoever the Council throws at me while spending the rest of my life remembering the woman who said yes without flinching.
Anya
Saoirse takes me upstairs herself.
She doesn't hand me off to anyone, doesn't call for a housekeeper or point me in the direction of a hallway and wish me luck. She walks beside me with her hand on my elbow, steady and warm, guiding me through the house like I'm something precious she doesn't want to drop.
The guest room is at the end of a long corridor on the second floor. It's beautiful in the way everything in this house is beautiful, understated and old and real. A large bed with a cream quilt, heavy curtains pulled shut against the dark night outside. There’s a dresser with a mirror that I can look in without hating what I see staring back at me.
"There are towels in the bathroom," Saoirse says, nodding toward a door on the far wall. "And I'll have Iris bring you something to sleep in. Are you hungry?"
I open my mouth to say no, but my stomach answers before I can, a low growl that makes Saoirse's eyebrows rise.
"I'll take that as a yes." She squeezes my arm. "I'll send something up. You don't have to come down if you're not ready."
"Saoirse." I catch her hand before she can leave. "Thank you. For not turning me away."
She looks at me, and for a second, I see my mother in the way her expression softens. In the way she holds space for someone else's pain without making it about herself.
"Your mother was my dearest friend," she says. "And you are always welcome in this house. That hasn't changed and it never will." She pauses. "Get some rest, Anya. You're safe here."
She closes the door behind her, and I stand in the middle of the room and breathe.
For the first time in three days, there's no walls closing in on me, no conversation to eavesdrop on, no clock ticking down to the end of the week. I'm in the Orlov house. I've made my play. And a man with a scar and a dead eye and a voice like gravel just offered to marry me, and I said yes, and now I'm standing in a guest room that smells like lavender and trying to figure out when my life became this.
