Page 73 of Dark King Daddy

He looked at me. His dark eyes held mine for a long moment—long enough to communicate everything he could not say in front of a priest and twenty witnesses. That he did not trust me entirely. That he loved his sister more than the alliance. That if I hurt her, the consequences would extend far beyond politics.

Then he took Ksenia’s hand from his arm.

He placed it in mine.

Her fingers were cool. Slim. They settled against my palm with a lightness that could have been calm or could have been the particular stillness of a woman holding herself together by force of will.

He held my gaze one second longer. Then he stepped back.

The next time I spoke to him, he would be my brother.

Ksenia and I stood together before the altar. My hand closed around hers. She did not pull away.

Father Alexei began the ceremony.

The Orthodox crowning ceremony is not a Western wedding. There is no giving away. There is no “speak now or forever hold your peace.” The priest crowns the couple—literal crowns, held above the head, symbols of martyrdom and responsibility. Marriage in the Orthodox tradition is not romance. It is martyrdom. You die to yourself and are reborn as something shared.

The words were in Russian. Old Church Slavonic, technically, the ancient forms that Lev had insisted upon for every family sacrament. I understood them the way I understood my father’s handwriting—imperfectly, through years of exposure.

Father Alexei held the crowns above us.

Ksenia’s fingers trembled inside mine.

One small tremor. A single involuntary contraction of the muscles in her hand. She was looking forward, her face composed, her posture correct. No one else would have noticed.

I closed my hand around hers. Tighter. Not crushing. Present.

She did not look at me. But her fingers steadied.

The crowns descended and rose. Descended and rose. The priest’s voice filled the church, ancient and certain, and the candles threw our shadows against the wall—two shapes joined at the hands, standing where my father’s coffin had stood.

The ceremony ended.

Father Alexei did not invite a kiss. Orthodox weddings often did not. The couple was married by the crowning, by the shared cup, by the procession around the altar. Physical display was not required.

Ksenia and I did not create one.

We turned together. We walked down the short aisle. The guests stood as we passed—Arkady and Nikita and Kiryl on one side, Anton and Uncle Kostya on the other. Yelena and Sal near the rear. Zoe, who had arrived that morning with the dress and a bag of emergency supplies and the expression of a woman who was deeply concerned and trying not to show it.

Outside, the November air hit us. Cold. Clean. Carrying salt from the water two blocks south.

Sokolov and Orlov soldiers lined both sides of the street. They did not cheer. They did not need to. Their presence was the celebration — two organizations standing together, armed and watchful, on a street in Brighton Beach where four days ago they might have been standing against each other.

I didn’t know how to feel.

The house at 46 Dover Street stood two blocks from the water in Manhattan Beach, a pale-stone building with deep-set windows and a walled garden that kept the wind from reaching the front door. I had bought it three years ago with money that was technically legitimate—proceeds from a Sokolov-owned import company that filed taxes and everything. It was the only place in my life that did not smell like Lev.

I had barely had time to make arrangements for our co-habitation, but I wanted to do something for her. Honestly, I had barely had time to even understand that I was married, that this was my new life, that this woman, the woman I’d been obsessed with for years, was my wife.

And I couldn’t even touch her without her permission.

I brought Ksenia through the side entrance. The household staff — a housekeeper named Galina and a security man named Pavel — stood in the front hall. They had been told to expect us. They had not been told what to expect.

Ksenia looked at the staircase, the pale walls, the dark wood of the banister. She took in the entryway with the same assessing gaze she had turned on Volna’s security — exits, sightlines, the particular geometry of a space she would need to understand.

“The east suite is yours,” I said. “Bedroom, bathroom, and a small sitting room. My rooms are on the opposite side of the house.”

I gave her the keys. All of them. Front door, side entrance, garden gate, the east suite itself. I gave her the security code — six digits, changed this morning — and the code for the alarm panel beside her bed.