Page 4 of The Pakhan’s Stolen Bride

I try to twist away, but he’s strong in his desperation.

He’s sobbing now, pressing his face into the small of my back as bullets whistle through the air around us.

One hits the heavy gold chalice on the altar, sending it spinning with a loud clang.

"Get up, Mikhail! Fight!" my father yells from behind a fallen marble pillar.

"I can't! He'll kill me!" Mikhail wails.

The gunfire from Ilya’s side stops abruptly.

The silence is even more terrifying than the noise.

I’m standing alone in the center of the altar, a white target against a backdrop of ancient stone.

I look down. A shadow is falling over me.

Ilya is standing right there.

He’s walked through the gunfire like it was a light drizzle.

There’s a streak of blood on his cheek—not his, I realize—and his obsidian eyes are burning with a dark, manic light.

He looks at me, then his gaze drops to the man cowering behind my dress.

"Mikhail," Ilya says softly. "You really are a pathetic little worm, aren't you?"

"Ilya, wait⁠—"

Mikhail never finishes the sentence. Ilya raises a matte-black handgun, the movement so fast I almost miss it.

Pop. Pop.

Two suppressed shots. I feel the impact through the fabric of my dress.

Mikhail’s grip on my hips goes slack.

He doesn't even make a sound, just slides down the back of my legs and hits the floor with a heavy, wet thud.

I don't look back. I don't need to.

I know exactly what color the blood is on the white lilies.

It’s the same shade that stained my mother’s favorite rug.

The same iron-heavy scent that has lived in the back of my throat since I was three years old.

Everything goes grey. The screaming guests, the shouting guards, the ringing in my ears—it all fades into a dull, distant hum, like a radio tuned to a dead frequency.

I’m staring at Ilya, but I’m not really seeing him. I’m seeing a ghost.

I’m seeing the end of a life I never really got to start.

I try to draw a breath, but my lungs feel like they’ve been filled with wet cement.

I’m gasping, short, shallow bursts of air that hit the back of my throat and die there.

My chest is tight, my heart a panicked bird battering itself against the cage of my ribs.