Page 129 of One For my Enemy

Wipe out his army.

Dimitri was gone. Roman was all but useless.

Sasha nearly smiled to herself, watching Koschei the Deathless cradle his own head in his hands, until suddenly, an uninvited thought slid into the back of her mind: None of it would do her any good. Her mind whispered to her in Lev’s voice, laughing as only he could laugh. No sliver of Roman’s sanity would repair the gaping holes in her heart; no weary sigh from Koschei would return the air to her lungs.None of it,Lev’s memory murmured to her,will ever bring me back.

Still, she thought firmly, Koschei’s loss was one step closer to matching the depths of her own.

Someday,she thought,you will know I had a hand in this.

But not today.

Not yet.

Not until there’s no coming back for you.

Then she slid silently out of the air, moving onto the next of her compulsory tasks as the shadows shifted mournfully around her.

V. 13

(Darkness.)

The witch called Baba Yaga was beginning to wonder if she had not made a terrible mistake when she permitted her daughter to come back to the land of the living without first making her whole. She had once known her eldest daughter’s heart as well as she knew her own, but now, for the first time, Marya was secretive; distracted.

Marya had only been that way once before, and the same person who held her heart now had possessed it then, too.

“You’ve been seeing Dima, haven’t you?” Yaga said to her daughter’s back one night while Marya was working, bent once again over the tablets they’d both worked so hard to design.

Marya didn’t answer, and Yaga sighed, taking the seat beside her daughter.

Implied:What else are you keeping from me?

Unspoken:For the first time since you were born, Masha, I feel terribly alone.

Aloud: “What is happening to us, Mashenka?” Yaga asked, watching Marya flinch as Yaga reached out to touch her cheek, hand faltering in the air. “Are you angry with me?”

For a moment, it looked like Marya still might not answer.

But then she said, voice low, “I’m simply beginning to wonder, Mama, if you still have the stomach for this.”

Yaga frowned. “For our business?”

“Not just our business.” Marya’s gaze didn’t rise from her work. “I notice you’ve made no effort to put Koschei in his place.”

Yaga paused, surprised. “Masha, the best revenge we have against Koschei is our success. We are succeeding,” she reminded her, referencing the tablets beneath Marya’s fingers. “Every day that our business grows is another we rise above Koschei.”

“Yes, but is that enough?” Marya asked, and looked up sharply, her dark eyes fixed on Yaga’s. “What about retribution, Mama? What about making him pay for what his enmity has cost us?”

Seeing her daughter’s anger, Yaga softened and sighed, reaching out to pull her eldest child into her arms.

“Hatred is a curse, Mashenka,” she said to Marya’s dark hair, breathing in the familiar rosewater scent of her. “At my age, you gain a little wisdom. In my experience,” she murmured soothingly, “holding onto hatred only comes back to haunt you.”

She waited for Marya to sigh a little; to make a joke, to sayMama, you’re not so old,and take comfort from her arms, as she usually did. Instead, Marya grew stiff and detached, her voice like a cold wind from a distance.

“I’m glad your wisdom gives you peace, Mama,” Marya said. “Even if it came at the price of my pain.”

Yaga blinked, feeling her daughter pull away, and stared with paralyzing disquietude as Marya’s eyes flashed in the light of their workshop.

“You know, you forget the sort of darkness this business requires,” Marya said, casting an eye over the tablets in front of them. “You haven’t had to run it yourself in quite a long time.”

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