One for My Enemy

by Olivie Blake

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.

At best, Dimitri Fedorov was Marya Antonova’s greatest weakness. At worst, she was his.

“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?”

“You want me to burn for you?” she asked. “Then watch me burn.”

“Do you really believe people are so isolated that when they’re gone, nothing grows in their place? To really kill something, you have to kill everything.

“Peace doesn’t come from death,”

be mine as I am yours—