Page 16 of One For my Enemy

“You’re in need of a husband, and I’m in need of a wife,” he told her, more Lazar Fedorov than Koschei the Deathless that evening. “We can be very useful to each other, don’t you think?”

“I can’t have any more children,” Marya said, hoping that would dissuade him, and Lazar shrugged.

“I have three fine sons. I hardly need any more.”

She hesitated, caught in a precarious position.I have built this business on my own,she didn’t say.I do not need you.

“I’ll think about it,” she replied, and came home to find that Masha’s bed was empty. She waited on the edge of it, staring blankly into the dark until her daughter crept in, tiptoeing quietly and stopping, the heel of her hand pressed to her heart, at the sight of Marya.

“Mama,” Masha gasped, immediately remorseful. “I was only—”

“You were with Dima,” Marya supplied, as Masha winced. “Yes, I know very well where you’ve been, Masha, but I’m not upset. Not about this.” She paused, and then, “Did Dima tell you his father has proposed marriage to me?”

Masha blinked, frowning, and fell heavily beside Marya. “No,” she said quietly, “but I think maybe he doesn’t know. He would have told me,” she added, her jaw set with certainty, and Marya reached out, touching her thumb to her daughter’s cheek.

“Tell me, Masha,” Marya ventured carefully. “Is Dima any less of a son to his father than you are a daughter to me?”

Masha hesitated, and, with a reluctant sort of expectancy, murmured, “No,” after a moment. “Dima is as loyal to Koschei as I am to you, Mama.”

“So, what would you have me do, then, Masha?” Marya asked her daughter, preserving her own thoughts on the matter. “If I marry the man who is Koschei the Deathless, you and I will no longer have to work so hard. He will give us the money we need to grow the business. You and Dima would be equals—”

“We would never be equals,” Masha cut in darkly, brow furrowing. “Not to Koschei. Koschei wouldn’t surrender his empire to me or to you, and we’ll have built all of this for nothing. He’ll make the decisions for us—or worse, make them against us; he’ll bury us. He’ll take it all and when he’s gone, he’ll give it to Dima, and then none of it will be yours or mine.”

Marya said nothing. She already knew as much.

“But if you refuse Koschei,” Masha said slowly, weighing Marya’s options for her, “he’ll take offense. He’ll try to ruin you, ruin us.”

“Yes,” Marya agreed.

Silence.

“Dima,” Masha exhaled, “will feel the offense, too. He’ll side with his father. And even if he doesn’t—”

Either way, I will lose him,Masha wasn’t saying, but Marya knew perfectly what was going through her daughter’s mind.

“So, what would you like me to choose?” Marya asked neutrally, and in the pause that followed, she wondered which Masha would come out on the other side. Whether it would beherMasha, who had been at her side since birth, and quite literally a piece of her (herblood,hername,herheart) or whether it would be Dimitri Fedorov’s Masha, who was all flushed cheeks and tender smiles, melted to a shallow pool of wonder at his touch.

“Whatever you wish for us, I will leave it in your hands,” Marya promised her daughter, and waited as Masha contemplated it, her discerning eyes gazing sharply into the dark.

“Don’t marry Koschei, Mama,” Masha determined finally, her expression stiff. “Don’t accept his offer. We built this. It’s ours. We’ll see it through.”

“And Dima?” Marya asked, half-holding her breath.

Masha swallowed hard. “It’s over with Dima,” she said, turning away.

As a gesture of kindness, Marya had left her daughter alone. Even as a girl, Masha had always been too proud to cry where Marya could see.

Once Marya had refused Koschei, she’d known there was no going back. She could no longer live a quiet life, nor have any quiet success; she would need to be powerful, so powerful she could not be ignored, and so, with Masha at her side, she remade her reputation from that of Marya Antonova, the quiet, dutiful wife of the borough witch Antonov, to simply that of Baba Yaga, shrugging on a new and undeniable skin. Everyone knew Yaga’s intoxicants were the best, slicing out a piece of Koschei’s profits when they turned to her instead, but what could he do? At best, he was only a very apt middleman. Koschei procured products; he didn’t make them. He and his sons were strong and powerful and bold, but they were not Marya and her daughters, who were clever and capable creators. Masha and Marya had known this, just as they had known Koschei couldn’t turn her over to the Borough Witches without his own identity being revealed. They had suspected, too, that by refusing Koschei, they would one day come to overshadow him. They played their hand well enough to trap him, and then took a not-so-quiet comfort from his loss.

By then Marya was many things, but she was still also a mother, and so she understood that the true birth of her empire had not been in the gaining of a fortune but in the loss of Dimitri Fedorov; in the hardening of her daughter Masha’s heart. Masha was just as ruthless as Marya, had always been, but now not even a shadow of fragility remained in her constitution. Better yet, Masha was as good a witch as Marya, perhaps even better after a time, and fiercely protective of her family. Every witch in the Boroughs knew it was the young Marya Antonova, Baba Yaga’s lieutenant, who had made the Antonova sisters the finest army any of them had ever seen—and it was only because Masha had buried the girl she’d been for Dima, leaving her old skin behind.

Marya knew Masha filled the holes in her heart with her sisters, especially Sasha; the youngest, the baby, the ingenue who was permitted the luxuries of affection that Masha had sacrificed, excising them from her life. Masha made her sisters her entire focus, so by the time she met and was shyly courted by Stas Maksimov, a good-natured son of a Borough witch about five years Masha’s senior, Marya was surprised to discover her daughter had even considered the prospect of marriage.

“Do you love him?” Marya had asked her privately, when Masha had announced her intent to accept Stas’ proposal.

“I love him exactly as much as I wish to,” Masha replied, leaving the unsaid to remain unspoken:And no more than that,she did not add.

Marya understood. There would never be another love for Masha like the one she’d had for Dima, and rightly so. That love had made her soft, and like her mother, Masha endured no softness. There was no version of Marya Antonova that did not detest weakness and, in choosing Stas, Masha had made a promise to herself that she would never be weak again. So, after a few months, Marya Antonova married Stas Maksimov with her mother’s blessing, and did not concern herself with Dimitri Fedorov again.

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