My Trojan Horse Majesty (The Russian Witch’s Curse #5)

14. Izzy

Chapter 14

Izzy

W hile I’m showering, I finally have time to think things through. One question keeps bothering me. Why was Leonid at my parents’ farm?

That question leads to a whole host of other questions. Why was he stuck in Steve’s stallion paddock? Did my parents find him? Was he acting insane because he was really a man? Is that why they locked him up? And what’s the connection between my family and Leonid? I feel like if we can figure that out, we might have a shot at breaking the bond that he apparently no longer wants to break.

I shiver again, just thinking of what he said.

And how he said it.

Which is stupid. If I thought Tim was too good for me, the gorgeous, supermodel leader of Russia is way too good for me. Plus, what would I do if I wanted to make this work? Move to Russia? I can’t even consider that. My entire life’s here.

Not to mention, I don’t speak a single word of their language.

By the time I’m clean, I feel better, but I’ve also screwed up my resolve to get some answers. I spend a little too much time getting dressed, and if I put on my brand new, expensive, birthday-present dress that Mom got me from Tecovas, well. I rarely have cause to wear anything nice. It’s a deep brownish maroon with tiny stars on it, and it really accentuates my ample bosom and narrow waist. Or at least, that’s what Mom said when she bought it.

I haven’t worn it yet—I was saving it.

That thought makes me feel kind of stupid for putting it on. It’s not like I like really think Leo and I. . . It’s just that, if we’re going shopping, I should at least look presentable. If someone recognizes him, they’ll be sure to take photos of us. I’d rather not have my time with him memorialized as some kind of scrubby country bumpkin following the czar of Russia around.

That’s a good reason to look presentable, actually. Instead of ducking out in a rush, I swipe on some eye shadow and mascara, just in case. I almost never wear makeup, but I should look my best for any possible photos. When I finally emerge, Leonid’s not watching television at all. He’s not even pretending to watch. He’s flipping through an old photo album and smiling.

“You’re just digging through my stuff now?”

He doesn’t even look remotely guilty when he looks up. “Yes, I am.”

I scowl. “I can’t go through your stuff. Don’t you think that’s unfair?”

He leaps to his feet gracefully and stalks toward me.

Even with a stained shirt, pants that are too short, and a very used pair of sneakers, he looks like something from a television show. Polished. Smooth. Teeth-grittingly handsome. I realize that he’s every bit as beautiful in his human form as he was in horse form.

He tucks the strand of hair that’s falling forward across my eyes behind my ear, and he smiles. “What things of mine would you want to look at?”

“I—that’s not what I meant.”

He drops his hand. “No?”

“I just. . .as I was showering, I realized you seem to know almost everything about my life. Tim, the breakup, my horses, my family, and now you’ve seen my apartment.” I poke a finger at him. “But I know nothing about you.”

“I’m the czar of Russia. My life’s plastered all over the television.” He cocks his head sideways. “I’ve been in your country for weeks, and cameras follow me everywhere.”

“But—that’s not?—”

He lowers his head so our eyes are almost on level. “Are you saying you want to know the real me?”

How does he keep making me so nervous and jumpy? “No. I’m saying I want to know what you were doing at Birch Creek Ranch. Why were you stuck in your horse form at my mom’s house?” I nod, proud that I finally got it all out. “What’s really going on?” I narrow my eyes in a way that I hope is intimidating.

Leonid straightens, his eyes studying me more carefully. “Good question.”

“Are you going to answer it?”

“We’ll have a lot of time while we’re shopping,” he says. “I can start to answer it, anyway.”

“Start?” Now I’m annoyed. “I can tell you why I was there in ten seconds. I’d borrowed my stepdad’s trailer, and I had to return it.”

“But you also wanted to ask them to borrow money so you could bail out your boyfriend,” he says. “The reason you didn’t return the trailer or ask them for money is that you were distracted by the stallion. But you were distracted so easily, because you didn’t want to ask them for money, and you were looking for a chance to get out of it.” He shrugs. “Most questions have a more complex answer than the one we give. I’m just telling you that before I answer, I need to lay the groundwork so my answer makes sense.”

“Spoken like a politician preparing to perjure himself.”

He smiles. “I’m planning not to perjure myself. That’s what is going to take some time.”

“Tell me this.” I can’t help thinking of his solution to everything—kill people. He’s powerful, he has no compunctions eliminating people when they get in his way. I can’t forget the diplomatic immunity he’s often mentioned either. “Did you harm anyone in my family?”

“No. In fact, when I left, I believe they were all in good health.”

“Do you plan to harm anyone in my family?”

He tilts his head, like he’s saluting me. “Another good question, and also no. I don’t have any plans to harm your family in any way.”

“Then I suppose you can answer the rest in a long way if you like.” I shake my finger at him. “But it’s suspicious, and right now, I’m already doubting my judgment. Don’t give me a reason to dump you on the side of the road.”

“Oh, I don’t want you to dump me at all.” The way he says it, the way he’s looking at me, almost makes me think he’s talking about dumping dumping me. But that’s—I’m beginning to think the czar’s just a little flirty. I wonder whether that’s why so many women love him. I’m not about to become another bank manager.

So I ignore his innuendo. “We should go, then. You definitely need an upgrade to your wardrobe. It’s basically a miracle no one recognized you at the car dealership. If they had, you never could have lived this down.” I can’t help my smirk.

“Fewer Americans than you might think actually watch the world news,” he says. “I’ve gone many places without being recognized.”

“That’s sadly true,” I say.

“Even so, I really need new shoes. If I don’t get some soon, I may need new feet.”

I chuckle at that, and I grab the cobra key. “If your feet hurt that badly, it’s a safety issue. I’m driving.”

He, wisely, doesn’t argue, but his smile tells me he thought about it.

“You know, we do need to get this connection between us severed.” I unlock the car. “I can’t just follow you around so you don’t pass out.”

Leonid climbs in the passenger side while I take the driver’s seat. “And I need to be able to use my magic without touching you, but I do like the excuse.” He drops his hand over mine.

I snatch it away. “None of that.”

He smiles. “Why not? You don’t like it?”

“I need room to breathe,” I say. “You’re already taking over my life. I just got rid of Tim.” I realize as I say it that I mean it. If this had happened a week ago, I’d have been inconsolable. Now that he’s gone, it’s freeing.

I’m not depressed.

I’m not even sad. I hadn’t realized how much he hampered my ability to grow, to breathe, to be myself.

“Fine.” He shrugs. “I’ll respect your space.” He whispers, “For now.”

I back out of the parking spot and head for the exit, but only then does it occur to me. . .I have no idea where we should go. “What kinds of clothes do you usually wear?”

He shrugs. “Nice ones.”

I should have guessed. “Suits?”

“Suits. Slacks. Sweaters.”

That reminds me of a place Tim talked about sometimes—Beckett and Robb. It’s supposed to be the nicest custom clothing in Utah. I’m not sure whether they sell anything from the rack, but a quick search on my phone shows they aren’t too far from me. We could at least try it. “I have an idea. I bet it would be perfect for you.”

“While you drive, I’ll start answering your question.”

“Okay.”

“But please pay attention to the road.”

I can’t help glaring at him. “Of course.” I roll my eyes.

“I was born in the eighteen hundreds.”

“What?” I swerve into the next lane, and the large red SUV next to us honks.

“I told you to focus on the road.”

I say a few select words. “You don’t look hundreds of years old.”

“Very late eighteen hundreds,” he says. “And I’m not hundreds of years old. I’m right around a hundred and thirty, but I’m also just right around thirty.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It’s a strange set of circumstances,” he says. “Which is why I said it might take some time to explain.”

“Well, I’m listening,” I say. “Go ahead.”

“Of course, when I was born, I had no idea about any of the crazy things that would happen in my life. All I knew was that we were very poor, that I didn’t have a mother or any siblings, and that no one really liked my father.”

“Why not?”

“My father—I’m not sure what they’d say about him today. At the time, he was all I had. I knew nothing different, so I didn’t question it. He told a story to anyone who would listen. I can still recite it verbatim, I heard it so often.” Leonid’s looking out the window as we drive past the various streets of Salt Lake.

“I’m not sure about things here, but Ivan the Terrible’s a ruler most children in Russia have heard of. He was the last great Rurikid ruler. He had three sons with his wife Anastasia. The first son died in infancy. The second son was named Ivan Ivanovich. The third son was Feodor. The records show that the second son, Ivan, was strong, brilliant, fierce, and Ivan the Terrible’s choice to replace him on the throne. However, it also shows that after an altercation, Ivan the Terrible struck his son and killed him.”

I gasp. “He killed his own son?”

“He was called ‘the terrible’ for a reason.” Leonid shrugs. “It’s in all the records, but my dad’s story starts here. He says Ivan didn’t kill his son Ivan. He says they got into a huge fight, and the son Ivan stormed off. When Ivan the Terrible fell ill, some time later, one of the boyars later spread the story that he wasn’t ill. He was quite strong, and in fact had recently been fighting with his own strong, hale son and struck him down.”

“That’s a terrible story to use to convince people you’re not sick.”

“It is, but I fear that was more telling of the time they lived in. You were strong, or you were at risk. In any case, not long after, when Ivan the Terrible died, he and his son had not made up, so his sickly, mentally ill son Feodor was made the new czar. When he had no children, the Rurikid line was said to have died out. Only, my father said it didn’t. Ivan, who had left Russia, tried to return. He made every effort, but the boyars, desiring to run the country themselves, prevented it.”

“If that’s true, that’s pretty sad.”

“Ivan, whom everyone believed to be dead, was instead hiding in Europe. By the time his descendants finally returned, no one believed that they were who they said they were.”

“Because how could they prove it?”

“Precisely. My father had an amulet, a scepter, and a crown he claimed were given to Ivan by his father when he was made the heir. My father, generations later, still had them, but he hid them all the time. He would only get them out when he met someone he thought might help him retake his crown. At the time, they were his only proof.”

“What did they look like?”

“They each bore the symbol of the Rurikid line, a trident. The same symbol also resembles a three-pointed flame. They all have large, brilliant, blood-red rubies set into them, and I could tell they were valuable.”

“What’s the point of a three-pronged flame?”

“The three points were to represent the magic in our bloodline, our divine right as the original Rus conquerors of the area, and our ability to claim animal and human dominion.” He shrugs. “Also, when Rurik took the throne originally, he did it with two brothers, but he was the only one to survive—the point of the flame.”

“This is all pretty weird,” I say.

“I thought so too,” he says. “And my father didn’t even stop there. He would also explain to anyone who would listen that our blood bore the magic of Rurik’s line.”

“Which I guess it did,” I say. “But I doubt that incinerating people made him lots of friends.”

“Oh, it was far worse than that,” Leo says. “See, he told anyone he deemed important that we could shift into horses and command the elements—earth, air, wind, water, and lightning.”

“So he sounded crazy, right up until he turned into a horse, I guess.”

“That was the problem,” Leonid says. “He couldn’t use any magic, and he couldn’t turn into a horse. I didn’t know anything more about it, then. I only knew that he would tell these stories, and people would laugh, and they would mock us as crazy, and then we’d be run out of another town. Almost as soon as my father found a job, or as soon as we had a place to eat or food on the table, he’d meet new people, and he’d tell his stories, and we’d be run out of town yet again.”

“That’s horrible.”

“I didn’t have a very good childhood,” Leonid says. “And when I was about ten, he showed the relics to the wrong person, and he was robbed of even those. Frankly, looking back, I was surprised he had them as long as he did. I imagine most people assumed they were fake. But eventually, we found a place to live that was beautiful. He and I both had good jobs—working outside, mostly away from people—and the family didn’t seem to mind his ranting. I knew that it was all absurd, and I told them that while he was delusional, he was harmless.”

“But you can turn into a horse.”

“I’ll get there.”

“Okay.” We’re almost to Beckett and Robb, but I don’t want to stop listening.

“The daughter of the lord we were working for came to me one day, and she asked for a favor.”

“Okay.” I pull into a parking spot.

“Oh, we’re here.”

I nod. “Yep. The place I was thinking of is right there.”

“I can finish on our way back.”

“Fine.”

He frowns. “What has you so irritated?”

“I want to know what happens—how did you get from the early nineteen hundreds to now, where you’re the czar and you can shift into a horse?”

He smiles. “I have you hooked. It’s all going according to plan.” He rubs his hands together.

I can’t help it. I laugh. “Assuming this is all true, you’ve at least been watching plenty of modern television,” I say. “You mimicked the cartoon villains perfectly.”

“In your life, you appear to be surrounded by people who care for you—friends and family. I was not so lucky. It left me plenty of time for catching up on the modern world.” Leonid’s not someone who feels sorry for himself, clearly, but I sense for the first time an underlying sadness, a vulnerability I never noticed before.

I think he’s lonely.

It must have been hard, being poor in that time period, which meant he was truly hungry and sometimes starving. He was ridiculed. His father was correct—as evidenced by the fact that he can shift into a horse—but that almost makes it more tragic. His father wasn’t actually crazy, just misunderstood and doggedly determined to stick with what he knew.

Leonid exits the car and looks down at me through the glass. Then he tosses his head.

I follow him into the store I drove him to, but when we get inside, I realize this was a terrible idea. There aren’t many articles of clothing here at all. Other than a handful of garments hanging on racks, there’s nothing, actually.

“Did you have an appointment today?” The tall, very well-dressed man looks a little confused, like he knows we don’t.

“We didn’t,” Leonid says.

When the man hears his British accent, his eyebrows rise. “Ah. Well, I’m Curtis, and I manage this location. We usually operate on an appointment-only basis, but as I recognize you, I can guess that there might be extenuating circumstances, Your Majesty.” He bows his head.

Not only was he recognized, but by the very first person we see.

“I have a need for new clothing.” Leonid looks down at his shirt in disgust. “A long sequence of circumstances has led to this, but it seems you understand why I can’t go out in public looking this way.”

Leonid has a presence. I can’t really describe it, but even though his stained, too-small clothes should look ridiculous, they don’t, somehow. Clearly the man also sees it.

“Our store makes custom-order suits. We need these sample styles in order to show customers their options and see how standard sizing would work. However, we do sometimes have extras that people. . .” He clears his throat. “Decline to pay the balance on when they arrive.”

“Interesting,” Leonid says.

“I can also expedite your order, should you like to place one, and have it here in less than a week.”

Leonid nods. “I would be happy to take anything you can offer.”

An hour and a half later, with a seamstress working furiously in the back to modify a few things, we leave with a trunk full of clothing and another fifty thousand dollars’ worth of things on order. “Did you really need that much?” I shake my head. “It won’t all fit in my apartment.”

He looks transformed. I thought he looked good in Tim’s clothing, but seeing him in a dark sweater with light grey slacks? The staff had another shop bring some shoes over, and he looks better than I thought he could. “That’s not much of a concern. I’m sure you won’t be staying there for very long anyway.”

“Why not?” I hardly think I’m about to leave my apartment.

“I’m sure Tim will think to come by soon, if he hasn’t already.”

“Leo, people don’t move after a breakup. They just move on .”

“Moving on is simpler when you’ve also moved.” He shrugs. “Trust me on this one.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re crazy.”

“Yes, I’ve heard.”

My head snaps to the side. “Oh, I didn’t mean?—”

He laughs. “I’m not offended. But it is a decent segue into the story.” He points down the street at a small stand. “Please tell me there’s food close that’s nicer than that.”

I glance at the sign. It reads, “Hot Dog On A Stick.” I can’t help laughing. “I’m sure we can find something better.”

“If there’s a place you really like, let’s go there. I’m hungry enough to eat most anything.”

“Market Street Grill isn’t far,” I say, “Do you like seafood?”

“Do they have good seafood here? Isn’t this area landlocked?”

“I mean, for this part of the world, it’s the best,” I say. “They fly fresh seafood in, and I love the crab cakes.”

He shrugs. “Sure. Let’s go there.”

Once we’re back in the car, he picks up with the story like we never stopped. “I should go back a bit. One night, when things had gotten particularly bad, I feared Father and I might not live much longer. He was suffering from what I now believe was alcohol poisoning and malnourishment, and I feared he might perish. We had not been able to find reputable jobs in our new town, and on that very night, I saw a woman struggling to carry her drunk companion to a car. Of course I lent a hand. That woman turned out to be the daughter of a local nobleman, hauling her brother to his vehicle. Helping them landed us positions with the Volkonsky family. At the time, I thought of her as our savior.”

I hate hearing that. For some reason, I dislike a woman I barely know. She sounds like she was kind—and he sure needed someone to help him, but I still dislike her. I suppress that thought, because it’s clearly nuts. “And then?”

“I worked with their animals, mostly. I wasn’t great with horses, but I could manage them. I was decent at other animal husbandry. My father obtained a position as their gardener. I later learned to drive a car and became their chauffeur.”

“A big step up,” I say.

“You have no idea,” he says. “After we had been there for almost six months, I had started to gain weight and height, thanks to finally eating well, and my father’s sunken cheeks were filling out. I thought nothing in the world had been luckier than the moment I met Katerina.”

Okay, yeah, I tried, but I still hate her. I can’t help asking, “Was she pretty?”

He blinks. “Does it matter?”

“Doesn’t it always?”

“Pretty isn’t the right word to describe her.” He frowns.

Oh, good.

“Pretty’s for women in shops, or perhaps for women who have worked very hard to look polished. Katerina was beautiful, elegant, and refined.”

Okay, now I really hate her.

“Like before, one night, I happened upon her struggling to haul her worthless older brother home after overindulging. Before realizing I was coming to their aid, she muttered something to him, and he nodded. Then, right in front of my eyes, she turned into a horse.”

She’s gorgeous and magical? Ugh. The world sucks.

“That’s how I learned that my father might not be entirely insane with his stories. There really were horse shifters in the world.”

“You know, if you get online or go to a library, you can find rows and rows of books about wolves shifting into humans and the reverse,” I say. “When there really are horse shifters, why isn’t that in any storybook?”

Leonid’s smirk is dry. “I’m sure that is the reason. How better to make something absurd than to tell stories that are somewhat close, but not quite the truth? Then if anyone does find out, they’ll never believe it. They’ll assume it’s just more fiction.”

Weird, but it makes sense, I guess.

“In any case, that same night, when I approached her, Katerina convinced her father to let me and my father in on their family secret. They had been entrusted with a special kind of magic. In addition to shifting into horses, they could manipulate electricity in any number of useful ways.”

I pull into a parking space outside of Market Street Grill. “And then you discovered that you could, too?”

Leonid grimaces. “Quite the opposite. In spite of my father’s constant claims, neither he nor I could shift into any other forms or use any magic. After he learned what I’d seen, it took me weeks to get him back to functioning shape. During those weeks, I had to complete all of his work and mine. That kind of effort convinced me that pursuing his obsession was fruitless. If our family ever had that kind of power, surely it had long since abandoned us.”

“What?” This story sucks. “But somehow, that changed.”

He reaches for the door handle. “It did, but let’s get into that over some food, shall we?”

“Fine.”

After the bread comes, I order my crab and Leonid orders the plank salmon and the swordfish.

“Two entrees, and no lobster?” I ask. “I’m surprised.”

He pulls a face. “You know, when I was. . .” He clears his throat and waits for the waiter to walk off. “Back in the early nineteen hundreds, I hear the servants in this area had rules in regards to lobster.”

“Rules?” I blink.

“I notice that you didn’t order it, either,” he says.

“I don’t like it,” I say. “It’s all rubbery and gross. It just tastes like butter, and only because you douse it in butter.”

He laughs. “Indeed. Well, from what I’ve heard, servants in the early nineteen hundreds here in America considered it to be dirty and disgusting. As it was extremely common and cheap, employers would often try and feed it to their workers as often as three or four times a week. They had to institute rules that it would be provided no more often than once a week.”

I can hardly believe it.

“But as it happens, in Russia, thanks to Catherine the Great’s love for lobster, it was quite expensive. It’s not a crustacean that’s native to that region, and they had to be imported. I disliked them because as a servant, I watched the wealthy eating it and wasn’t personally allowed to even try it.”

“Now you could eat as much as you like.”

“I could.” His lip twitches. “And yet, I find that I have no interest in it, as with many things I thought were so desirable back then.”

“What else?” I’m compelled to ask.

“Well, back then, I also fancied that I liked the daughter of the family who had taken us in.”

“Katerina.” I hate how flat her name sounds. There’s no way he didn’t notice that I dislike her.

His smile tells me I’m right. “I quickly discovered that while she pretended to like me, she never had eyes for anyone other than Alexei Romanov.”

“Wait, the Alexei Romanov? From the family that was killed in the Russian Revolution. . .” My eyes widen. “Don’t tell me he’s from then, too. The one you had an election against? Are you both from the early nineteen hundreds? He’s the real Alexei Romanov?”

He looks exceedingly annoyed—far more irritated than I looked when I said Katerina. “Alexei beat me back in the nineteen hundreds, but I defeated him earlier this year. The people chose me as their new ruler.”

“But. . .” I frown. “I still don’t understand how?—”

Two men approach our table, and they aren’t carrying trays of food. When Leonid looks up, he doesn’t look worried. He does, however, look irritated.

“How did you find me?” His eyes flash.

Both men bow their heads. “I’m pleased to see you’re alive and well.” The man turns toward me, bowing his head again. “I’m Boris Yurovsky.”

“And I’m Mikhail Kurakin.” The other man drops his head toward me as well.

“Why are you bowing to me?” I ask. “I’m not—” I shake my head. “I’m nobody.”

Mikhail’s eyes widen. “I’ve never seen His Royal Majesty take a meal with any other person until today.”

Take a meal? It’s clear that English is not his first language, or probably even his second. “Well, you aren’t seeing it today, either. Our food hasn’t arrived yet.”

As if I prompted it to come, two men emerge with platters full of food.

“It’s here now, though,” Leonid says. “You two can wait for us outside.”

“But what if they’re hungry?” I ask.

“I hear there’s a hot dog place around the corner.” His expression is flat.

I laugh. “Corn dogs,” I say. “That was a corn dog place.”

Leonid shrugs. “I don’t care. You can wait for me outside.”

Both men bow and pivot on their heels.

“How many men did you bring?” Leonid asks.

Mikhail pauses, looks over his shoulder, and says, “Only twenty.”

And then they’re gone.

I have a feeling that life is about to get even stranger for me, because not two minutes later, a half-dozen flashes from the corner of the room alert us to the presence of reporters.

“Well, shoot,” I say.

Leonid snorts. “You can say that again.”