Page 59 of My Wild Horse King

I hold out my hand. “You may want to give me my bag, because this one’s also my fault.”

“Give you your—why? Oh. Because after this I’ll want you to leave?” He snorts. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Things had been bad between the Romanovs and our family for a while.” I start walking again, kicking at trash as we go. “Really, they were bad for both my family and the Kurakins. The Romanov family really liked Grigoriy and Aleksandr’s families, and they did things together.”

“Things?”

I shrug. “You know, they went in on projects, like building libraries. They co-hosted balls. The Romanovs would make sure their crops were watered and the Volkonsky family would bring them baskets full of gems. It was very. . .exclusive, and our families were always left out. But when they went to war, you better believe they called on us then.”

“I imagine burning and zapping powers are pretty helpful in war.”

“I don’t think this came up before, but Alexei pretended to be my suitor for a little over three years, and my dad got pretty excited about the prospect of us marrying.” I cringe. “So when I used Leonid to make Alexei jealous, it didn’t go as I had hoped.”

“What happened?”

“After that initial incident, Leonid and I told the others that we were recovering. We used that time to search the records in the library for any mentions of the magical powers that were possessed by Rurik, and we found quite a few. We knew that Rurik had all five powers, and the records were also clear that there was only one person who could master the powers in each generation—only the oldest child.”

“Okay.”

“That frustrated Leonid. He wasn’t the oldest child—he was theonlyperson, other than his dad, who seemed to have no interest and had certainly not ever done a selfless act to qualify himself. It seemed to both of us like Leonid didn’t have any of the powers he was supposed to have because they’d been given to others, leaving him with nothing but the strange ability to tell what kind of person someone was deep down.”

“Right.”

“But on our fourth night there, Leonid read a passage that said that the Rurikid line had to accept the powers.”

“Huh?” We’re in front of his building now, and Gustav has stopped. “What does that even mean?”

“I wasn’t sure, either. I thought maybe it was a transcription error. The journals were really old, and they had basically stolen them from the royal record chamber, after the Time of Troubles when the Romanovs took over. It had been hundreds of years since then, as well. But Leonid had this idea. He wondered whether he had to accept the abilities first in some way, but in order to accept something. . .”

“It has to be offered to you.”

“I know it might sound reckless, but you have no idea how pathetic Leonid looked at the time. He was my servant. He’d done everything he could, and nothing had helped. He had been doing his best at dinners and training sessions to help me make Alexei jealous. It almost felt like it was working. Alexei hated him, at the very least, possibly because he felt guilty about how bad things got that first night. I felt like I owed him my best efforts, and so. . .”

“You gave him his first power.”

“There was a big fight,” I say. “On the last day of training, Alexei caught Leonid and me in the records room.”

Gustav cringes.

“To cover up what we were doing. . .” I swallow. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I kissed Leonid.”

Gustav inhales sharply.

“It shocked Alexei, I think, and at the time, I thought he might confess that he liked me. Alexei knew, at that point, that Leonid worked for our family. But. . .instead of moving Alexei to action like I wanted, he shifted and we saw that his father was standing behind him.” I still cringe at the memory.

“The czar.”

“The thing is, Alexei and I knew our courtship was fake, and I knew he was kind of pulling away—he had said he was ready to end it—but his father thought it was real. Seeing me kissing Leonid inside the palace, well.” I shake my head. “He broke off our understanding in a rather violent way, sending me home to my father immediately.”

“I bet that didn’t go over well.”

“It did not,” I say. “And actually.” I hate even thinking about this. “My dad was so angry that he fired Leonid’s father, and they both left. Leonid’s dad got really, really drunk, and then he got into a fight, and when he struck his head on the stones outside the bar. . .” I sigh. “He died the night Dad fired him, and Leonid was beside himself. His dad was crazy, but he was the only person who had ever really loved him. He blamed himself for agreeing to help me, and he blamed my dad for firing them, and he blamed me a little bit, because he had gotten no powers, and he couldn’t save his own dad.”

“It sounds pretty tragic,” Gustav agrees.

“The next morning, when I heard what happened, I went looking for him. I offered him my powers, and it worked.” I sigh. “Suddenly, he could use my powers. . .and I couldn’t.”

“Whoops.”

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