Page 118 of My Queendom for a Horse

“He’s unconscious.” I gesture past myself toward John.

“That wasn’t an accident,” Aleks says. “They’re here.”

“Who’s here?” My heart rate, which had finally started to come down, spikes again.

“I couldn’t figure it out, before. It’s why I finally gave up on the idea. How could Mikhail and Boris possibly still be alive, unless they were using the three of us to boost our powers for a preservation spell?” He closes his eyes. “Since I couldn’t find any evidence that Alexei and Grigoriy are alive, I thought maybe I was the only one left.” He opens his eyes. “But now? They must be here to kill me.”

“What?”

“I know you said no destroying,” he says. “But Kris?”

His face is beautiful, even covered with grime, even lying sideways on the ground, even with desperately grim eyes.

“I’m not going to let them kill me today, which means I’m going to have to do a little destroying myself.”

26

“Yes,” I practically shout. “Kill them. Fast.”

Aleksandr chuckles.

John’s unconscious. We’re both stuck under a collapsed building. Villains are here trying to murder us, and he’s laughing.

“You’re deranged,” I say.

“I’m just proud of how far we’ve come.” He’s also naked, and it’s freezing, and he’s pontificating on this? “You want me to do whatever it takes to keep you safe, and I’m the one wondering if there’s another way.”

“If it’s the same guys you thought you saw before, they froze you as a horse for a hundred years, and they’re still alive, somehow, and now they’re trying to kill you. So, yeah. I’d say eliminating them is an appropriate action.”

“When you’re mad about how this goes down, just remember you told me to do it.”

There’s a huge rumbling underneath me, and then the ground opens up and swallows me.

Which, really, frankly, is not at all what I had in mind.

I try to scream, and my mouth predictably fills with dirt. It’s really hard to cough when you’re underground. All kinds of thoughts zoom through my head in this moment, some of them pretty morose.

Presumably Aleks tossed me under here to keep me safe. But what if he dies? I mean, I hate to think it, but what if he isn’t stronger than the two mega-villains who have somehow lived a hundred years, and they kill him?

Would he just leave me stuck down here?

That makes me flail around, and I realize that I’m not really buried underground. He moved me, using the earth to keep me from being seen, probably. I’m inches from the surface, which is probably why, when I’m no longer trying to scream and I expel the dirt I choked on earlier, I’m able to breathe.

I push my way upward slowly and notice a lump next to me. I pull myself out far enough that I can scootch toward it—is it Aleks? I tug and claw and yank until John’s craggy face is exposed.

So at least he’s also hidden.

Then I hear the boom. I leap from the ground and pelt toward the sound, realizing that Aleks did entirely heal my leg at least, before burying me away from the action. Why did Aleks move me so far away? I’m running as fast as I can, but I can barely make out three figures, standing just in front of the collapsed cover from the barn courtyard.

Aleksandr’s facing two other men—both of them large, both of them imposing. One of them’s hurling fireballs at him. The other. . . Suds! Svetais suds! Is that a lightning bolt?

By throwing up huge walls of earth, Aleks manages to deflect most of the damage, but one of his arms is smoking, and the other is blackened.

Can he really kill them? It’s two on one, and he has a bunch of dirt, while they have flame and lightning. Plus, he just healed me, and moved me and John, and he said that has a cost.

What is the cost? How tired is he?

If he was sure he could win, why did he send me away? I can’t think this through, not now, not watching this. So I race, as fast as I can, as bravely as I can, toward the danger. I may not be able to do much, but somehow I got Aleks to access his powers. Somehow, I was able to help him do things he couldn’t before. He might need me again.

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