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

24. Leonid

Chapter 24

Leonid

W hen I wake up, I realize I must be in hell.

Surely heaven would be prettier than this, right? But as I look around, memories start to trickle back, and as I turn my aching neck, I see the limekiln, each of the walled-off entry points chock full of trash.

So I’m not in hell.

Just another place humans have treated like a landfill for no reason.

“He’s awake.” Katerina.

I groan as I shove myself into a seated position. “I didn’t die.”

“More’s the pity,” Alexei mutters.

I rub my hands across my face and blink repeatedly. My head’s pounding, and I don’t feel very strong, but. . . the bond to Izzy is gone. I can’t sense her, but I can sense something else.

My magic. It’s still intact.

And, perhaps more telling, I no longer need physical contact with her to use it. I straighten. “Is she—did Izzy?—”

“I like this.” Grigoriy chuckles. “Now you’re acting almost as nervous and effeminate as you always looked.” He kicks a rock that rolls right up and nails me in the knee.

Without even thinking, I flick the fingers of my right hand and fling it right back at him. He can’t block with wind, so it strikes his shoulder. Hard. He cries out like a little girl.

That makes me smile.

“Maybe don’t call him effeminate,” Mirdza says. “I like you to be able to walk and talk.”

“Where’s Izzy?” I ask again, more forcefully this time.

“Do you even care anymore?” Katerina asks. “Her parents said she wasn’t doing great, but then, bam , all of a sudden she was fine. She woke up. She talked to them, for a while actually, saying all kinds of disgusting things about how great you were, but then. . .” She sighs. “She came to look at you. She touched your face, and then she got pale. She slumped a little. She was clearly tired. She laid down in their car and just. . .went to sleep.”

“Not until after Gabe and I separated successfully,” Gustav says. “It wasn’t fun, but it seemed way less horrible than what you just went through. I guess we should count that as a win.”

“He did spasm and writhe a lot,” Katerina says, “but not nearly as much as you did.”

“But now?” I ask. “Where’s Izzy now?”

“Once Gabe woke up and started talking, she totally passed out.” Katerina shrugs.

“You said that already.”

“Yeah, well, she looked like she might sleep for a while, so they just. . .” Katerina points. “They left with her and Gabe both asleep in the back of the car.”

They left?

I shake my head. “She wouldn’t leave me.”

“Effeminate and stupid,” Adriana mutters. “Apparently the key to Leonid’s intelligence was his evilness.” She snickers. “She was sleeping, idiot. She didn’t leave—they left you with her in tow. Then once they got a mile away, they called Kris. You weren’t convulsing again, so they decided their job was done.”

Their job of disconnecting us. Right. I struggle to my feet.

Aleksandr offers me his hand.

I’d rather cut mine off than take it. I stand up and shove past him, not even bothering to glare. “You know, if I wanted someone more powerful than I was to return my magic to me, I might not insult them from the second they wake.” I shrug. “But what do I know? I’m just an effeminate moron.”

By the time I reach my car, they’re all scrambling along behind me in a very satisfying way.

Kristiana shoves Aleksandr. “—told you that you shouldn’t have let them?—”

Adriana’s poking Alexei’s side. “—save people when you can’t even fill a glass with water. A shotglass.”

I can’t help a chuckle. “None of you are supposed to be using your magic at all. Weren’t you listening? Use your immense wealth, that I haven’t taken from you thanks to my unappreciated largesse, and get on a plane back to Russia, stat.”

Gustav clears his throat. “But if you could just?—”

“No.” I shake my head. “Once you’ve landed, send me a text message and let me know you’re no longer at risk of waking anything horrible here. Apologize, from the heart, and I’ll consider letting you play with your toys again.”

Kristiana opens her mouth, but Aleks slaps a hand over it. “We’ll book some flights.”

“But you should remember that Izzy won’t like you if you’re mean to us,” Gustav says. “No one that shiny could like a villain.”

I hate that he’s right, because being a hero’s a real drag . “Just go.”

They’re heading for their SUVs when I realize that I’m not sure where Izzy’s parents were headed with her. Probably Birch Creek, but who knows? I could waste a lot of time looking when these people probably already know the answer. “Wait.”

“Yes?” Gustav turns, a half-smile telling me they were waiting for this.

“Where did Izzy go with her parents?”

Kristiana drops her hands on her hips. “Shouldn’t you head back to your hotel and wait for her to come to you, like a good boy?”

I can’t help my snarl. “A good boy?” I snort. “There’s a difference between a reformed villain and a ‘good boy.’”

She glares. “And you want the information that we have. So what are you offering for it, good boy ?”

I roll my eyes, and then I flip all their powers back online. “You already know that I can turn them off again just as fast. Now tell me where she went.”

“Her parents were taking her home. They left half an hour ago.”

Shoot.

I jam directions back to Birch Creek Ranch into my GPS, and I hit the gas. I haven’t gone very far—traffic in Salt Lake’s so infuriating that I’m contemplating using wind to just shove a few dozen cars off the road—when my phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Hey.” Katerina clears her throat. “Not everyone wanted me to call you.” Her voice drops to barely a hiss. “But Steve called us, and apparently Izzy woke up and insisted they let her out. She made them drive her back to her car so she could go to her old apartment to pick up her stuff.”

“She went back for stuff?” I sigh. “Thanks for telling me.”

Now I’m stuck making the same horrible time going the other way, but eventually I work past the rush hour congestion, and I make a bit of incremental progress. As I’m driving, I think about what I can possibly say to her. Sure, I no longer need her with me to live, but I still want to be with her all the time. That should count for something, right?

Or maybe I should make my good behavior contingent on her spending time with me.

No, that’s too villainous.

Good boys wouldn’t do that. Gah, I hate being a good boy.

“Oooh, I have an idea.” And now I’m talking to myself, like a villain in a bad movie. I’m monologuing, and not even to the good guys. “I’ll tell her that I have a lot of magic that I could use for good or bad, and that I need her to help me to know what’s good.” I nod. “That’s a good idea. She’ll like that.”

But when I reach her apartment, and I see her cobra parked just outside, I’m not relieved.

Not at all.

Because there’s a big truck parked next to it, a big, green truck. It’s a truck I’ve seen before—parked at Timothy Heaston’s house. I’m practically fuming when I reach the elevator, which has two small people who look like teenagers waiting on its arrival.

I take the stairs three at a time, and then I stare at her front door.

326C.

Should I give her space? What would a good boy do? I think about how Tim reached out to try and grab her arm and force her to listen, and I stop dithering. I grab the doorknob, and I channel a tiny bit of fire and earth inside, and the lock pops.

I yank it open.

The scene I was expecting doesn’t materialize. They’re not in the family room, locked into some kind of physical altercation. I walk down the hall, the voices growing loud enough that I stop to listen.

“—thought you’d be the kind of woman who would fold at the first difficulty.” There’s a thwack sound.

“I didn’t,” Izzy says. “In fact, I got you out of jail, though I probably should have left you in there. You didn’t care that I had no money, that I had no way to get you out, and you wanted me to beg my parents?—”

“Don’t act like it would have been hard. All you had to do was ask Mommy and Daddy, and they’d have given you the money. Your pride was?—”

“My pride?” She’s shouting now. “I barely had any pride left, thanks to you. And you know what?” I hear her stomp. “As soon as I got back here today, a moment before you arrived, I reported your interference to the school board. I should’ve done it before, but I didn’t want to hurt Rebecca. Today, though, I took screenshots of the email you sent to her, and I sent them over. She was doing what she thought was right. You were just trying to control me, so I figure they’ll sort that out.”

“You—you did what? I had no idea you were that selfish, or that painfully stupid.”

“I’m just embarrassed it took me so long to do something about it,” she says.

And then I hear a crack—a sound I’d know anywhere.

I round the doorway as he’s reaching back to strike her again. I whip him backward with bands of air, and then I release him. He falls forward on his hands and knees.

I smile.

“You struck her.” I glance back, and fury floods my entire body.

Izzy’s on the ground, a bruise already spreading across her cheek. Her lip’s bleeding, and there’s a small cut under her left eye. She shoves up to her feet, shaking her head. “Leo, no.”

“No, what ?” I’m so angry that my hand’s shaking where I’ve balled it into a fist at my side. “I won’t even use magic.” I toss my head. “I can destroy him with my bare hands, just like last time, but this time, there’s no camera recording it.”

Tim’s back on his feet. “What was that?” He’s scowling. “What kind of sick, weird technology do you have, weirdo?”

Before I can say another word, he comes after me. I’m smiling when I clock him hard on his jaw. He stumbles backward, swearing under his breath. “I will end you, Ruski.”

I laugh. It’s going to be very, very fun tearing him apart.

“Leo, please,” Izzy says.

I turn around, my whole body aching to attack. “But he’s dark. Really, really dark.”

She shakes her head.

“He’s—you know he is. You said you turned him over to the board.”

“You were listening in.” She sighs. “Now that I’ve done that, we’ll wait and see what they do.”

“What if they don’t do anything?”

He swings at me again, a slow, lumbering blow that’s easy to dodge. I dance around and slam him in his ribs.

“Fine. I won’t kill him. I’ll just beat him up really bad.” I lift my eyebrows. “Surely that’s fine.”

She shakes her head again. “Leo.”

The disapproval in her face has me gnashing my teeth.

He tries to grab me then, with his meaty arms. I let him, gritting my teeth while he pulls one hand back and clocks me in the jaw.

“There.” He’s still trying to clobber me, but I dance away. “He got me . Now I can retaliate, right?” I dance a step or two, and then slam him good.

This time, the big idiot collapses to the ground, groaning.

It’s so unsatisfying to beat up a wiener like this.

“I can drag him outside,” I say. “I’ll use air, so no one can track me, and then I can take care of him out in the mountains.”

“Leonid.”

“Before you say I’d be breaking the law. . .” I pause.

“If you say diplomatic immunity,” she says.

“Then what?” I arch one eyebrow. “Marry me, and you’d have diplomatic immunity too. You could help. ”

She scowls. “Leo, drag him outside and dump him on the sidewalk, and then leave him alone.”

I straighten. “I’m the czar of Russia, and I have the power to gut thousands. Maybe millions.” I jab my finger at the waste of space on the ground. “This one hurt you.” I want him to suffer. I want to make him suffer. “I told you I’d burn the world down for you.”

She steps closer, and she turns her head up. “But will you spare the world for me?”

It’s harder.

Burning the world comes naturally to me.

Sparing it?

Ugh.

“He deserves it,” I say, aware that I’m whining now like a petulant child.

She goes up on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to my mouth. Her lips are soft, and her arms wrap around my neck, pulling me down toward her. I fall against her, consuming her in a way I never have before. She’s everything I need. Light to my dark, balm to my fury, calm to my rage. All my bottled-up, shaky desire to decimate slowly, surely ebbs away.

“That was sneaky,” I whisper against her mouth.

She smiles, and then she winces.

I forgot about her lip.

I reach out with just a ribbon of water and a touch of air, and the bruising on her face, the cut on her lip, and the tiny laceration under her eye disappear.

“I would do anything for you,” I say. “Even. . .” I huff. “Even this, I guess.”

“You promise?” She stares into my eyes.

And I nod. “Even this.”

“What about the next one?” she asks.

I groan. “Are you talking about your neighbor? Because if that idiot hit on you too, then?—”

She laughs, pressing a hand to my chest. “I meant, the next time a small, dark person like him does something stupid. Will you let me help you know what to do?”

I step back, finding it hard to separate myself from her hand. “When I was a horse, you wanted to break me, right?” I narrow my eyes at her. “You wanted me to do anything you asked, using your feet, your hands, and a metal bit to force me if I balked.”

She frowns.

“You wanted me—Leonid Ivanovich, ruler of the largest country in the world—to submit completely to you.”

“I’m not saying?—”

I press a finger to her mouth. Her beautiful, perfect mouth. “Just a nod would be fine.”

She’s half-smiling as she nods. “I guess,” she mumbles against my finger.

I drop my hand, and I duck so my face is right in front of hers. “It almost killed me when you broke our bond.” I press a small kiss to the side of her mouth. “I liked that bond. I wanted an excuse to have you around.”

“I had to know,” she says. “I had to know whether I really liked you, or whether I was just stuck with you by fate or the universe or some kind of magic.”

I freeze. “And?”

“When I was out, I dreamed of you. I saw what was probably your worst pain. And when I woke up, all I could think about was you.”

Shoot. Should I not have kissed her? Should I have given her more space? Did I rush over here and mess this up?

“I love you, Leonid Ivanovich. Maybe it’s because our souls are like puzzle pieces, formed a hundred years and a billion miles apart.”

“I mean, it’s probably more like five thousand miles,” I say.

She flicks my chest.

I laugh.

“I love you because you listen to me. I’m not sure why you do, and I’m still not sure why you like me.” When she tilts her head, she’s so painfully beautiful, I could cry. “But my soul, shredded and battered though it is, still longs for yours.” She wraps her arms around me, and then she presses her mouth to mine. Then, with her lips touching mine, she whispers, “I think I’ll love you forever, you poor little broken Russian prince.”

When she kisses me this time, I forget where we are. I forget my own name. I forget what I was worried about, and what I wanted to do, and I forget everything but how much I love this woman, and how I would do literally anything for her, including sparing the whole undeserving world on her whim.

Until someone groans from the corner, and says a very ugly swear word. “What am I looking at right now?”

In my love-inspired haze, I forgot about stupid Timothy Heaston.

“Can I kill him now?” I mutter.

“Sure,” Izzy says.

I leap toward him, eager to do it before she changes her mind.

But she shouts, “ Leo, I was kidding.”

I can’t stop before I kick him, at least. Hard. And then I lift him with air, and I drag him down three flights of stairs, and then I drop him in the bed of his own pickup truck, which, in a stroke of luck, still has a muck tub full of horse manure. I can’t help my smile as I upend the tub. . .dumping a juicy pile of my well-aged horse crap over his head.

I brush my hands off, even though I didn’t have to touch him, and I spin on my heel.

“Are you quite done?” Izzy’s watching me, one eyebrow raised.

“You can take the evil out of the villain, but you can’t take the villain out of the. . .” I pause. “You know what I mean.”

She laughs. “He really should have dumped that already.”

“From now on, though,” I say. “I’ll do much better at listening.”

“Somehow I doubt it.” She sighs. “But a girl can dream.”

Another truck pulls up then, a big grey one. The doors open right away, and Steve and Abigail both climb out.

“I forgot to mention,” Izzy says. “When I told Mom that I wasn’t giving you up, she said she has conditions.”

“Conditions?” I blink.

“You have to come home and meet us all,” Steve says. “Amends will have to be made.”

“I didn’t actually harm anyone,” I say. “Maybe you can keep that in mind.”

Izzy winces. “I did text my Aunt Helen.”

“Helen?” I vaguely remember her. She was irritating.

“She’s had some reparations to make before,” Izzy says. “She recommends Lucchese boots.”

For. . .kicking? “For. . .what?”

Abigail laughs. “You have a lot to learn, but I think you’re showing a little bit of promise. More than that guy, anyway.” Abigail’s eyes widen as she glances in the back of the truck bed. “Although, this is a good first start.”

“We have a little common ground, it seems,” I say.

“The Brooks women are a little hard to love,” Steve says. “But they’re worth the effort. Only really strong men can handle it. After watching you today, you might one day become one of them.”