by T. J. Klune
Ryan Foxheart took his place.
His hand went to my waist and it burned.
His other hand took mine, and I felt every scrape of his fingers against my skin.
I could feel the heavy muscle of his arm under my touch.
This was not nice.
This was an inferno.
The music swelled.
We moved. I didn’t have to count for him.
He said, “You’ve been busy all night.” There was no smile on his face and a heat to his words.
And because I had enough of a buzz still going, I deflected and said, “Congratulations. On everything.” The words came out light and sweet.
“Thank you. You danced with him twice.”
“What?”
He moved as he always did, with beautiful precision. He was leading and I didn’t even try to fight it. “The others. You sent them away after one song.”
“Or they ran.”
His lip twitched and the skin around his eyes crinkled slightly. “Or that. But he didn’t.”
“No, Todd didn’t,” I agreed.
“Is that his name?”
“It is. He’s very nice.”
“Is he?”
“Yes.”
“Because you like nice.”
“Perhaps.”
We danced on.
“I’m not nice,” Ryan said suddenly. “Not all the time.”
“You’re a knight,” I said, because that almost meant the same thing.
“Knight Commander,” he said with a glint in his eyes.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m so impressed.”
“You don’t sound like it.”
My mind wandered. “You know, I think this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had.”
He arched an eyebrow at me, and with that single motion, a fire burned in my belly like I’d never felt before. “And whose fault is that?”
I grinned at him. “Mine. You scare me.”
“Why? Because I’m too pretty to exist in this world?” He threw my words back at me, his voice teasing and soft.
“Because you’re scary,” I managed to say.
His eyes never left mine. “Why did you dance with him twice?”
“Because he was different.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one, he didn’t lick my hand like the first guy did.”
Ryan’s hand tightened in mine. “Is that so?”
“Sure. It’s been a weird night.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t know, did you?” About the marriage, I couldn’t say.
He didn’t need to ask. He just shook his head. He said, “Todd didn’t lick your hand. Why else?”
I laughed. It felt like it was edging toward bitterness. “He told me he didn’t know how to dance. I thought it was sweet. And he didn’t run screaming after the ass babies.”
Ryan chuckled darkly. “Why sweet?”
“It was honest. When’s the wedding?”
“We haven’t decided. When are you seeing Todd again?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I never said I was.”
“Why not?” he asked, jaw set. “He’s sweet. And honest.”
I felt dizzy. “I don’t have time for such things. I have priorities. Goals to accomplish.”
“So do I,” he said, and it was like he was trying to tell me more than those three words, but I wasn’t in the mood to understand anything.
“I suppose. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
“That so?” he said, and I thought he pulled me closer.
“Yes,” I said and I didn’t allow my voice to drop. “I’m the apprentice to the King’s Wizard. You’re the Knight Commander of the King’s Guard. Seems as if we’ll see each other more often than not. Especially after you’re married to the future King of Verania. I will be his wizard.”
“Will you run this time?” he asked, and when had his face gotten closer? I could feel his breath on my cheek. It was hot and moist and mint and wine. “I try and I try but you run away. Every single time.”
Suddenly, I felt very out of place. Or rather, I remembered my place. My skin was too tight, and I was sweating. The song was ending, and I pulled away. He didn’t release my hand. I could hear him being called by someone and realized tonight was supposed to be about him. He needed to mingle and kiss ass and make out with his fiancé in darkened corners because he was getting married.
“Thank you for the dance, Knight Commander.” I bowed to him because rank and custom made it so.
“Dances,” he said, voice pitched so low I could feel it crawl over me. “Plural. Because we went through three waltzes. Not one. And definitely not just two.”
Oh shit.
Ryan bowed back to me. I pulled away and his fingers trailed against mine.
I NEEDED air.
The stars above were bright as I moved into the garden. Lanterns hung from metal poles, lighting the paths near the roses and the tulips.
I took a breath and let it out slowly.
Footsteps came up behind me. Of course they would follow me out here. They would follow me anywhere.
“Had to escape to hide your raging erection?” Gary asked sympathetically.
“You know,” I said, “I came across a spell in Morgan’s Grimoire. In one of those back pages for the truly evil shit? It called for the dust of unicorn bones. I’m thinking about trying it out.” I kept walking.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Gary said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen dance fucking before. It was illuminating to see a live demonstration.”
I walked into a tree.
Tiggy and Gary laughed at me, because that’s what best friends do.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I said as I picked tree bark out of my mouth. “Todd was very nice.”
“Todd,” Gary mocked. “Yes. Todd.”
I ignored him. “Tiggy, did Morgan say when he was sending us out again?” Because being in the castle for the foreseeable future seemed like a Very Bad Idea.
“Two weeks,” Tiggy rumbled.
“That motherfucker,” I muttered. “He’s doing this on purpose.”
“Kind of like how Ryan was dancing all up in your business on purpose,” Gary said.
“You shut your mouth!”
“Dance fucking!” he hissed at me.
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s when you’re all, like, dancing, but it’s so easy to tell you’d much rather be naked and dancing. And by dancing, I mean fucking.”
“That’s so stupid. And we weren’t. We were talking about his wedding and about Todd.”
“Who Todd?” Tiggy asked.
“Big ears,” Gary said. “Couldn’t dance.”
“He precious,” Tiggy said. “Turned color of strawberries at all things.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was. And maybe I just wanted to dance fuck with him, not Ryan.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” Gary said. “Todd was an appetizer. Ryan was the main course covered in dessert.”
“I thought I was the buffet?” I asked, confused.
“You were. It’s… that… okay, too many food metaphors. I’m trying to be subtle here.”
“You’re a talking unicorn,” I said. “Sometimes when you poop, it comes out as rainbows and smells like cookies. There is nothing subtle about you.”
“It magical,” Tiggy said succinctly.
“The point is,” Gary said loudly, “when you were dancing with Todd, it was cute and clumsy and juvenile. When you were dancing with Ryan, I thought the entire room was going to choke on the tension.”
I groaned. “That’s the last thing I need. Because if you could see it, then others could too, and that’s how rumors start, and I seriously don’t need everyone knowing how I want to do… stuff… to him.”
“Stuff,” Gary mocked. “Prude. And trust me when I say it’s not just on you. He’s right there with you.
You should have seen the glares he was giving Todd when you went through a second dance.”
“Lies,” I said with a scowl. “All lies. You know what? No. I don’t even want to talk about this anymore. I don’t even care. I’m over it. Past it. Moving on. I’m going to march back in there and tell Todd that he’s going to take me out on a date and it will be awkward and nice and that’ll be that.”
Gary and Tiggy stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“How can you not see it?” Gary asked incredulously.
“See what?”
“Gaaah!” he shrieked.
Tiggy shushed him soothingly. “It okay. Pretty Gary. It okay.”
“You guys are so weird,” I muttered.
“I love you,” Gary said. “But sometimes I want to kick your spleen in.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I assured him. “I don’t even—”
“Sam?” a voice said from behind us.
Because of course.
All three of us turned.
Ryan stood there next to a stand of my mother’s violets, the light from a nearby lantern falling perfectly across his face.
“Well fuck me upside the head,” I said.
He said, “What?”
And I said, “Absolutely nothing,” because my mouth.
“I heard screaming.”
“And you came running? Of course you did.” I sounded like I was in pain.
He shrugged. “I thought somebody might need help.”
Apparently being noble and righteous is a turn-on for me, so I might have drooled a bit. “That was just Gary,” I managed to say. “He does that sometimes. With the screaming.”
“It’s true,” Gary said with a dramatic sigh. “I seem to suffer from a very serious condition called obliviousness by proximity. It causes screaming and the occasional uncontrollable need to stomp stupid wizards for being stupid.”
“And it’s completely fatal,” I said with a glare. “So maybe make with the dying.”
Gary ignored me. “You just happened to be in the garden?” he asked Ryan.
Ryan stared back. “Exactly.”
“Finding a rosebush to make out with your fiancé?” His tone was gentle, but I’d known Gary a long time. He was not being gentle.
“Gary,” I hissed.
“Completely alone,” Ryan said.
“Is that right? It seems a betrothed knight commander wouldn’t need to be alone.”
“You would think.”
Gary’s eyes narrowed. “I’m pretty sure I don’t like you.”
“My world is crumbling,” Ryan said.
I might have laughed. Because sass.
Gary wasn’t as amused. “Gary knows how to kill a bitch.”
“You probably should run,” I told Ryan. “When he starts referring to himself in the third person, it usually means he’s about to go into one of his unicorn rages.”
“Unicorn rages?” Ryan asked.
“There’s glitter involved,” I said solemnly. “Glitter and sarcasm. You’ll be emotionally eviscerated. Not physically, because we haven’t gotten his horn back yet. Count your blessings.”
“Don’t think I need it to kick your ass, though!” Gary snarled, prancing backward and forward. Glitter started sprinkling in the air around him, sloughing off from his back and sides. We could never really quite figure out where it came from. Gary had said it was because his insides were so festive. I’d told him that was way lame. “Bring it on, pretty boy! Gary gonna bring the pain.”
“It would probably be more threatening if you weren’t angrily raining glitter,” Ryan said. “It’s hard to be intimidated when you’re so shiny.”
“This is amazing,” I whispered to no one in particular because no one was listening to me.
“Shiny?” Gary said, outraged. “I’ll show you shiny! When I am finished with my emotional onslaught, you won’t even understand the concept of self-esteem, much less how to have it!”
Tiggy said, “This gonna be ugly.”
“You’re adorable,” Ryan said, and he was adorable for using the word adorable. Especially since he sounded like he meant it.
And Gary must have heard it too. Especially since unicorns can tell when someone is lying. “I’ll murder your face and—wait. What?” Gary stopped prancing.
Ryan shrugged. “You’re adorable. With your angry glitter.”
And Gary blushed. His whole face. Never before in the strange and sordid history of our super-best friendship had I ever seen him blush. “Aww,” he said. He scuffed the ground with one hoof. “You just hush, you.” And then he giggled.
“What is even happening right now?” I said.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Gary said. “Ryan is in love with me. We’re going to run away together. Now shoo.” He turned back to Ryan, dismissing me completely. “Now,” he said. “Tell me more about myself.”
“It’s a love for the ages,” Ryan agreed with a small smile.
“You have to hand-feed me grapes,” Gary demanded. “Peeled frozen grapes. I will not accept anything less. I am the light of your life and you shall treat me as such.”
Ryan rubbed a hand along Gary’s nose and I was so pissed off because I wanted him to rub my nose. So I said, “Gary, you whore! He’s getting married!” Like I actually thought Ryan would fuck my unicorn best friend. Right? Right?
I heard the wicked curl in his tone even before I could comprehend Gary’s words, and only then did I realize just how much of a diabolical mastermind my best friend could be. He had planned this. Getting to this point. He was evil.
“Sam,” he said with a glance back at me. “Weren’t you saying something about marching back inside and asking Todd out on a date?”
And the somewhat cheery atmosphere died a quick and painful death.
I cursed Gary in my head. My fingers actually twitched with the beginnings of a banishing spell that could potentially send him to the ends of the known world, but I somehow was able to stop myself. Barely.
Why, though? It shouldn’t matter what Gary had said. I owed nothing to Ryan. He definitely owed nothing to me.
So I said, “Yeah, sure.” Because I was. Because I had options.
Ryan took a step back from Gary and dropped his hand.
And then he said flatly, “You’ll need a chaperone.”
I rolled my eyes. “Because that makes sense. It’s not like he can hurt me. I’m taller than him and can set him on fire.”
“It’s to protect your virtue,” Ryan said through gritted teeth.
“My virtue?”
“Oh,” Gary said to Tiggy. “It’s so much more fun being on this side of things.”
“Why Sam loud?” Tiggy asked.
“It’s his default setting,” Gary said.
“It’s to make sure you stay safe,” Ryan said. “You’re important to m—to the Kingdom.”
“To the Kingdom,” Gary whispered.
“Right,” Tiggy whispered back, “the Kingdom.”
“I don’t need anyone to protect my virtue,” I snapped. “If I wanted to go out and fuck the first guy I saw, then I could. Or maybe I’d feel adventurous and find a lady! Maybe both. At the same time.”
“Sam, honey,” Gary called, breaking through the anger. “Remember you love the mens. No lady bits. Though you seem to have an unhealthy appreciation of boobs.”
“Okay,” I said. “Point. Breasts are fascinating.”
Ryan was pissed. “You’re not going to fuck anything.”
“Whoa.”
“What?”
“You just said fuck.”
“So?”
“But, you’re a knight. You can’t say things like fuck. You’re supposed to hug children and rescue kittens and slay fantastical beasts. You can’t say fuck. It’s unbecoming of someone of your position.”
“And you can?” He was back to being bemused.
I grinned. “You bet your fucking ass I can. I’m a wizard.”
“Appren
tice,” Gary whispered.
Murder is bad. Murder is bad. “Regardless, I am my own man. I don’t answer to anyone but myself.”
“And me,” Gary said.
“And Gary,” I allowed. Because it was true.
“And Tiggy,” Tiggy said.
“And Tiggy.” Because that was also true.
“And your mom,” Gary said. “And your dad. And Morgan. And the King.”
“Okay, them too.” I was not my own man at all.
Ryan smiled. It was not the nice one I’d seen earlier. “Good. I’ll ask the King about it, then.”
Motherfucker. “You fight dirty, Foxheart,” I grumbled.
“Hey, if I have to go through with it, then so do you,” he said, which brought significantly more questions than I wanted to deal with. Like did they ever ditch the chaperone? Did they run away and fuck in the forest? Was Ryan a virgin? A sweet, sweet virgin with a big, fat—
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. So not even going there.
“Not for much longer,” I said lightly. “Pretty soon, it’s married life for you.” That was easier to think about.
“Hey, Ryan?” Gary asked. “If you’re so concerned with Sam’s… virtue and importance to the Kingdom, why don’t you volunteer to be the chaperone? As Knight Commander of the King’s Guard, no one is more qualified than you to ensure the safety of his butthole.”
I muttered two dark syllables as the green fluttered around the edges of my vision. I snapped my fingers and Gary’s mouth was bound with shining twine. He glared at me while Tiggy laughed at him. Gary was a unicorn, so his magic would counteract my own in a few short minutes, but it shut him up for now. It was time to end this, and Ryan would laugh and I would laugh (while slowly withering on the inside), and then I’d go back inside and find some way to move to a different continent.
And then Ryan said, “That’s a good idea. I’ll tell the King immediately.” He turned tightly on his heel and started walking toward the ballroom.
Because. What? “Hey!”
“Don’t worry,” he called over his shoulder. “It’ll be a great first date. You’ll see.”
And then he was gone.
“What in the fuck just happened?” I breathed.
Gary’s magic finally negated my own and the twine fell away and disappeared. “I fell in love with Ryan, you got jealous, then I fell out of love with him because he seemed needy, you tied me up, I got half a chubby because it reminded me of Octavio, and now you have a date with Ryan. Oops. I mean Todd. Gosh, I’m beat. What a long night. Tiggy, take me to bed or lose me forever. Bye, Sam! Bye! Good night! Bye!”