Page 17 of My Dark Horse Prince

“Listen, you stupid, bloody idiot,” Aleksandr practically growls. “If you don’t let me get her off your back this very moment, I’m going to bury you, and you know I can put you underground.” He doesn’t approach again—he just glares.

Charlemagne’s nostrils flare. He huffs. He paws. He snorts. But finally, he drops down and bows.

I slide off his back to the ground.

“Finally.” Aleks shakes his head. “Was I this moronic?” He quirks an eyebrow and stares at Kris, as if his question makes any sense at all.

“You were way worse,” she says.

“What’s going on?” I’m so confused.

Aleks sighs. “The thing is, I know this gu—”

“Horse. He knows this horse.” Kris takes his arm and leans against him. “Aleksandr trained Grigoriy.” She beams, but something’s off. She’s forcing her cheer, and I definitely need to know why.

Oh, no. Is the horse nuts? Did it break free, and now it’s running wild, kidnapping women?

That makes no sense. Horses don’t kidnap people.

But their bizarre shared glances, which are now getting more intense, make even less sense. Kris is shaking her head, and cutting her eyes toward me. Aleksandr’s gesturing and throwing his hands up in the air.

“No, she speaks English and Russian, too,” Kristiana says. “I told you that my mom taught us at the same time.”

“Hello?” I say. “Are you guys practicing some kind of pantomime?”

Kris spins around and smiles at me again.

“That smile’s freaking me right out,” I say. “And that’s shocking, really, after the night I’ve had.”

“Let’s start there,” Kris says. “How did you get here?”

“By train, mostly,” I say, taking a step toward her. “This is so not how I planned to tell you this.” I wince. Even one single step hurts. “But the thing is, while I was at Brigita’s, I had an accident. That one horse I told you about, the crazy one that little girl bought, freaked out, and I got her off, but it slammed me against a wall in the process.”

Kris closes her eyes.

“The government docs told me it was not fixable and offered me a wheelchair. They said if it gets infected, they’d amputate at this point, and I’d get a new, top-of-the-line prosthetic.” I can barely say the words. “I decided to look into private options.”

“Obviously.” Kris looks ill. “And?”

“They would need to do another round of surgeries, hopefully just two, to try and reconstruct the bone into something that will hold my weight. They think there’s about a fifty-fifty shot that it will work and I’ll be able to keep walking.”

I haven’t said that out loud to anyone else.

It means that loaning me the money is a tremendous gamble. I didn’t even tell Adriana. It’s too depressing. I could borrow fifty grand and never be fit enough to earn the money to ever repay it. The surgeries—costly, arduous, and painful—have as much chance of failure as they do of success.

I can’t even blame Brigita for firing me. It’s what she should have done. It’s what anyone would have done if I was honest with them. But I can’t lie to Kris, especially not when I’m asking her to give me money for it.

“But how did you meet this horse?” Aleks asks.

“Charlemagne?”

“Wait, you’re calling him. . .what?” Kris glances back at Aleksandr with a twitching lip.

“I went through a few, and he seemed to like that one best,” I say. “I’m sorry. I forgot you said he has a name. Grigoriy.” I can’t help thinking that’s a terrible name for a horse. It sounds like a Russian business mogul or something, not a horse. “Well.” Now that I have to explain it, I’m not sure quite what to say. “I was on the train for a long time. We’d almost reached Novgorod.”

“Okay.” Kris’s brow furrows.

I notice that the people who were at the gate of this estate, barring my entry initially, are all lined up now, standing in a semi-circle behind Kris and Aleks. “Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else.” My leg’s aching and sending periodic shooting pains through me all at the same time. “Is there somewhere I can sit? Maybe where there aren’t as many people?”

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