One for My Enemy

by Olivie Blake

“We have a number of informants, you know. They’re very clever, and very well concealed. Unfortunately, according to one of them, someone,” Marya murmured, “has been selling our intoxicants. Buying them from us, actually, and then turning around to sell them at nearly quadruple the price. Who would do that, I wonder, Dima?”

“Tell Koschei that Baba Yaga sends her love,” she said simply. Translation: Your move.

This is the important thing, after all: nobody fears a beautiful woman. They revere her, worship her, sing praises to her—but nobody fears her, even when they should.

The more successful Baba Yaga’s apothecary became, however, and the closer Marya and Masha came to staking a sizable claim amid New York’s magical black markets, the keener Marya’s sense that obstacles, whether in the form of dangerous rivals or disastrous repercussions, almost certainly loomed ahead.

Any magical drug would easily prove more euphoric than Ecstasy, more effective than whatever dose of Adderall or Lexapro the average university student used to cope, but it still had to be proven. Until the deal was settled and the new client list secured, secrecy would be paramount.

“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.”

To believe in destiny, one must also believe in succession. If the world is ruled by predetermination, then it must also be ordered, measured, paced out from first to last: If this, then this.

How was it possible to feel such greatness in one’s bones and yet be kept from it by some inconsequentiality of birth? To give in to such a feeling would be to submit, inevitably, to chaos.

After nearly a decade’s vendetta, Roman finally managed to uncover Marya Antonova’s primary informant: the man called Brynmor Attaway, who was otherwise known as The Bridge.

Bryn told Roman when the Antonova witches were selling the tablets. Roman bought them, turned them around, and sold them for a profit through Bryn, who took his earnings in vials of blood in exchange for thick stacks of bills.

“Whatever happens to our family is on your conscience, Roma,” Dimitri warned, preparing to leave the room and pausing only briefly; only to glance askance at Roman. “Whatever comes of this, it will either be your doing, or your undoing. Whatever happens, you will live with the consequences, but it will not be on my hands.”

“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?”

“What does it mean to be a Fedorov son if we destroy ourselves in the process?” Dimitri asked, and his expression was nothing Lev had ever seen on his face before. “What does it mean to be this family or that, if loss is the only thing that comes from it?”

“and there’s no hope of peace between us until the scales between our families are even.”

“If it will be blood for blood to make a deal, Marya, then it will be one of yours for one of mine. Your youngest for mine, to give us peace,” he clarified, as her expression stiffened. “Masha was payment for Dima. This is another deal, a new one for a higher price, and I will accept no less.”

“You can travel realms,” Koschei said warily, and so it was a good day for rumors all around.

“No ifs,” Koschei said, cutting him off. “The devil lounges in the word if, Roma. The circumstances of our conditions are not for us to ponder without slowly losing our minds.”

“Because nobody will deny you anything the moment you stop denying yourself. Who could possibly have sovereignty greater than yours?” she asked, insistent. “Who on earth could have the right to refuse you, if you do not permit them to? If this isn’t the way, Sasha, then find another one.”

“Sashenka,” Marya said, “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.”

“When you win,” she said slowly, “we burn it down. We set the match and light it.” At his questioning glance, she clarified, “We leave behind the kingdoms we kept for Koschei and Baba Yaga, and together, we build something new.”

Faith was an unwise extension of hope, which was nearly always dashed, destroyed, burned on a pyre of routine and almost unvarying disappointment.

Marya and Dimitri had given Sasha and Lev the simplicity—the beautiful normality—that they themselves had been denied. Dimitri had given Lev freedom from a life he’d never wanted. He’d given him choices.