by T. J. Klune
“Look,” I said. “You don’t know me. And that’s okay. I know I don’t look like much. I know I’m only an apprentice. Sure, I can talk to you and help others do the same, but really, in the end, that’s not all that impressive. I’m young, and Randall would tell you that I’m unpracticed and uncoordinated. Maybe even dangerous. I’m told I have more magic in me than anything else in the known world, and if I’m not careful, it can be used against me. There is a man who betrayed the two wizards I admire most who wants to eat part of my soul. I’m scared sometimes. Other times I’m angry. Because this shouldn’t be happening to me. This is too much for one person to carry on their own. I hate the gods sometimes for putting this all on me.”
The dragons were silent. Watching, waiting.
“But that’s just it,” I said quietly. “The gods may have chosen me. They may be testing me. They may be using me. To what end, I don’t know. Maybe I’m needed to course-correct the way of things. Maybe Myrin is an aberration. Or maybe I am. Maybe I’m not meant to win, maybe I’m being lied to for reasons hidden in shadow. In the end, though, I am not alone. I have Gary and Tiggy. I have Morgan and Randall. I have my parents and the King and Justin. I have my cornerstone.”
“And Kevin,” Pat said.
“And Kevin,” I agreed. “He may aggravate me. His relationship with Gary is probably an affront to the gods. Sometimes I want to punch him in the eye when he asks me if I need help with my homework, and also with a blow job. I mean, what the fuck, Kevin? Why are you like that? But he’s my friend. Ever since that day we showed up at his keep to do… something, he’s been my friend.
“Look, I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. I’m loud and obnoxious and I try really hard to make sure everyone likes me. Probably more than I should. But I didn’t have to do that with them. Even though it might have taken me a long time to see it, eventually I did. They like me for me.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly embarrassed at the impromptu speech I was giving. “But you have to know that not everyone feels that way. There are people in Verania who hate me. Because of my position with the Crown. Because of the color of my skin. Because I dared to look upon the stars and wish for something more. I don’t know if they’re jealous or if they genuinely look at me and see someone to despise. I don’t know that it matters. Well, I don’t know that most of it matters. Lady Tina DeSilva is another story. One day, and one day soon, I will stand before her and have my revenge. She will plead for mercy, and I will deny her request and say unto her, ‘Behold, you cankerous bitch! I stand before you as your ending!’”
I began to cackle evilly.
That lasted only a few seconds, because it sounded as if a small chicken was being strangled.
I made a mental note to work on my evil laugh.
I coughed. “Um. Where was I? Uh… oh! Friendship. Right, friendship is super important to me and I love them and they love me and that’s why I didn’t slay Kevin. The end.”
I bowed, expecting thunderous applause.
There was none.
I might not have stuck that landing as much as I thought I had.
I looked back up at them.
The dragons stared down at me.
“The end?” I said again, trying not to make it sound like a question but failing miserably.
“What was it talking about?” Leslie whispered to Pat.
“I don’t rightly know,” Pat said. “It certainly was loud.”
I threw my hands up. “Oh, come on! That was passionate.”
“Is that another word for loud?” Leslie asked. “Because if it is, it was so passionate. You might just be the most passionate thing I have ever met.”
“Dragons are such assholes,” I muttered. “What the fuck.”
“Step forward, child,” Pat said.
“I’m not a chi—you know what? Doesn’t even matter.” I took a step forward. “Please don’t murder my face.”
Pat crouched down in front of me until she was at eye level. Leslie did the same at her side, her feathers brushing against her mate.
They really were quite beautiful, now that I wasn’t mostly filled with fear that they were going to kill me. The feathers atop their heads looked soft to the touch, whereas the ones along their backs and wings appeared to be hard as steel. I marveled at how different they were from Kevin or Zero and wondered just how many types of dragons there used to be. The fact that these two found each other seemed to be a minor miracle.
“We asked him about you,” Pat said. “While you were inside the castle.”
“Randall? Now wait a minute. You probably shouldn’t believe a single word he says about me. He tends to overexaggerate my faults! I didn’t mean to turn his nose into a dick—”
“I’m talking about Kevin.”
“Oh. Oh! Right! Ignore everything that I just said.”
“I believe that’s not going to be an issue.”
“Good. Good, that’s—hey!”
“So precious,” Leslie whispered.
“We asked him about you,” Pat said. “Because a dragon’s trust is not something that is handed out lightly. There is a choice in everything, human. The gods may have dictated your path, but they have not dictated ours.”
“You’re telling me,” I mumbled. “They’re kind of jerks that way.”
“We were to be given a choice,” Leslie said. “That’s what he told us.”
“He?” I asked.
“The star dragon,” Pat said, surprising absolutely no one.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let me tell you about that guy. I get the feeling he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing.”
“Blasphemy,” Pat hissed.
“But most likely true,” Leslie said.
“Leslie!”
“Oh, stop it,” Leslie said, rolling her eyes at her mate’s anger. “He was a bit of a loon. You can’t deny that. For a god, he was rather… ungodly.”
I decided Leslie was my favorite.
“He still deserves respect,” Pat snapped.
“Pishposh,” Leslie said, bumping her nose against Pat’s jaw. “You’re just upset that you like the human too, even though you’re trying so hard not to show it.” Leslie looked at me and winked. “She tends to be such a grouch sometimes. Have to keep up appearances, you know?”
“I don’t know why I put up with you,” Pat muttered.
“You love me.”
“Only the gods know why.”
Leslie smiled. “I’m sure they do.”
“I want to hug you both so bad right now,” I breathed. “Like, you don’t even know. Lesbians are so awesome.”
“Touch me and you’ll lose an arm,” Pat said, snapping her teeth.
“Finish your story so that we can tell it we’ll help it,” Leslie said, nudging her mate.
“Leslie!”
“Oh, hush. You know we will. Look at it. It’s so tiny!”
“Gods, I can never take you anywhere.”
“So she asked Kevin about you—”
“I will tell it. You know how I like telling stories.”
“Do I ever.”
Pat turned back toward me. “Do you know what he said about you?”
I squinted at her. “Is this a trick question?”
“No.”
“Um. Okay. Did he… talk about my ass?”
“Yes, but only for seven minutes. And then he talked about the unicorn graphically for sixteen minutes. I mean after that.”
“Younglings,” Leslie said. “Remember when we used to be that way? Why, I remember when we could go days without leaving the cave.”
“Lesbian dragon sex,” I whispered. “I’m hearing about lesbian dragon sex.”
“Leslie,” Pat hissed. “Now is not the time.”
“How I love you,” Leslie purred.
“As I was saying,” Pat said to me. “I do not take the word of a human. The star dragon said that we had a choice. That we could choose a side or remain neutral. That we could turn
our gazes away from the plights of men and let the land around us burn. I do believe we are high enough in our snowy mountain to avoid the worst of the fallout should the man in shadows rise.”
I swallowed thickly.
“And then you were here,” she said, cocking her head at me. “After all this time. And you were not what I expected. The star dragon said you were to be a grand wizard, capable of things this world has never seen before. But all I saw in front of me was a little smudge against the snow.”
“I don’t even find that offensive,” I assured her.
“No? So be it. We followed you down the mountain to see what you would do. You showed… ingenuity. Resourcefulness. Cunning. Qualities I do not care for in a human. Because they can lead to wrath and destruction if not tempered. I have seen the worst of men. Once they came for my beloved. They tried to take her from me. Do you know what happened to those men, apprentice?”
I had a pretty good idea.
“I ate them,” Pat said, tongue flicking out of her mouth. “Because I would not let them lay one filthy finger upon her feathers. No one should be able to touch them except for me.”
“I can see why,” I said quietly.
“Can you? I should hope so. Do you know what your Kevin said about you?”
I shook my head.
“After extolling your… assets, he grew quiet for a time. Then he looked down upon us and said that because of you, for the first time in his life, he was no longer scared.”
Oh, how my heart ached at that.
“He said that he’d been hurt before. That they had come for him, trying to take his hearts and blood, that he’d been trapped in their spells, unable to move. He had known fear then, true fear. Somehow he managed to escape. And he fled, looking for a place to call his own. He traveled far and wide and only settled when he found an abandoned keep that had easy access to sheep.”
I laughed as I wiped my eyes. “Yeah. He likes them because he’s a weirdo.”
“And he was okay, for a time,” Pat said. “He was able to catch his breath. But then he chanced upon a wizard near a castle, and it scared him. Because they were all the same, Darks or not. He fled, but not before taking a pretty.”
“The Prince.”
She nodded. “But then he found you again, one day. In a field. And even though he knew he should be scared, he… wasn’t. He said you were loud and annoying and you threw up on him.”
“All of that is pretty much true,” I agreed.
I thought I saw the ghost of a smile on her face. “I thought it might be. He doesn’t know how it happened. Did you know that? He doesn’t know the moment he began to see you as his home.”
I hung my head.
“He thinks it might have been the moment you two bonded atop the keep under a field of stars, but he cannot be sure. He remembers that night quite vividly. He said it was the first time he’d ever seen a human heart break up close. He knew then that he wanted to keep you safe. He may not have understood why, but he did. And when you spoke of your castle to him, when you told him he could go with you, he said that he believed that you would keep your promises. That even though you were young and would sometimes make mistakes, you would always try and do the right thing.”
“He has a lot of faith in me,” I said. “I don’t know that I deserve it.”
“Those who do rarely think they should,” Pat said, not unkindly.
“Why was your heart breaking?” Leslie asked. “He said that was your story to tell.”
I laughed wetly. “I was in love. A choice was made to follow an oath rather than a heart. I thought Ryan was choosing the Prince over me.”
“Your cornerstone?” Pat asked, sounding surprised. “He loved another?”
I shook my head. “Not loved. It was duty. But I was so hurt that I couldn’t see the difference.”
“But now?”
“My heart was struck by lightning and made whole again. He keeps it safe.” Even if he was angry with me at the moment, I truly believed that.
They were silent, and I looked back up to find the feathered dragons staring at each other, as if they were speaking without words. They must have come to some kind of agreement, because Leslie nudged Pat, who sighed before she turned back to me.
“Dragons have magic,” she told me. “You understand this, yes?”
I nodded slowly. “You are dreamwalkers. Zero can grow an entire forest.”
“Truly?” Leslie asked. “And you have seen it with your own eyes?”
“He grew a tree right in front of me. It was beautiful.”
Leslie sighed. “How lovely.”
“And Kevin… well. We don’t know exactly what Kevin can do.”
“He’s young yet,” Leslie said. “It’ll come.”
“I don’t know that it matters,” I said honestly. “He’s… enough as it is. More than enough.”
“It’ll come,” Leslie repeated, and there was something in the tone of her voice that suggested she knew more than I did, but before I could ask, Pat spoke again.
“Dreams can be terrible things,” she said. “Nightmares from which there can seem to be no escape. It is where your darkest thoughts come into hazy focus, your greatest fears. We pulled you into a dream, wizard, to see what you were made of. But with you came something we did not expect.”
“Your knight,” Leslie said. “He was not meant to be there. We did not call for him.”
I frowned. “Then how…?”
“Kevin spoke of your broken heart,” Pat said. “That he had never seen anything like it before. And you have said it was mended, piece by piece. Do you trust it? Do you trust the man who holds it in his hands?”
“Always,” I said without hesitation.
“It is why he was there,” Leslie said. “Because in the end, you wished for him so desperately that your magic superseded ours. A wizard and his cornerstone is one of the most powerful bonds in the world. He came because you wished it so, whether you knew it or not.”
“And then I shoved him off a cliff,” I said with a wince. “That might not have been the best first impression.”
Pat snorted. “That was… unexpected. But you did what you did to keep him safe. You are a curious creature, Sam of Wilds. I did not expect you to be as you are.”
“I get that a lot,” I admitted. “Both good and bad.”
“You’ve seen much in your short life.”
“That might be an understatement.”
“And you have a long road ahead.”
“Again, understatement.”
“What do you hope to achieve?” Pat asked. “When all is said and done, what is it that you wish for most?”
And wasn’t that the biggest question of all. Because in the end, no one, not Randall, not Morgan, not Vadoma, not the star dragon, no one had asked me that. I’d been told this is how things were. This is how things were going to be. This is what I had to do to ensure everyone I loved was safe. This is your destiny, Sam. This is your path, Sam. This is the reason you were born, Sam.
What did I want? Out of everything, what did I wish for most?
“To do everything I can,” I said, “that in the end, no matter what happens, I’ll be able to look back on my life and say I did my best. That my family can be proud to call me their own because what I did mattered.” I shook my head. “The gods can say what they wish. They can set me on a path. Carve the course of my life into stone. But stone crumbles. It can fall into dust and swirl like snow in a storm. I make the choices. Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re not. But even when I make mistakes, it’s because I thought I was doing the right thing.”
And I knew Morgan and Randall had thought the same thing. They’d hidden the truth from me because they’d thought it was for the best. They had the hopes of foolish men with foolish hearts. Theirs had been broken. They had tried to keep mine whole. I was done with my anger. It left me as if it hadn’t ever been there at all. Of course it wasn’t that easy. There was much to ma
ke up for.
But first, there were other matters to attend to.
The dragons’ eyes began to glow blue.
Magic started to build around me.
There was green and gold.
And blue.
I felt the moment my eyes began to shine in response. It was warm and sweet, and it felt right in the way Zero had in his dome in the middle of the desert. In the way that Kevin had when he’d curled around me atop his keep, the heavens shining down upon us, the dragon whispering to me that he’d never seen one look at another the way Ryan looked at me.
One day I’ll believe you.
And one day, maybe I could be there to tell you I told you so.
I was caught then, in a swirl of magic and snow, the feathered dragons looming above me, and the moment they slid into place, the moment I felt their power align with my own, I knew I could take it from them. I could take it for myself and lay waste to my enemies. I could rip their dragon minds from their dragon bodies and take their strength and become more powerful than the world could possibly imagine.
What will you choose, wizard?
It was intoxicating—
My feet left the ground as I rose into the air.
It would be so easy.
It would be so easy.
And it would be mine.
All I had to do was take it.
I could—
I let it go.
I OPENED my eyes.
I stood in the middle of a grassy field.
The stars were like ice in the night sky.
Two feathered dragons slept peacefully around me. Their breaths were slow and even.
David’s Dragon shone above.
He said, “You continue to impress me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Because that brings me so much joy.”
“I should hope it does.”
“Apparently stars don’t understand sarcasm.”
“Oh, I believe we do. We get enough of it from you.”
Which, okay. Fair point. “He said I wasn’t ready.”
“Are you?”
“That’s not annoying or anything.”
“What?”
“Answering a question with a question.”
“I wasn’t aware you asked a question.”