Page 45 of One For my Enemy

It wasn’t that Roman hated his brother. He didn’t, not at all. Dimitri was inordinately easy to love, after all, and Roman loved him as everyone else loved him; with helpless reverence, and with genuine awe. Roman saw his brother for all his splendor and rightly offered him his due, and Dimitri wasn’t undeserving in the slightest. He was a brilliant leader, wearing his inherited authority like a comfortable garment; like a crown, resting naturally atop his golden head. He was a talented witch, a clever negotiator, a loyal brother—and Roman loved him, fiercely, as he loved his younger brother Lev as well. They were the Fedorov brothers, the three sons of Koschei, and Roman had always thought those things mattered most of all. He’d thought, for much of his life, that the Fedorov brothers, so long as they stood together, would never stand to fall.

But Dimitri Fedorov, like all heroes, had one near-fatal flaw.

Roman, ever a keen and questioning observer, vividly remembered the first time he had caught his brother Dimitri with the witch Marya Antonova, the daughter of Koschei’s friend Antonov. It was back when Dimitri had been only sixteen and Marya seventeen, and while the Antonova witches had not become their enemies quite yet, there had still been something unnervingly treasonous about a girl—thatgirl, withthoseeyes, which clearly saw too much—being among Roman’s father’s things, tangled up with his brother’s limbs. Roman himself had been just fifteen then, surveying less the transgression itself than the pink in Masha’s defiant cheeks, and the not-quite-sorry look on Dima’s face. His brother had turned around, pressing his finger to his lips:Don’t tell Papa, Roma,he’d warned, though from a glance, he’d been nothing more than smug and unconcerned. Happy, even. As ever, all of Dimitri’s golden features had been ablaze, and Roman felt the slightest divide then; the gaping of loyalty between them.

(If this, then this.)

He’d told Koschei anyway.

“Leave Dima be, Romik,” was all Koschei had said, waving it away. “Calf love, that’s all.”

But Roman knew Marya Antonova performed nothing with innocence. He’d seen her spells, her magic; the way that, increasingly, she would reach out and adjust Dimitri’s hands, his own power instantly surging at her touch. Even as a witch himself, Roman was uncomfortably certain that whatever Marya Antonova possessed was no trifling amount of skill. Masha was not a calf, and certainly not capable of a calf’s love.

She also didn’t seem to like Roman in the slightest.

“He’s always watching,” she’d whispered to Dimitri, who’d laughed, blithely ignorant as always of Roman’s ever-present orbit, even after years had passed.

“He’s protective,” Dimitri told her. “He’s my brother.”

“Protective like a vulture over a corpse,” Marya muttered, shuddering. “He’s not like you, Dima. He’s not a hunter; he has no honor at all. He’s a scavenger, and he has death in his eyes—”

“Why should he have to be like me?” Dimitri countered, royally unfazed. “There’s more than enough of me already, I imagine.”

“Well, I prefer to have only you,” Marya said gruffly, though she was quieted for a moment by the sound of a kiss, all muffled touches and tender sighs. “Only you, Dima,” she said, her voice softening around his name.

“I am only for you,” Dimitri had sworn to her, and out of sight, Roman had curled a fist.

“And I am only ever for you,” Marya agreed. “Which is why, Dima, I don’t trust Roma. Not with you. You’re much too valuable.”

Roman waited, tensing at her admonition, but again, his brother only laughed.

“If you love me, Masha,” Dimitri had said, “you will learn to love my brother, too.”

“Why should I?” she’d retorted fiercely. “I’m not a Fedorov.”

No, she wasn’t, Roman thought, slipping away. Nor would she be, if Roman had anything to do with it.

“I don’t like her,” he’d said to his father, gritting his teeth around rage. “She’s manipulative, Papa. She wants to take Dima for herself and steal him from us. She would have him turn his back on his family.”

“Nobody will ever take Dima from me,” Koschei had replied, impassive, “but if you are so very opposed to her—”

“I am,” Roman replied staunchly.

“—you will have to change your mind quite soon, as she will shortly be your sister,” Koschei finished, and despite what was eventually the unpleasant news of his father’s proposed marriage to Baba Yaga, Roman had struggled to stifle a victorious smile.

Even then, Roman had known that the elder Marya Antonova would never agree. Inevitably, the Antonova witches would choose each other, and Dimitri, like Roman, was a Fedorov son before anything else. He could never forgive the slight against their father’s name; of that much Roman was certain, and he soon found himself proven correct.

“She has refused me,” Koschei informed all three of his sons, though at eleven, Lev was much too young to understand the complexities of what may as well have been an open declaration of war between the families. “No longer will we consort with the Antonova witches or their allies. They are nothing to us, and nothing to the Boroughs. We will not speak of them, nor do business with them, nor bother ourselves with them. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Papa,” said Roman. As did Lev, who knew next to nothing of their brother’s ill-advised romance. Dimitri, by contrast, had hesitated for a moment, but only one.

“Is it perhaps unwise, Papa,” Dimitri ventured slowly, “to burn bridges with witches so powerful? Couldn’t the relationship be salvaged still?”

“Baba Yaga has insulted me,” Koschei said firmly in return, “and therefore, she has insulted all of us. Kill whatever softness you have for her daughter, Dima, as there is no mistaking what she has chosen. There is no misinterpreting what she’s done.”

Ever the Fedorov son, Dimitri dutifully buried his affections when asked, or so Roman had assumed. True, at first Dimitri had not lost hope that something might still come from the feud between Koschei and Baba Yaga—had seemed to believe, silently, that circumstances might soften, or that perhaps Marya might be persuaded to change her mother’s mind—but that hope was doused with violence at the news that the eldest Antonova witch would be marrying Stas Maksimov, an unremarkable Borough witch several years their senior who was the son of another equally uninspiring Borough witch.

Roman had seen the lines around his brother’s mouth that meant for the first time, possibly ever, Dimitri was angry, or anguished. Perhaps both. Either way, Dimitri Fedorov’s sun had shone very little that day, and Roman had taken it as a sign. His father had been wronged by the Antonovas, and now his brother, too. It was up to Roman, who loved them both, to seek out restitution.

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