by T. J. Klune
I hadn’t understood that before. And maybe I still didn’t, not completely. There was no way in hell I’d ever ask Randall about it, because he’d probably light my skin on fire, but the curiosity was there. The rooms that were sealed—particularly the library—held new meaning for me, and I wanted to know what he had hidden away behind the doors.
Even with all he’d been through, with all he’d done, I didn’t quite get how he could live up here all by himself. Maybe it was because I was a social creature and needed the safety of others around me, but the thought of becoming a recluse made my skin crawl. I wondered if Morgan would follow him up here one day, after I passed the Trials and became the King’s Wizard. If they would be two old men bound together by the memory of the man who’d betrayed them.
Granted, in order for that to happen, I had a shit-ton of work to do.
Collecting dragons, stopping villains.
My life was strange.
The ice of the castle creaked ominously as I left the kitchens, gnawing on some slightly chilled bread that had been left atop the fireplace. This was probably as good as it was going to get when it came to food. We didn’t eat here like we did in Castle Lockes, but it was still better than when I’d been in the slums. Barely.
I made my way back to my room with the intention of opening my Grimoire and trying to make some headway so that when tomorrow came and Randall asked to see it, the disdain would be somewhat diminished.
That was the plan.
The problem with having plans to do what essentially amounted to writing in a diary (which, those first pages when I started the Grimoire were extraordinarily cringe-worthy, as there were pages where MRS. SAM FOXHEART was written in the corners, surrounded by little hearts and squiggly lines—but hey, it all worked out, so dream big, kids!) is that sometimes gods feel it necessary to appear in the ice.
My life.
I was crossing the grand foyer just inside the entrance to the castle on my way back to my room. The foyer was large, with a double staircase that led to the upper levels of the castle. There were roaring fires on either side of the room, and it lessened the biting chill. A crystal chandelier hung above us, grand and ornate and probably older than fuck. I eyed it as it swayed from side to side as I entered the foyer, mouth full of dry bread, thoughts on how badass I should make myself sound when writing about my desert adventures (and coming to the decision that I wouldn’t need to embellish because I had been super badass). Before I could make my way across the foyer to the hallway on the opposite wall, there was a loud crack.
I stopped, ready to run in case Castle Freeze Your Ass Off was about to come crashing down around me, sure I’d see the wall of ice with a split down the middle. I had the brief thought that this whole thing had been a trap, that Randall had brought me here, locked me inside, but that disappeared as soon as I saw a spark of blue light shoot through the wall like a falling star.
I watched as more and more lights began to fall, and sighed as I chewed, knowing exactly what this was. I wasn’t looking forward to it, especially given how our last conversation had gone, what with him predicting death and burning and blah, blah, blah.
But apparently how I felt didn’t matter to the gods, because one formed in the ice wall before me, made of twinkling stars.
David’s Dragon.
“Hullo, Sam,” the star dragon said.
“I just saw you,” I groused, not giving two shits that he could probably smite me where I stood. I was cranky, I missed my friends and my boyfriend, I was cold and stuck in a tomb with the oldest person alive who didn’t understand that eyebrow maintenance was a thing that normal people partook in. “Whatever dire thing you want to tell me now can wait. I’m eating cold bread for dinner. Cold bread. It tastes like sadness.”
The dragon didn’t look moved at my plight. “Time has no meaning to a god.”
“Yes, well, bully for you. I have to go write in my dia—I mean, my Grimoire, so if we could make this quick, that’d be great.”
“You survived Meridian City. This pleases me.”
I rolled my eyes. “No shit. Thanks for the heads-up, by the way.”
“We do not—”
“Interfere. I know. You’ve told me before. And then you also told me that you hoped I won and that someone would die but that you wouldn’t say any more. So forgive me if I don’t give two shits if you’re pleased.”
“You’re a mouthy little thing, aren’t you? One would think a god would have garnered a tad bit more respect.”
I winced. “Yeah, okay. I deserved that. But you gotta admit this whole thing is a shitstorm.”
The star dragon shrugged. “Eh.”
“Eh? That’s what you’re going with? Eh? That’s it. When this whole thing is done and over with, I’m going full-on atheist. You hear me? Once I kick Myrin’s ass and get my happily ever after, you don’t exist to me. At all.”
“Just because you don’t believe in us doesn’t mean we don’t believe in you.”
I gaped at him.
He stared back at me.
“You asshole,” I said. “Why do you have to make me have feelings? That was dirty pool, you dick.”
“I come,” the star dragon said, “with a warning.”
I sighed. “Of course you do. Fine. Go ahead. Hit me with it.”
“Ooooo, hear me now, Sam of Wilds. The dark man in shadows is moving. His plan has changed. His fingers stretch over the surface of the world, and in his blackened heart, he looks to the consumption of magic to—”
“Hold up,” I said. “Let’s curb the theatrics for a moment. I know about the whole magic-eating thing already.”
“Noooo you doooooon’t,” the star dragon said. “You’re hearing it for the first time from me. Lo and behold! For I bring you tidings of great warning.”
“Legit, you are telling me something I already know.”
The star dragon deflated. “Dammit, I thought that would work. Why can’t you be more susceptible? Humans are normally so stupid when it comes to the gods. I regret this. I regret this whole thing.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t quite have the specifics behind it yet.”
“Strangely, no, that doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Oh. Well. Sucks, dude.”
“I can’t give you the specifics.”
“Right. Because of the whole impartiality thing. Which you guys aren’t very good at.”
His starry eyes widened. “Oh! I know something you don’t.”
“That’s… kind of a given. You’re a god.”
“The mated pair. The mountain dragons.”
That caught my attention. “What about them? Do you know them? Could you put in a good word for me? Dude, you have no idea how much easier it would be if they’d just come over to me and, like, be my friends or something. That way we wouldn’t have to go through the whole song and dance that I went through with Kevin. And with Zero. I’d really rather not be chased. They probably have gigantic teeth. And honestly? Me and gigantic teeth really don’t do well together, especially when they’re snapping in my direction.”
“I can’t do that,” the dragon said. “But I can give you a hint.”
I scowled at him. “Your hints usually suck balls.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Fine. Hint away.”
“The mated pair are both… female.”
“What,” I said flatly, because what?
“The mountain dragons are female.”
“Uh, yeah. Got that the first time. I don’t know what that’s supposed to help me with. Hints mean help. Did you not know that? That’s sad that you didn’t—holy fucking shit, lesbian dragons!”
The star dragon preened.
“That’s… so fucking cool,” I breathed. “Are you being serious right now? Lesbians are amazing. This is going to be a piece of cake! We’re family! I’ll just walk in, talk about how I love penis, and they’ll love me!” I paused, considering. “Okay, maybe
that plan needs some fine-tuning, but I’ll figure it out. But that makes things so much easier. Lesbians love me for some reason. But that’s okay, because I love them too. It’s all good in the hood. Finally, something going my way—”
“Who are you talking to?” Randall said from the top of the stairs.
Since I hadn’t expected him to be there, I spun around and screamed.
The room had some pretty killer acoustics, which taught me that I sounded significantly less masculine than I thought I did when I screamed out of fear. It was crushingly disappointing, to say the least.
“My word,” I said, hand at my throat. “Why are you sneaking?”
He arched an eyebrow at me.
“The star dragon.”
He looked around the room slowly. “There’s nothing here.”
I looked over at the far wall. Sure enough, only ice remained.
“He was there!” I exclaimed, turning back to Randall. “He totally was!”
“You sound like a heretic.”
“I sound like a sexy heretic.”
“That’s not even remotely a thing.”
“I’m making it one.”
“You’re going to be loud the whole time you’re here, aren’t you.”
“You can always send me back,” I said hopefully. “Then you’ll get five weeks of blissful silence until we get here.”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
“Thank the gods.”
“But then I realized that seeing how far you’ve come is more important than my comfort levels.”
“Damn the gods.”
“However, we can still have blissful silence during this time.” That didn’t come out sounding like a request.
“It’s like you don’t even know me.”
“No,” he said. “I could never be that lucky. You do realize that seeing the star dragon is exactly what happened to Vadoma, correct? You can no longer doubt any aspect of her when you’re capable of the same thing.”
“You just had to go there, didn’t you?”
“Are you ready to discuss your secrets?”
“Are you?” I snapped back without thinking. I wanted to take the words back as soon as I heard them echo around the foyer.
Randall’s mouth thinned to a bloodless line. “Eight in the morning, Sam of Wilds. Not a second later.”
Then he turned, robes swirling, kicking up little shavings of ice, before he disappeared down a hallway. A door opened and closed a moment later.
Chapter 9: No More Secrets
“THE LAST few passages seem as if they were written rather… hastily,” Randall said, a little sneer curled on his lips. He was flipping through my Grimoire down in the labs of Castle Freesias, and it was the first time he’d spoken in almost ten minutes. I had been trying not to fidget as I stood on the other side of the large wooden table, tracing my fingers along the runes and arcane symbols carved into its surface. “Did you just complete these yesterday?”
“Maybe?” I said, refusing to be embarrassed. What I’d written certainly hadn’t been my best work, but I’d been distracted by the star dragon’s visit and the implications behind it. The star dragon had repeatedly insisted that it had no favorites, but then always did something to contradict that. And unless it was doing something similar for Myrin—which I highly doubted—then it would seem I had at least one god on my side.
Too bad I thought it was kind of an idiot.
But then it was a dragon, and all the dragons I’d met so far had been idiots.
But lesbian dragons. Who were mated.
I couldn’t fucking wait to learn their names.
They were going to be something amazing, like Adalinda and Chumana, and they were going to want to help me because they’d think I was an adorable twink they wanted to love and protect for the rest of their days. I so had this.
“I’ve been… busy,” I said because Randall looked like he was waiting for more.
“Have you now.”
“Yes?” I asked. Or said. I didn’t know. I was starting to squirm a little. “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s been a prophecy, and I’ve been kind of wrapped up in that.”
“You spent weeks traveling to the desert.” He flipped toward the beginning of the Grimoire. I hoped he would ignore the RYAN FOXHEART IS SO DREAMY written in purple ink. I knew I wanted to ignore it. And this whole conversation. Forever. “You could have spent time updating it then.”
And he had a point. But then Ryan and I had never had sex on sand before and spent most nights trying it out, coming to the conclusion that yes, sand did get everywhere if you let it. “Um, I was performing… experiments? For science.”
“For science,” he repeated. “Tell me. What was the purpose of these experiments?”
“Uhh… friction. Yes. It was about force and friction.”
“Your hypothesis before you began?”
“That it… would… hurt?”
“And the results.”
“It… did?”
Randall sighed. “You’re terrible at this, you know that, right?”
“Very much aware,” I said.
He closed my Grimoire and rested his hand on the blank cover. I glanced over his shoulder to see his own on a bookshelf behind him, the binding made of a dark stone. Ever since I’d been given my blank Grimoire at the age of fifteen, I’d been told that one day, I’d need to bind it, and that the binding would come from the skin of a fallen enemy defeated in battle or a material hard-won in the face of adversity. Randall’s was made of basalt—hardened lava—taken from an erupting volcano, which I was sure counted as a material hard-won. There was another book next to it, the binding done in glittering green scales, and even though I knew who it’d probably belonged to, I couldn’t find the courage to open my mouth and ask.
“Do you know why I’ve brought you here?” he asked me, looking down at his gnarled hand on top of my Grimoire.
“You’re concerned,” I said slowly. “About me. And my magic.”
He nodded. “I am. More than you probably know.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why do you even care?”
“Is that so hard to believe? That I could care about you?”
“A little. We don’t… have that kind of relationship.”
“Only because I don’t indulge you as Morgan does.”
“Morgan is my friend.”
“Morgan shouldn’t be your friend. He should be your mentor.”
“He can be both.”
“He’s always had a soft spot for you. Ever since the beginning. It killed him to know you were in the slums. He kept an eye on you as best he could and even went so far as to almost disobey a direct order from me to leave you until you showed signs of a propensity toward magic.”
“I didn’t know that,” I admitted. “I thought—”
“I know what you thought. You thought Morgan didn’t care enough about you to save you from the slums, to give you and your parents the life that you wished for. Well. Now you know. Blame me. Not him.”
“Why?”
His hand flexed on the Grimoire. “Why did I leave you there?”
I nodded.
“Because I hoped that Vadoma was a liar. A charlatan. A false prophet. That she would be proven wrong and there would be no need to involve you in the ways of magic. It’s wondrous, Sam, but it’s also seductive. It can take parts of you and mold them until they’re unrecognizable. To be good, to be a good wizard, there are rules and laws that must be followed. Paths diverge, and it’s so easy to meander among them. To stray. To allow yourself to be pulled further and further away. It’s hard, Sam, to be good. It’s not so very hard to skirt along the edges of the dark. And to be consumed by it? Why, that just might be the easiest thing of all.”
“You didn’t think I was capable?” That stung more than I thought it would.
He huffed out a bitter laugh. “It’s not that I thought you weren’t. It’s that I didn’t want to have to find out one way
or another. I was a selfish man, Sam, in that I wanted you to live a life where the worst thing for you would be to wonder where your next meal would come from. This life… it can take from you. Pieces that you weren’t aware could be taken. I’d seen what it’d done to one who I had mentored. What it’d done to myself.”
“Did you know? About the dark man in shadows. Who he was.”
“I don’t… no,” he said, not looking up at me. “I didn’t. I trusted what Morgan and I had done would have been enough. I trusted the families that had been entrusted with the keys to the seal. I convinced myself that at the very least, we were safe. From him.”
“But shouldn’t you have at least checked? I mean, what the hell, Randall.”
“The fallacy of an old man who thought his magic was enough.”
“Why keys at all?”
He sighed. “Because I didn’t trust myself to be in control of it. I had already shown what I was and wasn’t capable of by banishing him instead of killing him.”
“It…. I understand it. Why you did what you did. Mostly.”
His head snapped up, surprise on his face. “You do?”
I shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “He was your cornerstone. I don’t know that I could have done any different had it been Ryan.”
He stared at me.
I looked away.
Then, after another few moments of silence, he said, “Which is yet another reason I’ve brought you here alone.”
Because of course there was something else. “Randall, please. I told you. You’re not my type.”
“That mouth of yours is going to get you in more trouble than you’re worth.”
“It gets me out of trouble more often than not,” I said with a rakish grin. “And Ryan doesn’t complain about it.”
“That you know of.”
“Hey!”
“The levels of magic you’ve exhibited are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. You’ve come to depend upon your cornerstone and have shown spikes in your power when it comes to him. He cannot be your crutch, Sam. Or your weakness.”
“He’s neither.”
“If the choice came between saving Verania and saving Knight Commander Foxheart, what would you choose?”