Page 2 of My Dark Horse Prince

My heart stops. “I’m. . .I’m what?”

“You’re fired. Clean out your locker, if you can manage it with your bum leg.”

“But I brought so many new clients with me,” I say. “More than half the riders at this barn followed me here.”

She clucks. “Oh, Mirdza. You’re such a naive little thing. Did you really think I meant to keep you around? Even if you hadn’t given me such a beautiful excuse to fire you, this was always the plan.”

I swallow. “The plan?”

“I only hired a broke-down nag like you to teach here because—”

“You said Danils convinced you.”

She’s laughing again. “You believed that? That my boyfriend recommending his ex to me would be beneficial to you?”

“But you also said that even though we don’t show together any more, you had a fondness for me from when we were in the ring.”

“A fondness? You should never have beat me—not when all you ever had were hand-me-down horses your loser friend gave you out of pity. I hated you when we were in the ring together.” This time, her laughter’s high and light. Airy. Like the tinkling of demonic bells. “You do know that naive is just another word for stupid, don’t you?”

My leg’s throbbing like someone hit it with a poker from the fire. My head’s pounding now too. “You always meant to fire me?”

“It was actually Danils’ idea all along. Did you really think he’d encourage me to hire his ex-girlfriend?” She rolls her eyes. “But now you can’t teach your students, so they won’t even have to feel bad for staying here with me.”

“What about my horses?” I ask. “You don’t have enough lesson horses without mine.”

“As if I can’t find some old, janky horses to replace them.” She sighs. “I’ll give you a month to find them a new barn,” she says. “And if you can’t find one, then they’ll become my horses and I won’t even need to find new ones, per the terms of our contract.” Her smile this time is wicked. Malicious. Pure evil.

“Oh, I’ll find them a new place.” And I don’t plan to roll over and let her steal my clients, either. After enduring a few weeks of her teaching, they’ll realize what a mistake it would be to stay, I’m sure of it. I hate how heavily I have to lean on my crutches as I limp toward the tack room to clear out my locker.

She starts to yell when I just walk away, but she shouldn’t be too surprised. Even dogs dodge when someone’s kicking at them.

It’s hard to manage all of my gear on the bus with my crutches, even though I left all my tack behind with my animals. Horses come with a lot of stuff.

When my phone bings, I almost ignore it. But on the off chance it’s Kristiana, finally returning one of my messages, I dig it out. If she has room for me back at her barn, that would solve a lot of my problems at the same time. While digging in my bag for my phone, I inadvertently drop my bag of grooming brushes, and the lady next to me kicks them away from her.

Sometimes it feels like there are no decent people left in this world.

By the time I finally recover all my belongings, my leg vehemently protesting the movements, my hand is shaking. It makes it hard to read my text. Once I do, my spirits sink even further. It’s from Danils. I should have expected that.

HEAR YOU’RE IN TROUBLE. CALL ME.

I may be in terrible pain without a solution in sight, and his girlfriend may think I’m an idiot, but I’m not even close to stupid enough to ask Danils for aid. I wouldn’t touch his help with a three-meter lunging crop.

I delete the text with a shudder.

By the time I get home, I still haven’t come up with a better solution. Adriana’s face in the front window is pressed against the glass. Her long blond hair and bright blue eyes look so similar to Kristiana’s that it’s almost startling. Adriana looks just like my mother, but high cheekbones and slender frames are the only things we share, in spite of being actual twins. My hair’s so dark it’s nearly black, and my eyes are a dark chocolate brown. Apparently I look just like my father, but I don’t even have a decent photo of him, so I have to take my mother’s word for it.

As if our looks reflect our insides, our personalities are entirely different as well. Adriana’s forever making sure I know how lacking I am, and how much better it would be if I were like her—brave, outspoken, and bitter. She’s standing by the time I finally hobble through the door. “She laughed, didn’t she?”

My jaw drops. “How could you know that?”

“She’s a vindictive, nasty piece of trash,” Adriana says. “That’s how.” Her hair’s pulled back like it always is, and her muscular arms flex when she slaps a bug on the wall. “You never should have gone to work there.” There’s another one crawling up the wall behind her, but I don’t bother pointing it out. It’ll only make her more irritated than she already is.

“Not like I had much of a choice,” I say. “Kris had to sell up.”

“So that witch laughed at you and now you have to walk back in there and try and act professional.”

“Not exactly.” I wince. “She fired me for not being able to work, and she’s planning on keeping all my clients.”

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