The Consumption of Magic

by TJ Klune

  “Phase three?” I asked, brow furrowed. “What’s phase three? And for that matter, what the hell were one and two?”

  “Phase one, sow the seeds of distrust into the people of Verania against Sam of Wilds,” she said, back straight and poised as the most proper of ladies. “Phase two, capture Sam of Wilds in an unbreakable prison. Phase three, watching your eyes once you experience betrayal. And finally, phase four, the death of Sam of Wilds.”

  “Bitch, I’m going to motherfucking cut you! You just wait until I get out of here. I swear to the gods, you are so dead, you don’t even know!”

  “And once the phases are complete,” she said, clapping her hands together gleefully, “Ryan will be free of your enchantments and the world will go back to the way it should have been, filled with Rystin and sunshine, and nothing will ever hurt ever again.”

  “Ryan! Stab her! Stab her fucking face off!”

  Ryan frowned. “But she’s a girl. I can’t just stab a girl.”

  “You can,” I yelled at him. “You can and you will. I would do it, except I’m fucking stuck in dragon’s blood and—wait. Just how in the hell did you get dragon’s blood? And what the fuck did you mean, betrayal? Who’s going to betray me?”

  “That would be me.”

  He stepped out from the far corner where he’d been hidden in shadows. He was dressed differently than he was the last time I saw him. He wore trousers and heavy boots. A long black coat hung from his shoulders and scraped the wooden floorboards that creaked beneath his feet. His hair had been shorn, and it made a startling difference. Where he’d once been strangely sweet, he was now darkly ominous.

  I should have known, given the way my magic felt when I was around him.

  I should have seen this coming.

  “You,” I breathed.

  And Ruv, the Wolf of Bari Lavuta, said, “Surprised, aren’t you? Oh, the look on your face, Sam. If only I could go back in time to do this again and again, I would be a happy man. Your expression is certainly… captivating.”

  I slammed my hands against the invisible barrier that surrounded me, knowing it was futile but trying to get at him anyway. Ruv stood there, looking quietly amused in the face of my rage. I reached for my magic as hard as I could, but it was buried too far under the surface. I couldn’t see the green and gold, much less feel it coursing through me. Dragon’s blood was the most powerful deterrent to a wizard’s magic, and for all I knew, it was infallible.

  That didn’t stop me from trying to break through it and launch myself at him, wanting to rip him to shreds.

  “Let me out!” I bellowed at him. “You motherfucker, let me out so I can kick your fucking ass!”

  “Ah, but I don’t think I will,” Ruv said. “We have… time. Before the final act. Time for a discussion about—”

  Ryan was moving even as he spoke, surprisingly silent, given how much armor he wore. Lady Tina shrieked and Caleb shouted in surprise, but Ryan ignored them. He was deadly and swift, sword gripped tightly as he rushed toward Ruv.

  He didn’t make it.

  One moment he was running, teeth bared, and the next Ruv muttered something under his breath, raising his hands toward Ryan. There was a bright flash of sickly yellow light, and Ryan was flung back toward the wall, sword knocked from his hands. He landed with a crash, head almost at the ceiling, the wood cracking behind him. His arms and legs were spread wide as he was pinned to the wall. Before he could recover, the wood behind him snapped and broke apart, moving like it was sentient. It had a liquid quality to it, like it was flowing, and it molded itself over his hands and feet before hardening again with a dull thump. Only then did Ruv lower his hands, and Ryan sagged against the wall, effectively trapped within it.

  “Ryan!” I punched the barrier again, feeling the skin of my knuckles split.

  “There,” Ruv said. “That’s better.”

  Ryan struggled against the grip the wall had on him. He didn’t look like he was in pain, but the sight of him trapped against the wall enraged me.

  “I will kill you,” I promised Ruv. “You should know that now. When I get out of here—and you should believe me when I say that I will—I’m going to fucking kill you.”

  “Wow,” Ruv said, eyes wide. “That’s rather dark coming from the great Sam of Wilds, don’t you think? You don’t kill people, Sam. That’s not your way. You get others to do it for you. Lartin the Dark Leaf. Eloise Marlowe.”

  “Rystin,” Tina added from somewhere near the fireplace. “He killed Rystin. Not a person, but just as important.”

  Ruv took in a very measured breath, eyes tightening just a little. “Yes. That too, I suppose. But regardless, I am surprised at you, Sam. Though I suppose once you corner an animal, it will lash out. It is the way of things. Who else has there been, Sam? How many others have fallen because of your incompetence?”

  “I trusted you,” I snapped at him.

  He arched an eyebrow at me. “Did you? I don’t remember that part.”

  “Well. Okay. I sort of trusted you. Obviously I was right not to put my complete trust in you, since you turned out to be a villain.”

  Ruv snorted. “It’s really that black and white with you, isn’t it? Even after everything you’ve been through, you see things as divided between good and evil.”

  “Uh, yeah, dude. That’s pretty much what this is, in case you haven’t noticed. We’re the good guys, you’re the bad guys. And in case you hadn’t noticed, the bad guys always lose.”

  “Tell that to these two,” Ruv said, nodding toward Lady Tina and Caleb. “See if they agree that you’re the good guy here.”

  “Maybe not the best pool to draw opinions from,” I said. “One’s mother tried to sacrifice me after making me eat corn and admit to wanting to lovingly butt-fuck the knight you have there against the wall. The other is a psychotic superfan whose vagina I’m going to kick the shit out of just as soon as I get out of here.”

  “You will stay away from my vagina,” Lady Tina said shrilly.

  I turned slowly to glare at her.

  She took a step back, bumping into Caleb, who had come to stand beside her.

  I drew my finger along my neck. And then across my crotch.

  “Really, Sam?” Ryan sighed.

  “Hey! I’m trying to show that I’m a man of my word!”

  “It’s funny that you think there’s still a way out of this,” Ruv said. “There’s not, of course. Not even you can get out of a trap constructed of dragon’s blood.”

  “How did you even get dragon’s—Zero. You got it from Zero.”

  “Smarter than you look,” Ruv said. “I’m impressed.”

  “If you hurt him—”

  He waved a hand at me. “I didn’t touch your precious dragon. I merely went back after you left Mashallaha and convinced him you needed a couple of vials of his blood in order to complete the bond between the two of you. He was suspicious, but in the end, his faith in you outweighed his mistrust in me. He was already growing more trees by the time I left.” Ruv grimaced. “And really, Sam, that whole your beauty is on the inside rather than the outside speech you gave to him was misplaced, don’t you think? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything more disgusting than him.”

  “I don’t understand. How are you doing this? Why are you doing this?” Another thought crossed my mind, and it made my stomach churn. “Is she a part of this?”

  “She?”

  “Vadoma.”

  He laughed. “Oh. Her. No. She’s… useful, in her own way. She has a connection to you in blood, but also by the gods. They came to her long before my birth. I had no part in that, nor would I want it. Though honestly, if they never told her about me, doesn’t it make you wonder just what sort of games they play? You have to know that you’re nothing but a pawn to them, Sam, merely being shuffled across the board for their amusement. Do you understand that? The gods don’t care about you. If they did, do you think you’d be here right now? And if you think about it, if you re
ally parse it out, is it possible that you were meant to be here, right at this moment? That everything you’ve done to get to this point mattered not, and nothing you could have done could have changed that?”

  “Nothing is set in stone,” I retorted.

  “Ah, yes. Because stone crumbles. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what Zero told you? I had to keep enough distance away so that thing wouldn’t smell me, but I was close enough to hear him tell you that. Stone crumbles. Do you know what else crumbles, Sam?” He took a step forward until he was within reach, but given Zero’s blood, there was nothing else I could do. He smiled as his eyes searched my face. “Iron and steel.”

  “What? What the hell are you—”

  His hands snapped up, fingers bent awkwardly, and I heard him mutter dis and tae and cos, and I knew what those words meant, I knew what he was going to do even before that rotten yellow light flashed again. His magic, which was stronger than I’d ever thought it’d be, still pulled at me, even though my own was dampened by the dragon’s blood. It was invasive in a way it’d never been before, like it was the anticornerstone. I ground my teeth against the weight of it as his magic did what he’d intended it to do.

  Ryan’s armor began to break apart.

  Ryan shouted in anger, struggling against the bindings that held him as his armor broke off in chunks like it were cracking right down the middle. His breastplate fell first, then the gardbraces and vambraces from his arms, followed by the greaves and the cuisses from his legs. They landed with loud thunks on the ground, hissing and crackling as they crumbled. The padding he wore between the armor and the thin clothing underneath fell off to the side. He was left barefoot, wearing a tunic and trousers, both made of wool to keep the sweat from dripping down his body under the armor.

  He was defenseless.

  But he was not afraid. No, I could tell by the look on his face that he was pissed. That armor had been given to him by the King, commissioned when he’d been promoted to Knight Commander. It had been an honor and a physical representation of his oath to the King of Verania.

  Yeah. Ryan Foxheart was angry, all right.

  Which in turn made me angrier.

  I was going to kick so much ass.

  But first.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  Ruv lowered his hands, panting a little at the exertion of his magic. It told me everything I needed to know. “Him?”

  “You know who I mean.”

  He wiped the sweat from his brow. “I want to hear you say it, Sam.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a gypsy. The magic you’re using is strong, but it’s wild. Unpracticed. Like it was taught to you in a short amount of time. You shouldn’t be able to do what you’re doing.”

  He nodded slowly. “That’s fair. My mentor hasn’t had… the time to give me what I needed. I was nothing. Did you know that? I was nothing, but he recognized my potential. He saw in me what I was capable of. What I could mean. To him.” His lips twitched. “To you. He knew you, Sam, even before you knew about him. He wasn’t corporeal, but the cracks in the seal were large enough for him to seep through, for the shadows to cross, and I heard him whispering to me. At first I thought I was going crazy, that I was losing my mind. But I wasn’t. He was real. And he wanted me. He showed me how, Sam. He showed me how to make them all think I was something I wasn’t, that I’d always been the Bari Lavuta to the phuro of Mashallaha.”

  He sighed. “It was so easy. Vadoma’s mind is… well. She wants to believe, and all it took was the simplest of suggestions and she folded, Sam. She just collapsed until I was in all her memories, until I was in all their memories as the second to the phuro. He taught me that. And I am indebted to him.”

  “And he used you,” I said through gritted teeth. “To try and get to me. As my cornerstone.”

  “Twice he has underestimated you, Sam,” he said. “That much is clear. It won’t happen again, but mistakes were made, yes. The second time was when he came for you in Mashallaha. I tried to tell him, tried to make him understand that you were more than he thought, but… in the end, he realized his mistake. But do you know the first time he underestimated you, Sam?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “It was your devotion to the knight.” He glanced over to where Ryan was trapped against the wall, still struggling against the wood around his hands and feet. “He thought you could be swayed from him. That no mere grunt could ever take the heart of Sam of Wilds. He thought you would respond to someone of your own kind, someone who understood what it meant to have magic, to be a gypsy. But your love for this—this nothing proved to be rather remarkable. You were not seduced by me. He wasn’t happy. After you left. Partly because of his own failings, but because I too had failed him.”

  “Your mentor?” I spat at him. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Wait, don’t answer that. I already know you are.”

  Ruv chuckled. “That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble one of these days, Sam. You have to know that by now.”

  “Excuse me? Excuse me!”

  “What?” Ruv said, whirling on Lady Tina.

  “Yes,” she said, looking rather defiant, Caleb next to her, his dark eyes on me. “Hello. Thank you for finally acknowledging that I am still in the room. Which, if you must know, I will not stand for such rudeness. I am a noblewoman, and I demand to be treated as such.”

  “Of course, my lady,” Ruv said, bowing low. He was mocking her, but I didn’t think she knew. “How may I be of service to you?”

  “This is all really quite fascinating, I’m sure, what with your plots for revenge and whatever else you’re blathering on about. But in case you hadn’t noticed, I am a white woman stuck in a house with—with half-breeds, and I would like to return to where I belong. I don’t even like spending time in this house for meetings of the We-Hate-Sam-A-Lots, much less standing here listening to you air whatever your issues are with Sam. I get it. Trust me when I say I do. But don’t you think it’d be easier on all of us if you removed whatever enchantment is on Ryan Foxheart as you promised? I would like to return him to the castle to witness the reunion with his beloved that I have already plotted out in my head to make the most delicious of real-person fan fictions that I’ve ever created. I already have it titled. Would you like to hear it?”

  He stared at her.

  She brought her hands up, wiggling her fingers. “It’s called Rystin: Homecoming; A Story of Love and Triumphant Return of Two Lovers Who Love Each Other Like They’ve Loved No Other Lover Before. My thighs are absolutely tingling at the thought of it.”

  “Right,” Ruv said, voice flat. “There is the matter of Ryan Foxheart.”

  It was like ice down my spine.

  “Yes,” Lady Tina said with a nod. “And if you will just release him from the enchantment… and the wall, we’ll leave you to it with whatever you have planned with Sam of Wilds.”

  “Do your worst,” Ryan snarled at him as Ruv took a step toward him.

  I groaned. “Don’t tell him to do that, you idiot. Now he’ll do it.”

  “It’s okay, Ryan,” Lady Tina said, hands clutched between her breasts. “Soon you will be free from all of this. I promise you.”

  “You will be,” Ruv agreed. “Free, that is. From all of this. Do you remember, Knight Commander? In Mashallaha. How many times you threatened to stab me. It’s ironic, really.”

  Ryan rolled his eyes. “How is that ironic? I didn’t actually do it. Although now I wish I had.”

  “No,” I whispered. “No, no, don’t—”

  “That’s not the irony, Ryan Foxheart. The irony here is that I’m going to be the one to stab you.”

  I screamed at him.

  But it didn’t matter.

  Ryan looked confused as Ruv moved quicker than I’d ever seen him move. One moment he was standing near Tina, a small smile on his face. And the next he was scooping up Ryan’s discarded sword by the hilt and charging my knight.
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  Ryan Foxheart didn’t cry out as the sword pierced his skin just below his rib cage. He exhaled explosively, but the only other sound was the harsh thunk as the sword ran him through completely and hit the wall behind him. His eyes bulged as he looked down slowly at Ruv, who stood in front of him, hand still holding the sword, crimson starting to bleed along the cold steel.

  “What?” Ryan whispered. “What?”

  And still I screamed.

  My hands were bleeding, and I thought two of the fingers on my right hand were broken with how hard I was hitting the barrier that surrounded me, trying to do something, anything, to get to Ryan, to tear Ruv to pieces and to make it all okay again.

  But it was the price of magic.

  I could bring the lightning out from my heart.

  I could hold a bird in my hand and give it life once again.

  And I could not break the seal of dragon’s blood above me.

  I was shattering, breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, and Ryan coughed weakly, blood dribbling down his chin. He looked up at me as Ruv took a step back. His teeth were stained red, and when he said, “Sam?” all I could think about, all I could remember was the day Morgan took me away from the slums by the hand, and how I’d looked back just once and saw the boy named Nox standing on the road behind me.

  I had waved at him.

  He’d waved back.

  And then I rounded the corner and Nox was gone, and I didn’t think about him again until I sat beside a knight I loved next to a fire under the bright, bright stars on our way to rescue the Prince from the clutches of a dragon, and he’d said You’ve never been turned to stone, Sam? It’s an interesting experience to say the least.

  Nox Ashford.

  Ryan Foxheart.

  I loved them both.