Page 139 of One For my Enemy

He said nothing. Marya turned back to Sasha, who was still gawking at her, unsatisfied.

“I told many lies,” Marya informed her sister, glancing at her watch. She was running late. “Is that what’s upsetting you?” she pressed, unfazed. “Did you come here to shame me for my omissions, my untruths? Because if so, you should know I’ve been lying to you forever, Sashenka, unceasingly, by letting you think this life could ever fulfill you, or satisfy you. It does not.” She paused, and then conceded, “It will not.”

But Sasha seemed determined to miss the truth of the statement.

“I just want to knowwhy,” she shot at Marya. “Why, Masha?”

Maybe she wasn’t ready yet, Marya thought.

Maybe she couldn’t yet understand.

So, Marya simply shrugged. “Perhaps I just wanted chaos.”

“No.”

Lev’s voice startled both of them. In the subsequent beat of silence, he stepped towards Marya.

“No,” he said again, “you did this for a reason. All of it. Didn’t you?”

She sighed. His insistence on her plan was so resolute it was almost like faith, which she would never have personally recommended as a lifestyle choice. Faith was an unwise extension of hope, which was nearly always dashed, destroyed, burned. Expectations, at least, faced a more meager consequence of being raised or lowered. Whatever Lev had in her, it was in constant danger of being irreparably shattered.

“You want so badly for me to have a purpose, Solnyshko,” she remarked. “Why is that?”

“Because you do. You have to. Why bring me back at all?” he pressed. “If you really wanted it to be a secret, you could have left me dead. You must have known this would happen,” he pointed out. “You put me in a position to find Sasha, didn’t you?”

Another shrug. “I still arranged for it to be a secret. I couldn’t have your father coming for my mother.”

“Not before you were ready, you mean,” Sasha accused. “Youusedme, Masha. You used my anger, my hatred. You kept Lev away from me so that I would help you destroy Koschei, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Marya said. “Of course. If you were thinking clearly, you would see it was the obvious thing to do.”

“I—” Sasha looked hurt, and furious. “Why?” she demanded again, though Marya could see the question wasn’t about anything in particular. It was merely a reflex; a muscle spasm in response to everything Marya had done. “Why any of this?”

“That is simply what this life is, Sashenka,” Marya reminded her. “Sacrifice and loss. So long as you remain a part of it, that’s all you’ll be capable of feeling. It’s all you’ll be able to do. Your only gifts will be what you can take, what you can break, and what you can ruin.” She glanced at Lev, then back at her sister. “This life is a thief, Sasha. It takes and takes, and then maybe you die or maybe you don’t. But either way, this life will try to leave you empty-handed unless you learn to strike first.”

Lev glanced down at his own hands, but said nothing.

“I love you, Sashenka,” Marya said, and Sasha opened her mouth to speak, but Marya cut her off with a shake of her head. “I love you, whether you see it or not; whether you choose to believe it today or not. But don’t cross me, Sasha.”

She stepped forward, swapping her robe for a dress with a wave of a hand, and stepped into her shoes, one by one. In her bare feet, without her usual armor—her high heels, her berry-red lips, her constricting clothes—she’d been just below her sister’s eyeline, but still there had been no mistaking who was in control then, and there certainly wasn’t now.

Marya straightened her dress, eyeing herself in the mirror.

Grey. Immobility, subtlety. A little beckon ofunderestimate me, I dare you, just try.

“Run if you like, Sasha,” Marya suggested, picking up her earrings from her vanity and putting them on, eyeing the final effect. “Turn your back on me if you wish, but do not get in my way.”

Sasha stared at her back, disbelieving.

“Do you belong to anyone, Masha?” Sasha asked hoarsely. “Do you even belong to me?”

Marya turned around to glance first at Lev, and then at Sasha.

Someday,she thought to say,when you replay all your little questions knowing what you know, you’ll feel silly for even asking.

Instead, she said nothing. She merely slid a glance that saidlet me go,and Sasha, like everyone who’d ever stood in Marya’s way, gradually stepped aside.

Then Marya Antonova slipped into the corridor, leaving her sister behind her, and ventured out into the night.

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