As the moments ticked by, Anatoly cou;d tell things were deteriorating quickly. Not that he'd really expected anything else given Svetlana was cursed. Still, this was not a situation he'd had to deal with before. Well, there had been the time when he'd come back from the alternate world to find Svetlana closed off to an extreme because of what had happened when he hadn't been there. But this was different from that situation. While Svetlana was obviously putting up her walls and returning to her survival mode, the reason why she was doing that was because of Maleficent. Well, he hoped it was Maleficent and not something else the Seal decided to throw at them all while dealing with Maleficent.
So all right, in reading Svetlana he could tell she was very much in fight or flight mode. And it was also obvious to him that his words were not being heard, at least not on a conscious level. So he needed a new approach, and he needed to think of it extremely quickly. He couldn't let go of her, that would just result in very bad things happening. She could fling herself in front of the oncoming train. She could run into a street and get hit by a car. There was even a possibility she could take her own life if she believed him and the girls to be dead and Molokov to be there. After all, hadn't that been what he'd found her preparing to do when he'd returned home unexpectedly before they were to be married? When Katya had made her think he was dead? He wasn't about to lose her then, and he sure as hell wasn't going to lose her now.
So where words failed, he needed to speak with actions. Svetlana put more stock in actions than words anyway, though he was fairly certain in the current state of mind she was in, that wouldn't fully register until he could break the curse. But he needed an action that was so very them, something that might hopefully touch her enough to keep her from fleeing completely and allow him to kiss her without getting punched in the face or kneed in the groin. He had an idea of the reaction her body was having giving she thought he was Molokov, but he had gentleness to him that Molokov didn't.
Decision made, he eased his grip on her slightly. It was just enough where he wasn't having a vice-like grip on her, but she couldn't easily slip from grasp either. Knowing he probably couldn't yet get a kiss in, he was going for something that might let him kiss her. Moving one hand to the back of her neck, he started rubbing it soothingly. It was perhaps low of him to go directly for Svetlana's weak spot, but he knew it was the best chance he had of getting her to calm down even the smallest fraction. It was also a move that Molokov wouldn't know how to use. Which was the most important thing currently.