Page 67 of My Dark Horse Prince

“Hey there.” Kristiana perches on the chair by my bed. “I’m so happy to see you looking so alert.”

“Thanks.” My voice is scratchy and sore. Anesthesia’s a modern miracle, but even it has its costs. “I’m happy to be awake. Did he tell you how it went?” I struggle to sit up, hoping to see what my leg looks like.

Kris’s smile doesn’t really move. That makes me pretty nervous.

“Just tell me.”

“There was more damage than he thought,” she says. “You’ll be fine to walk, and he doesn’t think there will be any ongoing risk of infection, but. . .”

“But I won’t be able to ride again?”

She swallows.

“Why not?”

“It’s just not as stable as he’d hoped it would be,” she says. “The configuration he wanted to use didn’t work.”

I should be fine.

This is what I was hoping for last week. But the opposite of hope isn’t resignation.

It’s despair.

I wish he hadn’t even mentioned it was a possibility if he wasn’t sure. “What’s the good of all those tests if they can still be surprised when they go in to operate? You should get a partial refund.”

Her smile’s pained. “I’m sorry, M.”

Me too. I’m sorry, too. But I refuse to dwell on it. My dearest friend in the world got me the surgery I need to keep living my life. To teach lessons. To care for my horses, even if I can’t ride them. She gave me my life back, and I’m not going to repay her generosity by moping around and wallowing in ingratitude. “He thinks it’ll recover well enough for me to walk, and that’s all I had for the last decade. It’s fine. It’s better than fine. This is still good news.”

“But—”

“Mirdza!” Aleks’s voice booms, from the second he walks through the door to the recovery room, his friend on his heels. “So good to see you awake.”

“They tried to tell us only one person was allowed in here at once,” Grigoriy says. He shakes his head like he pities their stupidity.

“How did you get in?” I ask.

He leans down closer, having reached my bedside, and whispers, “I told them I’m your doctor back in Latvia, and that I need my assistant here too. They believed it, because I was allowed to stand behind the window and watch the whole repair.”

That makes me chuckle, but that, in turn, hurts my throat and my leg.

“Let’s do it,” Grigoriy says. “Now.”

“Right here?” Aleks glances around.

There’s another woman, a much older lady, in the corner of the recovery room, with a younger man hunched in the chair next to her. Probably her son. Maybe even her grandson, judging by his age. And only one bed over from us, there’s a man in his forties who looks asleep. A nurse comes by periodically and glances at his machine.

“No one will see anything,” Kris says. “It just takes a moment.”

The next thing I know, Aleksandr’s reaching for my arm.

“Wait.” Grigoriy grabs his forearm. “You’re sure this won’t hurt her in any way.”

Aleks laughs. “I can’t decide whether I like this new Grigoriy or whether I’m disgusted. Where’s Ilmen’s Gale? What happened to the Zephyr of Zhabitsy?”

Grigoriy glares.

“I’ve done this hundreds of times, and several this century, so calm down and let go of my hand.”

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