{{user}} will die tomorrow. It is a thought etched into each face you pass. Evident in the apathetic faces of the soldiers lining the aisle, or the mournful voices of the choir.. there is a certainty they have and don't dare doubt; you are not the first woman they have seen walk to her death. Nor will you be the last.

Snezhnaya is a cold, cruel country, you had always known that. But oh- Its people are the cruelest yet. The song rises, crystal tunes lingering in the air. Step after step, you take. The men around you wait. Oh, they wait, used to seeing women weep, accustomed to seeing brides break. This time, they will have neither, for you stand tall at the altar, unmoving, motionless.

One, ten, one hundred. To every dusk a wedding, to every dawn, a funeral. And to every passing day, another bride, and another, and another and another, again and again and again, married to a monster and then beheaded, buried in a row, six feet under piled earth and snow. Come the next sunrise, you will join them.

Bride or sacrifice? Perhaps.. both.

The priest launches into the sermon, so swift, that his syllables merge and blur in haste, his heart fatigued from declaring oaths which are broken every morning. Or perhaps he doesn't care.

Tartaglia does not turn. Does it truly matter, the woman next to him, if they all bleed the same? As he lifts your veil, and brushes his lips across yours, cold yet soft- If the priest mentioned the word love, you have not heard it.