Page 71 of One For my Enemy

Gratifyingly, Koschei froze for a beat, thrown.

“What? How could that—but—”

“Marya Antonova is not in the realm of the dead,” Bryn repeated, “and therefore, reports of her death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“But—Sasha, then,” Koschei sputtered. “What about Sasha? Is she there? Has Yaga kept to her deal, is Sasha truly dead?”

To that, The Bridge permitted a smile, snatching up the kidney with his clever fae fingers.

“That, Koschei the Deathless,” he said, “is outside the terms of our deal.”

III. 23

(A Little Death.)

She remembered leaving Lev’s side and standing, placing herself between Roman and Ivan. She remembered, too, that she had seen someone; her sister, of all people. Marya. Had it been a ghost? Was she nothing but a ghost now, too?

Don’t be silly. It is only a little death, Sashenka.

Very temporary.

Hardly enough to matter.

You won’t even feel it when you wake up.

“Masha?” Sasha croaked, hearing her sister’s voice again as a hand stretched out towards her, beckoning. She forced her blurry vision to settle, recognizing the face of her mother behind a veil; then she reached out, taking hold of it with her fingers, and felt a wrench, her entire body drawn forth abruptly as if from drowning, with a cold, foreign air filling her lungs.

“Where am I? What’s happening?”

“Hush, Sasha, be still,” came her mother’s voice, and in a blurry transfer of images, another figure leaned prominently into view. This one, too, was familiar, the dark 1940s waves falling around Sasha’s face.

“Mama, I should think she deserves a minute to adjust, doesn’t she?”

“Masha,” Sasha confirmed groggily, in awe and disbelief, and her eldest sister smiled, pleased, as Sasha’s vision cleared, a jagged scar across Marya’s chest becoming starkly visible beneath the thin silk of her chemise.

“Welcome back, Sashenka,” said Marya, with a dazzling, radiant smile. “Come,” she beckoned, taking Sasha’s hand. “You and I have work to do.”

THE ANTONOVA SISTERS, YESTERDAY

(Irina and Katya.)

Ekaterina Antonova, called Katya, and her twin Irina equally shared the misfortune of following their elder sister Marya, both in sequence and in affection. Neither was as clever or as beautiful as Marya—their accomplished sister Masha, beloved by mother and father and still, despite everything, by each of the sisters alike—and for a time, this succession plagued them hatefully. It wasn’t until their mother Baba Yaga pulled them aside that they learned being second-born was powerful, too.

“Envy is a wasted emotion,” Yaga had said to her twin daughters when they were still very young. She’d held tight to both their little chins and searched them sternly, her dark eyes hard and intolerant of sulking. “You are born of my blood and your father’s magic and you will not waste it; not even a drop. You are Antonova daughters, as equally as your sister, and you will find power in you no one else will ever dream of. You will have hunger no one else will ever feel, and it will drive you. It will push you to madness or else to greatness, and you have only to choose for yourselves what your futures will be.

“Do you believe I would have brought you into this world if I did not want you?” Yaga asked them, and the twins slowly shook their heads. “No, you’re right, I would not. If I thought I only needed one daughter, I would have had only one. So, what would you have your lives be, Katya? Irka?” She gripped each of them tightly, her hands as firm as the steel of her will. “Would you have it be wasted in loathing? In pettiness and greed? Or will you prove to me and the world alike that the blood in your veins is as valuable as any witch who walks this earth?”

Katya looked at Irina, who looked back at Katya.

Then they both looked at their mother, a secret lingering on both their tongues.

“We can see things,” Katya confessed, and paused, amending the statement. “I can see things,” she corrected herself slowly. “Irka can hear them.”

Yaga’s expression remained still. “What things?”

“There’s a veil,” Irina explained, frowning. “A curtain, and sometimes, when Katya pulls it back for me, things fall out of it. Voices.”

If their mother was afraid, she didn’t show it.

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