And the boy smiled so wide that it felt like his face would split. His parents cried, though his father would never admit to it. Even the King wiped away a tear, and Sam would make fun of him for years after because of it.
But he looked up at his mentor and said, “Yes, please. And thank you.”
Morgan of Shadows smiled and said that until the day of the Trials when he would become a full-fledged wizard, Sam Haversford, the strange and somewhat lonely boy from the slums, would be known as Sam of Wilds.
Gary said, “This has been the weirdest twenty-four hours ever.”
THE FIRE was almost out by the time I’d finished. My voice fell away and I looked over at my friends, still snoring and curled against each other.
“You love them,” Ryan said, the first time he’d spoken since I started the story.
“Very much,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t be who I am without them. We might fight with each other and piss each other off, but I would die for them. And they would die for me.”
“I don’t want you to die at all,” Ryan said quietly.
I looked over at him. He was staring up at the stars. “No one is dying,” I said.
“Sam.”
“What?”
“I….”
I waited.
“I knew you,” he said in a rush. “From before.”
I sat up quickly. “You did? How?”
He pushed himself up too, chewing on the inside of his cheek like he was nervous about something. He shook his head, steeling himself for something, and then did the most ridiculous thing. He covered his chest with his hands and said, “Please don’t make my nipples explode!”
I said, “What?”
He blushed and dropped his hands. He looked away again, then back at me, eyes searching for something. “You ever been turned to stone, Sam? It’s an interesting experience to say the least.”
“No. Fucking. Way,” I breathed. “Nox? You’re Nox?”
He shrugged. “In the flesh. Go by Ryan now, in case you didn’t notice.”
“But… but… you were such a dick,” I said, my voice going high. “What in the name of fuck?”
“I was a dick,” he corrected me. “Things change.”
“Um. No. Sometimes, you’re still a dick.”
He scowled at me. “Thanks.”
“How the hell did I not know this?” I asked. I was pretty sure my world felt completely altered.
“I grew up,” he said. “Worked out. Gained muscle. Joined the King’s Army. Got recruited into the knights. Came to the castle after that.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” I asked. “At any point?”
He looked a little hurt. “Would you have even given me a chance if you’d known?”
“A chance for what?”
And that seemed to fluster him. “For… just… oh my gods. Sam. I don’t… friendship, okay? Like… or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” I echoed. “So, instead of telling me that you were the guy that stole Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s cloth, you decided to be dashing and immaculate.”
“Maybe?” he said with a wince.
I just stared at him, too many things running through my head, so many things I wanted to say to him. So, of course, I said the thing that mattered the least. “Why did you steal her cloth?”
He rolled his eyes. “I was a teenage asshole from the slums. I stole everything.”
And it hit me. Why my magic had manifested then. Why I’d been able to turn them to stone when I did. Why I’d done magic so complex without ever having done it before. Ryan had been there from the very first. He was my cornerstone, even then. He was the reason I was able to do what I did.
“Holy fucking shit,” I whispered.
“What?” he asked.
“I… don’t….” I shook my head. “I’m just… surprised. Of all the things you could have said, that’s probably the thing I expected the least.”
“Yeah, I figured as much. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your eyebrows go that high before.”
“It was very shocking,” I assured him. “The most shocking of all. Why now?”
“Why tell you now?”
I nodded.
He looked down at his hands. “I don’t know. You were telling me about Tiggy and Gary and it was personal and sweet, and I just couldn’t take the thought anymore of you not knowing who I was. You said you didn’t have friends before and there were times when we were kids that I wanted you to be my friend, but I didn’t know how to ask.”
“So you were a jerk instead,” I said. “Makes sense.”
“Teenagers usually do,” he said. And then he blurted, “I did it because of you.” He winced. “Ah shit.”
“Did what?”
He groaned. “Gods, forget I said that, okay?”
“Yeah, because when have I ever done that? Remember who you’re talking to here.”
“Sam.”
“Nox.”
“I am never going to hear the end of this, am I?”
“Not ever,” I agreed. “You have decades of this to look forward to. It probably would’ve been in your best interest to not have said anything at all. I will lord this over you until my dying breath, and at no point will I feel badly at doing so.”
For some reason, he didn’t look too upset at the prospect. In fact, his mouth curved gently upward. “Everyone talked about you. Even before the alleyway happened. ‘Little Sam,’ they said. ‘Little Sam who is going to do great things.’ They talked about you like you were this sight to behold, and when I saw you for the first time, I thought there’d been a mistake. I thought that this kid, this tiny little kid whose mouth never closed, couldn’t possibly be who they meant.”
He reached and stoked the fire with a stick I’d used before, the tip blackened and charred. The flame flared briefly, little sparks rising with the smoke. “But then, one day, you knocked me down and took a bag of cloth from my hand. Do you remember what you said to me?”
I shook my head. “I remember you glaring and me thinking I was going to die a painful death. That’s about it.”
He chuckled. “You looked down at me and said, ‘Don’t be a jerk, dude. You don’t have the right to take away something that makes other people happy.’ And then you grinned at me and started running.”
I winced. “Yeah, that sounds like something I would have said. It’s easier to be unabashedly sanctimonious when you’re eleven years old. The cynicism hadn’t quite set in.”
Ryan glanced over at me then back at the fire. “I don’t know. You’re still smug a lot of the time.”
“Ass. I am the definition of humble. But enough about me. Surely you started chasing after me because you wanted to tell me just how right I was and apologize for everything you’d ever done. Be absolved of your sins to lead a righteous life.”
“No,” Ryan said. “I wanted to kick the shit out of you.”
I couldn’t stop the bark of laughter that came out at that. “That’s… I don’t know what that is.”
He shrugged. “The truth. You made me mad.”
“I tend to do that.”
“You turned that corner down the alley and I knew you were caught.”
“I saw the wall and thought I was fucked.”
“That’s because you were,” he said. “And yet you still turned and faced us. You looked me in the eyes and then the next thing I knew, the alley was filled with people and your mom and dad and Morgan were threatening me, and I was positive that Morgan was going to make my nipples explode.”
“Still one of my better rumors.” I grinned up at him. “People still think he can do that. I would say I’m sorry for turning you to stone, but honestly, I’m really not.”
He smiled again. I thought I saw a flash of teeth. “Didn’t think you would be.”
“In fact, I should probably thank you.”
“For?”
“If you hadn’t chased me that day, I’d have never turned you to stone and Morgan wouldn’t have found me. If you
think about it, you’re sort of responsible for everything that happened afterward.”
“That’s… one way of looking at it.”
I beamed at him. “Thanks for being a teenage dick bag, Ryan.”
“Exactly what I was aiming for,” he said, dry as dust.
“Then you succeeded admirably.” I laid my head back down on my pack and looked back up at the stars. “What happened then?”
He was quiet for a moment. Then, “You left.”
“To the castle.”
“Yeah. It was all anyone could talk about. ‘Little Sam and his magic.’ ‘Little Sam would be a wizard.’ ‘Little Sam ascended from the slums into Castle Locke.’” It was said without a hint of bitterness. In fact, if I had to put a name to the tone in his voice, I would have thought it was something like pride. “Before then. You’d never done anything like that?”
“No,” I said. “Not once. Morgan thought it might have been a combination of being close to puberty and a survival instinct. It manifested itself then because I needed it to. You know. Because you were an asshole.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you dashing and immaculate now?” I demanded. “People like Nox don’t grow up to be people like you. You should be overweight and balding and have no teeth and awful body odor to go with your surly attitude. But no! You’re all muscular and gorgeous and sassy and awesome and holy fucking shit I am not talking right now.” Because what the fuck was I thinking? Why could I never keep my mouth shut?
And his smile was blinding.
“Oh crap. That’s not what I meant to say. At all. Oh, look over there. There’s a tree that looks like a dragon. That’s surely a sign.”
“Right. A sign that you needed a distraction and have failed miserably at finding one.”
“Says you. It was a perfect distraction. We’re talking about it, aren’t we?”
“Uh-huh. Muscular and gorgeous, you say?”
“From a purely clinical standpoint,” I assured him. “Absolutely nothing more.”
“Absolutely nothing more.”
I despised when he repeated my own words back to me and made them sound absolutely ridiculous. “At least some things don’t change. You were a bastard then and you’re a bastard now. Sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” he said, the grin never wavering. “Is that right?”
I scowled at him. “I take it back. All of the time.”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“The effect you have on people.”
That… was odd. I had never really thought about it, to be honest. I didn’t go through life wanting to affect other people. I wanted to learn magic and become a wizard. I wanted Morgan to be proud of me and confident in my abilities. I wanted my mom to smile every day and my dad to be able to put his feet up at the end of the day and not worry about what tomorrow would bring. I wanted Gary and Tiggy to never again know the sting of a whip or the confines of a cage. I wanted Ryan. I wanted Ryan to be happy and alive and to smile all the time. I wanted more, but since that couldn’t happen, I would take what I could get.
“The King said you didn’t smile,” I blurted out.
Ryan looked startled. “What?”
“At your ceremony. He said he never sees you smile anymore. And I thought that was weird because I see you smile all the time.”
“Do you?”
“Well, yeah. Like right now.”
“You just… you have no….”
I cocked my head at him. “What?”
He sighed. “After you were taken to the castle, people began to realize the lives they were given in the slums were not always the lives they had to take. They thought if one of their own could grow to be someone so important, that they could change the shape of their destinies too. You inspired them, Sam.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said honestly. “Not really. I go back. To the slums. Every chance I get. It’s not as much as I used to, but I still try.”
“I know. And that’s what makes it all the more important. Your actions. And that’s why I taught myself to read. It’s why I taught myself to write. It’s why I changed my name. It’s why I joined up with the King’s Army. It’s why I kept my head down and worked until my back ached and my fingers bled. It’s why I was recruited into the knights. It’s why I was promoted to Knight Commander.”
I shook my head. “No. That was you. That was only you. I didn’t—”
“But it was because of you that I did it.” He looked down at his hands. “Not directly, but it might as well have been. I thought that if you could change your future, to make it into something more, then maybe I could too. That I could do enough to take my mom out of the slums and give her the life she deserved after putting up with a son like me.” He took a breath and let it out slowly. “I made it, Sam. Mostly. I changed my future. But she died before I could change hers. I made a promise to her. Before. That I would do everything in my power to become greater than what I was born into, be more than what my station allowed. And I… I needed… need to keep that promise to her.”
I felt cold. “I’m sorry,” I said, inadequate as it was. “I didn’t know.” And there were questions that I wanted (needed) to ask: how, when, where, why. But they all stuck in my throat and I said nothing more. I’d never known the loss of a parent. I couldn’t even begin to understand.
“Most don’t,” he murmured. “They don’t know me as Nox. They only know Ryan Foxheart.”
I reached over and took his hand in mine, letting it rest in his lap. Our fingers intertwined, and he stared down at them. I didn’t like it when he hurt, even if my act of comfort hurt me more. “I know you,” I said quietly. “I know how you were. And how you are now.” I hesitated, but pushed through it. “Do the others know? About where you came from?” Meaning did Justin know. And I thought I knew the answer, but I still needed to hear it from him, no matter how crushing it would be.
He shook his head.
I sighed and withdrew my hand. I was disappointed, though I didn’t know if it was my place to be. It was none of my business what he told people about himself. I needed to remember that. Just because I was proud of where I’d come from didn’t mean that others would feel the same. The slums were awful, sure, but they’d been my home for the first half of my life, and I knew happiness there. I didn’t see the need to hide where I’d come from because others might look down upon it. Granted, most already knew I was from the slums. But, if anything, that just made the hurt a bit worse, that Ryan could see how most didn’t give a shit about me, yet he still chose to hide it about himself. And maybe, for the briefest of moments, I entertained a dark thought: Just how easy would it be to let it slip to Justin that his fiancé was born in the slums? Would Justin still be as keen to marry Ryan? It would be so easy. Then Ryan would be free and I could—
No.
No. That’s not who I was. That’s not who I am. I could never do that to him, no matter how I felt about him. It wasn’t my secret to tell.
“It’s not like that,” he said, and he almost sounded like he was pleading. “I’m not ashamed about being from the slums. It’s just… I can’t….”
“I didn’t say you were,” I said, trying to put him out of his misery. “You have to do what you have to do, you know? You don’t need to justify yourself. Especially to me. I’m proud of how far you’ve come. And flattered that you think that I helped in whatever way I did, though I don’t think I deserve that. I promise your secret is safe with me.”
“It’s not meant to be a secret,” he said. “You have to believe me about that.”
“I do,” I said, even though it felt like a lie.
“Can we just—?”
“It’s late,” I said, because I could see this brewing into something more damning. “I should get some sleep. You good for the first watch still?”
He nodded. He opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it a
moment later. Maybe he understood that it was time we stopped before we couldn’t stop anymore.
“Give me a couple of hours and I’ll take over,” I told him.
He looked away.
I turned over on my side away from him and tried to take calm, even breaths. To shut my mind down so I could at least sleep for a little while.
Of course it wasn’t that easy. It never had been and all I could think of now was RyanRyanRyan and NoxNoxNox. About how I could be so stupid to think I could get to know him better without there being consequences. Without allowing him to get even further under my skin. That was proving to be difficult.
After what felt like ages, he said, “Sam?”
I thought about ignoring him. Feigning sleep. Instead, I said, “Yeah.” My voice was rough.
“What happened to him?”
“Who?”
“Koklanaris.”
I smiled, though he couldn’t see it. Most never thought to ask that question, so of course he did. “The day after I brought Tiggy and Gary to the castle, he was arrested and charged with abuse and cruelty to magical creatures. They’re protected, you know. As long as they haven’t hurt anyone else, they’re protected by law. His entire carnival was dismantled, and he’s in a jail in the desert. He’ll be there for a very long time.”
“Because of you,” he said.
“I couldn’t let him get away with what he did. It wasn’t fair, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen to anyone else.” I thought to stop there, but truth for a truth, right? That’s how the game is played. “I almost killed him in that clearing. It was very close. I sent him to jail so I would never have to. If he’s lucky, that’s where he’ll stay. Because if I ever see him again, he won’t be walking away.”
He said, “Sam” like I had achieved something wonderful. Like I had revealed to him a great secret that only he and I would ever know.
And I suppose I did.
So I slept and dreamed of running through the streets of the slums, my heart beating rapidly, my lungs burning. And I laughed because even though I was chased into a blind alley, my cornerstone was there and he’d never let anything hurt me. Because only he could do that, and there, in a world that did not exist, he never would.