Page 58 of My Trojan Horse Majesty

“They simply had to agree to grant me access to their powers, and I could use it while returning it to them. Mikhail and Boris did so almost right away.”

“So they have been your friends for a long time.”

“Friends?” He shrugs. “Not exactly.” The doors open. “They gave me the powers in the hope I’d attack the Romanovs for them, and they wouldn’t be culpable, and, you know, they wouldn’t be killed themselves if it went wrong.”

“That’s terrible.”

He gestures for me to get out before the doors close. “Terrible? No. Opportunists? Always.”

I barely make it through before the doors close.

Not that Leonid would have let them close on me. The large doors slam into his arm, but he emerges unscathed. “Unfortunately for them, I wasn’t quite as stupid as they’d hoped. Instead of attacking the Romanovs for perceived slights to their families, which has nothing to do with me, I tried to prevail upon the other three families to grant me the powers of wind, earth, and water. They all refused, but I really tried to do things the easy way.”

“And then?” I can tell we’re close to the answers I need. “What did you do?”

“I tried to force them to surrender their powers,” Leonid says. “It went badly—the harder I tried to pull the powers into myself, the more it hurt. I had quite a bit of energy, thanks to the other two powers I’d mastered, and I pulled far too long. The backlash was. . .unfortunate.”

It sounds like it was painful.

“It had several unintended consequences.”

“I bet.”

“Most importantly, none of the materials I was able to find in the library explained that when Baba Yaga?—”

“Who?”

He sighs. “I’m trying to go too fast.”

“Let me just grab my stuff.”

He plops down on the sofa and starts flipping through my old photo album again. “I’ll wait.”

It only takes me a minute, but he’s already looking at a second photo album when I make it back to the family room. It’s from junior high. “Hey.” I snatch it out of his hands. “No one gets to see that one.”

“Why not?” His bemused expression’s a little too pretty. “You were adorable.”

“That’s about enough of that.”

He picks up his phone and waves it at me. “Too late. I already documented all the best ones so I can look at them whenever I like.”

I lunge for his phone and fall against him instead.

He drops his phone on the sofa and catches me, his arms wrapping around my waist, his eyes intent on mine. “You’re clumsy.”

“I am,” I agree. “I can’t figure out why you like me.” Saying he likes me—what am I doing? Heat rushes to my face, and I try to scramble back and away. “Not that you do. I’m just saying, that if you did?—”

“I already confessed that I do.” His hands tighten around my waist, his head bends slowly over me, and then his mouth closes over mine. I know we’re just standing in the middle of my tiny, unimpressive apartment, but it feelsmomentous. It’s like the whole world drops away, and I’m tumbling down, down, down into a sea of stars.

His mouth is warm, and his hands are strong, and it’severythinga kiss should be. My hands press against his chest, and I can’t help remembering what he looked like without a sweater. My fingers flex, and he groans against me.

I snap backward. “I—I just broke up with my boyfriend this morning.”

He leans forward, his forehead dropping against mine. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”

“What?” I close my eyes and let my body rest against his.

“People act liketimeis what it takes to recover from something, to heal from it. They judge you for your actions when they take place in shorter than the appointed time, like two weeks or two months or two years is what it will take for you to recover, but time is actually somewhat meaningless.”

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