Page 103 of One For my Enemy

She hesitated, and then added, “And when I’m done with Koschei—” A pause. “When, not if.Whenhe is no longer a threat, my sisters and I can bring Lev back. Koschei’s détente with my mother will be unimportant. My hands will no longer be tied. Think of me as if I’m not an Antonova,” Sasha suggested, her grey eyes fixed on him, “and you are not a Fedorov, and we are merely two people who miss the same man.”

There was very little Dimitri wouldn’t do to have his brother back.

Still, he might have preferred something a little less… Antonova. This one, anyway.

“So,” Sasha exhaled with a sense of finality. “Do we understand each other?”

Dimitri turned to Bryn.

“This wasn’t what I wanted,” he said. He needed to say at least that much.

“No,” The Bridge agreed. “But do you usually get what you want, Dimitri Fedorov?”

Almost never, he thought.

“Okay,” he said slowly, turning back to Sasha Antonova. “What did you have in mind?”

IV. 18

(Only the Holy.)

“There,” Marya said, leaning back to survey her handiwork. “How do you feel?”

The one-time corpse raised a hand to his cheek.

“You’re very good at this,” he noted. “A shame the majority of my memories of you involve my brother nearly dying at your hands.”

“Well, only because you remember very little,” she said, “Lev Fedorov.”

Lev blinked, settling back into his bones; back into his life; back into his name.

“You can go now,” Marya said to her sisters, placing her hand gently on Galina’s. “Lev and I have things to discuss.”

Irina hesitated. “But Masha, about Mama—”

“You’ll say nothing,” Marya told her firmly. “I’ll tell Mama myself.”

Katya and Irina looked as if they would argue for a moment, but then nodded, resigning themselves to go; then Galina brushed her lips against Marya’s cheek, following them out.

“Now,” Marya said, turning to Lev. “About why you kept pestering my sisters.”

He was very like Dimitri had been when they were younger. This Fedorov had dark hair and eyes, he wasn’t quite as golden, and his jaw was sharper, cheekbones higher—but he had a familiar spark of youth in his eyes; a sense of earnestness to him that had long since left Dimitri.

“Well, nobody else could hear or see me,” Lev explained. “Bit of a frustrating experience, death. Which,” he added uncomfortably, “is apparently something you’re familiar with.”

“More or less,” Marya agreed. “Still. What exactly is your fear for Sasha?”

“I thought maybe Roma would hurt her. Or worse, that she would lose herself.”

Ivan’s words—She seems sad—wandered in and quickly out of Marya’s consciousness.

“You don’t know our Sasha very well,” Marya said, and Lev arched a brow.

“Don’t I?” he countered.

Marya thought of the vacant look on Sasha’s face and said nothing. She knew better than anyone the troubles with inadvisable love.

“Sasha’s dead,” she told Lev, adhering to falsity. She didn’t know yet whether he might be compelled to tell his father, or his brothers, so she couldn’t trust him—but that didn’t make him useless. “Though, you can still help her,” she told him carefully, measuring out and changing the plan as she went. “After all, the man at fault is still at large.”

---