Page 66 of One For my Enemy

III. 18

(Not For You.)

Stas stared down at them, at the curse of circumstance that was Sasha Antonova and Lev Fedorov, as Ivan tried to coax her away. “Sasha,” Ivan was saying, his voice low and urgent. “Sasha, come now, come with me—”

She was sobbing against Lev Fedorov’s chest, refusing to move.

“Let go of me—let go—”

Stas blinked, his vision swimming, and all at once, again, the woman on the ground wasn’t Sasha. It was Marya, as youthful as when he’d first lain eyes on her. When Stas Maksimov had first seen Marya Antonova she’d been smiling, her shoulders glowing and bronzed in a way that meant the sun had seen all parts of her; that she’d been carelessly cast beneath its rays, unconcerned with burning.

This one?Stas had thought morosely when he’d seen her, admonishing the artless tug of his heart.Stas, you fool, this one is not for you.

(She burns for Dimitri Fedorov,the whispered rumors said, then only charmed by the thought of it.Young Dima, such a clever boy. He already has her heart, and by the looks of it, her body, too. She will never burn for you.)

This one is not for you—

“Let go of him, Sasha,” Stas croaked, trying to remember this was not his wife; this wasn’t Dimitri Fedorov, and not his Masha. This was someone else. This was someone else, and his own wife had loved him. He had been in love, and now she was gone. “Sasha, let him go—”

But the longer he looked at her, the more his vision swam with remnants of the past.

When Stas had seen Marya Antonova again, she was like a candle doused, a shadowed edge of what she’d been. It had been little more than months between occurrences but already she was close to unrecognizable; her dark hair, previously floating down to her waist, had been sliced to shoulder length, the ends of it sitting with careful precision along the line of her clavicle. She’d worn a sundress when he’d first seen her, the strap of it slipping from the curve of her shoulder, but that day she’d worn a plain grey dress, high heels, a meticulously tailored blazer. A few months before, she’d been a girl in love. When he saw her again, she was a woman.

Stas had walked towards her, half in a trance.

“Do you need something?” he’d asked her. He and his father were Borough witches, administers of the banal. He must have looked stiff and boring to her. He must have looked plain, dark-haired and dull, compared to Dimitri Fedorov. He offered her assistance and winced at the eagerness in his voice, which he’d felt certain would turn her away. She’d fixed her dark eyes on his and blinked once, lashes fanning out against her pale cheeks, and considered the question.

“Do I look like I need something?” she’d asked in reply.

Stas wished he could have said he didn’t love her right then, or that he hadn’t had a sensation of urgency, some absurd need to hold her, to press her body close to his and murmur his devotion through the night. He wished he hadn’t wanted to know her thoughts, to understand each tiny story of the freckles beneath her eyes, to translate each degree of interest from her mouth. What did she look like when he made her laugh? When he held her hand, what would it sound like? How would her breath respond when he slid his hand between her legs and whispered,not yet, not just yet, I want so badly for this to last—?

(This one is not for you,he knew,but please, please, may I borrow her from someone else’s fate? May I have her until her stars change, or mine? May I worship her until I die, and may I give her all of me, for better or worse, or worse, or surely worse?)

“Stas Maksimov,” she’d said—as if they were alone together; as if there were not several other men in the room watching his composure slide away to nothing on the floor—“would it be presumptuous to wonder if you might have a question for me?”

He asked her to have dinner. She accepted. Within weeks he had told her he loved her, having no other alternative but to confess. He’d watched her blink with surprise, taken aback; no doubt she’d heard the words before. Often, even. If Stas had been Dimitri Fedorov and free to say them, to hear them in return, he knew he would have told her every hour on the hour. A woman like Marya Antonova inspired a feverish sort of reverence; an affliction. Stas had spoken to Dimitri only once, perhaps twice, and yet he felt both a kinship he didn’t understand and a hatred he couldn’t manage to stifle.

“I understand,” he’d said awkwardly to Marya upon confession of his feelings, “that perhaps you can’t say those words to me yet.”

She had reached up, brushing his hair from his forehead and considering him, shifting her view of him, watching him change in the light.

“You’re a good man, Stas,” she’d murmured. “Kind. Thoughtful.”

He’d flinched, awaiting the inevitablebut.“If you still have feelings for Dimitri Fedorov—”

“I promise you I’ll never see him again,” she said, cutting him off with the briefest, most subtle of motions from her hand, “because if I ever do, I may never come back to you at all.” A pause, and then, “Knowing that, Stas Maksimov, can you love me still?”

This one is not for you.

Still, he’d bent his head to hers. “I’ll never make you sad, Marya Antonova,” Stas whispered to her. “I’ll never take what is yours. I’ll never demand anything from you. If you were mine, I’d take care each day not to lose you. I’d give you my affection when you wanted it, my devotion when you needed it, and space to breathe when you did not. And you will always have my love, Marya Antonova,” he’d sworn to her, “whether you wish to possess it or not.”

That night he learned how her hair looked when it was fanned out like a raven’s wing against his pillows. He’d learned what she felt like in his sheets, her skin soft as satin in his arms. He’d learned what a whisper of his name in his ear could do to the tension in his spine, and if it had been Dimitri Fedorov on her mind that night, Stas had told himself he would take it. He would accept the parts of Marya she had to give him, however much they were, and eventually, when she told him she loved him in return—and he believed her, having seen a new and blessed fondness in her eyes—he didn’t hesitate a moment.

“Marry me,” he’d said. Let fate be unsatisfied if it wished.

Those words, too—marry me, Marya Antonova, be mine as I am yours—Stas felt certain she’d heard some variant of before. He could almost see her thoughts dance fleetingly to Dimitri Fedorov, but even before he’d said the words aloud, Stas had known there was no turning back. There was no denying the truth of his heart. Fuck the stars. Let her choose him if she wished to choose him.

“Stas.”

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