Page 73 of My Wild Horse King

“But maybe she does.” I shudder. “This is a bad idea, Leonid.”

“Well, if it is, you’ll be able to tell everyone just how bad.” He closes the book. “Because I’ve already done it.”

He stands and grabs a bowl from a shelf in the top corner of the small room, and he pours the contents into the fireplace. The flames crackle as he does, and I can feel it—the injection of our magic into the dark, sticky-looking liquid. “I followed all the horrible, bizarre instructions. Dig up earth of loam, of sand, of clay, and of peat. Add water of stream, ocean, lake, and snow. Mix it with the wind from the steppe, and the air from the ocean.” He smiles. “Slaughter a crowing rooster and mix his blood, laced with the sparking power of the earth.”

Fire blooms in the hearth.

“And burn it all to ash.”

I’m shaking my head. “No. This is a terrible idea. Stop now, before?—”

But it’s too late.

Thunder roars above us. The earth shakes beneath our feet, and the roof of the miserable hut trembles, chunks of sod crumbling down on our heads. The sound that follows, like the lowing of cattle, the groaning of the earth beneath, and the rumbling of thunder above, fills the air around us, somehow combining in an unholy and unnatural way.

“Who dares to summon me?” The voice pounds against my skull. I drop to my knees and wrap my arms around my legs, closing my eyes and pressing them against the tops of my thighs.

“Who summoned me here?” The voice is louder, somehow, rattling my very brain inside my skull. “Present yourself.”

“It was I, Leonid Ivanovich.” I look up, and moonlight streams through the ravaged roof, lighting up Leonid’s proud, but filthy face. “I called you, becauseI’mthe rightful heir to your power. Others have usurped it, but I call on you to make it right.”

The cacophony, the wind, the trembling, it all stops.

The moonlight on Leonid’s face is all that remains. I uncurl myself, wondering whether it’s good or bad that the noise and pressure and battering of the unnatural wind has abated.

And then a woman steps through the front of the hut.

“Leonid Ivanovich.” The woman’s ancient—a hunched crone. Then I blink, and she’s middle-aged, her hair just beginning to grey at the temples. Small creases on the edges of her eyes are there, but only just. Not a second later, she’s a maiden, fair and lovely to behold, with streaming blonde hair and eyes just like Leonid’s.

She smiles. “My child.”

Herchild?

“I called for your help,” Leonid says. “The Romanov family, as well as two others, possess the powers that were meant for me.”

The woman extends her arm, and her hand presses against the side of his face. “You’re as beautiful as your ancestor.” Her smile’s soft and kind. Her face is as gentle as the summer rain. Her eyes are still every bit as bright and startling as Leonid’s—the most vibrant green of grass growing in the middle of summer.

“Help me,” he says.

“No one’s entitled to powers, child,” she says. “Not you, and not the Romanovs.”

He frowns. “But?—”

“I thought your line had gone.” She shakes her head. “Had I known you yet lived—I couldn’t sense you.” She peers at him. “How did I miss. . .”

“Father says our ancestors fled. They traveled far, into old England, until when I was a young child, he and his father finally returned.”

She closes her eyes. “They left my realm, beyond my reach.” She shakes her head. “What’s done cannot be undone.” When she opens her eyes again, they’re no longer bright green. They’re the deep brown of loamy earth. “I cannot help you. The only way you can regain your power is if they’re given back to you by the others. Those I bestowed them upon must relinquish them to you.”

“But—”

She presses her index finger against his mouth, and in that moment, she ages what looks like a hundred years. Her back is hunched. Her eyes are rheumy, and her fingers are crooked and covered with blotches. “You must not attempt to force them, my child. Promise.”

Leonid’s nostrils flare. “You say there’s no way, but?—”

“My calling is to provide balance to the world. It always has been. I’m not the only force in this world, and nature seeks balance, always. Light begets dark. Life begets death. High requires low. Sky cries out to earth, and fire calls for dousing moisture.”

“But—”

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