The Destined and the Deathless

Part 5

Marya grew worse. The healers did their best to keep her comfortable, and Marya slept fitfully, visions dancing across her eyelids. Dreams to match the stories her mother had filled her head with as a child, of Vasilisas and Ivans and witches and chyerti, of sacrifice and noble quests and declarations of love.

Then she saw her Ivan, pacing in her castle, distraught.

She saw the door to the dungeon, still locked after all this time.

She saw Koschei still bound, waiting.

She watched Koschei tip back her head, her mouth opening soundlessly.

She watched as Ivan stopped his pacing, turned, and followed the siren call. His hands shook as he found the key in his key ring and unlocked the door, bringing with him a torch.

He descended the stairs, found the door to Koschei's room, and unlocked that as well.

Marya could do nothing as Ivan saw Marya's secret. He saw Koschei, naked and bound on the bed, seemingly helpless. Her pale skin shone in his torchlight, full breasts only partially covered by her hair. She pressed her knees together as he neared her demurely.

Koschei had always been breathtakingly beautiful.

And Ivan was only a man.

Koschei's mouth opened again, and though Marya couldn't hear her, she saw her lips form the word, "water."

Ivan, stunned, quite possibly enchanted, fetched her water.

He held the cup to Koschei's lips. She smiled as she drank and some of the water spilled on her chest. Ivan's eyes tracked the trails of water as they slid between her breasts.

The ropes slipped from her wrists and she jerked forward, grinning. She spoke words too quickly for Marya to decipher aside from her own name but Ivan leaned backwards, horrified.

Koschei vanished and the vision dissolved.

* * *

The next thing Marya was aware of was being gathered in strong, slender arms. Between the medicine and the plague, she couldn't open her eyes.

"I'm here, Marya. I will not let you be alone, but we have to go." Koschei pressed a kiss to Marya's burning forehead. "He's coming."

A confused sound bubbled up from Marya's sweat-slicked throat.

"Who else? Your fool of a husband."

"Ivan the Fool." Marya's voice was merely a ghost of a whisper, but even near death she could be angry. He had broken his promise and disobeyed her, after all.

And had doomed her tsardom.

"Indeed," Koschei chuckled. "But he had his uses."

Marya felt herself be hefted onto a saddle. "Wha—"

"We have to take my horse," Koschei said as she sat behind her. "I'm too weak for anything else."

"You? Weak?"

"Undone by your hands alone, my love. This was always the cost. Someone always has to pay it." She spoke softly. "Sleep, Marya. Save your strength."

* * *

Marya slept, and dreamed.

In her dreams, Ivan chased after them, calling out for her.

"I would follow you anywhere," he had said the night they were wed.

Perhaps he was a fool, but at least he wasn't a liar.

Marya felt too distant to care, too distant to feel anything at all.