Page 110 of One For my Enemy

“Well, you set the terms yourself, Lazar,” she reminded him wearily. “You told me you would come for me if I crossed you, didn’t you?”

Touch me and all the Boroughs will come for you,he’d said, and at the time, it had been true. It wasn’t now.

“So, since I am sitting here, very much alive,” Yaga said drily, gesturing to herself, “surely you must not be able to prove I’ve done anything.”

“I will always suspect you first, Marya, proof or not,” he told her. “You’re the only one strong enough to come against me. The only one to outwit me, or to beat me.”

She blinked, internalizing this.

Then she said gruffly, “What do you want, Lazar?”

He hesitated.

“I miss my son,” Lazar confessed.

Dima. He was different.

Romik. He was troubled.

Levka. He was gone.

“And I miss my daughter,” Baba Yaga replied.

Lazar thought it best he didn’t ask which one.

“I asked for too steep a price.”

“You always did,” she reminded him. “You’ve always wanted too much from me.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Yes, but Antonov wanted nothing from you,” he reminded her, “and look what that got him.”

“Nothing?” Yaga echoed. “You think it was nothing? You think my silence, my subservience, came at no considerable cost?”

He stiffened, registering his misstep. “Marya—”

“You and I both know my husband was a fool, but you’re the one who would have taken what didn’t belong to you,” Yaga accused him. “You would have stolen what I and my daughters deserved. If I have stood against you, Lazar, it’s because you’re a selfish man who believes he has a right to the universe itself.”

“That’s not true,” Lazar insisted staunchly. “And it’s because of me you had the freedom to become what you were, Marya.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” Yaga snapped. “You know Antonov died at my hands. You threatened me with it before. So why pretend now?”

“Because you didn’t,” Lazar said, and she balked. “You didn’t kill Antonov, Marya. I did.”

Yaga stared at him. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do. You needed it to look real, didn’t you?” he reminded her. “You needed to do it slowly, carefully, because you lacked the ability to cover your tracks, but I didn’t. He knew you were poisoning him and he came to me for help. He came to me, so I killed him,” Lazar finally confessed, throat dry. “I killed him, Marya, for you. So that you could be free.”

She paused, unable to speak.

“You didn’t,” she managed eventually. “You killed him so that you could have me yourself, didn’t you?”

Lazar let out a growl of impatience. “Marya, you and your pride—”

“Oh, don’t pretend at selflessness, Lazar,” she spat. “You are only a shadow. You linger in the darkness and you wait, don’t you? For your chance to strike. You have just been sitting with this truth, biding your time until you could use it as a weapon. You think you can sit there and tell me now, after all this time, it is only because of you that I have any of this, which I built with my own two hands? With my own daughter, who had the audacity to love me more than she loved your son?”

Lazar flinched. “I did it for you, Marya, whether you believe me or not. If I had told you, you would feel indebted to me, and I never wanted that. I never wanted you to owe me.”

“You want it from everyone else,” Yaga scoffed. “Why not me?”

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