Page 62 of My Wild Horse King

“We need to get you some powers too,” Grigoriy says, “and we need to train you to use them together, in ways we can’t.”

“If you can’t use them together, how can you train me?” I arch one eyebrow.

“We can teach you to do everything we can do,” Aleksandr says. “And then help come up with ideas of what else you might be able to do.”

I sigh. “Alright, let’s say we actually do the training montage?—”

“It’s not a montage,” Kristiana says. “Stop pretending this is a movie.”

“If we do the training montage,” I insist, because ignoring my little sister’s objections is ingrained, “around my meetings, then I’ll do it. But you guys have to help me, not just buy all my shares. My life’s important too.”

Grigoriy’s face and body is strained like he just ran across hot coals or jogged through a crosswalk full of broken glass, but he doesn’t argue.

“How do we do that?” Aleksandr asks.

“Do what?” I ask.

“How do we give you our powers?” My sister’s apparently billionaire husband is eyeing me like I’m a skin suit he needs to step into. It’s giving me the heebie jeebies.

“What did Leonid do?” Kristiana asks. “How did he take Alexei’s power?”

“He just had me say that he could use my powers,” Alexei says. “Pretty simple.”

“I hereby grant the use of my powers to Gustav Liepa,” Grigoriy says.

“Wait!” Katerina’s grass-green eyes are wide. Her breathing’s staccato.

I was already looking at her whenever I could sneak a glance—the flame-red hair, and her startling eyes call to me. I find myself looking at her too often already. But after that outcry, everyone else turns to look at her, too.

“What?” Grigoriy frowns.

She sighs and closes her eyes. “After he got a new power, Leonid was incapacitated, sometimes for as long as three days.”

“Three days?” That cannot be true. I can’t miss the next three days of meetings. “What does that mean, wiped out?”

“It didn’t happen at the palace after that initial attack,” Katerina says. “But when he got the electrical powers, it was like he had the flu.”

“And the second time?” I ask. “When he took the fire powers?”

“It was worse,” she says. “That’s why he was in such a hurry to rush you guys out after Alexei surrendered.”

Aleksandr’s shaking his head.

Adriana looks sick—and I’m not shocked to notice that of the fireflies of light dancing around her, a good twenty percent of them are dark. She’s always been a bit of a moral grey.

Alexei’s scowling. “Whose side are you on?” He steps closer to her. “You could have told us that before.”

Katerina shrugs. “No one’s ever been on my side.”

But she confessed that little secret when they started trying to give me their powers. I realize that, since she arrived, other than the whole incident with homeland security, which she started before meeting me, she’s been the only one who is always seemingly on my side.

She was worried if they gave me their powers now, it would mess up my meetings.

Unlike the others, Katerina’s trying to help in the way I want help.

“At least see whether it worked,” Grigoriy says. “Can you do this?” The wind screams through my family room, ruffling everyone’s hair and knocking over a bag of takeout. The smell of garlic fills the air.

And a splotch of red spreads across my white wool rug.

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