by T. J. Klune
And when the Darks started murmuring their assent behind us, it was all I could do not to actually smite them where they stood. Gary was awesome and cool, and I really liked it when he sang songs about killing people he didn’t like.
“You have control over the dragon?” Caleb asked, sounding incredulous.
I squinted at him. “What part of Sam of Dragons do you not understand?”
“Does that include the Great White?”
“He’s a dragon, isn’t he?”
“What is the meaning of this?” another voice called as it entered the courtyard where we’d gathered. I didn’t even need to look. I would recognize that voice anywhere.
Ruv.
He came to stand next to Caleb. He didn’t look surprised to see me, even if his outburst suggested otherwise. He appeared rather smug, which led me to suspect Myrin did sense my presence just as I’d expected. In fact, I thought it was possible that Myrin was somewhere in the crowd, listening to every word. Many of the Darks had hoods pulled up over their heads, obscuring their faces. Myrin was probably going to let Caleb and Ruv vet me before he revealed himself in a dramatic fashion that was supposed to strike fear and awe in the hearts of all those present. I reminded myself to show fear and awe when the time came.
“It appears Sam here has had a change of heart,” Caleb said, sounding nervous. “He’s claiming to be a villain now. Says he has control over the dragons.”
I could see the moment when Ruv registered who Kevin held. His eyes widened slightly, but that was all. He hid it well. He hadn’t been expecting them. “A villain,” Ruv said slowly.
I shrugged. “It happens, I guess. But hey, maybe I don’t want to have to repeat myself over and over again. So why doesn’t Myrin join us so I can just say this once?” I sneered at Ruv. “Besides, I don’t think I’d answer to someone like you. I mean, you’re cute and all, what with your dirty street magic, but I think it’s time for the adults to talk, don’t you?”
He didn’t like that very much. “I am his second,” Ruv hissed, taking a step toward me. “And as for my dirty street magic, it certainly got the best of you, didn’t it? Myrin gave it to me, and I made sure to use it against you as best I knew how. My sail board, for example. You thought it a gift from the heart, when instead it allowed me to track your every move until it was unfortunately destroyed.”
Whoa. That escalated quickly. And for the briefest of moments, my control wavered and a great and terrible rage rose within me, and it felt black and dark, that someone like him could be so cavalier about—
I took a breath. And pushed it away.
“Is that what you think?” I asked him coolly.
“It’s what I know.” He took another step toward me. “I stood in that house and felt your anger when you realized just how completely I’d betrayed you. How well you’d been played. I wallowed in your anguish when I shoved your cornerstone’s sword into his chest. I was right under your nose the whole time, and you never saw me coming. So don’t speak to me as if I’m not worthy of your attention. Because I have taken more from you than almost anyone here, and I will have your respect.”
He was right, of course. Not about respecting him, because fuck that. But no, I hadn’t seen his betrayal until it was too late. He had me there. But I couldn’t let that distract me. Not when—
There. In the crowd. Off to the right.
“Myrin,” I said, raising my voice. A hush fell over the Darks. “Perhaps you could pull your guard dog back so we may have a civilized discussion.”
No one moved.
I turned and looked directly at the hooded Dark who emanated that sick yellow infection tinged with something so much more, something that felt akin to home, but twisted in savage mockery of what it had once been. He had his own magic, yes, but he also had Morgan’s, and it reached for me, sticky and sweet, whispering for me to love it, to touch it, to meld with it like we’d done time and time again.
I reached up and pressed my hand against Ruv’s chest, pushing until he took a step back. His eyes narrowed, but I ignored him. “Myrin,” I said again. “If you please.”
He reached up and pulled his hood back and—
It wasn’t Myrin. It didn’t even look like him. It was some random man, some Dark who smiled nervously and—
“You are a curious creature, Sam of Dragons.”
I jerked my head to the left. Myrin stood just out of reach, his long red robes flowing around him. There came that discordant feeling again, a sense of blurred edges, of one image placed atop another, because Myrin looked so much like Morgan. The same beard and build. The same face. But it was the eyes that caused the dissonance, the eyes that felt just a step off. Morgan’s had always been warm and kind, tinged with exasperation and mirth. Myrin’s were cold and calculating, unnerving, as he didn’t seem to blink.
And here, at last, was the beginning of the end of my story.
Chapter 18: Death Comes for Thee
“YOU KNOW,” Myrin said, voice soft, “it takes a lot to surprise me.”
I said nothing. Just watched. And waited.
He smiled, a perverse version of the same one Morgan had whenever he’d seen me. “This world doesn’t harbor very many secrets from me. Not anymore. I have studied it far longer than you could even possibly imagine. And even when I was… away, I could still hear its whispers, though I was covered in shadow.”
He was already monologuing. Fun. Since he looked like he was waiting for me to say something, I said, “That sounds nice.”
His smile didn’t falter. “Nice,” he repeated. “Yes, a curious creature. There’s no doubt about that. As I said, it takes much to surprise me. I have seen things that defy logic. I have felt things that would stretch the boundaries of your imagination. The pain. And agony. The death and destruction. Betrayal. Yes, Sam, even betrayal. But not in the way you might think. It is true that from the way it’s been told, it was I who betrayed Morgan. It was I who betrayed Randall.” He shook his head ruefully. “But what about when they betrayed me?”
“Because they didn’t understand what you were going through,” I said. “What you had experienced. The knowledge you had.”
He looked a little startled at that before he laughed. It wasn’t even necessarily an evil laugh, but it still grated along my nerves. “There it is again. Surprising me. Now, and when I felt you approaching the City of Lockes, your magic just sloughing off of you. I felt the dragon too, yes, but only the one. I told myself that surely even you couldn’t be so stupid as to knock on my door and attempt to face me head-on, knowing what you do about me. What I’m capable of. So I admit to being interested in the why of it all. You confound me, Sam. You always have, even when you were nothing but a thought.”
“Yeah, not the first time I’ve heard that, dude. Usually it’s said with a little more irritation, but I just roll with it, you know? It’s easier that way.”
“Do you?” he asked. “I suppose if that’s what works for you.”
I shrugged. “It’s gotten me this far.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t have the evidence right in front of me. Why are you here?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve been listening the entire time. You know why.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “You say you’re a villain.”
“Like, the villainest. Just accepted it, you know? It’s easier that way.”
He took a step away from the crowd of Darks. If I couldn’t see them all, I would have thought Myrin and me alone, given how quiet it was. It was as if all of them held their breath, waiting to see what would happen next. I hoped they wouldn’t be disappointed.
“What changed?” he asked.
“A desire for power.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted it.”
“You were supposed to be the force for good.”
“Boring, right? I mean, come on. The whole chosen-one trope is overplayed, don’t you think?” I winked at him. “
Who would expect the good guy to go bad instead? I think it makes for a more interesting story.”
He cocked his head at me. “And just how do you see this story playing out?”
“I’ve been inside Camp HaveHeart. I know everything about it. The people. The knights. The guards. The location of the Prince and the King.”
“The King you helped to escape.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But just think: now he’s with all the others. All in one place.”
Myrin chuckled. “Makes for an easier target.”
“Exactly.”
“See, there’s just one problem with that, Sam,” he said, coming to stand in front of Ruv. Myrin reached up and traced a finger along Ruv’s cheek. Ruv barely flinched.
“Oh? And what would that be?”
He turned to face me. “I don’t believe you.”
Well shit. “That sucks.”
He sighed. “It really does. I mean, for all your bravado, for the way you weaponized your words, I still see the scared little boy underneath it all, extraordinarily out of his depth. You are a child playing in a chess game of the gods, Sam.”
“Dude, no need to be so condescending. You could just say you don’t believe me and leave it at that. Really. My feelings are hurt.”
He was in front of me before I could even blink, a hand gripping my face, fingers digging into my skin. It took all I had to stare blandly at him, showing him just how unaffected I was. “You speak,” he whispered, breath warm on my face, “without saying anything. Your words are a jumbled mess of adolescent mockery derived from an undeserved sense of accomplishment. I truly expected more from someone who was ordained by the gods to be my equal. You are nothing to me. You are insignificant. You have dragons, yes. And an unwieldy magic. But tell me, Sam. What would stop me, right here, right now, from just… taking it from you.”
“Consuming me. My magic.”
His grip tightened. “Yes, Sam. From consuming your magic.”
“Because then you’d be missing out on the fact that I am your equal.”
His eyes narrowed. “Come again?”
“I read it.”
“What?”
“Your Grimoire.”
The grip on my face loosened as he blinked in surprise. “You what?”
“Your Grimoire. I have it. I read it. Not the whole thing, of course, because, dude, you could really use an editor. I mean, you had stuff in there that made no sense and didn’t advance the narrative at all, but you still chose to devote pages to it. Why do you do that? Don’t you know that people don’t like superfluous stuff that makes it sound like the only thing you like is the sound of your own voice? Because legit, you should really tone back that shit. And now I totally forgot what we were talking about, because you are still breathing on my mouth, and I am really uncomfortable with that.”
“The Grimoire,” he growled.
“Oh. Right. Your Grimoire. Yeah, dude, totes read the highlights. I don’t know if you’ve ever met the snake dragon monster thing, but you guys have a lot in common. Everything is Dark this and Dark that and no one understands me at all.”
“Make your point before I decide it’s not worth hearing.”
“Wow. That was… an effective threat. My point, since you’re so insistent, is that we’re not so different, you and I.”
“And how is that.”
“We’ve been betrayed by those we love.”
He let go of my face, but not before patting my cheek just this side of too hard. “You?”
I nodded. “Me.”
“Go on.”
“Morgan. Randall.”
“What about them?”
“They never told me about you.”
He scoffed. “That’s all?”
“No. That’s not all. They never told me about you. About any part of it.”
I could see the moment he understood. “The prophecy.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“After my grandmother came to the City for the first time.”
A cloud of something fell over his face, and he turned to glance at Ruv over his shoulder. “Did you know about this?”
Ruv looked flustered. “I didn’t know to what extent he’d been informed before our arrival. I didn’t want to speculate.”
Myrin turned back to me. “Go on.”
“They lied to me,” I said, putting all the anger I’d felt over it into my voice. “They knew things about me, about my future, and didn’t tell me until they were caught in the lie. If Vadoma hadn’t shown when she did, if you hadn’t escaped the shadow realm, who knows when—or if—they would have told me.”
“And this upsets you.”
“You’re damn right it does. Being told I have to do this—this thing where I don’t have a choice? Where I’m nothing but a tool used by the gods in a game I want no part of? That’s not fair. And for what end? To stop you? To protect the people of Verania? The people who turned their backs on me just because they didn’t like the color of my skin or the magic I wielded or the fact that I came from the slums? How is that fair? Why would I want to protect those who would just as soon stab me in the back as look at me?” And I hated it, hated the words, because there was truth to them. No matter what I told myself, I wasn’t always a good person. I was petty and vindictive. I could be an asshole. And I was angry, still so godsdamn angry, that I’d been made into this pariah, cast out by the very people who now cozied up to those I loved like it was nothing. I left to do the right thing, to do what was expected of me, only to return and find Vadoma with my parents, to find Lady Tina smiling at Ryan and Justin, standing by their sides like she belonged there. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.
“I can feel it,” he said with something akin to wonder in his voice. “Your anger. You’re speaking truth.”
“You’re damn fucking right I am,” I snapped at him. “And I know you felt it too. I read what you wrote. I saw it in your Grimoire. You tried to expand on the way people thought of magic. You tried to show others a different way to think of the boundaries of what wizards are capable of. You said that you didn’t think Darks were something to be feared or condemned, that they were just misunderstood. That they had chosen a different path, and it was to be admired.”
“Randall looked at me as if I was crazy,” Myrin said. “He thought those were the words of a heretic. ‘You don’t understand what you’re saying,’ he told me. ‘You don’t know what you’re speaking about.’ Like I was nothing but a child. And maybe I didn’t know as much as he did. I doubt anyone ever has. But just because I didn’t have the breadth he did doesn’t mean I couldn’t think for myself.”
“And then they betrayed you.”
His eyes flashed and I felt the pulse of his magic, thick and viscous. “You don’t know how that felt. I tried to show them a different way. Tried to show them what the truth of it all was. That there were different paths to magic. That nothing was set in stone.”
“Because stone crumbles,” I said quietly.
“It does,” he agreed. “Or it can be shattered. I admit I was… overzealous with the so-called King of Sorrows. I pushed too far, and his mind… warped. More than I expected it to. But I needed Randall and Morgan to see just what could be done, what I was capable of, for them to take me seriously. To consider joining me on my quest to burst through the boundaries of magic.” He shook his head. “But they called me evil, even though I could see their hearts breaking. They said I was a villain, that I was no better than the Darks who hid in the forests and practiced magic the way they chose. Do you know why there are so many of us, Sam? Why there are so many Dark wizards while there are only a few like Randall and Morgan?”
“No.”
“It’s because we’re told how to act. How to be. Those with a more liberal agenda can’t understand what it means to be marginalized, to have the ways of others forced upon us. You have magic? Fine. Here’s how you need to act. Here’s how you need to practice. Here’s what yo
u can and cannot do. And there are so many more of us that reject that false narrative, that don’t believe we’re to be regimented and defined by what we’re capable of. We’ve lurked in the shadows, waiting for our time to rise.” He looked up at Kevin, then back at me. “And there will be a cornerstone, a person who will keep you from reaching your true potential. And you must love them. You must cherish them. You must put them above all others, and gods help you if they should reject you. Betray you. Die. Do you know what happens to the mind of a wizard who loses his cornerstone, Sam?”
I had an idea. I had the evidence right in front of me.
“It breaks. It tears. There is nothing that can prepare you for loss, Sam, not of this magnitude. Whether it be death or the act of betrayal, it hurts. It wasn’t a quick process, no. Even before I revealed myself, I could feel the bond between Randall and myself fraying. I loved him, Sam. I hope you understand that. If you read my Grimoire, then you should have seen just how much I loved him.”
“But you loved magic more.”
He flinched and tried to hide it, but I saw it for what it was. Shame. “It wasn’t about loving something more than him. It was about becoming free from the constraints placed upon me.”
“And what if he’d said yes to you?” I asked, suddenly curious. “What if he’d decided to join you? He’d still have been your cornerstone. You still would have depended on him.”
He smiled grimly. “I guess we’ll never find out, will we?”
No, we wouldn’t. Because Myrin wasn’t even half the wizard that Randall was. And he never would be. “You were cast in shadow then.”
“I was. And I learned things that this world could not have taught me. That there is no one to depend upon but myself. That I control my destiny. Not the gods. Not a prophecy. And certainly not a child who was supposed to be my antithesis.”