Page 74 of One For my Enemy

“What is it?” Galina asked her mother, who smiled thinly.

“If you help us, Galinka,” Yaga murmured, “perhaps there’s something we can do about it.”

Galya, pretty Galya, come hold my hand.

“Just tell me what you need,” Galina said instantly, and her mother opened her bedroom door, inviting her to come inside.

ACT IV: BE BUT MINE

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name.

Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

Juliet, (2.2.33–36)

IV. 1

(In Darkness.)

Dimitri Fedorov was the sun, the moon, and the stars. His mother had whispered it to him when he was a boy:Dima, you are the sun, the moon, and the stars.She’d meant that he was her entire universe, and perhaps he was. Her world was very small.

Marya had said something similar to him when he was fifteen, only she’d been joking;Dima, you are the sun, the moon, and the stars,she’d said in her criminally uninterested tone. Dima, you never look around to realize the world goes on around you, outside you, in spite of you.

Now, again, Dimitri Fedorov was the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Shiny, dead things in space.

Dimitri and Roman buried their brother Lev in darkness. The irony of new moons, of beginnings in general, is that they are always begun with total blindness. No orb of light for guidance. No promise of the future. Roman had come to find Dimitri, told him what happened. They were dead, both of them. Lev and Alexandra—Sasha, the youngest Antonova witch—whose body was already taken. Probably by Ivan, Roman said.

Dimitri said nothing. He didn’t ask what happened. He said nothing of the heart he’d placed in a small vial, tied with a leather cord around his neck. He said nothing, either of Marya Antonova’s heart or his own.

Dimitri and Roman buried Lev in darkness, in silence. Then Roman straightened, cleared his throat, and spoke.

“The Bridge told me our deal is ended,” Roman said.

This is your fault, Dimitri didn’t say.

“Good,” was his only answer.

“You hate me,” Roman guessed.

Yes, of course. Of course I do. Do you not see what you’ve cost me?

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“I never wanted this to happen, Dima,” Roman told him.

No one ever gets what they want, Roma. I know that more than anyone.

“I know,” said Dimitri.

“Papa,” Roman began tentatively, “he wants us to—”

Dimitri shut his eyes.

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