by TJ Klune
It didn’t help that I’d still felt the sting of betrayal. That my whole life had been foretold. That most of the major events that had happened to me, the things that had shaped me to become who I was today, seemed to have been done deliberately. That the man I looked up to almost the same as I did my father knew more about my past and future than he’d ever told me. One of the first things he’d ever taught me was that a wizard had his secrets. I knew that. I understood that.
It still hurt.
Especially to know I was keeping secrets too.
“My head feels full,” I muttered. “I don’t know what to focus on.”
“Okay,” Ryan said, turning his face to kiss my hair. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you do what you needed to do here? With Zero.”
“I think so.”
“Will Zero help us when the time comes?”
I was surer about that. “Yes. He will.”
“And where do we go next?”
“North. The mountains.”
“Randall. Castle Freesias. The mated dragons.”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s the most pressing concern?”
I have awoken, O human child. In this forest deep, in the dark of the wild. And I have seen what is in your heart. Take heed of my warning: you are not ready.
All of you will not survive until the end. There will be loss, Sam. And it will burn like nothing has ever burned before. You must remember to keep in the light, even when the dark begins to curl around your feet.
I blinked away the burn.
And then I opened my mouth and lied.
“Yes. That, and I need to talk to Morgan.”
“Good,” he said. “Then we have a plan.”
I laughed wetly. He had to have noticed.
He did, of course. “Hey.” He lifted his head off mine, put a couple of fingers under my chin until I could look up at him. “What is it?”
I shrugged. “Just… tired. Really, really tired.”
“You sure?”
I nodded. “Been a long few weeks, I guess.”
“You can tell me anything, Sam. You know that, right?”
I looked into his bright eyes.
And believed him.
“I know.”
“All right,” he said, sounding regretful. “I distinctly remember a promise of butt sex, but if you’re too tired, maybe we should just get you to bed.”
I felt lighter because of him. Freer. “That’s how you play it?”
He had a wicked smile on his face. “That’s how I play it. What are you gonna do about it?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is that a challenge, Sir Knight?”
“It would be, Wizard. Think you can handle it?”
I leaned forward, the weight of the world pushed away, at least for now. I had more important things to focus on. When I spoke, my voice was low and rough. “Tell you what we’re going to do,” I said, watching as the breath hitched in his chest, because he knew that voice. His pupils dilated and his tongue darted out as he licked his lips. “We’re gonna head back to our room. You’re gonna get undressed. And then you’ll be on your knees while I’m still fully clothed. You’re gonna take my cock out. You’re gonna suck me off. And if you’re good, if you can get me nice and wet, I promise I’ll eat your ass until you’re crying. Then, and only then, will I fuck you. How’s that sound?”
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “That. Please. Let’s do that. That sounds good.”
“Then get up and get moving.”
He did, pulling me up. In his hurry, he almost ended up knocking us into the water but caught us before we went in. I was laughing at him, and he was laughing at me, and there, under the stars, I reminded myself that stone crumbled, and that even if it didn’t, I would shatter it until there was nothing left.
“I love you,” I said as he dragged me toward our room. “Gods, I love you.”
And when he smiled back at me, eyes still blown out with lust, his grip on my hand tightening, I knew no one would take this away from me. Because I would get my happy ending. If it was the last thing I did.
And there, under the stars, he said, “I love you too. You and me, Sam. Always.”
Yeah. I had plans, all right.
I could talk to Morgan later.
Chapter 22: Something Wicked
SAM.
I’m here.
Sam.
See me.
See me for what I am.
I opened my eyes.
It was dark.
Ryan slept deeply next to me, arm hung heavily over my waist, legs tangled with mine. My skin felt slick with sweat. My heart was in my throat. Magic raced along my skin, and I was electrified because of it.
Something was pulling me. That hook in my brain. I thought maybe Zero had come to Mashallaha, but that didn’t feel quite right. Maybe it was Kevin. Maybe it was Ruv. I thought about ignoring it. I thought about curling back into the warmth of the man I loved and drifting away. It would be easy.
I didn’t.
I didn’t because—
“—WE LOVED him, Sam,” Morgan told me the day we left for the desert. He sat across from me in our labs in Castle Lockes. I was angry with him. With Randall. With Vadoma. But I was going to hear him out. I owed him that much, at least. “That’s something I need you to understand above all else. Regardless of what I tell you, regardless of what you hear, you must know that we loved him.” He sighed and looked down at his hands. “And I think it’s safe to say we love him still. I can’t speak for Randall, but… I’ve known him for a very long time.”
I said nothing. Not because I didn’t want to. No, of course not. I had never seen my mentor look so… defeated before. Broken down. I said nothing because I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“He was kind, but then that’s how we were raised. Our parents were powerful. Our father was a wizard. Our mother was… well. I don’t know exactly what our mother was. She was magic, yes, but it wasn’t like being a wizard. She wasn’t a seer. She wasn’t a fortune-teller. She was not a mage or a witch or any other form of magical being that I’ve ever come across. She defied description. I don’t know that there has ever been one quite like her before or since. The things she was capable of, Sam. Such beautiful things. You remind me of her, in that way. Magic is stringent. It’s governed by a specific set of rules. Those rules didn’t seem to apply to her.” He looked up at me with a quiet smile on his face. “Or to you. You’re alike that way. There is a power in you that I don’t know that I will ever understand. Like her. I’ve often wondered if she knew. If she knew what would become of us. Of what I, as her son, would have to do to Myrin, her other son. If she loved him even though his heart would become corrupted. If she did her all to correct the path he was set upon before she followed my father through the veil. By the time I’d thought to ask her, it was far too late. For all of us.”
Gods, how my heart hurt already. I almost opened my mouth to stop him. To keep him from speaking further about deceit and betrayal. I—
—MOVED QUIETLY, trying not to wake Ryan. It was probably nothing, this feeling I had. I was tired. We’d been through a lot. My mind was probably just playing tricks on me. It was nothing.
It was nothing.
The hairs on my arms stood on end. My skin was covered in gooseflesh. My eyes were wide.
Sam.
Sam.
Sam.
“What the hell,” I muttered.
I rose from the bed. Ryan mumbled something in his sleep, moving over to the spot I’d vacated, face pressed into my pillow. Firelight from the lamps around Mashallaha filtered in through the slats of the wall, illuminating his naked back, the blanket pooled at his waist. My heart tripped all over itself at the sight, and I reached down, trailing my fingers along his skin. He hummed quietly, leaning into the touch, eyes remaining closed.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered.
/> And still he slept.
Sam.
I jerked up and whirled around, because that voice sounded like it’d come from right behind me.
There was nothing there.
The hook pulled.
I told myself to crawl back into bed.
Instead, I moved toward the door and—
“—HE TREATED me as if I was the greatest thing in the world,” Morgan said, a far-off look in his eyes. “He was older than me, far older, but he didn’t treat me as if I was a burden. Didn’t think I was a nuisance. He cared for me, maybe more than our parents did. For all intents and purposes, he raised me. Our parents were… distant, for lack of a better term. Oh, they loved us, and they made sure we had anything we could ever want, but they had other things to focus on. Stretching the boundaries of magic. Defining what it meant to be a wizard. Speaking out against the rejecting of a cornerstone. I never begrudged them for what they did. And I thought Myrin didn’t either. I would be wrong about that.”
He laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “Randall was everything to him. I was told that even before they were actually… them, you could tell Myrin thought Randall had hung the sun and the moon. Had placed all of the stars in the sky. I told you that Randall was a builder. An architect. That it took him decades to construct his magic, to create the outline for who he would become. He had long since passed the Trials, but it was… different. For him. His magic was theory before it was anything else. By the time he was ready for a cornerstone, by the time he opened his eyes, he was able to see what had been right in front of him the entire time. What Myrin had known all along. That they belonged to each other. That they loved each other. That they were each other’s cornerstones. My brother had been a patient man. He knew that one day Randall would see him for what he was. And he did.” Morgan wiped his eyes. “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
“Morgan, you don’t have to—”
“But I do, Sam. Because you have to know what lies ahead. You have to know what may come down upon us. This is your history as much as it is mine. This is the legacy I will leave to you, and I would have you know it. Will you listen?”
I was helpless, so all I could say was “Yes.”
He took a breath, held it for a count, and then let it out slowly, something I knew he did when he was attempting to calm himself. I didn’t want to hear how this story ended, even though I thought I knew.
“They… completed each other,” he continued. “Unlike anything I’d ever seen before. A wizard’s cornerstone isn’t usually another wizard. We’re taught that there’s too much instability, too much of a chance for whatever has been built to come crumbling down. That it’s not safe. But it happens. It’s rare, but it happens. And even though there were people trying to convince them that they should find another, that they shouldn’t depend on each other as they did, they laughed and scoffed and went on as they were. And it was wonderful. I didn’t see them as others did. I saw them as something to aspire to be. Something that I would one day want for myself. Randall was old, far older than a wizard should have been before finding their cornerstone. But the power that they had negated any argument against them.
“Randall became the King’s Wizard. They worked here, in the labs, together, every day. They taught me. They taught each other. They laughed and loved and made promises that we all thought would always be kept.
“And then things began to change. I noticed it first, when I—”
—STEPPED OUT into the warm night air. The stars were bright above. I immediately sought out David’s Dragon, but it said nothing to me, just blinking in the sky as it always had. I wondered if maybe I was dreaming, but it didn’t feel like a dream. I did feel awake, but I also felt… more. Like my eyes were open for the very first time in my life. Everything around me felt like it’d come into sharper focus. The crystal clarity of the water around Mashallaha in the starlight. The grain of the wood beneath my feet. The colors of the flags that hung above me.
It was quiet, this late. I heard not a single soul.
Sam.
I took a stumbling step forward as a burst of magic crawled through me. Green and gold and an infected yellow swirled just along the edges of my vision.
I took a breath.
“What is this?” I said. “Who are you?”
There was no one there. Not in front of me. Not behind me.
“I’m losing my mind,” I muttered. “That’s it. That’s all.”
The hook pulled and—
“—I THOUGHT I could handle it,” Morgan said. “I thought I could talk to him, and that he would hear me. I didn’t know what he was trying to accomplish with the magic he was performing. The boundaries he was pushing. He said that if our parents had done it, then he could too. But that he would stretch it further than they ever had. He didn’t want to just push, he told me. No. He wanted to break.” He ran a hand over his face, looking more tired than I’d ever seen him before. “I told him that was the path of the Darks. That they had no regard for the rules that bound us to our magic. That anyone who attempted what he was attempting could find their souls cracked, their hearts shattered. Their minds diseased with temptations that should never be considered.”
“What did he want to do?” I asked, not sure I wanted the answer.
Morgan looked up at me. “He thought it was possible to bend the will of the people. Verania was… turbulent then. Not everyone agreed with the King in power. There were talks of uprisings. Of coups against the throne. The threat of civil war had hung over the country for years. Myrin wanted to take away their free will. To make the people docile. He said it would prevent death. That it would prevent conflict. That everyone would fall in line, and Verania would not descend into madness.
“I couldn’t fault him for thinking that way. I doubt anyone could. Who wouldn’t want to avoid war? Who wouldn’t want to stop bloodshed? It’s seductive, that line of thinking. I truly believe he came to it from the right place, but that before long, it soured within him and began to rot. And that’s where he was wrong. That’s where the idea as a whole became fetid. Because even if it would have prevented Verania from descending into chaos, even if it would have stopped the deaths of our people, it would still have been wrong. You cannot tamper with free will. You cannot take the choices away from people. They have the right to choose for themselves. Many of them disagreed with their King. They were not wrong. He was a weak man. A coward. Randall had done his very best in trying to counsel him, but he could only do so much. I could see his frustrations, the helplessness that he sometimes showed. And Myrin saw it too. And I think that only fueled him. By the time Randall figured out what was happening, it was too late. For all of us. I—”
—FOUND THEM sleeping, all curled around each other. It was an old barn of sorts that had lofts that held wheat and oats, rice, sorghum, corn, and barley. It was the only place big enough for Kevin to curl up and sleep at night. Gary had objected (quite loudly and fiercely) at being offered a barn to stay in, of all things. Didn’t they know how racist that was? When Vadoma had told him that it was just for Kevin, Gary had, of course, become even more irate, saying that he wouldn’t allow Kevin to stay by himself in an unfamiliar bed. Didn’t they know he had troubles sleeping in places that weren’t his home? The audacity behind it, the sheer audacity, and yes, they were separated (not that anyone had asked), but that didn’t mean he didn’t care for Kevin’s well-being. Why, anything else would just be rude.
Vadoma had looked like she didn’t know what hit her. Which, to be fair, most people looked like after having dealt with Gary.
But I remembered the look on Kevin’s face as he stared down at Gary, that expression of wonder, like he couldn’t believe someone would speak up for him like that. If Gary hadn’t, I would have, but I knew he’d do the right thing. Gary always did. He just had to be loud about it. I knew those two crazy kids would make it, once they stopped being idiots.
Kevin lay on his stomach, wings at his sides, h
ead on his hands, taking in low, rumbling breaths and huffing them out in little snores. Gary was sprawled out obnoxiously, tongue lolling out of his mouth, legs and hooves pointed out in all different directions, head on Tiggy’s lap. The half-giant was propped up against Kevin’s side, rising and falling with the dragon’s breathing.
Tiggy opened his eyes as I stood in the doorway. He smiled when he saw me, nodding when I brought a finger to my lips.
“All right?” he whispered.
“All right. Just… checking on you.”
“Good. We good.”
“I can see that.”
“You good?” he said, brow furrowing.
I pulled a smile out of nowhere and said, “Sure, dude. I’m good. I’m gonna head back, okay?”
“I walk with you?”
“Nah. Get back to sleep. We gotta long trip ahead of us.”
He blinked sleepily at me. “Castle Freeze Your Ass Off?”
“Castle Freeze Your Ass Off,” I agreed.
He yawned, jaw cracking. “Okay. G’night, Sam. Love you.”
“I love you too, buddy. Night.”
And I closed the door behind me as he fell back asleep. I thought about going back in, letting Ryan hold me close, of being surrounded by those I loved, but the hook was pulling me harder now. It was pulling me away from them.
I left them behind and moved deeper into Mashallaha.
It felt like a ghost town. Like everyone had disappeared and I was all that was left.
I thought about using the summoning crystal to call Morgan, but I’d left it in the room with Ryan.
Besides, I told myself. Morgan would be asleep right now. Like a normal person.
Sam.
My hands shook at my sides. I balled them into fists.
“Who are you?” I said through gritted teeth.
Oh, Sam. I’ll show you.
Come to me, and I will show you everything.
And I did the only thing I could.