Page 146 of One For my Enemy

Roman stared at him.

Then, slowly, the blade in his hand traveled from Marya’s throat, aiming itself at his father’s chest instead.

“Because of you, I am haunted,” Roman said hoarsely. “Because of you, Sasha Antonova haunts me, and Lev, too. Because of all I’ve done for you, and now you say I’m not enough?”

Koschei said nothing.

“I could have been enough if you had ever let me,” Roman said, taking a step forward, and for the first time, Koschei saw that his son’s dark eyes were bloodshot and wide. Shadows crept under them, luminous and dark. Roman had not been sleeping well, Koschei realized. Something had kept his middle son awake at night. Demons had danced on his skull. He was owed a reckoning.

It was Marya’s voice that jolted them.

“If you kill him,” she remarked, taking a few steps to stand beside Koschei as Roman hurriedly re-aimed the spatha at her throat, “I’ll bring Lev back. After all, the deal will be broken and there will be no further need for enmity. My mother has no need for a rival,” she said with a shrug, “and your family won’t be one for long. Your empire will fall to me, to my mother, to my sisters. Already, you have nothing left to fight for.”

Roman blinked.

Koschei opened his mouth, but made no sound.

“I don’t want what’s yours, Roma,” Marya continued to say to him, her voice a disconcerting tone of comfort. “Perhaps you wanted to take from me, but I have no claim to what’s yours. You’re trapped by your father’s animosity?” she posed to him, beguiling as she always was. “Break the chains, then, Roma. Free yourself.”

She held up a hand, guiding the spatha’s edge to place it just beneath Koschei’s jaw, and he stiffened. A careless breath would be enough to strike his throat.

“What do you think your father would choose?” Marya whispered to Roman, whose mouth tightened.

“He never chooses me.”

“No, Romik,” she said sadly, “he doesn’t.”

Koschei held his breath, waiting.

Life doesn’t flash, he realized abruptly. At the end, it’s a sticky sort of glue, lining the back of a single image. It seemed foolish to bother with regrets. Now, here? He remembered only one thing from his life, a single sensation, and it was the precise feeling of Dimitri’s hair under his fingers.Looks like gold, feels like silk,he’d always thought proudly.This,he had thought with a smile,is luxury.This is opulence. This is treasure itself: the wealth of the perfect son.

Now, the vision of Roman before him dimmed.

Marya was telling the truth about Dimitri, Koschei realized, letting recognition wash over him in a wave. He wasn’t a fool; he knew the pitch and timbre of his children, down to every bone and thought and feeling. Dimitri had surely betrayed him, because of course he had. Dimitri was a good man, not a good son. His father had wronged him, had cost him everything he loved, and Dimitri was not so weak to continue on his knees. Dimitri would make a life for himself. Dimitri would be fine.

Roman, on the other hand, would not.

Roman needed redemption. He needed a reckoning.

And whatever anyone else believed, Koschei treasured his middle son enough to give him that.

“Do it,” he said, swallowing against the sword’s edge. “She’s right, Romik. I do love Dima more.”

Roman’s mouth became a broken arch of loss. It twisted to the corpse of a smile.

“This is your fault,” Roman said.

Yes, thought Lazar Fedorov, closing his eyes.

This was his fault, the work of his hands.

This was the consequence of his lifetime, and in his final moments, he knew it to be true.

This was the empire Koschei the Deathless had built.

V. 23

(Strikes.)

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