Page 9 of BRATVA'S Poisoner Bride
And I saw something else too.
The moment she opened the door, something in me moved. A slow, deliberate shift like tectonic plates grinding against each other deep beneath the earth. The kind of shift that creates mountains. Or cracks continents apart.
She looked at me like she remembered the way my gaze touched her in the church. Like she had spent days trying to push that moment into a dark corner and pretend it didn’t exist. The faint flush at the base of her throat betrayed her even though her eyes were cool, almost expressionless.
Elizabeth Ashomicht is not easy to read, but she’s impossible to ignore.
I turn the ring over between my fingers. The diamond flashes again, but I’m not thinking about its value. I’m thinking about the fact she accepted a ring chosen by a man she had no intention of loving. A man she didn’t cry for. A man who died with the scent of herbs on his breath.
Herbs I recognized. Herbs I smelled on her at the funeral.
If she were any other woman, I could dismiss it. Coincidence. Tradition. Some old family remedy freshened and applied without thought. But nothing about her is accidental. Nothing about her feels uncalculated.
And yet there is a softness in her too. A domestic rhythm she tries to cling to like it might keep her sane. The house smelled of baking. Lemon. Sugar. Warmth. A strange contrast to the quiet ruthlessness threaded through her gaze.
I picture her in her kitchen, shoulders tense, hands dusted in flour, trying to knead away worry she won’t name aloud. Trying to be dutiful even now, even after her father sent her into a dead man’s arms. A woman caught between a world that demanded her obedience and a fire she’s too careful to let burn openly.
She told me she didn’t love Piotr. She spoke the words like a truth so absolute it didn’t need embellishment.
Most would feel shame admitting that to a dead man’s relative. She felt none. And when she looked at me, I recognized the expression. I’ve seen it in mirrors. In survivors. In those who’ve crawled through dark spaces and come out sharper on the other side.
She might think she hid it well at the funeral, but I saw the steel beneath her quiet. I saw the perfected stillness. The kind developed in places where noise draws attention and attention draws harm.
She stood at the coffin with the serenity of someone who had already buried every version of herself that could ever feel anything for him. And when our eyes met, the church fell away. For a heartbeat, I felt something old stirring between us, something that didn’t care about vows or bloodlines or the ash settling around Piotr’s legacy.
Now, standing outside her father’s house, I feel it again, low in my chest, heavy and steady as a drumbeat.
I close my fist around the ring.
I should get in the car. I should report what I found, or didn’t find, to the men waiting for answers. I should track the details ofmy uncle’s death with the clarity of a man trained for decades to see what others overlook.
But all I can think about is the way she said she had agreed to the engagement because it was expected. How her father gave away her future, and she accepted it with the kind of brittle obedience that only grows in households where daughters are taught not to make noise.
What kind of home turns a woman into a whisper?
And what kind of woman poisons the man who tried to claim her?
I exhale slowly, watching the breath cloud before me. When I inhale the air tastes like winter. Like endings.
I open the door and slide into my seat, but I don’t start the engine. I let the quiet settle around me, the weight of the ring heavy in my hand.
She tried to dismiss me. She tried to stay small. She tried to pretend I wouldn’t be able to see her.
But I did. And more importantly, she knows I did.
That knowledge changed the way she breathed. The way she held her shoulders. The way her eyes lingered just a moment too long before she looked away.
Fear would’ve made her slam the door. Innocence would’ve made her fluster. Guilt would’ve made her chatter or stumble.
But Elizabeth did none of those things.
She stood there, heart beating steadily, breath catching ever so slightly, aware of the danger but unwilling to shrink from it. A woman trying to convince herself she could stay invisible even as she was lit up in the doorway by the bright, terrible clarity of my attention.
I slip the ring into my coat pocket and close my hand around it. The diamond presses into my palm like a spark refusing to die.
As I pull away from the curb, I catch one last glimpse of the house in the rear-view mirror. The curtain shifts, a tiny movement, but enough to tell me she’s watching.
Good.
