Page 135 of My Dark Horse Prince

He whuffles again, and then he paws at the ground.

“You can’t change right here,” I whisper. “So you’ll have to wait to take a look.”

He whinnies softly, and the officials glare at me. If I’m not careful, they won’t let us watch, and I need to see who wins. If it’s not me. . .as long as it’s not Brigita.

But when Charlemagne dances sideways again, I have to balance with my bad leg and tears spring into my eyes. I look up and inhale so I can keep them at bay.

Suddenly, a warm feeling spreads through my entire body, but starting with my thigh.

Grigoriy can heal damage that’s recent! How did I forget that?

My head snaps down toward his, and he snorts. Then he shakes his head slowly, side-to-side.

The misery in my leg magically. . .disappears.

Can that be? I slide out of the saddle and swing off, landing hard on my legs, and the pain is the same as I’ve grown accustomed to enduring, no more. Now I really am crying, and Kris has noticed.

“Hey, are you alright? Your run was amazing. Did I not mention that? It was. Epic, really. If any first round run is going to win, it’s that one.”

“It’s fine,” I say. But in that moment, I wish desperately that Charlemagne could be human. I want to hug Grigoriy. I want his arms around me, not the warm, solid body of this massive stallion. But I can’t have my cake and eat it too, so here we are.

And so I watch, one by one, as the other jumpers enter the ring, fly around the course as quickly as they can. . .and knock poles. The first to follow me knocks one down on the ascending oxer. The next bumps the second vertical. The fourth rider runs clean, but four and a half seconds behind us.

It’s looking like we might actually. . .win.

But now it’s Brigita’s turn, and Blanka looks ready. Focused.

Part of me is a little bummed that she’s jumping just fine for my arch-nemesis, but horses don’t understand the concerns of humans. The best ones just like to move, to leap and bound and pivot and race. And Blanka’s one of those. I can’t really fault her for being amazing at what she was made to do.

After they clear the first two verticals and the oxer combination, flying around the difficult turns, my heart gets heavier and heavier. Because I can control how well I do, and I can push through the pain, but there’s an element of chance with a jumping round that you just can’t manage, and that’s how well other riders manage it. Whether that horse is having an epic day. Whether the riders are in sync.

I’m watching their time, but I can’t really tell exactly where they should be to beat us. It’s a long course. When they hang a tight corner and duck around the water jump to reach the last—a pretty risky move—I hold my breath.

Because Brigita’s taking Blanka at an angle into that jump, and it’s 1.6 meters high, and that’s not great. Even Blanka can’t make it work. She shouldn’t have tried to cut the corner.

I cringe when Blanka drops a pole.

Even though it means that I’ve beaten them.

To my surprise, when they finish, even with cutting corners and strides, they’re almost two seconds slower than we were, too. As soon as they walk off the course, Brigita throws Blanka’s reins at me. “Take her. She’s defective anyway, just like you.”

I’m so stunned that I nearly drop Charlemagne’s reins.

Luckily, Kris takes them.

A few moments later, when the final contestant, a French pair, loses to us by more than two full seconds, I stand numbly as they announce Charlemagne and me as the Grand Champion of the two-star World Cup qualifier in Riga.

A lot of people appear, some holding cameras and microphones, and some just officials and trainers and breeders.

“How does it feel to be the first female from Latvia to win the World Cup qualifier in your host country?”

“Where did you locate this brilliant horse?”

“Were you nervous to ride a stallion in such a large event? Especially one who was untried?”

“What inspired you to make this comeback after more than ten years?”

Everything starts to blur together, but I answer the barrage of questions as well as I possibly can, dodging questions about why I’m now holding Brigita’s horse. It would have been nice if she’d been less melodramatic, but the reporters seem to be assuming that we’re close friends and she was just too upset to stick around.

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