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“I can always dye it back—a little perspective.” Mirdza rolls her eyes. “They won’t know I’ve been healed, either.”
“I think they can guess,” Grigoriy says. “The guys knew what Alexei’s family could do.”
Mirdza huffs. “They may have seen me, but I doubt they paid much attention to me. They held Adriana. They wanted Kris. No one cares about me. And if I can cause a distraction or sneak out and let you guys in—”
“No way,” Grigoriy says.
“This may be our last chance to stop him from ruling all of Russia,” Mirdza says. “Or at the very least, we can try to find out what measures we need to take. Maybe meeting with Alexei is a publicity stunt, and if so, it could help prevent rioting. But if he’s planning something else, we could finally turn the tables on him.” Mirdza shrugs. “I think we should try to do something before it’s too late.”
Too late.
All of Russia’s children are mine—not just Riurik’s.
Baba Yaga’s words come back to me. She made the mistake of caring only about her own child for a time. She gave certain humans a power they never should have had. And in the process, she forgot to care for the others.
She gave the noble families—Aleks, Grigoriy, and Alexei’s families—five smaller powers to try and fix her mistake. She wanted them to care for the people of Russia. Now someone who may not have that interest in his mind at all is about to take control. I think that’s why she came to talk to me.
It hits me then—it all comes from the same main. “Baba Yaga was talking about Leonid. He can use more than one power, because he really is from Riurik’s line.”
“Right,” Alexei says. “We figured that part out.”
“But we haven’t understood why Boris and Mikhail would listen to him.” I say the next part slowly, as I work it out in my brain. “What if, when he uses their powers, they can’t? Or they only can with his permission?”
“Then he really could be holding Katerina hostage,” Alexei says.
I can’t say I love that she’s his first thought.
“And Boris and Mikhail as well,” I say. “If he’s the higher valve that she didn’t know was still there. . .” I gasp. “He might be able to control you three as well.”
Aleksandr’s shaking his head. “He’d have come after us already if that was how it worked. There must be more to it than that.”
“Why didn’t she tell us what she meant?” Kristiana looks heartily annoyed. “Why be so cryptic?”
“She’s not sure whether Leonid’s going to do good or bad, maybe,” I say. “Or, if he is descended from her child, she might be too invested to do what it takes.”
“I hate her,” Kristiana says. “If she gave him this power, she could just take it away.”
“He’d still be about to take over Russia,” I say. “So maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“He used those powers to get where he is,” Kris says. “I’m sure of it.”
She might be right, but the three men we care about have all used theirs as well. “If he could take Boris and Mikhail’s powers, he can take Aleks, Grigoriy, and Alexei’s as well.”
“But only they can stop him,” Mirdza says, “from doing exactly what they did to you to anyone else they’d like.”
The words sound dragged out of me, but they do come. “We should go.”
Alexei looks shocked. “I thought you wanted to live our lives, now that we’ve been freed.”
I nod.
“Then why—”
“Because as selfish as she wants people to think she is, no one is as ferocious a defender of what’s right as my sister is,” Mirdza says.
Does she really believe that?
Tears well up in my eyes. I want it to be true. I want to be brave. I want to be good. And in that moment, I think about what I promised to do. I could be dead right now. I could have been killed by Leonid, the very man we’re talking about going back to meet. It’s possible that it was luck, but it’s also possible that God helped me escape. . . For what purpose?
