Page 97 of My Wild Horse King

She’s not wrong. Standing on the street is just inviting more madness, and that’s the very last thing we need.

Gabe’s house is largeish, but with this many people in it, three of them quite young, it feels very, very full.

“I can’t believe you stole those journals,” Amanda says.

“I told you like four times,” Gabe says. “You told me to quit speaking nonsense.”

“You told me that you thought our family had horse-shifters in it.” Amanda’s shaking her head. “Even my dad never said anything as crazy as that.”

“He probably thought that one day, you’d read them,” Gabe says.

“He probably didn’t believe it himself,” she says, still eyeing Aleksandr sideways.

But Gabe doesn’t let us down. A few moments later, he emerges triumphant with a box, and in the bottom of it, there are four crumbling journals. He was right about the languages, too. Three were in Russian, and one’s mostly Latvian.

“I’ll take this one,” Mirdza offers. “Since it’s Latvian, it’s probably the newest, and therefore the least helpful.”

“I’ll take a Russian one,” Aleksandr says.

“And me,” Alexei says.

“I’ll take the third,” Grigoriy says.

They’re undeniably correct that their Russian is the best, so I’m left standing around like an idiot while my sister’s husband and his friends pore over our family journals looking for any sort of clue we can use.

At least we don’t have to wait for very long.

“This first entry. . .” Aleksandr whistles.

“What?” Kris is leaning over his shoulder, but the rest of us are stuck waiting.

“I think it has our answer, right here.” Aleksandr’s head never lifts from the journal, his hands as gentle as I’ve ever seen them where he’s touching the edge. “For it to make sense, you need to know who the Seven Boyars were.”

Alexei straightens. “They were the self-appointed leaders in Russia’s provisional government during the Time of Troubles. They brought the misery to an end when they made my ancestor the new monarch. They chose the Romanovs to rule, basically.”

Aleksandr finally looks up. “And Gustav and Kristiana’s relative was Fyodor Sheremetev.”

That name means something to them, I can tell.

“Why is everyone reacting like that?” Amanda asks. “Was he a villain?”

Alexei shakes his head. “He was the most powerful of the boyars. He set my family on the throne.”

“The opening passage reads,” Aleksandr says, “I had no idea what I was agreeing to. When first we saw her, Baba Yaga appeared as a maiden. She had such an open air. She had such a lovely countenance. We were all inclined to listen to her, and to believe anything she promised.”

“So it was them,” Grigoriy says. “She did meet with our ancestors.”

“We already knew all this,” Alexei says.

“But we didn’t know this,” Aleksandr says. “Had I known she intended to make me the individual responsible for commanding this group, I would have refused. Not a day goes by that one of the others does not come to me, complaining about some thing or other that Misha has done.” Aleksandr looks up, like that should mean something.

“Who’s Misha?” I ask.

“Short for Michael,” Alexei says. “The first Romanov to rule.”

“But why does that matter?” I ask.

“Because Fyodor’s commanding the group,” Aleksandr says, “not the Romanovs.”

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