A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania Book 2)

by T. J. Klune

“Fuck you, Sam,” Gary said. “I have been traumatized, okay? You don’t even know what I’ve been through. I am emotional, and I would like a cup of hot chocolate and to have someone rub my hooves and tell me I’m pretty.”

  “We don’t have time for that now,” I said, heading toward the door, knowing the others would follow. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “You’re pretty,” Tiggy told Gary.

  “Thank you, kitten. It’s high time someone recognizes that.”

  “Sam,” Randall said, his voice a whipcrack of warning.

  I stopped but didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. Not now. Not after everything. I felt Morgan’s gaze on me, and as much as I wanted to go to him, to have him make everything better, to take all of this away, I couldn’t. I didn’t know what I was feeling toward him right then, but it wasn’t anything charitable.

  “Sam,” he said quietly. “What are you going to do?”

  When I spoke, my voice was strong, more so than I expected it to be. “I’ve got a douchebag monologuing villain whose ass I need to kick, a kingdom to save, and a godsdamned destiny of dragons to face. You can sure as shit bet I’m going to do everything I have to.”

  I didn’t look back as I left the interrogation room. Tiggy, Gary, and Ryan followed me without hesitation.

  Randall and Morgan did not.

  II: The Desert Dragon

  Chapter 12: The Will of the Gods

  THE SUN blazed above as the shadows of five travelers stretched along the worn path between mountainous red sand dunes that rose around them. The wind was fierce and unforgiving, blowing particles of sand that would scrape against any exposed skin. The land was desolate, no plant life able to withstand the extreme conditions. It was—

  “Holy fuck,” Gary groaned loudly. “It’s hot as motherfucking balls.”

  That was more succinct than my internal narration. Because it was as hot as motherfucking balls. And when one is as hot as motherfucking balls, one tends to be uncomfortable and grouchy. “You didn’t need to come along,” I reminded him. “In fact, I told you that you didn’t. You insisted. I believe the wording you used was Sam, don’t be a dippy cunt. Of course I’m coming with you. You need me.”

  “Why was your voice all high and whiny?” Gary asked. “I don’t sound anything like that.”

  “Some,” Tiggy said, trudging forward, leaving large footprints in the sand behind him. He was barefoot, and I’d thought the sand would be too hot for his feet, but it hadn’t bothered him at all, the lucky bastard. I wished I could be a half-giant.

  “Some?” Gary asked. “Tiggy, say it isn’t so.”

  “Okay,” Tiggy said. “But I don’t lie.”

  “Insolence,” Gary said. “You should carry me.”

  “Your tummy sweats,” Tiggy said with a grimace. “That’s gross.”

  “You’re gross,” Gary muttered.

  “Sam,” Kevin rumbled above us, wings spread to try and block the worst of the sand and wind. “Would you please tell Gary that his stomach does sweat, and while I don’t find it disgusting, some other people might, and therefore he shouldn’t try forcing others to do what he wants?”

  “I’m not going to do—”

  “And Sam,” Gary said. “Would you please tell Kevin that not everyone wants to hear him talk with his mouth and his words, and therefore he should shut up?”

  “Yeah, I don’t think I—”

  “Or,” Kevin said, “you could tell Gary that maybe he should just calm the fuck down because some of us are sick of his shit?”

  “I don’t know why you put me—”

  “You tell Kevin that he wasn’t even invited on this adventure,” Gary hissed.

  “Invited?” Kevin snapped. “Uh, excuse me, sweetheart. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but this whole adventure is about me. I’m someone’s destiny, after all. You know what your destiny is? Never getting to have a piece of this fine ass ever again. So suck it.”

  “Oh nooo,” Gary mocked. “Whatever shall I do? How will I possibly survive not getting something that I’ve already had a million times over like everyone else in Verania.”

  “Hey! I have a sexually adventurous spirit! You know I am a lover of many, many things. You liked it before you decided to put your head up your ass!”

  “People grow up,” Gary said loftily. “Things they wanted when they were far, far younger don’t satisfy them like they used to. I am today’s mature and modern unicorn. I don’t take your shit for anything. My body, my rights. You don’t own any of this.”

  And this had been going on since we’d left the castle.

  Three weeks ago.

  To say I was ready to choke a bitch would be an understatement.

  “They still in love?” Tiggy muttered as Gary and Kevin continued to snipe back and forth.

  I rolled my eyes. “Disgustingly so.”

  “Bet you broom they get back together by time we get to Freeze Your Ass Off?”

  “Nah,” I said. “It’ll take them until at least the Dark Woods.”

  “Four brooms.”

  “Tiggy, that’s still not how you barter when you—”

  “Seven brooms!”

  I sighed.

  We shook on it.

  “Sucker,” Tiggy said.

  “Hey!”

  He went back to listening as Gary and Kevin volleyed insults back and forth.

  “You know,” Ryan said, voice slightly muffled from the cloth he had wrapped around his head and mouth, “you could probably just use magic to keep their mouths shut, right?”

  “Probably,” I said. “But you would just pop a boner, and I think it’d be uncomfortable to walk with that. And, as a side note, penises are so weird. They broadcast far too much and in such awkward ways. Oh look, an attractive something. Let’s have all my blood rush to this one appendage and make it stick out during church.”

  “During… church?”

  “I was thirteen,” I mumbled. “The priest was hot. Whatever.”

  “I don’t always pop boners when you do magic,” he said. “And gods, I am never saying pop boners ever again. It’s all your fault I talk like that to begin with now.”

  “Really?” I said, bringing my hand up, palm toward the sky. “My magic does nothing for you?” I barely had to concentrate before a smidge of sand was floating above my hand, forming a sphere that circled slowly. It caused the barest of tugs around my head and heart, and I knew that Ryan was probably feeling it too, given his propensity these days to be almost an extension of my magic.

  “Ungh,” he said, eyes glazing over slightly. He licked his lips, eyes darting from my hand down to my crotch.

  “You’re so easy,” I said, letting my hand drop and the sand fall away. “It’s one of the things I love about you.”

  “The first minute we get to ourselves,” he muttered, “I’m going to suck your brain out through your dick and make you come on my face.”

  I tripped, falling face-first into the sand and rolling down a little dune.

  Gods, I hated the desert.

  “ARE YOU sure about this?” Mom asked, watching as I rolled an extra pair of trousers before shoving them into my pack. “She’s getting what she wants now. Sam, she’s my mother and I love her, but you shouldn’t trust her.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t. And I won’t. This isn’t about her. Not anymore.”

  She reached over and touched my arm, causing me to pause. “Then what is this about?”

  I couldn’t look her in the eye, because if I did, I knew I’d spill everything to her, every single fear that I had: that I couldn’t trust Morgan, that I couldn’t trust Randall, that I was so angry at them for keeping this from me, that I was worried that I was going to fail. That I wasn’t going to be enough. That I was making all the wrong decisions. That I should be listening with my head instead of my heart.

  “It’s about doing what’s right,” I said instead. “It’s about doing what I have to.”

  She sighed. “I’m
going to tell you something, and I want you to listen to me. All right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gypsy magic is mostly farce. It’s guesswork and fraud. Manipulation. For the most part, that’s all it will ever be. There are times when something else pokes through, something beyond the veil. Vadoma can do those things. I can’t explain it, but I can’t explain your magic either. You can do things that I can never even dream of. But the only thing that matters to me is that you’re making the choice you are, not because of what others want, but because it’s what you believe in. Prophecies, no matter who they come from, no matter what they say, are never written in stone. You can change the future, Sam. No matter what anyone else says, nothing is set in stone. You are your own destiny.”

  I looked up at her then. Her eyes were wet, but she had that fierce set to her jaw she sometimes did when she was readying herself for an argument. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her look more beautiful.

  “I love you,” I told her, because I couldn’t not.

  She laughed. “Oh, I know. And I you, more than all the stars in the sky.”

  TWO DAYS later:

  “Are we there yet?”

  “No, Gary.”

  “Oh.” Then, “How about now?”

  “No, Gary.”

  “Hey, Sam.”

  “Yes, Gary.”

  “Did you know that unicorns aren’t meant to survive in harsh conditions?”

  “One can only hope, Gary,” I said.

  “Rude. Hey, Sam.”

  “Yes, Gary.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever find love again?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Oh, here we go again. You know what, Gary? I was trying to have some bonding with my son, seeing as you already claimed him for the holidays. Again. And now you’re trying to make it all about you.”

  “Maybe we should just—”

  “About me? About me? I’ll show you making it about me, you overgrown sex reptile whose muscles I don’t give the smallest of shits about! Just because you’re going to have to move into that postdivorce depressing singles apartment when we get back, doesn’t mean you get to act like an asshat!”

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  “Hey! I like that apartment! It’s a bachelor pad, and I am going to live my life now that I’m not held back by the ball and chain of spousal tyranny! You know how many bitches I’m going to have? So many bitches.”

  “Good! I hope your dick rots off!”

  And then they were off again.

  DAD AND I walked in Mom’s garden, making our way to the secret part toward the back that only a few seemed to know about. We hadn’t said much between the two of us, but it helped just having him at my side.

  Finally, he said, “This is some fucked-up shit.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “Yeah. It is.”

  “Star dragons and prophecies and shadow men. Never thought I’d see the day.”

  I felt a little pang at that. “I’m sorry,” I said, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

  He looked startled at that. “What on earth could you be sorry for?”

  I shrugged, unable to look my father in the eye. “For… all of this. If… I don’t know. If I hadn’t been magic, if I’d just been normal like everyone else, we wouldn’t be here right now. You and Mom wouldn’t have to worry, and I could just… be. It’s heavy. Dad. This weight. This responsibility. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have this. That I didn’t—”

  He slapped me upside the back of the head.

  “Ow.” I glared at him.

  “Yes, well,” he said. “You deserved that, talking nonsense like you are. You’re gonna listen to me. You got that, boy?”

  “Yessir.”

  “There is much in my life I wish I could change. That I wish I could do over again. But if there is one thing I’m sure of, it’s that I wouldn’t change a godsdamned second, not a second, of the time I’ve had with you since you were born. You are the greatest thing that has ever been mine, and I know your mother agrees. We are as proud of you as we have ever been. The only thing you need to do is come home in one piece. You do that and we won’t have a problem. You get me?”

  I hugged the fuck out of him. He laughed wetly in my ear. We didn’t move away from each other for a long time.

  THREE DAYS after that:

  “What is it?” Ryan asked as we stood on top of a sand dune. In the distance, shimmering in the sun as if it were a mirage, was a large stone complex, rising out of the middle of the desert. There were towers spread out around the outside of it, rising above the large wall that surrounded the buildings.

  “It’s Mantok,” I said, voice low, even though it didn’t matter. Gary and Tiggy knew where we were.

  “The prison in the desert,” Ryan said. “I’ve never seen it before. It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

  “It’s meant to be. It houses the worst of the worst. The murderers. The rapists. Those that deal in dark magic.” I took a breath and let it out slowly to try and rein in the rage that ran through me. “Those that would keep magical creatures in cages and parade them around Verania in a carnival.”

  Ryan tensed beside me. “Fuck,” he said. “The one that had Gary and Tiggy before you met them? What was his name?”

  “Koklanaris.”

  “He’s in there?”

  “Yes. We should go before I do something I’ll regret.”

  So we went, Kevin and Gary and Tiggy waiting for us at the bottom of the sand dune. Tiggy was trembling. Gary wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, kicking at the sand with his right front hoof, nostrils flaring.

  And if that night, Tiggy gathered Gary and me in his arms to keep us close, no one said anything to the contrary. Gary woke me up in the middle of the night, whimpering in some dream I couldn’t chase away. I was going to reach over and run my hand over his snout to try and calm him, but the tip of a scaly tail was already there doing just that. Kevin was pretending to be asleep, but he didn’t fool me.

  I lay awake for a long time that night, watching the stars.

  “WHY DO you do this?” the King asked as I stood before him and the Prince in the throne room. They were seated, and I was at the bottom of the dais, more formal than we normally were. Justin was sitting as if uninterested, but I could see the stiffness in his shoulders. “Why do you think I would ask this of you?”

  I watched him closely, trying to find the right words to say. “Am I yours?” I finally asked.

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “You are mine.”

  “An extension of the Crown.”

  “And my family.”

  Justin didn’t scowl at that.

  I felt a little flustered at the King’s pronouncement, even if it warmed me to the core. “Then you know why I have to do this. I am an extension of the Crown. I act in your stead. You trust me to make the decisions I have to in order to keep you safe.” I glanced at Justin. “You and the Prince.”

  “Morgan told me,” the King said. “About what happened.”

  I said nothing.

  “Are you running away?” he asked lightly.

  I was. A little. “No,” I said. “Or at least that’s not the main reason.”

  “But it is a reason. That, and I believe it to be coupled with the protests that took place in the streets.”

  I shrugged, because he wasn’t wrong. “Even if it hadn’t happened the way it did, even if he wasn’t who he is, I would still believe now. That he can do what he says he will. And I can’t let that happen.”

  “Because you love Verania. Regardless of what it thinks about you.”

  “No,” I said. “Because I love you.”

  The King took in a great shuddering breath as he shook his head. “Do you want to know what I thought when I first saw you? I thought, here is this boy, loud and bright, and I believe he will change the world. I just didn’t expect you to change mine too. I am proud to know you and call you my own. Please, stop this formality. Come
here and hug me.”

  I did. Because I loved my King very much.

  Later, after the King was gone with a kiss to my forehead, Justin and I remained. We didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Surprisingly, he spoke first. “I didn’t feel the same way when you first came.”

  I snorted. “I know.”

  “I didn’t like you. In fact, I hated you. I still do sometimes.”

  “I know that too.”

  “You have to come back.”

  I looked up, startled, only to find Justin looking more vulnerable, more determined than I’d ever seen him before. “What?”

  “You have to come back. You have to be safe and come back and be my Wizard. I could do this without you. I know I could. I am smart. And I can be kind. Sometimes. My father has taught me well. I’ve learned a lot in the past year. I can do this without you. But I don’t want to. The King of Verania needs his Wizard. It’s how it’s always been. So come back, and in one piece, or I swear to the gods, I am going to put you in the dungeon where you’ll poop in buckets for the rest of your days. Do you hear me?”

  KEVIN AND Ryan were scouting ahead while Gary, Tiggy, and I hung back. I held my summoning stone in my hand, running my thumb over it. It’d remained dark since we’d left the castle four weeks before. No one had called me. I hadn’t called anyone either. I didn’t want to, afraid of what I would say that I couldn’t ever take back. And I thought if I had to hear Morgan’s voice right now, I would have.

  “So,” Gary said.

  “So,” Tiggy said.

  I sighed. “Say whatever it is you have planned.”

  “Planned?” Tiggy asked, feigning surprise. “No plan. Tiggy no got time for plans.”

  “Damn right,” Gary said. “We don’t need no plans. Everything we do is executed perfectly and without complaint and/or death.”

  They were idiots. “I heard you practicing whatever you were going to say to me last night.”

  “Told you,” Tiggy said to Gary.

  Gary glared at me. “Spying, are we? How uncouth.”