Page 36 of My Queendom for a Horse

I roll my eyes, and then I lean around the corner and peer down the stairwell. It looks like John and Dad didn’t follow me, so that’s progress. Now to think of something I can tell them.

“Why did you yell?” he asks.

I yank him into my bedroom again. It’s becoming a dangerous habit—or maybe what makes me nervous is that a small part of me likes the feel of dragging him inside my space. “You can’t stay here,” I clarify. “As soon as we’re done talking, you have to go back to the barn and be a stallion again.”

“I have a lot to learn about the modern world,” he says. “I need more time as a man.”

Something about the way he says man makes my knees tremble. I swallow. “Listen, mister, part of paying me back is keeping from blowing my cover. My family can’t know that you’re some kind of maniacal magician who’s a hundred years old and turns into a horse.”

“I’m not a magician,” he says.

I need to find out exactly who and what he is before I take any more risks on him. I point at my desk chair. “Sit.”

He actually listens, to my utter shock, dropping into the seat, but sitting just as ramrod-straight and regal as he did through all of dinner. He has the kind of posture that looks like it was drilled into him by a crazed governess.

“Tell me who you are, and why you got cursed. I need to know what I’m dealing with. I’m going to talk to my dad and try to figure out how we might be related, but I need to know what questions to ask.”

Aleks stretches his arm out, dropping one hand to the top of my desk, and drums his fingers. “There were five of us with powers. I don’t know why, and I’m not sure how long it had been that way.”

“Five what?” I ask.

“Families,” he says. “Five families that could work magic.”

“Okay,” I say. “All Russian families?”

He nods. “Sort of. My father told me it dated back to Genghis Kahn’s time. There are only a few words in Russian that take their meaning from the Mongolian language, but money, horse, customs, and trade are among them. That man swept through with his mounted troops and conquered all of Russia. We remained oppressed for more than two hundred years.” He sighs heavily. “But after all that time, the people were desperate to be free. They began to pray to any God that would listen for help.”

“Any God that would listen?”

Aleks shrugs. “I’m just telling you what I was taught. In order to free our people from the Mongolian rule, the locals began to make sacrifices. Some were small, ranging from widows giving up their bread to wealthy families releasing sheep or goats into the wild. Eventually, larger sacrifices were made, possibly dark ones. It’s pretty unclear what exactly happened, but one thing we know is that something answered.

“Five families were gifted with powers. They became the ruling families in the region, after vanquishing the Mongols. My family, the Volkonsky family, received the gift of dominion over the earth.”

Dominion over the earth? What does that even mean? “And you could shift into a horse. Is that part of it?”

“I assume they were connected, but shifting hasn’t ever been easy,” he says. “The process itself is simple enough and painless as well, but in order to master it, you must first conquer your skills with your element—for me, earth, as I mentioned.”

“Okay,” I say. “And you did?”

The line of his mouth is flat.

“I mean, I’m assuming you did, but who knows? You can’t seem to shift without me, so. . .”

“As I said, that’s because of the curse.”

“Tell me about the curse, then,” I say.

His eyes flash. “I don’t know many details. The entire region of Russia was in the middle of a terrible drought. My friends and I had been working together to keep our lands and people safe—fed. But when the Yurovsky and the Kurakin families came and demanded that we save their people too?” He shrugs. “We declined.”

“Wait, there was a famine, but you could still feed your people?”

“I control the earth,” he says. “As I mentioned. The Khilkovs mastered wind, and the Romanovs mastered water. There wasn’t much of it to be had, but between the three of us, we were able to use everything at our disposal to grow enough crops for our provinces.”

“The Romanovs?” I pause. “That name sounds familiar.”

“The Czars of Russia?” He rolls his eyes. “I should hope so.”

“Right. Duh.” History wasn’t really my favorite subject—ever.

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