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I leap to my feet, and I look over the edge of the stall. Quicksilver stands up behind me, too.

Sure enough, Kristiana and her fiancé Aleksandr, as well as Mirdza and her boyfriend Grigoriy, have followed the panicked man.

“Trust me,” Aleks says. “If you give us a moment alone with Adriana, we can make it so that this all just goes away.”

8

What on earth are they talking about?

I know Aleksandr’s wealthy, and I know he’s connected. But if anyone’s connections are going to help us here, it’s Gavriil’s. His uncle’s the Minister of Justice, for heaven’s sake.

“I’m going to call my uncle,” Gavriil says. “I think—”

Quicksilver screams, the loudest whinny I have ever heard, and instead of stepping back in alarm, Aleksandr and Grigoriy both smile.

And then they salute, which is really, really strange.

“Before you call in any favors, please give us five minutes,” Aleks says. “In fact, you can go tell the people who are causing the problem that they have the wrong place. You do not have a large grey horse here, not anywhere. Tell them that, and invite them to search.”

The man who came running over, shouting, looks totally incredulous. “But there is a large—”

“You want me to lie?” Gavriil asks.

“Trust me,” Aleksandr says.

“But I don’t.” Gavriil folds his arms. “I don’t even know you.”

Aleksandr glares at him, and it’s actually pretty scary. “Give me five minutes, or I’ll be forced to do something I don’t want to do.”

A chill runs up my spine—I’ve never thought Kristiana’s fiancé was particularly threatening. . .until now.

Gavriil must agree, because he stops arguing, and he and his groom duck out the side, presumably going to buy us a few minutes.

“What’s the plan?” I ask. “Do you have a trailer or something? Because I bet at this hour, there’s no traffic at all, and I know there’s a dirt road that—”

“Adriana,” Kristiana says.

I lift my eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Hush.”

Aleksandr opens the stall door and walks inside, completely unafraid that the enormous, insane stallion in the stall will attack him. I jump between them, throwing up both arms, my back to Quicksilver. “I should warn you. This horse isn’t at all broke, and he gets pretty aggressive.”

Aleks ignores me, ducking around my arms, and Quicksilver doesn’t bite or kick or even pin his ears. He leans in, and Aleksandr hugs his neck.

“What’s going on?” I ask. “Do you know this horse somehow?”

“Do me a favor,” Aleks says. “Press your hand against his neck.”

“But—”

“Just do it,” Mirdza says softly. “Please.”

I open my mouth to argue, but they’re all looking at me so expectantly, like they know some secret that will just blow my mind. If they would listen long enough, I could tell them that he knows Russian letters and wrote a swearword in the dirt. Or I could tell them that he listens to what I say and responds. But since they know everything already, whatever.

“Fine.” I press my hand against Quicksilver’s neck. “Now what?”

“Repeat after me,” Aleksandr says.