Page 4 of BRATVA'S Poisoner Bride
Only awareness. A flash of recognition without familiarity and a quiet, steadyyesto a question I haven’t voiced.
Then she looks away, walking back to her father with the poise of someone who’s already survived the worst thing a man can do to a woman.
And suddenly the church feels too small.
A woman who can stand at the coffin of the man who meant to claim her, a man who may have destroyed her mother, and offer him nothing but silence… That woman isn’t fragile.
She’s sharp. Focused. Dangerous in ways men overlook until it’s far too late.
A feeling washes over me so strong I almost rock on my feet.
I want to know the shape of the truth she’s carrying. I want to know the story she’ll never tell out loud. I want to know why Piotr’s death feels less like decay and more like the end of a long, careful plan.
The priest lowers the casket lid with a thud that echoes through the chamber. People cross themselves; some begin to weep. The candles flicker. The incense swirls.
But my attention never leaves her.
Lukan leads her toward the exit. She walks with her chin high, shoulders squared, her breath even despite the weight of a dozen gazes pressing against her.
She doesn’t look back.
But I do.
And I know, down in the part of me that never lies, that something began here. Something old, inevitable, and sharp-edged.
Elizabeth
The kitchen is the only room in the house that still feels like mine.
Flour dusts the air in a soft cloud, catching in the light that pushes through the small window over the sink. My hands move on instinct. Measure, sift, stir, while my mind drifts somewhere between the past week and a future I haven’t dared look at yet.
The bowl is heavy under my palm as I turn it, folding butter into sugar, sugar into eggs. The rhythm calms me. There’s a comfort to baking that nothing else touches. Ratios. Heat. Time. You do the work, and something changes. Something transforms. The opposite of how it feels existing in this house.
The silence presses in, louder than any argument.
My father left early this morning. He didn’t say where he was going. He doesn’t say much at all to me now unless it’s sharp enough to cut.
You embarrassed me, Elizabeth. Leaving the wake so soon… people talk. They think you were ungrateful. He was to be your husband.
He hadn’t looked at me when he said it. Just stared past me, like I was another piece of furniture he regretted buying.
I scrape down the sides of the bowl with the spatula and focus on the pale, creamy mixture. It’s easier than thinking about the way his voice sounded. Not sad. Not grieving.
Accusing.
I could have told him the truth. That I left the wake because I couldn’t stand another second in that suffocating room, listening to strangers pretend Piotr was a good man. That every “he will be missed” made my stomach twist until I thought I’d be sick.
I could have told him that standing beside that coffin felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, and that I was already numb from the fall I’d taken years ago.
I could have told him that I didn’t leave because of Piotr.
I left because of the man standing across from me.
I see him again every time I close my eyes. The church. The candles. The coffin. And then his gaze, cutting through the space, pinning me in place like he’d been waiting his whole life to recognize something he found in me.
Diomid Agapov.
Piotr’s nephew.
