“You chose your brand, babe. Black dress, black veil, and combat boots. You’re doing this on your terms, in your way. That matters.”
“Kingston will hate it,” I say, and can’t help the small flicker of delight at aggravating my brother.
“He’ll pretend to hate it and then keep a photo hidden in his wallet like a repressed Victorian father,” Sunni says.
“He likes pretending he’s the stern one,” I reply with a laugh.
“Kingston is the stern one.”
“You have not seen him drunk on Christmas, my friend,” I tell Luce.
Not that I’ve seen it more than a couple times. My brother rarely lets go, which is kind of sad.
Lucetta’s mobile buzzes and she glances at it before tossing it to Sunni. “Dead-drop two pinged. Same route as last week, but earlier.”
Sunniva scrolls through whatever is on the Luce’s screen. “She’s moving the timeline. Or . . . she’s testing us.”
“Halloween,” I say. “It keeps circling back there. She knows that would be the night we’d pick to seal our bonds and say our vows. You don’t really think she’d be stupid enough to do start anything there, right?”
“Fear is a conductor and blood is a battery,” Lucetta says.
“Thanks for tonight’s lullaby that I don’t even understand.”
Lucetta sighs, grabbing a bottle of water. “It means that fear fuels the charge, and blood is what feeds it. When you put the two together, you’ve got power, violence, and, eventually, inevitability. Now, drink.”
“Okay,” I reply, sucking down gulps of water. “So, let’s make plans for the worst-case scenario.”
It doesn’t take us long to make it to the cathedral and even less time to talk them into letting use it for practice.
We move, and it feels good, like the scream lodged in my chest for months finally found a place to bleed. We run the patterns until my body remembers them better than my mind and rehearse exits until the path feels etched beneath our feet. We make lists of what we’ll carry, who we’ll call, and what to set on fire if the time comes. Sunniva laughs too loudly at her own jokes and mine when they spill out sharp and mean, because if she doesn’t, the silence will crack open and Giselda’s voice will crawl out of the echoes between us.
When my legs begin to tremble, Lucetta calls it. “All right. We’ve been over this goddamn plan so many times, I’ll be seeing it in my sleep.” She glances at her watch. “We have to get back to the warehouse for your fitting. You’re no use to me if you’re fainting in a puddle of tulle.”
“I’m not wearing tulle.”
“Precisely. I don’t know why you told her to meet you there instead of at your place.”
“Because Konstantin is always at my place. Call me superstitious, but I don’t want him seeing my dress before I’m marching down that aisle. Plus, I knew we’d be at the warehouse working on this shit.”
It’s not long after we’re back at the warehouse that the seamstress arrives flanked by two assistants. All three of them are dwarfed by the garment bag swinging between them that’s big enough to hide a body in if you knew how to fold it right. Their gazes keep snagging on the murder board pinned to the far wall, their eyes flickering away too late to pretend they weren’t staring.
She doesn’t falter, though, which is why I chose her. Her hands are steady as she sets the bag on the table and draws the zipper down, slow and deliberate, like she’s peeling back the skin on a secret.
The dress exhales into the room, and the girls gasp quietly as they get their first glimpse. Black—so black it swallows light whole—matte silk spills to the floor in a liquid pour, ribs cinched hard with bone-stitches structured like armor. The skirt coils and drifts like smoke when she shakes it free. It’s a promise of movement that looks more spectral than bridal. The veil tumbles after, cathedral-length and sheer, thorned vines ghosting across its surface that’s only visible when the light strikes it sideways.
And there, at the bottom of the bag, are my boots.
Polished, steel-capped, and gleaming like weapons that someone had the audacity to call beautiful.
It’s me.
I’m the someone with the motherfucking audacity.
Sunniva whistles. “Holy shit. Marry me instead.”
“You can be my flower girl,” I quip.
“Rude.”
