Page 124 of One For my Enemy

“Then believe this, Masha: I choose you. I will always choose you.” He tightened his grip on her, letting his fingers spread across her waist; taking her space and making it his. “This, with the Witches’ Boroughs, it’s for you.”

“It’s obviously a plot, Dima,” she sighed, though she consented to rest her hands flat against his chest, contemplating him beneath her palms. “Who are you conspiring with?”

“Your sister. Sasha.” Marya blinked; clearly, she hadn’t actually expected him to confess. “She wants to take my father down,” Dimitri clarified, “and I said I would help her. I’ll discredit him, one Borough witch at a time, and gain my own empire. My own life. One which, one day, might be worthy of you.” He bent his head, touching his lips to her forehead. “Someday, Masha,” he murmured, “I will have done enough to give you everything you deserve, and perhaps then it will be enough to bring you back to me.”

He felt her breath falter, her frame falling still in his arms.

Then she turned her head, resting her lips near the side of his neck.

“Dima,” she said softly. “You know Stas never took your place.”

He swallowed, saying nothing.

“How could he?” she pressed him. “You were all I ever wanted. From the day you told me you loved me, there has never been anyone else.”

It wasn’t simply a confession; he understood that much.

It was an offering.

“What are you saying?” he asked, and she pulled away, looking up at him.

“That Koschei wasn’t the only one who did this to us,” she said. “My mother is hardly innocent.”

Dimitri blinked. “Masha.”

“I thought my mother would never lie to me. Not to me. I thought we were one in all things.” There was a hardness to her expression, a shadow beneath her eyes, suggesting something had been weighing on her. “Now, it seems everything has always been a lie. A lie that I was stupid enough to believe.”

She paused.

“This life,” she said slowly, “this world, it’s a curse. You were right, Dima. What they want from us, it’s a sickness. A burden.”

For a moment, Dimitri considered the wisdom of saying nothing.

But he couldn’t help himself from murmuring, “My brother is gone.”

Perhaps in saying so he hadn’t really confessed to much, but she looked up at him with sympathy. Then she stiffened again to purpose.

“If you’re going to use your position in the Boroughs to discredit your father, I’ll help you. I have resources just as you do, connections of my own. But,” she said, fixing her gaze on his, “on one condition.”

He waited.

“When you win,” she said slowly, “we burn it down. We set the match and light it.” At his questioning glance, she clarified, “We leave behind the kingdoms we kept for Koschei and Baba Yaga, and together, we build something new.”

He stared down at her, stunned. “You mean that?”

“Yes.” Her expression was cold. “We didn’t suffer purely for your father’s errors, Dima. We both suffered, because both our parents are selfish fools. So,” she ventured, tracing her fingertips over the column of his throat, “no more. We’ll build something together, Dima.” Her hand stopped just shy of the vial at his neck, pressing into the cavern of his sternum. “My mother would be nothing without me, just as your father is nothing without you. Together, we could be everything.”

It wasn’t remotely what he’d expected. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Don’t tell Sasha,” she warned, and he frowned, but nodded slowly. “Let this be between us for now, but let me help you.” She slid her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. “Let me love you, Dima,” she told him softly, “the way I should have done twelve years ago. With nothing in my way.”

It was an offer he’d never wished to refuse. Dimitri took a ragged breath, bending towards her. “I should have fought for you then, Masha,” he said. “We shouldn’t have wasted so much time—”

“The past is nothing. We are everything.” Her hand curled securely around the back of his neck, and he felt a spark beneath his fingertips; a flood of his own magic that had been dormant since he’d suffered at her hands. He marveled that, for him, she could be crime and punishment both; vice and virtue all at once. “Dimitri Fedorov, I already gave you my useless heart. Now, have everything else that matters. Have my loyalty, my right hand. Have everything that was once my mother’s,” she offered fiercely, “and give me everything you once swore to Koschei. Give me all of you, take everything of me, and let’s see who stands against us then.”

She was soft and delicate and impossible in his hands. She was power, and powerful, and full of little intricacies he hardly knew how to name. He could feel all her little fissures, the cracklings of fury and desperation underneath, and he reached up to tug her hair loose, letting it fall gently around her shoulders with a rose-scented sigh, her lips parting slowly.

“I’ve loved you through so much distance it seems strange to hold you now,” he said quietly. “Like something could so easily take you from me.”

---