My Wild Horse King (The Russian Witch's Curse Book 4)

16. Katerina

The man I betrayed is asking me to stay. If it was anyone else, I’d say no. But he’s the one person I owe. He’s the one person I can’t turn down. Still, maybe I can convince him to let me go.

“I’m not going back there,” I say. “No one wants me there, either.”

“I do,” Gustav says. “And it’s my apartment. That should count for something.”

“You barely know me,” I say. “You’ll change your mind. Trust me.”

“I barely know my sister, and I don’t know any of them at all.” Gustav leans down and snatches my bag out of my hands. “And so far, you’re by far the least annoying.”

“Really?” I tilt my head so I can see him a little better. He towers over me, and when we’re walking side-by-side down the street, I can basically only see his shoulder. “Because I seem to recall almost getting you shot a few minutes ago.”

“I could’ve stayed out of it.” He shrugs.

“Why didn’t you?” I almost trip over an uneven spot in the pavement. “You didn’t even know it was me.”

He clears his throat. “We’re almost to the restaurant, and our order will be waiting, I think.”

“Why are you picking up food for everyone?” I can’t help thinking there must be someone better. “Don’t rich people get delivery these days? I’ve seen ads for Door Dash. I think that’s what they do.”

“This place doesn’t do deliveries, and I love their chicken parmesan. And their breadsticks.” He shrugs. “It’s one of the best things about New York.”

“You can give my bag back,” I say. “You won’t be able to carry the food and the bag.”

He clutches my bag against his chest. “I’m not letting go of this. You’ll bolt for Iceland.”

I roll my eyes. “Like I can’t go without my bag.”

“You can’t.” He frowns. “Women need their stuff.”

“You know nothing about women.”

“It seemed like most of the people in there knew nothing about you,” he says. “Do you really think that now, Leonid will fly right out here and try to kill me?”

I wish I knew. “Leonid has never been someone that anyone understands.” I sigh. “Sometimes he tells me what he’ll do, like when he said he’ll leave you alone unless you access your magic. But other times, I have no idea what to expect. This is one of those. I knew what he would do if you didn’t access your powers, but now that you have?” I stop and look up at the signage on the brick storefront.

We’re here.

“I’ll wait outside,” I say.

“Nice try.” He points. “March.”

I act annoyed, but it’s actually kind of funny that he’s treating me like I’m some kind of miscreant he has to keep an eye on. I could shift into a horse and bolt if I really wanted to, and there’s no way he could stop me.

I’m officially sad that he came into his powers by committing a selfless act, but it feels just a little nice that someone wants me to stick around. I can’t even think of the last time someone actually wanted me.

Gustav leans in and murmurs something to the woman behind the front desk and she waves us over to the bar. A moment later, we’re on our way, Gustav’s free hand and one of mine laden with bags of food. It smells really, really good. “Let’s hope none of the others have a garlic allergy,” I say.

He chuckles.

“Actually, it would be fine if Adriana does.”

“Do you really hate her?” His eyes look genuinely curious when I glance his way. “And do you still love him?”

I shrug. “I mean, I thought I did, but I’m way less upset than I thought I’d be. It’s pretty clear that he’s made his choice, and it’s not me. I should’ve seen that before, I guess.”

“He does look at her like she’s the last cookie in New York.”

The image of Alexei looking at Adriana like she’s something to eat makes me smile. “Gives new meaning to that English phrase, ‘have your cookie and eat it too.’”

“Cake,” Gustav says.

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” He sighs. “But tell me this, before you’re standing in front of the firing squad. How did Leonid get his first ability? After he found out he could see people’s good and bad like me, then what? Because now he has three powers, right?”

I sigh.

“You don’t have to tell me, but I feel like it might become relevant.”

I hold out my hand. “You may want to give me my bag, because this one’s also my fault.”

“Give you your—why? Oh. Because after this I’ll want you to leave?” He snorts. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Things had been bad between the Romanovs and our family for a while.” I start walking again, kicking at trash as we go. “Really, they were bad for both my family and the Kurakins. The Romanov family really liked Grigoriy and Aleksandr’s families, and they did things together.”

“Things?”

I shrug. “You know, they went in on projects, like building libraries. They co-hosted balls. The Romanovs would make sure their crops were watered and the Volkonsky family would bring them baskets full of gems. It was very. . .exclusive, and our families were always left out. But when they went to war, you better believe they called on us then.”

“I imagine burning and zapping powers are pretty helpful in war.”

“I don’t think this came up before, but Alexei pretended to be my suitor for a little over three years, and my dad got pretty excited about the prospect of us marrying.” I cringe. “So when I used Leonid to make Alexei jealous, it didn’t go as I had hoped.”

“What happened?”

“After that initial incident, Leonid and I told the others that we were recovering. We used that time to search the records in the library for any mentions of the magical powers that were possessed by Rurik, and we found quite a few. We knew that Rurik had all five powers, and the records were also clear that there was only one person who could master the powers in each generation—only the oldest child.”

“Okay.”

“That frustrated Leonid. He wasn’t the oldest child—he was the only person, other than his dad, who seemed to have no interest and had certainly not ever done a selfless act to qualify himself. It seemed to both of us like Leonid didn’t have any of the powers he was supposed to have because they’d been given to others, leaving him with nothing but the strange ability to tell what kind of person someone was deep down.”

“Right.”

“But on our fourth night there, Leonid read a passage that said that the Rurikid line had to accept the powers.”

“Huh?” We’re in front of his building now, and Gustav has stopped. “What does that even mean?”

“I wasn’t sure, either. I thought maybe it was a transcription error. The journals were really old, and they had basically stolen them from the royal record chamber, after the Time of Troubles when the Romanovs took over. It had been hundreds of years since then, as well. But Leonid had this idea. He wondered whether he had to accept the abilities first in some way, but in order to accept something. . .”

“It has to be offered to you.”

“I know it might sound reckless, but you have no idea how pathetic Leonid looked at the time. He was my servant. He’d done everything he could, and nothing had helped. He had been doing his best at dinners and training sessions to help me make Alexei jealous. It almost felt like it was working. Alexei hated him, at the very least, possibly because he felt guilty about how bad things got that first night. I felt like I owed him my best efforts, and so. . .”

“You gave him his first power.”

“There was a big fight,” I say. “On the last day of training, Alexei caught Leonid and me in the records room.”

Gustav cringes.

“To cover up what we were doing. . .” I swallow. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I kissed Leonid.”

Gustav inhales sharply.

“It shocked Alexei, I think, and at the time, I thought he might confess that he liked me. Alexei knew, at that point, that Leonid worked for our family. But. . .instead of moving Alexei to action like I wanted, he shifted and we saw that his father was standing behind him.” I still cringe at the memory.

“The czar.”

“The thing is, Alexei and I knew our courtship was fake, and I knew he was kind of pulling away—he had said he was ready to end it—but his father thought it was real. Seeing me kissing Leonid inside the palace, well.” I shake my head. “He broke off our understanding in a rather violent way, sending me home to my father immediately.”

“I bet that didn’t go over well.”

“It did not,” I say. “And actually.” I hate even thinking about this. “My dad was so angry that he fired Leonid’s father, and they both left. Leonid’s dad got really, really drunk, and then he got into a fight, and when he struck his head on the stones outside the bar. . .” I sigh. “He died the night Dad fired him, and Leonid was beside himself. His dad was crazy, but he was the only person who had ever really loved him. He blamed himself for agreeing to help me, and he blamed my dad for firing them, and he blamed me a little bit, because he had gotten no powers, and he couldn’t save his own dad.”

“It sounds pretty tragic,” Gustav agrees.

“The next morning, when I heard what happened, I went looking for him. I offered him my powers, and it worked.” I sigh. “Suddenly, he could use my powers. . .and I couldn’t.”

“Whoops.”

“To make matters worse, my father and my brother Boris couldn’t use theirs either. I hadn’t even thought of that—Leonid was angry with them for how things went down with his dad.”

Gustav cringes.

“Leonid wasn’t entirely unreasonable,” I say. “Before Boris or my dad knew the cause of all of us losing our abilities, I convinced him to restore our powers to us, but it took him all of five minutes to realize that he could cut us off at any point.”

“Okay.”

“And when Alexei found out what had happened, that Leonid could use my powers, he was even more unhappy. His father was livid. My dad had just made a petition for the Romanovs to help us, because we were in the middle of a drought.”

“A drought?”

“People were already starving—it was a really terrible one. Our family and the Kurakins both begged Alexei to defy his father and direct rain to our villages, but the whole Romanov family refused. The czar was so angry about the Leonid thing, and about my supposed relationship with him, that he thought we deserved to fend for ourselves. He told us to use buckets and pipes to water our crops, like the rest of the world. The drought wasn’t his problem, and he didn’t have an obligation to fix it.”

“I wonder what his face looked like,” Gustav mumbles. “Not light and bright, I’m guessing.”

“I don’t know whether he was a villain, or just on the opposite side of things,” I say. “But not knowing much about what happened with Leonid, the Kurakins saw the Romanov refusal to help as more preferential treatment for the magical families they liked—they were very angry. Not even a month later, when there was an uprising, the Kurakins took the chance to take their revenge on the Romanov-Volkonsky-Khilkov alliance. They sort of caused an uprising, and in the process, the Kurakins—Mikhail’s parents—killed both of Grigoriy’s parents, and it only got worse from there.”

We’ve reached the apartment building, so I push my way through the door and nod at Norm. His big smile makes me feel better. One day, when I have a job and a purpose and a place of my own to live, I really want a doorman.

“Once the Romanovs were firmly aligned against our family and the Kurakins, Mikhail came to visit. Leonid wasn’t living with us anymore, but he and I still talked. I would meet him in the town square a few times a week and give him food. He was practicing using his new powers, and I taught him things. I didn’t think he was a villain, honestly, just a man who had been dealt a very lousy hand in life. If I’d had more control over my own life, I’d have helped him more. Mikhail followed me once, and he caught us. Instead of being angry, he asked Leonid what he could do if he had two powers. Mikhail wanted him to right wrongs and exact vengeance on the Romanovs in a way he and his father couldn’t.”

Gustav stares at me with wide eyes. “So you accidentally gave him your powers, giving him power over you and your family.”

I nod.

“But this other guy, this Mikhail, he surrendered intentionally?”

“I begged Mikhail not to do it, and I begged Leonid not to listen, but they ignored me. Actually, I think my begging upset Leonid further. He couldn’t believe that even after all that had happened, I would side with Alexei. I really just wanted everything to go back to how it was. I wanted to heal things, but they just kept getting angrier and angrier.”

“That explains a lot about Grigoriy,” Gustav says. “He lost his parents. That won’t be an easy injury to recover from.”

“But to make matters worse, Leonid followed through on his end of their bargain to attack the Romanovs,” I say. “Although, not quite as Mikhail had imagined, I think.”

The elevators open, and I don’t have time to say anything else. We both step inside. It’s time to tell everyone what happened—that Gustav has the powers they came to try and force on him. But before we can even step out of the elevator and into Gustav’s apartment, we’re wrapped in bands of air and floated into the family room.

“You accessed your power.” Grigoriy’s furiously pacing, his eyes flashing.

“You’ve been gone for almost an hour since you did it, too.” Aleksandr stands up and joins Grigoriy. They’re going to wear a thin spot in the rug at this rate.

“I brought dinner,” Gustav says.

“We have a lot to do,” Kristiana says.

“But how do you guys even know that I accessed them?” Gustav asks.

“We felt it,” Grigoriy says.

“Like a static shock to our brains, pulsing where our power usually rests,” Aleksandr says.

I look at Alexei to see whether he agrees.

“Don’t look at me,” he says. “I felt nothing.”

That’s not promising.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Aleksandr says.

“But I have meetings for another ten days,” Gustav says.

“Face it, brother,” Kristiana says. “Your IPO’s going to have to sink or float without you. Your days of pretending you’re normal are over.”