by T. J. Klune
I shoved Ryan out of the way and hopped through Dark remains to stand in front of Justin, who was glaring at me. City guards were making their way toward us, and if there were any Darks left alive, I was sure they’d be taken to the city jail. Morgan or Randall would need to make sure their cells were warded so the Darks couldn’t use magic to break out.
“Why are you so pale?” Justin asked as I stepped over a finger in the grass. Then his nose wrinkled as he took a step back. “And why do you smell like that? Sam, you stay away. If you even think of touching me, I will find a way to make your life a living hell for the rest of my days. You do not get to put your sick on me.”
I stopped just in front of him, smiling as widely as possible. I hoped there was no vomit in my teeth. “You came to Meridian City because you were worried about me.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he said coolly.
“Nah,” I said, ready to take our friendship to the next level. “I’ve got your ex-boyfriend for that.”
He gaped at me.
I waggled my eyebrows at him.
He snorted and shook his head begrudgingly. “Okay, Haversford. That was… good. I mean, I really want to stab you with a sword, but I’ll give you that one.”
“Best friends 5eva!”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
“This must be awkward for you,” Randall said to Ryan.
“You have no idea,” Ryan muttered, trying to scrape Dark wizard off the bottom of his boot.
“How do you survive?” Randall said dryly. Then, “Morgan, a word, if you please.”
That couldn’t possibly be good, especially since both of them glanced at me before walking far enough away that I couldn’t hear them, no matter how hard I tried.
But before I could devise a way to listen in on whatever they were saying (because I just knew they were whispering about me, the jerks), my name was bellowed in such a way that said that if I didn’t respond, I was going to have one pissed-off unicorn on my hands.
And nobody wanted that.
Gary looked furious as he stood beside Kevin, glitter still sloughing off him in small bursts. Tiggy was standing next to him, running a finger up and down Gary’s snout, one of the few things that could get Gary to calm down.
Kevin was staring mournfully at the ragged hole through his wing, which was a lot bigger than I’d initially thought. The edges were bloody and frayed, but it looked as if the bleeding had slowed.
“Look at this,” Gary snapped as I came up next to them. “Would you just look at this. He’s got a hole in him, Sam. A hole.”
“I can see that,” I said lightly as I made my way toward them. “Kevin, all right?”
“I’m hideous,” Kevin said sadly. “Who is going to want to climb all over my junk now? I can’t even fly when it’s like this. What good am I if I can’t fly? Do you know what that makes me, Sam? I’m a lizard now. I’m just a gigantic lizard who can’t fly because of the hole in his wing.”
“Oh, you,” I said, trying my best to be empathetic. “Oh, just… you. You’ll be all right, friend. Okay, my guy? It’s… not even that noticeable. You’ll be totes fine.” I added, “Buddy,” for good measure.
Gary and Tiggy both turned slowly to look at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You are the worst at trying to make people feel better,” Gary hissed.
“I do suppose it’s another hole to put something into,” I said. Then, “Wait. I really shouldn’t have said that.”
Kevin’s lip curled. “I like the way you think. Though I don’t know if I’m into wound play.”
That made me a little queasy. “That’s a thing?”
He shrugged. “Anything’s a thing if you want it to be. You just have to have an active imagination.”
“Gross,” I muttered. “Also, let’s not talk about this ever again.”
“You started it.”
“For once, you’re right about that. And I wish I hadn’t. So. Moving on. Oh no, my pal! It’s not even noticeable!”
“Don’t listen to him,” Gary said, looking up at Kevin. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s totally noticeable. But if you’re lucky, it’ll scar and be sexy and—”
“You think I’m sexy?” Kevin asked.
Gary coughed. “I mean… sure. Um. If you like that kind of thing, I guess.”
“Huh,” Kevin said. “And do you like that kind of thing?”
“Maybe? I mean, I don’t not like it.”
“They love each other,” Tiggy whispered to me.
“I know, big guy,” I said, patting his arm.
“Where did they come from?” Ryan asked, coming to stand at my side. “And how did they hurt you? I thought dragons were impervious to magic?”
“The woods,” Kevin rumbled. “I heard them with their whizbangs and their sparklies and decided it was probably best if I ended their lives before they could do any damage to the city.” He puffed his chest out. “If you ask me, I must say that I was really rather brave.”
Gary was about to swoon. “The bravest,” he said breathlessly, eyeing Kevin like he was a piece of meat he wanted to choke down. “Tell me of your conquest. Leave no details out.”
Kevin must have heard the come fuck me in Gary’s voice, because he leered down at him in a way that made me intensely uncomfortable. “They came out of the trees,” he purred, eyes flashing. “And I told them that if they didn’t turn and march themselves right back to where they’d come from, that they would draw their last breath upon the field in which they stood.”
“Oh my,” Gary whispered.
“You should just ignore his erection,” I told Ryan.
Ryan looked scandalized. “I was until you said that.”
“And then I pulled myself to my full height, my muscles rippling and glistening in the sunlight—”
“Why were your muscles glistening?” I asked. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”
Gary glared at me. “It makes perfect sense. Just because you lack an imagination doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer along with you.”
“I’m just saying. Why was he glistening? Did he rub oil on himself—I shouldn’t have said that.”
“That’s exactly what I did,” Kevin said. “I was glistening because of the oil that I spurted on myself in anticipation of battle. I was hot and hard and moist and shiny—”
“I can’t stop staring at it,” Ryan said.
“We were good while we lasted,” I said to him. “I understand if you don’t think I can satisfy you anymore after seeing it. I know you’re a bit of a size queen.”
“Ick on my face,” Tiggy said as he frowned.
“That’s because you smashed. Come here.”
Tiggy bent over as I ripped part of a robe that hadn’t been sullied from a Dark wizard. I figured it was okay because the Dark wasn’t going to use it anymore, given that he looked like he’d been left roasting over a fire pit too long. I reached up and wiped off Tiggy’s face.
“There’s my handsome guy,” I said, getting most of the blood off him.
“Hi,” he said, grinning at me. “Hi, Sam.”
“Hey, dude. You okay?”
He nodded. “I smashed.”
“You did. You’re the best smasher.”
He preened at that.
“—and then I let out a great gout of fire, and I know I looked majestic as fuck, because how can one not look majestic when they can breathe fire? Oh, that’s right. They can’t. Wait. They can’t not. Okay, is that a double negative? I feel like I’m not making the point I want to make.”
“How did they tear a hole in his wing?” Justin asked, watching the Meridian City Guards start to poke through the bodies that were still intact. In the distance, I could see townsfolk beginning to exit through the front gates and head toward us.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t know everything.”
“No one believes you know everything,” Just
in said. “In fact, most people believe you don’t know much at all.”
“Thanks for understanding,” I said, feeling relieved.
He rolled his eyes at me.
“Well?” I asked, looking up at Kevin. “How’d it happen?”
“Hmm?” he said. “Oh, this old thing?” He stretched out his wing again, wincing as he did so. The hole looked rough. “Don’t rightly know. One moment I was winning, and the next, I was still winning but was wounded in the heat of battle. Granted, it didn’t do much to slow me down because I still kicked ass, but it certainly hurts. I suppose that maybe if I was given a reward of shinies, I’d feel much better about it.”
“I’m sure you would,” I said, eyeing the approaching crowd, an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “And I’ll get right on that, I really will, but I have a question. Why are people coming out here to look at the dead bodies? And a follow-up question. Why are they bringing their children?”
They all looked toward the people coming to stand along the edges of the field of battle. There were men and women, hookers and drug dealers. Many of them looked as if they hadn’t bathed in a long time. Some wore the smallest stitches of clothing that I was sure would probably be considered extraordinarily indecent in any place other than Meridian City. A few looked as if they were strung out on some kind of drug.
But most of them were staring at me with such derision that I looked over my shoulder, sure that I would see the most evil of men standing behind me. Because that was the only thing that made sense for those expressions.
Of course, there was no one behind me.
I looked back toward the crowd.
“Me?” I asked, pointing at myself.
The crowd nodded.
“Huh,” I said. “That’s… unexpected. I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re standing on the blood of your enemies,” someone called out.
I looked down. Sure enough, I was standing in a large pool of blood. “That’s unfortunate.”
“He’s so bloodthirsty,” another voice said. “He probably wants to bathe in it.”
“Well I never,” I said, putting my hand to my throat.
“They were just people,” someone else said. “And he murdered them.”
“What the hell,” Justin said. “They were Dark wizards. They would have attacked Meridian City!”
“The Prince is defending me,” I whispered to Ryan excitedly. “Are you hearing this?”
“Should I be worried about this you and Justin thing?” Ryan asked with a frown. “Because I think I might need to be worried about it.”
“Babe,” I said. “Of course not. You know you’re my one and only. But I can’t help it if he falls in love with me. It’s not my fault I’m so irresistible.”
Ryan crowded in close to me while he glared at Justin. “You can’t have him.”
“I feel like you’ve gotten stupider since our wedding day,” Justin said. “Given the company you keep, I’m not surprised.”
“Hey!”
“Sam’s thirst for blood knows no bounds!” a woman cried out. “Soon he’ll come for us and feast upon our flesh!”
The crowd gasped and took a step back, eyeing me in fear.
“Sam don’t eat flesh,” Tiggy said.
“Thank you, Tiggy.”
“Except for chicken.”
“Okay, Tiggy.”
“And cows.”
“That might be enough, Tiggy.”
“And—”
“Not helping, Tiggy.”
“Hear me, good people of Meridian City,” Justin said, sounding more regal than I’d ever heard him before. “Sam of Wilds might be… a lot to take in. I get that. Trust me. I really get that. In fact, I might get that more than any of you. In fact, I can almost guarantee that I get that more than you all do. You think you’ve got it bad? I have to see him almost every day.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And he doesn’t mean that the way it sounds, either.”
“But he came here with the sole purpose of making sure that you and your city are protected from the Dark wizards,” Justin continued. “You had a betrayer in your midst, a villain who acted with the sole purpose of attempting to bring darkness to Verania.”
The crowd gasped yet again. The fact that they did it in unison was really quite impressive. I wondered if they got together regularly and practiced it for moments such as this. “Who?” a man cried. “Who has betrayed us?”
“Someone you would not expect,” I said, taking a step forward to stand beside my Prince. Unfortunately, I accidentally stepped onto a recently deceased Dark wizard and crunched what sounded like a large bone. The crowd looked a little queasy at the sharp crack that echoed across the field. Justin’s face was in his hand as I tried to avoid more bones. I laughed weakly. “Oops. That was an accident.” I took another step forward, only to step on someone’s dead face and break their nose and cheeks. I stumbled a little bit on that one. “Ha ha, that… good gods, how many of them are there?”
It took another awkward minute or two before I was standing next to Justin. Thankfully, I’d only managed to step on (and in) three more Darks before I made it to his side. “Made it,” I announced.
No one seemed happy for me.
I coughed. “Anyway. It was Feng.”
I don’t know what I expected. Shock, maybe. Or possibly outrage that he could have fooled them as he had the rest of us.
What I didn’t expect was the immediate anger directed toward my person.
“Feng? Is he serious?”
“Feng was a good man!”
“He wouldn’t betray us!”
“Feng helped save my family from the streets.”
“Sam of Wilds is full of it! Feng would never work with the Darks.”
“Maybe it was Sam that betrayed us!”
“Yeah! We were fine until Sam of Wilds came here!”
“Just look at him! He’s basking on top of the dead bodies of those poor, defenseless wizards who probably wanted nothing more than to be friends with all of us!”
“Are they being for real right now?” I whispered to Justin. “Because if they are, I severely underestimated my self-worth, and I’ll be honest: that’s a really terrible feeling.”
Justin was tense next to me, warily eyeing the crowd. Tiggy began to growl behind me, and then came the unmistakable sound of Ryan drawing his sword, as if he thought the mob before us planned on attacking. And maybe they were. There was anger on their faces, and fear, and I promised myself that one day, I would have my revenge against Lady Tina DeSilva, because this was obviously her fault. Somehow she’d poisoned people against me, and I would see her pooping in a bucket in the dungeons for the rest of her life. I figured the King owed me a solid.
But whatever the crowd had planned was put on hold when another voice broke through the rest, fierce and angry. “What is the meaning of all of this?”
The crowd parted as Mama walked through them in all her glory, Letnia trailing behind her, eye patch glittering in the sunlight.
Mama made her way to the front of the crowd, cool and graceful as always. She barely had a reaction to the dead Darks that lay before her, and my respect for her grew exponentially. I wanted to be her when I grew up.
“Sam of Wilds said Feng betrayed us,” a brave man said. “He’s trying to justify the slaughter of these men by—”
“Feng did betray us,” Mama said. “And he has paid for his deception with his life.”
The crowd fell silent at that.
Mama glanced at me before looking back toward her people. “My eyes have been opened when I didn’t even know they’d been closed. I, like all of you, trusted Feng. And I know he has done much for Meridian City. But none of the good will ever make up for the decisions he’s made against all of us. If it hadn’t been for Sam of Wilds, or Randall and Morgan, Feng would have succeeded in his attempts at assassinating Letnia and myself.”
Maybe. If Feng were to be believed, his sole intent
ion was to bring me to Myrin, but the office had been filled with explosives. And it was Morgan who had stopped him rather than myself. I opened my mouth to say just that but a hand dropped on my shoulder and squeezed tightly. I looked back to see Morgan behind me. He shook his head as if he’d known exactly what I’d been about to say. And most likely he had.
But I couldn’t help but notice how pale he looked, more so than usual. Beyond him stood Randall, who was watching me with that same eerie look on his face. He hadn’t forgotten whatever he’d wanted to discuss with me. And most likely he’d told Morgan.
Godsdamn him.
The crowd was murmuring amongst themselves, taking in Mama’s declaration, but I could see that it wasn’t helping much. They were still staring at me with derision and distrust. I didn’t know most of them. It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.
“Feng was working with the Darks,” Mama said. “He had been given a great task, to protect something precious. He chose to follow the path into the darkness. His father, Lui Wei, would be turning in his grave if he knew of Feng’s duplicity.” She shook her head, hands fisted at her sides. “Hear me now. Sam of Wilds is a hero. And anyone that speaks against him will answer to me.”
“And to me,” Letnia said, head held high. “Villains will rise. That much is given. And there may come a time when choices will need to be made. You are either with us, or you are against us. And if you are against us, then you should be prepared for the consequences of your decision. The Crown has faith in Sam of Wilds. That alone should be enough. But in case it’s not, then know I throw my lot in with him.”
They both glared at the mob as if daring anyone to speak against them or me.
No one did, though most of them didn’t look convinced.
They dispersed soon after.
THE GUARDS were left to clean up the fields.
Letnia stayed to oversee the effort, a steely look on her face.
Mama headed back into the city, muttering about how she needed to see how the Feng cleanup in her office was going. She told Kevin to see the healers in the city to, at the very least, clean the hole in his wing. He tried to refuse, but Gary stopped that line of thought before it could get too far. Kevin stared at Gary for a long time before quietly agreeing. Tiggy trailed behind the both of them, glancing over his shoulder at me. I nodded at him, and he smiled at me.