by TJ Klune
“Because of course you call him GW,” he muttered, scrubbing his hand over his face. “It’s said he only essentially created the world, so why not give him a nickname.”
“Please. He liked it, even though he vehemently denied it and threatened me with a fiery death if I continued to call him that.”
“It’s good to see that your self-preservation is still remarkably intact.”
“Why thank you—hey!”
“The poem?” he asked, crossing his arms and leaning back against the door. I tried desperately not to stare at the outline of his junk through his undergarments, because we were being serious right now. But it was obvious he wasn’t wearing anything underneath them, and I didn’t think I could be blamed for cursing Ryan Foxheart in my head for posing so provocatively, especially since this was the closest I’d been to him in a long time.
I wiped the drool from my chin and said, “Blargh urgh do me.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“Yes, please. I mean, what?”
“The poem, Sam. The one the dragon told you? And then you decided he was full of crap and you could save the world without him and then for some reason changed your mind at the absolute worst possible moment?” Yeah, he was pissed, all right.
“Okay, so. Back up. Are you mad at me because I didn’t go with him the first time, or mad I went with him the second time? Because I can’t quite figure out what—”
“All of it! I’m angry because of everything.”
“Oh, well that’s… all-encompassing.”
“Sam,” he growled.
“Uh, yes?”
“You asshole.”
“Hey! Watch your mouth. You need to think of the children!”
“Fuck the children!” he bellowed.
“Whoa,” I whispered. “That escalated quickly.”
Ryan began to pace. “He told you to come with him. You told him no. And then everything went to hell and you went. What the fuck, Sam? What changed?”
“I didn’t want to leave you,” I said weakly. “Not with—”
“You sure as hell didn’t seem to have a problem with that after I’d been stabbed,” he retorted.
I flinched, taking a step back. “Yeah. Right. No problem whatsoever. That’s exactly right. It didn’t tear me in half at all. Good thing you know me so well.”
He laughed bitterly. “Know you? Sam, I haven’t seen you in almost a year. I don’t know who you are anymore. Before you left, I could always feel you, like there was this strange little thread that attached me to you. I thought that’s what it meant to be a cornerstone. But now? Now it’s like I’m consumed by you, and I don’t know why. Things have changed. You’ve changed. And I don’t know what that means. Or what happened to you while you—”
“I’m not an apprentice anymore,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my head. “It’s why you feel like that.”
He stopped pacing, jaw dropped. “What?”
I sighed. This wasn’t how I planned to tell him. I thought it’d come out better during pillow talk after the whole makeup sex fantasy I had going on in my head. “Uh. Yeah. Hi! I’m Sam of Dragons now. Wizard extraordinaire.” I wiggled my fingers at him, little trails of green and gold streaking around them.
“Ungh,” Ryan said, eyes slightly glazed as he watched my fingers. He shook his head as if trying to dispel whatever carnal thoughts he was having. I figured it was a good sign if he still had a magic kink. Maybe it was a little manipulative, but I would take what I could get. “What about the Trials?”
I shrugged. “I sort of… bypassed them? GW mentored Randall before the whole Myrin thing, and he did the same for me, only a little more… intensive. Randall used to be Randall of Dragons, and I guess that’s me now. GW gave me the name.”
“I don’t… holy shit.”
“Right? And I’ll let that one slide. Watch it, Foxheart. Your mouth is going to lead to such a spanking, just you wait.”
He rolled his eyes. “How did he mentor Randall? I thought the dragons could only speak when you were around?”
“Apparently some stupid mystical connection they had or something. I’m not too up on the details on that. It’s best to not try and focus on it too much. Makes less sense the more you think about it, so I just choose not to.”
“That’s pretty much the story of your life, isn’t it?”
“Was that a joke? Can I laugh, or are you still mad at me and we’re fighting and stuff?”
“And stuff,” he echoed. “Why would you—oh man. Does that mean you’re essentially Randall Part Two?”
I choked. “Oh my gods, you did not just say that. And you capitalized it. What the fuck is wrong with you!”
“Now it’s true!” he yelped, eyes wide. “You’re Randall Part Two!”
“Nope. Nope, nope, nope. I am not Randall Part Two. In fact, you know what? I am changing my name now. I’m no longer Sam of Dragons. I’m Sam of… okay, I can’t think of anything particularly awe-inspiring right now because I’m so outraged, but I will. And mark my words, when I do, it’s going to blow everyone away, and they’ll all say, ‘Ooh, that’s so cool! Look, everyone, look how cool he is with his new name that has nothing to do with Randall.’”
“Sam of Dragons,” Ryan said, sounding awed.
“Why do you keep saying it like that!”
“I can’t believe you’re—”
“I will melt your face off, Foxheart, mark my words!”
“Ungh.”
I groaned. “Stop finding my threats against your being attractive. We’re arguing right now. You can’t just be Knight Delicious Face when we’re arguing, you ass—”
“Oh, please. I’m Knight Delicious Face no matter what I do. Most everyone loves it.”
“Riiiight. Because most everyone has totally seen the way you drool on your pillow and wake up with crusty cheeks. You unbelievable douche.”
“I do not!”
“Yes, you do. In fact, sometimes I call you Knight Crusty Cheeks. So ha. Take that to your Foxy Lady Brigade and shove it. Which, by the way, you can sure as shit bet we’re going to have a long talk about, especially given how you apparently trust Lady Tina, of all people. My sworn enemy is now your second? What the fuck is wrong with all of you?” I had a thought then. “Is she holding you all hostage? Is she listening in right now? Blink once for yes and twice for probably, and I’ll go outside and make her die horribly. Like, all that would be left would be a pile of blood and gristle. It would be awesome.”
He didn’t blink.
“Okay, I’m not quite sure what that meant. Tell you what, I’ll just assume you’re being held hostage. Let me go make her die and we can continue this conversation sometime next decade—”
“Do you still love me?”
Godsdamn him.
I closed my eyes and took in a shuddering breath. That was a question I hadn’t expected. Out of everything that could have happened, I thought if those words were spoken aloud, I would have been the one saying them. And definitely not in a small voice like I’d never heard from him before.
“You’re my cornerstone,” I said clumsily.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I opened my eyes and looked at him. Now that we were close, I could see the dark bags under his eyes, the worry etched across his brow like it’d been there a long time. He was thinner, as if the stress of the last year had weighed heavily upon him. I wondered at the scar that would be on his torso, how pronounced it would be. If I would ever get to trace it with my tongue, silently thanking the gods that he still drew breath. And there was the other scar, the one on his face, partially hidden by his thick beard.
I didn’t think I looked any better. I hadn’t yet found the strength to look in a mirror, but from what everyone else was saying, I probably didn’t look too great. When I slept in the Dark Woods, it was the sleep of the exhausted, from having been assaulted by magic day in and day out, the Great White forcing me into something I hadn’t
thought I was quite capable of. It worked—eventually—but it’d taken its toll on me. The voices of dragons and Morgan and Randall and Myrin had been whispering around me, telling me I needed to be stronger, better, that I was going to fail, that everyone I loved would die.
But one thing kept me coming back to myself. One person kept me pushing forward so that one day, I could stand before him again and tell him how sorry I was.
And how much I loved him.
“It wasn’t—” I shook my head. “He told me I didn’t need you.”
Ryan took a step back, clenching his fists at his sides.
I pushed on. “He told me that cornerstones were weaknesses. That they would lead to nothing but ruin. That Randall had put his faith in his and was then betrayed. After… Myrin, after all that he did, and after they banished him to the realm of shadows, Randall brought back the King of Sorrows from the brink of madness, only to succumb to his own. He… went Dark, Ryan. He locked himself up in Castle Freesias and went Dark. He tried to fight it for so long, but…. He went Dark, and it took ages for him to come back from that. To put his own mind back together and return to the right side of magic.”
I looked down at my hands. “The Great White was… concerned. He thought I was too young to have found my cornerstone already, that you were an obstacle to what the gods had planned for me.”
“Your destiny.”
I sighed. “I really fucking hate that word.”
“And yet you seem to have accepted it just fine.”
“Okay, I deserved that.”
“Damn right you did. The Great White?”
Might as well get it all out now. “He tried to convince me that a cornerstone was an illogical fallacy, that putting faith and trust and magic into one person was a mistake. Because people could be cruel. Or corrupted. They could follow a path of magic that leads to shadows. Or they could die. Because no matter what happens, a cornerstone will die. You don’t have the magic I do. Either you will fall in battle or your body will be ravaged by sickness. And even if none of that happens, eventually time will catch up with you. It was better, he said, to only trust myself.”
“That… sounds really stupid.”
I snorted. “Right? I go to the woods to accept my Destiny of Dragons, and the Great White—the oldest living creature in the known world—tells me the secret to defeating the most evil wizard of all time is to believe in myself. I almost punched him in the eye.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“He’s super big. I couldn’t reach.”
“Like that’s stopped you before.”
“What can I say. I’ve grown as a person.”
He sounded nervous when he asked, “And what did you choose?”
“What?”
“Did you believe in yourself? Or did you keep your faith in me? Or can you do both? Like, believe in yourself and in me?”
I groaned. “This is such a dumb conversation.”
“How else am I supposed to ask that? This whole thing is fu—mothercracking stupid.”
“It’s like one of those after-school special plays they used to put on in the square. Remember those? They were all about learning life lessons like not to eat mushrooms you find in the forest because you’ll turn into a prostitute or not getting pregnant while young because you’ll have a baby and then turn into a prostitute.” I frowned. “Wow, now that I think about it, most of those ended with people turning into prostitutes.”
“Would you just—”
“I love you,” I told him, and he slumped against the door as if his knees had given out. “More than anything. You’re my cornerstone. And I don’t care what an ancient dragon says about that. Or what the gods say. Or anyone. I can believe in myself and still have faith in you. In what you are to me. That you’ll pull me back when I need you to. I gave you my heart, Ryan. And the only way I’ll take it back is if you don’t want it anymore. Which I hope you won’t, because I kind of want you for always.” My voice broke a little as I continued. “I promise you, when I was in the woods, looking up at the stars, there is nothing I wished for more than you.”
He bowed his head, taking in deep, raspy breaths. “Why did you come back?” he managed to say. “Why now?”
I was walking on dangerous ground here. “It was time. There was nothing more that GW could do for me, even though he thinks otherwise. And Zero only has a few weeks left before he goes back into hibernation. Either we do this now or we don’t do it at all.”
His head snapped up, and though he still looked angry, his eyes were wet. I had made Knight Delicious Face cry. I was the worst person in the world. “You came back because Zero’s time is almost up.”
“Yeah.” Oh shit. “And because of the whole love stuff. Remember that part? Hopefully you do, seeing as how it was just a minute ago and all hella romantic. Like, I said I love you, dude, because of wishes, and you were all like, oh no, I’m crying a little because I may be a knight, but I’m not afraid to show my feelings.”
“I’m not crying,” he said, a tear tracking down his cheek.
“Yeah, okay. Whatever you need to tell yourself, you big ball of sap.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“No argument from me there. Look, you can be mad at me all you want, but can you kiss me now? Please? I really would like it if you kissed me. And if you don’t want to, that’s okay. Well, it’s really not, and I’ll probably be emotionally devastated and have to write in my diary—I mean my Grimoire—about all my feelings with snippets of emo songs written in the corners that have lyrics like you broke my heart / why did we even start / to love, my loving love. I mean, I know you and Justin probably have His and His monogrammed bejeweled dildos that you fuck each other with at the dinner table and—”
And he was kissing me. Somehow, as if by magic, he’d moved across the room, taken my face in his hands, and was kissing me with all his might. His fingers dug into my skin, and his lips were hot and—
He pulled away, frowning and panting and all around being rather devastating up close. “His and His monogrammed what?”
“No,” I mumbled, trying to put my face back on his face. “No, ignore that. Go back to the whole kissing thing. I really like the kissing thing. You were so good at that. Stop talking and put your mouth on my mouth.”
“I don’t know if I can after that.”
“Yes, you can. I believe in you.”
“And wouldn’t bejeweled dildos hurt? Like, those would just—”
I kissed him. He groaned against my mouth and held on to me just as tightly as I was to him. My magic sang, the green and gold bursting brightly within me. And I knew the moment he felt it because he gasped, mouth open, hot and wet, and there were tongues and teeth and a sense of such great familiarity. Of being back where I belonged. Because no matter what the Great White said, no matter what he wanted me to believe, Ryan Foxheart was my cornerstone. I’d proven to GW that I could stand on my own. I’d done what he’d asked of me. But he couldn’t understand that while I believed in myself, while I could stand on my own, I didn’t have to. I had people who would hold me up should I begin to stumble. I had Gary. And Tiggy. And Kevin. I had Justin and the King. I had my parents. I had Randall, wherever he was. I had the memories of Morgan, something that would never be taken from me.
And I had Ryan Foxheart.
My heart was lightning-struck, and he held it in his hands as if it were something miraculous. Something precious. Even after all this time, after everything I’d done.
The Great White didn’t understand that. And I didn’t think he ever would.
But it wasn’t my job to convince him otherwise.
I’d gone to the forest an apprentice.
And I’d found something unexpected.
Myself.
And now I’d returned as a wizard, and I was going to—
“Oh my gods,” I groaned as Ryan began to gnaw on my neck, sucking a mark. “I’m going to fucking destroy you. I really hope you don’t li
ke walking straight, because by the time I’m done with you, people are gonna think one of your legs is shorter than the other. You’re gonna be walking in circles. In fact, I’m gonna fuck you cross-eyed too, you son of a bitch, so I hope you’re okay with just being an all-around mess.”
“I’m still mad at you,” he growled against my throat. “Really pissed off.”
“Totally fine, dude. Angry sex is awesome. Like, pressing up against the wall and wow, that is your dick right on my thigh. I’m going to be honest, it’s been a super long time, so this is probably going to last about another twenty-six seconds. I’m not even embarrassed right now.”
“I don’t care,” he muttered, grinding his hips against mine. “Fucking come in your trousers if you need to. I’ll just lick it up when you’re done.”
“That’s fucking dirty. I approve so much, you don’t even know—”
And then came a knock at the door.
“Ignore it,” I said, gripping Ryan’s dick through the wool and trying to jerk him off. The awkward angle pulled against my wrist, but I was pretty damn good at awkward, so I figured I could make it work. “It’s probably nothing important. A salesman or something.”
“I told you guys you had an hour!” a voice bellowed through the door.
“That’s probably nothing too,” I said as Ryan groaned while I stroked him, squeezing him tight. “I doubt that’s even really Justin. Sounds like an impersonator.”
“I command you as the Prince of Verania to not be having sex right now. Get your asses out here! Don’t make me come in there and see something I don’t want to see, especially if it’s Sam in any state of undress.”
“He loves me,” I told Ryan as his hips snapped against my hand. “Did you guys sit around a fire and tell stories about how much you missed me and how empty your lives were without me?”