Page 75 of My Wild Horse King

“He was a bad guy,” I say. “In case you’ve been beating yourself up about leaving him.”

“I’m not sure,” Katerina says. “I want to believe that. I really do. It absolves me of my role in everything.”

“No one good tries to rape-steal someone else’s powers.”

“But he did think they were making bad decisions.” Her shoulders slump, and she leans against the side window. “They did refuse to help us, and a lot of our people died in that famine.”

“He used that to justify his decision to do what he wanted, deep down.”

“Maybe.”

“What happened when he tried to force the powers?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Katerina says. “I remember the guys laughing at him. They told him to do his best. They were ready to fight. But then, once they said they were absolutely unwilling to return his power to him, when they said he had no right and that being Rurikid was irrelevant, he set his feet, closed his eyes, and. . .” She shrugs. “I’m not sure what he did, but it felt like. . .like the ceiling was caving in. Like the air was all gone. Like my insides were being forced outside. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

I shudder.

“Whatever he did forced me to shift into my equine form. That’s really the last thing I remember. It had never happened before, a forced shift. Nothing like that.”

“And when you woke up?”

“Leonid woke me up,” she says. “He was patting my cheek and saying my name.”

“You were in your human form?”

Katerina nods. “I know the guys woke stuck in their horse form, but I woke as a human and I could only shift when he specifically ordered it. I think maybe it has to do with my having surrendered to him. I’m not sure.”

“Do you really think we might find the answers in the middle of nowhere?” I want to believe there might be old family journals that explain everything, but it feels highly unlikely.

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “At first, I thought you were like Leonid—maybe from another branch of his family. I thought you were Rurikid. But if they offer you their powers and you don’t get them?” She frowns. “It must be something different. Like Leonid, I think your best bet at finding the truth is going to be searching whatever was written by your family.”

“Or summoning Baba Yaga.” I can’t help my smirk.

“I strongly advise against that,” she says. “Though the girls have apparently seen her from time to time.”

“She scared you?”

“Deeply,” Katerina says.

I yawn.

“I saw that,” she says. “You need to sleep.” Before I can stop her, she’s shaking Grigoriy awake by grabbing his knee. “Your turn to drive.”

I want to argue—I’m learning more from her on this drive than I have from all the chats with the others over the course of days—but she’s probably right. No matter what the guys may be hoping I’ll become, I’m far from superhuman now. If I don’t sleep, at least a little bit, I’ll eventually crash this car and kill us all.

The sun’s about to rise, the first rays brightening the horizon as I finally lean my head against the window and go to sleep. At some point, we stop. People are talking and some are getting out, presumably to eat or go to the restroom. I shrug out of my jacket, ball it up, and go right back to sleep.

I’m not sure how long I’ve slept when I finally wake up, but the sight I wake up to is breathtaking. There’s a gorge—tall, flat-topped but surrounded by sloping mountains with a winding river that threads through them. Maybe the river created the pass. I’m no geologist.

But what’s most breathtaking about them is the color.

The river water is the brightest blue, almost like a blue highlighter. The rocks that form the mountain sides are streaked with bright, flaming reds and oranges. The sky behind it is a light blue, and there’s both scattered greenery along the edges and patches of bright, golden sandstone, leaving the whole thing an almost unbelievable rainbow cascade of colors.

I’m not really one for faith or God, but this could almost change my mind.

I rub my eyes and yawn. “Where are we?” My voice cracks in the middle of we, and I cough to clear it.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Aleksandr says from the driver’s seat. “You’ve been asleep for almost fourteen hours, and we’re almost there.”

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