Page 49 of My Wild Horse King

“Wait,” I say. “You can’t do that. Your arm.”

He straightens a bit, and then he turns to me. “I need some help.” His one visible eye looks terrible, burning brightly.

“What?”

“Hold my arm up.” He tosses his head. “Come over here, and hold my arm up.”

“I don’t think?—”

“With all this noise, if he’s not awake, there’s a reason. The last thing you should do is try and wake him.” He looks down at Alexei with concern. “Just do as I’m asking.”

I shake my head. “If you can walk, I can?—”

“Please,” he says. “Maybe it takes more pain, more sacrifice, or more good. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

I can’t argue, not with that. Not with his burning, desperate desire. I’ve seen the same look in his father’s face, and I’m pretty sure it hollowed him from the inside out. “Fine.”

The next forty-five seconds arehorribleas he walks me through lifting his arm and rotating it—says he’s seen a healer do it. After an awful ordeal, his shoulder finally pops into place with a strange sound and a shift. He doesn’t even cry out or moan. He just shudders and exhales sharply.

And then he nods. “Alright.”

He crouches down, putting very little weight on his left leg, and reaches under Alexei. Then he lifts him up, his good arm straining, and his teeth gritted, and he carries him. Not just a few yards. He carries him on and on, step by stumbling step. Blood runs down the side of his face and drips to the ground. The furrows in his brow deepen. The redness in his cheek and eye darken.

And still he trudges along.

Until finally, miracle of miracles, we reach the car, and it’s still there, the key untouched. We load Alexei into the back, and I drive them both back to the palace. Just as we arrive, Alexei starts to moan. The sound’s horrifying, but I take it as a good sign. It means he’s still alive.

In the end, Alexei’s father heals them both.

It’s as miraculous to watch that day as it ever has been. Sure, in the moment it’s painful, but all healing is. It’s so fast, so complete, and so wondrous that I nearly start to cry.

Once he’s done, Alexei’s father asks me what happened. There’s no way he would condone our trip, not without more evidence that Leonid might be able to use magic. And if we were doing it, we should have gotten permission.

So I lie.

I tell him that we were out looking at the area, because Alexei was worried about some reports he’d heard from friends that the people didn’t have the best living conditions. Then I tell him that the men who attacked us saw Alexei’s ring on the ground and that they became even angrier. It’s not exactly comfortable, telling the leader of Russia that his citizens don’t like him, but I’m pretty sure he already knows. I’m about to tell him about Leonid’s bravery in protecting Alexei, but Leonid’s eyes widen and his head shakes just a small amount, so I don’t share that. I change course.

“I’m sorry I didn’t recover the ring,” I say. “I didn’t think to get it—we were really struggling to get Alexei back to the car. He was too heavy for me to carry, and as you saw, Leonid was badly injured.”

Alexei’s father doesn’t yell or rant. He places a hand on my head and bows his own. “I’m glad you’re all safe, and I’m sorry things are in such a state of unrest.” Then he walks away.

His calm, understated nature always stands out to me—it’s there inside of Alexei, but his mother Alexandra’s tempestuous temperament rises to the surface more often. Once I’m sure Alexei’s fine, and once we’ve answered his questions about the men and how we got him away, we bid him good night.

“I’ll see Leonid to his room,” I say. “You rest.”

Alexei’s too tired to argue, so I manage to trot after a now-healed Leonid alone.

“That wasamazing.” Leonid’s practically skipping. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You were in a lot of pain,” I say. “For a really long time. I’m so sorry.”

He spins around so fast that I stumble backward. “Who cares about the pain? Did you see the way the czar healed us? Did you see how, between one second and the next, what was broken, what was dying, was simply. . .” He snaps. “Restored?”

I nod slowly. “Yeah, that’s the best thing about the water power. You can fix things with it. A lot of things.”

“I need to figure out what I can do.” He’s nodding as he walks now, and I’m forced to jog to keep up. “We have to find out what all this means.”

Except, even after several hours of questions, I’m no closer to guessing. He has no affinity to any of the things I know about. No ability to manipulate water. He burns easily from fire—proven by both a candle and his room’s hearth. He’s got no connection to the earth, the wind, or electricity.

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