Again and again, I let my eyes sweep back and forth across the church, desperately urging myself to wake from this nightmare. Telling myself that it wasn’t real, that the scent of incense and mildew was in my head, that the chill in the air was just me shivering in the bed I still shared with Vasile, that at any moment he would turn and wrap his arm around me and I’d be comforted, knowing that we were together.
But none of that was true. The nightmare was real, and I was stuck in it for the rest of my life.
If I turned to go, the rats would seize me. If I escaped, my parents would be killed, and eventually so too would I.
I couldn’t bear to think of it. I couldn’t even let my mind gloss over that sadness. Forward was my only choice. And so I took another step down the aisle towards my doomed future life.
Once I arrived at altar, I refused to look at Petre. I would not give him the respect of my gaze and attention.
I stood beside him, straight and cold, looking up at the priest, who looked shocked by my appearance, disheveled as I was, a smug satisfaction that I came to him on my terms. Wild and furious.
Let them all stare at the dirt and bruises. Let them all know what the man standing beside me had done. The priest cleared his throat, avoiding my gaze, and began to address the congregation in Latin, as was the way of all ancient Praquean royal weddings.
“In nomine patris et fili et spiritus sancti,” the priest droned, running all those ancient words together as if they were one.
He signaled to the crowd to be seated. But as the hush of five hundred sitting guests filled the huge cathedral, one person didn’t move.
My father.
I turned to look at him. This was the part of the service when he too was supposed to step forward to take my arm, then hand me to Petre, symbolically giving me away.
As if he hadn’t already done that very thing months ago at that cursed poker table.
I stared at him hard. But he met my angry, conflicted gaze with nothing but sorrow in his eyes. He took me in, concerned at the state of me no doubt, then for one second, he gave me the smile that I had not seen since I was a child.
It was the smile of fishing together on Sunday afternoons, of reading books together, of gobbling up my mother’s fresh ushtapaka dumplings until we were both covered in powdered sugar like snowmen.
In that smile, I saw my dad. The man I loved with my whole heart.
“I cannot let this marriage go forward,” my father bellowed, filling the cathedral with his booming voice.
The crowd gasped and chittered with whispered confusion. Turning to my father, I was on the brink of asking if he was sure, if he had thought it through, but before I could speak, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close.
“No, father.” I begged knowing the consequences if his debt was not repaid.
But, before he could re-consider, Petre came up right behind him, facing me from behind my father, and eyed me with the most venomous gaze.
“You fucking people. You thought I didn’t expect this? Some heroic family bullshit at the last minute? You made a deal. Your daughter or your life. Now, I want both.” he hissed. From his pocket, he pulled a glinting knife.
And drove it straight into my father’s back.
I screamed. My mother screamed. The nightmare was worse than I’d ever believed.
In my arms, my father buckled against me, gasping and staggering forward as the church erupted in chaos. Screams from the guests, some rushing to leave, others stepping in to force them to stay. Then, everything became dreamlike, slow and shimmery, like we were underwater.
My father slumped to my feet and I fell to my knees beside him, seeing but not understanding the bloodstain that now marred the front of my gown. The wound from Petre’s knife had penetrated my father’s flank, and the blood flowed out in rhythmic pumps, turning his starched white shirt so red it turned nearly black.
Confusion erupted on all sides of me. The priest began eerie chants and benedictions, warding off evil from the cathedral. My mother shrieked moving her chair forward next to me on the floor beside my father. My father’s words were raspy and soft.
“I couldn’t do it to you, my girl. I couldn’t lose you like this,” he gasped.
And then I felt the cold but now familiar grip of Petre’s hand, horse-biting the back of my neck.
He spat commands toward the priest. “Finish it. Marry us, now!”
The priest looked scared but he returned to the Latin, then the vows. As my father lay dying on the floor, our marriage was being sealed.
From my right, a door flew open. Petre released his grip and I glanced behind me, expecting to see guests fleeing the nave. But instead, there stood Vasile himself, with his father at his side, a look of thunder on his face, and Daniel from the mansion just a step behind them. There was blood on Vasile’s clothes, but I couldn’t tell if it was his own or someone else’s.
Vasile was at a dead run toward his brother. The priest was once again stunned into silence.
“Finish it!” Petre screamed toward the clergyman, brandishing his knife in his direction but Vasile stopped him cold with a knockout-punch straight to the front of Petre’s face.
In the strange slowness of the moment, I watched one of Petre’s front teeth skitter across the cathedral floor, and then Petre went down, laying unconscious on the tombs of the ancient kings of Praque below.
Vasile reached
