Fighting back tears for the millionth time today, I straighten my shoulders and try to look radiantly happy as my mother opens the chamber door and pushes me out. My father is waiting nearby to take my arm and lead me down the aisle.
Everyone swivels in their pews, all eyes falling on me. I feel nauseous, gulping back a sob as Daddy smiles down at me and begins to walk me down the aisle to my fiancé, standing at the end of the walkway. The stranger is tall and imposing, towering over everyone, even Father Harrison.
The same dizziness that shook me before threatens to take me down now. My father senses my weakness and braces himself, subtly leaning into me as we approach the front of the church. My heart is galloping in my rib cage, beating so fast and so loudly that I wonder how nobody has noticed it yet. Finally, we are there. I’m standing at the marital podium next to my daddy and Father Harrison, looking up at…
My new husband.
He is just as scary as I remembered in my hazy memories of the other night. He is startlingly handsome. Frighteningly good-looking. He has hawk-like, watchful dark eyes, a long, straight nose, sensuous lips, and cropped black hair. His cheekbones are so high and sharp I think they could cut glass. And of course, even his fitted, immaculately-tailored black suit cannot hide his bulging muscles. I glance between Daddy, Father Harrison, and my fiancé — the latter is by far the biggest one.
I am so caught up in cataloguing the gorgeous, terrifying features of my future husband that I totally zone out during the ceremony! Father Harrison is droning on and on about the duties of a Godly woman to her husband, explaining what I already know from years of education: that my sole purpose in life is to serve my father… and then my husband.
“Do you, Cassandra Bethany Meadows, take Andrei Abramovich Petrov to be your lawfully wedded husband, to love and to serve as ordained by our formidable God?” Father Harrison asks of me, taking my hand and lifting it up.
I am shaken by the sudden realization that this is the first time I’ve heard his name. Then it hits me that I have to respond.
“Y-yes. I do,” I say quickly, my voice sounding a little thin.
“And do you, Andrei Abramovich Petrov, take Cassandra Bethany Meadows to be your lawfully wedded wife, to guide and to protect as ordained by our formidable God?”
Andrei, my new husband, looks at me deep in the eyes. I feel a sharp stab to my gut as though his gaze is physically piercing my body. I try not to flinch.
In a deep, velvety voice, he replies: “I do.”
5
Andrei
“You may now kiss the bride.”
I can practically feel her heart beating furiously through the palms of her hands as we hear those words, and she looks up at me with wide, anxious eyes. She puts on a strong show for these people, and I’m impressed by how well she’s kept herself together all this time.
Most women envision their wedding day to be the most magical moment of their lives, but I can only imagine the fear in her heart before my looming figure. She must feel alone and backed into a corner, her parents selling her off like a commodity, the rest of her cold family expecting her to perform like a doll today, and I just know she looks at me and sees me for the criminal I am.
But through it all, she looks angelic. Where she looked exposed and vulnerable up on the auction stage, she looks now like she should be in her element — a heavenly figure clothed in an immaculate dress.
After a brief pause, she offers a shy smile, fear still written in her eyes, and we lean into each other, our lips pressing together.
It’s a chaste kiss, but I feel her draw breath as she’s pressed up against my face, and her hands tighten in my grip as she feels the warmth of my mouth. Is this really her first kiss?
We break after only a moment, the poor girl too dazed by the whole ceremony and the rush of what’s happening to her to savor the moment. Even as I give her hand a squeeze, she blinks and looks confused, but not displeased as the audience begins to clap for us and the organ wedding music starts up.
“Brothers and sisters of the church, Mr. and Mrs. Petrov.”
A few moments later, we’re walking down the aisle towards the door, the rest of Cassie’s relatives smiling and bobbing their heads at us, many of them in poorly-fitted suits and reeking from an overuse of perfume. Many of their faces are stony even as they clap, as if this were a grave ritual rather than a cause for celebration. It’s all too familiar to me, though I can’t quite place why.
I feel like I’m guiding my shaky bride through the underworld as we pass through all these people she seems to know only tangentially. I see a lot of simple colors all around — the wedding was obviously thrown together at the last minute, but for that, I can’t blame anyone but Cassie’s parents.