Page 53 of My Trojan Horse Majesty

“Pretty isn’t the right word to describe her.” He frowns.

Oh, good.

“Pretty’s for women in shops, or perhaps for women who have worked very hard to look polished. Katerina was beautiful, elegant, and refined.”

Okay, now I really hate her.

“Like before, one night, I happened upon her struggling to haul her worthless older brother home after overindulging. Before realizing I was coming to their aid, she muttered something to him, and he nodded. Then, right in front of my eyes, she turned into a horse.”

She’s gorgeousandmagical? Ugh. The world sucks.

“That’s how I learned that my father might not be entirely insane with his stories. There really were horse shifters in the world.”

“You know, if you get online or go to a library, you can find rows and rows of books about wolves shifting into humans and the reverse,” I say. “When there reallyarehorse shifters, why isn’tthatin any storybook?”

Leonid’s smirk is dry. “I’m sure thatisthe reason. How better to make something absurd than to tell stories that are somewhat close, but not quite the truth? Then if anyone does find out, they’ll never believe it. They’ll assume it’s just more fiction.”

Weird, but it makes sense, I guess.

“In any case, that same night, when I approached her, Katerina convinced her father to let me and my father in on their family secret. They had been entrusted with a special kind of magic. In addition to shifting into horses, they could manipulate electricity in any number of useful ways.”

I pull into a parking space outside of Market Street Grill. “And then you discovered that you could, too?”

Leonid grimaces. “Quite the opposite. In spite of my father’s constant claims, neither he nor I could shift into any other forms or use any magic. After he learned what I’d seen, it took me weeks to get him back to functioning shape. During those weeks, I had to complete all of his work and mine. That kind of effort convinced me that pursuing his obsession was fruitless. If our family ever had that kind of power, surely it had long since abandoned us.”

“What?” This story sucks. “But somehow, that changed.”

He reaches for the door handle. “It did, but let’s get into that over some food, shall we?”

“Fine.”

After the bread comes, I order my crab and Leonid orders the plank salmon and the swordfish.

“Two entrees, and no lobster?” I ask. “I’m surprised.”

He pulls a face. “You know, when I was. . .” He clears his throat and waits for the waiter to walk off. “Back in the early nineteen hundreds, I hear the servants in this area had rules in regards to lobster.”

“Rules?” I blink.

“I notice that you didn’t order it, either,” he says.

“I don’t like it,” I say. “It’s all rubbery and gross. It just tastes like butter, and only because you douse it in butter.”

He laughs. “Indeed. Well, from what I’ve heard, servants in the early nineteen hundreds here in America considered it to be dirty and disgusting. As it was extremely common and cheap, employers would often try and feed it to their workers as often as three or four times a week. They had to institute rules that it would be provided no more often than once a week.”

I can hardly believe it.

“But as it happens, in Russia, thanks to Catherine the Great’s love for lobster, it was quite expensive. It’s not a crustacean that’s native to that region, and they had to be imported. I disliked them because as a servant, I watched the wealthy eating it and wasn’t personally allowed to even try it.”

“Now you could eat as much as you like.”

“I could.” His lip twitches. “And yet, I find that I have no interest in it, as with many things I thought were so desirable back then.”

“What else?” I’m compelled to ask.

“Well, back then, I also fancied that I liked the daughter of the family who had taken us in.”

“Katerina.” I hate how flat her name sounds. There’s no way he didn’t notice that I dislike her.

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