More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
We can’t curse all the men in the world, can we?” “Not in a single day, at least,” Marya replied, “much as I try.”
The implication was clear; he’d come as close as he was going to. He’d come close enough to imagine her, to taste the proximity of her in the air between them, but no closer—that was up to her.
Such is the case when time goes by: emptiness.
What else is there to know about Marya Antonova, in the end? Only that now, she is called Baba Yaga, and of all her many trinkets, her daughter remains the greatest treasure of them all.
(212) 555-0131: good morning (212) 555-0131: I know I should wait— (212) 555-0131: what’s the rule? 3 days? (212) 555-0131: anyway, doesn’t matter, because I can’t (212) 555-0131: mostly because it’s a stupid rule (212) 555-0131: but also because I can’t sleep (212) 555-0131: not sure I’ll be able to until I see you again but try not to hold that against me
“I’m not here for a one-night stand, Sasha,” he told her. “The story we’re writing? It has chapters. Installments. I don’t want once.”
“I would have gone to you, Masha, if you’d asked. You would’ve only had to ask, and I would have chosen you over everything.”
will always love you, I will love you until the day I die—and if you’re the one to kill me, then by all means, you should know without a trace of doubt that you will not have turned me away. I will have spent the final beat of my heart loving you, just as I always have. Only you, Masha,” he said, and she bent in anguish, resting her forehead against the still-sluggish motion of his chest while he gathered her in his arms, eternally hers. Even now, eternally familiar. “Only you, forever, I promise.”
She wanted to kill him, to kiss him, to love him with her hands around his neck.
She sighed, sliding her arms around his waist, and he curled himself around her like the shield she’d never asked for, his heart beating steadily, thrumming with futile oaths beside her ear.
“Dima,” she said again, and his grip on her tightened. “Dima, I swear,” she confessed to his chest in a whisper, “this love I have for you will be the death of me.”
At best, Dimitri Fedorov was Marya Antonova’s greatest weakness. At worst, she was his.
Sasha I swear to fucking god nobody will ever hurt you, I will never, ever, let anyone hurt you, I won’t let them touch you, I’ll burn the world down myself before anyone ever lays a hand on you
Could he really taste so sweet, being her enemy?
“Write me a tragedy, Lev Fedorov,” she whispered to him. “Write me a litany of sins. Write me a plague of devastation. Write me lonely, write me wanting, write me shattered and
fearful and lost. Then write me finding myself in your arms, if only for a night, and then write it again. Write it over and over, Lev, until we both know the pages by heart. Isn’t that a story, too?”
I’m simply going to make us some tea and remind you how best to kill a witch,” she murmured, “because at the moment, I feel quite certain blood will satisfy me very well.”
What would it be like, Sasha wondered, to live in a world where no meant no?
Dimitri Fedorov was the sun, the moon, and the stars.
“you are not incomplete because a piece of your heart is gone. You are you, an entire whole, all on your own. If you have loved and been loved, then you can only be richer for it—you don’t become a smaller version of yourself simply because what you once had is gone.”
“Sometimes, Masha, my eyes open and I know, somewhere in my bones, that I have formed myself to the shape of waking up beside you. Sometimes I smell your perfume on a breeze and wonder how it’s possible that I still know the scent of you so well. Sometimes I wake up with the taste of you on my lips,”
Because she wanted him to love her, and because he would, without fear, for as long as he lived. For as long as his heart still beat beside hers, and for long after. For all of the afters, happily or not.
When he opened his eyes again, she was smiling down at him, mean and victorious and cruelly beautiful, and she was everything, everything he had ever loved. She was the sun, the moon, and the stars.
The corpse sat. It was an obedient corpse.
