One for My Enemy

by Olivie Blake

“Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, Masha,” Sasha sighed, “but somehow, I think I should just get used to it. 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.”

when a kiss felt like this—like intoxication itself, like madness, so terribly impious and yet so purely, completely divine—it had to be stopped, and quickly, or else it would set fire to her every thought.

My daughters are diamonds, Yaga so often said. Nothing is more beautiful. Nothing shines brighter. And most importantly, nothing will break them.

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.

“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 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.”

“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

“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 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.”

“Strength comes from struggle,” Marya said. “Each time we bid farewell to a piece of ourselves we become different than we were. But each time we rise again in the morning, it’s a victory,”

power is knowing what you’re capable of and choosing if and when you give it to the world. Power is knowing when to be delicate and soft, like my sister, and when to make foolish, small-minded people think beauty and goodness are the same.