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“Maybe you get it then. I’m like that, except about all of it.” I wave my hands around to encompass everything. We’re standing in a pretty small dressing room on the side of the small chapel she chose, so there’s not really a lot to gesture at, but I think she gets my point.

Mirdza walks through the side door, closing it quietly. “The coordinator says four minutes.” Her mouth drops open. “Oh, no. The bouquet.”

“I’m fixing it.” I set mine on an end table and start poking the runaway lilies into gaps in the enormous bubble-shaped ball of flowers.

“Not like that.” Mirdza slaps my hand away. “You’re making it look like a helmet.”

“Isn’t that how bouquets are meant to look?”

Mirdza clucks at me, just like Mom always did. “Just stand over there and try not to ruin yours too.”

“Hey, I didn’t ruin that one,” I say. “I didn’t even touch it until she dropped it.”

“Because Adriana says she doesn’t want a wedding.” Kris’s mauve lips are pursed, and her perfectly plucked and outlined eyebrow is arched in frustration.

Mirdza crushes the flower she’s holding.

“What’s with all the melodrama?” I shake my head.

“If you’re going to get married,” Mirdza says, “you should do it right. You should throw the biggest party anyone has ever seen.” She glances back at Kris. “But not bigger or nicer than this, of course.”

Kris rolls her eyes.

“The last thing you want to do is what Mom did,” Mirdza says.

“Mom got married,” I say. “To a real loser. That’s the example of hers I want to avoid. Neither of us would ever marry someone like him, so the kind of celebration we have is a little irrelevant, isn’t it?”

Mirdza frowns. “I guess.”

“We’re not done talking about this,” Kris says, “but maybe let’s finish with the bouquet.”

“Right.”

We’re shoving the very last lily into a gap in the bottom—for all her self-righteous indignation, my twin ended up doing the same thing I was—when the door pops open and the coordinator waves at us. “Come, come. Mirdza first, then you.”

I was a little surprised when Kristiana invited me to be a bridesmaid, but I realized that she can’t very well leave me out when I grew up alongside her just like Mirdza. Plus, my fiancé’s best friends with her groom. Alexei must have said a dozen times that he wouldn’t stand next to anyone other than me. It should have annoyed me. But. . .

When I heard him say that, it made me smile.

I’ve definitely changed. I hope it’s for the better.

With Alexei in attendance, the paparazzi are understandably pretty bad, but Igor says it’s fine. Attending a lovely wedding with respectable Russian nobility who are marrying wealthy Latvian girls can only improve both Alexei’s and my images, apparently.

Or so Igor thinks.

The polls have been a little strange for the past week, which is hardly surprising. The voting happens tomorrow, and we’ll be stuck spending all day on television and standing on stages making speeches. It’s not the election for President, of course. That will still lie ahead of us, but if the referendum passes, there won’t be an election. In most ways, the vote for the referendum is actually more important. With the way their political parties work, as I understand it, no one else would really have a chance if the grab at the monarchy fails.

When Alexei threw in with Russia United, he sort of gave up his right to challenge Leonid’s right to rule. He had to pick whether to support the current government or vie for his place in the new one.

The aisle we have to walk is stupidly long. I have no idea how Kris and Aleks can possibly know the number of people filling all these seats. Aleksandr has been in an extended coma for a century, for heaven’s sake. We’re almost there when I trip on a little kid’s discarded shoe and nearly fall on my face.

Alexei catches me, his hands bracing my elbow and back. “You alright?”

“I am now.” A month ago, that might have annoyed me, having to thank a man, but now I’m not even surprised that he lunged forward and caught me. I’m grateful for his attention and care.

I shuffle over and hop into line at the end, cameras flashing right and left. Clearly, in spite of Aleksandr’s people being posted on every corner, a few reporters squeezed through. Either that, or some of the people in attendance are being paid a lot for their candid photos. Mirdza steps into place next to Grigoriy as gracefully as ever, the opposite of me in almost every way now that her leg has been repaired.

Mom’s on the front row, already bawling. She told me this morning that all her wildest dreams are coming true. While I’m happy for Kris, Mirdza, and myself, I couldn’t help being a little annoyed that her dreams for her daughters still revolve around them marrying the right guys.