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GALANA

I’ve been awake since four. In that time I’ve made syrniki, two loaves of black bread, and a medovik that won’t be ready until tomorrow. I’ve also made no decisions at all about what to wear.

The kitchen smells like butter and scorched honey. There’s flour on my forearms and a smear of condensed milk on the cuff of my cardigan, and every flat surface has something cooling on it. The medovik sits in the fridge under plastic wrap, all twelve layers of it.

Mama’s recipe. She used to make it for birthdays.

Today isn’t anybody’s birthday. Today is Saturday, and at ten o’clock a man I’ve never met is going to ring our doorbell and look at me like I’m a decision that’s already been made.

I wipe down the counter for the third time.

“You need to relax,” Milana says from the doorway.

She’s in pajama shorts and one of Papa’s old sweatshirts, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, her hair piled on top of her head. She crosses the kitchen, takes a syrnik straight off the cooling rack and bites it in half.

“Those are for later.”

She chews. “You made forty of them, Galya. Who’s eating forty pancakes?”

“Theo might come,” I murmur absently.

“Theo would probably eat forty pancakes.” She considers that, then takes another one. “Fair.”

On the windowsill above the sink, the tulips I bought are starting to droop. Their pink heads hang over the edge of the vase. I should throw them out.

Zhenya comes in next with her laptop under her arm, already dressed, already frowning. She sits at the end of the table and opens the lid.

“I have more on him.”

My stomach drops. “I didn’t ask you to look.”

“I know, but I did it anyway because I’m a good sister.” She turns the screen toward me, then turns it back when she sees my face. “Caleb Reznikov. Thirty-eight. His cousin is Ivor Reznikov. Most of the family business is in Europe, but Caleb’s been in Chicago for at least ten years. Private security. Very private. No arrests. No social media. One photograph, from the masquerade a couple years back, and he’s turned away from the camera in it.”

“That’s a theme,” Milana says. “Papa really liked men who hate photographs.”

“Papa liked men he could trust,” Zhenya replies. “Or men he had something on.”

The kettle starts to whistle. I lift it off the heat before it screams and pour water over the tea leaves in Mama’s blue pot, and I keep my back to them both.

Viktor read my name sixth. After Arina’s, and Evaria’s, and Zhenya’s name, which she still hasn’t said out loud. He read it in that dry, tired voice, the same way he’d read everyone else’s.

Galana Yaroslavovna Maximova is to marry Caleb Reznikov.

That was all. Arina got a groom she’s known for six years and hates on principle. Evaria got a fighter with a sister and a story. I got a name and one photograph of the back of a man’s head.

“You don’t have to do this,” Arina says.

I didn’t hear her come in. She’s leaning against the doorframe in a gray sweater, arms folded, her blond hair scraped back in a ponytail so tight it looks painful. There are shadows under her eyes. She’s been sleeping badly since the funeral. So have I. I hear her pacing at night.

“I know,” I say.

“I mean it. If he walks in and you don’t like him, you tell him to leave. If you can’t tell him, you tell me, and I’ll tell him.”

“She knows, Arina,” Zhenya says.

“I’m just making sure,” she snaps.

“I know,” I say again, a little louder this time.