Page 148 of One For my Enemy

Still, she wasn’t so cruel as to rob him of his moment. Let him think her life revolved around the ending of his. Let death bring him peace, if it wished to.

“You are your mother’s daughter, Marya Antonova,” Koschei said hoarsely. By now, she was no longer surprised he said it with faint traces of awe.

She didn’t bother replying. They both knew it was true.

Instead she tightened her hand around the knife, taking the breath that would drag them both to the feet of a lifetime’s inevitability.

V. 26

(Inevitability.)

When had Dimitri Fedorov known he loved Marya Antonova?

He had known it with the sanctity of every breath, and with equal certainty. He had known he loved her like he knew he would rise each day, with the same comfort as knowing his lungs would fill. With motions as practiced as each step he took. He had loved her with the whole of his being, as if he’d been made to do it; as if he’d been crafted that way by some divine hand. She was in his blood, beating in his chest, racing against it. He felt the ache of her now, pressed against the flat of his sternum. With each moment since he’d begun racing to find her, a fraction of her had shattered more; each little sliver of shrapnel had dug into his chest, as much his doing as hers.

Why had he loved her? Not for her strength, though she had plenty of it. For that, he’d admired her. She was untouchable for it, for her courage, for her unyielding surety. It was easy to say it was why anyone would be drawn to her. Still, it wasn’t why Dimitri had loved her.

No. That had been for her goodness. For her loyalty.

For her heart.

Dimitri Fedorov had loved Marya Antonova with his entire being for his entire life, which was how he’d somehow come to miss the now-obvious signs that his plans and hers weren’t entirely the same.

Burn the world down.

She hadn’t meant the whole world.

Just the world she’d been forced to occupy.

Dimitri raced into The Bridge’s office, bursting through the doors. “Masha, no,” he gasped, seeing her with her knife to his father’s throat, and she looked up, confusion flickering briefly on her brow. He summoned the knife from her hand, ripping it from her fingers as his father lurched back and nearly fell, Roman staggering forward to catch him.

Dimitri caught the blade in his palm, watching as Marya turned to him.

This was only part of her plan. Ridding the world of Koschei was only half. For twelve years, it had been a rivalry, a two-part equation. Koschei and Baba Yaga, two halves of a symbiotic whole.

Koschei was only the beginning of something Dimitri hadn’t managed to see at first.

“Masha,” he said with a faint overtone of pleading, and at the sight of him, she smiled grimly.

“Everything’s different now,” she told him. “You did it, Dima. You won.”

“We won,” he told her with a creak of anguish, and she shook her head.

“Youwon,” she corrected. “I’ve lost. Well, that’s not quite true,” she said with a hollow laugh. “Is it a loss if it’s a forfeit?”

He’d known she’d never give up her mother. She was a witch, but before that she was a daughter, a sister, a woman with countless regrets. Her family would be fine; he was positive she’d made sure of it, somehow.

Tonight, for the first time, Dimitri Fedorov had stood alone, his own man. Now, like him, she was doing the same.

For once, Marya Antonova was taking her fate into her own hands.

“You don’t have to,” he told her.

Her mouth quirked.

“No,” she agreed. “But you would, if you were me. I know you understand it.”

Her gaze dropped to the heart he wore around his neck, and the pulse of it he knew by now, in every fit and start it possessed.If I ever decide to give my heart to you, Dima,she’d said once, holding his hand palm up,then cut it out of my chest and keep it somewhere safe, where no one else can get to it. Keep it locked somewhere, Dima, where no one will ever find it.

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