Page 84 of My Dark Horse Prince

“The thing that’s strange is that I’d expect to see more muscle mass than I do, if it was that long ago. It’s like the bone has healed, but the muscle has atrophied.”

“But the bone looks good?” I ask. “Could I ride a horse on it? Maybe that will help strengthen the muscle.”

He frowns. “I’m surprised your surgeon didn’t tell you this himself.” He turns his clipboard around and points with a pen toward a paper printout. Latvia is many things, but high tech is not one of them. No iPads here. We use photocopies of the actual scan. “See this?”

I lean forward, my heart in my throat. Be good. Be something good. Please. Something good that Dr. Hubert didn’t share.

“It looks like he intended to use a bone graft on this area,” he says. “Based on the scans in our system from the last time you were seen, it’s what I’d have recommended as well.” He frowns. “But the last scans we had were from a few weeks ago, so I don’t see how—”

“The critical point,” Kris asks, “is whether she can ride? Or is it too dangerous?”

“He didn’t do the graft,” the surgeon says. “He could barely rejoin the bone fragments, and it looks like he found evidence of a bone infection, based on the amount of bone he shaved before reattaching the new plate. I’m assuming that’s why he backed out on the graft and didn’t add as much hardware as he told you he would.” He drops the clipboard holding the scans on the counter.

“So, she can’t?” Aleks asks.

“She can do whatever she wants to do,” he says. “I’ve heard of people riding horses without having legs. You could probably make her a brace that would even allow it to be more comfortable, but it would be very stupid for her to do that when she can actually walk on her own right now. If she fell, or if she even pushed too hard, the results could be catastrophic.”

It’s what I expected him to say. I’m not even surprised.

But I am disappointed.

We’re not even to the car when Kris says, “The only way I’ll support you in this is if you ride with a brace like the one he mentioned, and that you ride Grigoriy and no one else.”

“So we have him make the brace—”

She shakes her head. “We had to get out of there, because he had noticed too many things. There’s no way for us to explain what Aleksandr did to you after that procedure. We will commission a top-of-the-line brace from that company he mentioned. But it’s not because he’ll be safer that I want you riding Grigoriy.”

“You mean Charlemagne.”

Kris stares me dead in the eyes. “You do know that Grigoriy and Charlemagne are the same, right? It’s not like he’s actually a horse.”

I drop my eyes. “Of course.”

“Okay, as long as we know we’re being silly.” She shakes her head. “It’s fine—I even get your need to pretend he’s something else. But in this instance, it’s because of who he is that it’s fine for you to ride him.”

“His powers,” Aleksandr says, “include healing injuries that have just been suffered.”

Which means, if I fall off, he could fix it. Probably. Assuming it works to heal damage from past issues, which it might not. Even so, I can’t argue that it’s not my best shot.

“Plus, I’m sure he’s a heck of a jumper,” Kris says.

“Why do you two think—”

Kris shrugs. “They aren’t real horses, and Aleks is the best jumper I’ve seen.”

Her future husband looks really, stupidly hot most of the time. But when he’s preening because his fiancée complimented him for jumping really well as a horse?

He looks decidedly dopey.

My lip curls. “But if I agree to ride him?”

Kris smiles. “Then I’ll do everything in my power to get you ready for that World Cup competition.”

“I really want to win Blanka back.”

“I like Blanka,” Kris says. “But what I really want is to watch Brigita get destroyed. It’s really important to me that happens, and that as many people as possible see it happen.”

Aleksandr laughs. “My tiny little fiancée is such a delicate flower.”

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