“There’ve been reports. People missing. Livestock taken. Scorch marks upon the earth.”
She sat back in her chair. When she spoke next, I could hear the great care with which she chose her words. “And so, naturally, you thought of the dragon and the Prince.”
“Naturally. Well. Morgan thought of it. We know where the Prince is now. We think. Dimitri told us of a keep in the north near the mountains.”
“Where?”
“Tarker Mills.”
She arched an eyebrow. “And you trust the fairy?”
“Trust might be too strong a word,” I admitted. “But I don’t see what reason he’d have to lie to me. Even if he’s a fairy.”
“He’s your ex,” Ryan muttered. “Of course he’d lie to you.”
“He’s not my ex.”
“You were almost married!”
“That was once!”
“This is just fascinating,” Mama said. “Please continue to waste my time.”
I scoffed at her. “Don’t lie. This is the most fun you’ve had since the last time I was here. I bring joy and wonderment to your life.”
“That’s not quite how I would describe it,” she said, even though we both knew she was full of shit. “There was no dragon in Old Clearing. At least, not from what I’ve heard.”
“And you hear everything,” I said.
She nodded. “I do. It’s one of the perks of being Mama. Shit don’t stick and stories get told.”
“Then tell me a story,” I said.
She eyed me warily. She stood up and walked around the desk. She wore high heels, adding inches to her already considerable height. They clacked angrily on the wooden floor. She brought a single finger to her lips in warning as she moved around us to the carved door. She cracked it open briefly, peering out into the hallway. It was empty. She closed the door again.
She turned back to me. “Do you feel anything here?” she whispered. “Any magic that isn’t your own?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.” I would have noticed the moment we walked into the room.
She sighed. “Good.”
“Problems?” Ryan asked.
“Sometimes the walls have ears,” Mama said. “And sometimes the ears are attached to little heads that should not still be attached to their bodies.”
“That’s… ominous,” I said. “And confusing. You are ominous and confusing.”
She smiled at me. “Thank you, precious. I have spent a very long time cultivating such a demeanor.”
“Spot-on, then.”
She studied me for a moment. I didn’t know what she was looking for, but she nodded and said, “Your dragon has never been here.”
“Come again?”
“The dragon has never been to Meridian City. Or to Old Clearing. I doubt it’s been within days of here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t, precious,” she said. “Because none of us do, really.” She sat behind her desk and leaned back in her chair. “People have disappeared from villages around Meridian City. Men. Women. Children. Not in great numbers and only within the last two months, but they’re gone and have never been seen again.”
“Why couldn’t it be the dragon, then?”
“One would think if a dragon was attacking a village that it would not have gone unnoticed.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need the sarcasm, Mama.”
“Then don’t ask dumb questions, precious.”
“Why has no one brought this up to the King? Surely someone would have mentioned it by now.”
“They’re scared,” she said. “The City of Lockes is far away. It’s only a few people at a time and spread out over great distances. Take your pick, Sam. Any reason will do.”
“Is it just from the villages?”
Mama chuckled darkly. “People disappear every day, especially from Meridian City. Who knows how many others there might have been. There’s no census here. Too many people coming and going. I had a customer come in the other day I hadn’t heard from in nearly two decades. I thought him dead long ago. Turns out he was just married.”
“And he’s not anymore?” Ryan asked.
Mama grinned. “I didn’t say that. And lose that judgmental face, darling. You are obviously in no position to criticize the choices of others, if your words have any weight to them. And besides, you’re much too pretty to scowl like that. I changed my mind. You’re rehired. You can start right now. Take off your pants so that I may see your cock and know just what a knight commander carries with him as his weapon.”
And that bugged the shit out of me. I was used to Mama’s innuendos and sexual advancements and had always brushed them off with a laugh in the past. It didn’t matter who it was directed at (though, once, I might have considered throwing a punch when she’d met my father and decided to call him “dinner”), I would look past it.
But this.
This was different.
I stepped in between the two of them, like I could block Mama from even seeing him. There was a bit of green and gold that fluttered off to the side, and a little voice said, Why not? Why not pull it in and turn it into something more?
Because I could.
“No,” I growled at her and she just smiled.
“Now, isn’t that curious,” she said.
I felt Ryan’s hand come up to the middle of my back. He pressed his palm flat against me and said, “Sam,” and there was no green. There was no gold. There wasn’t the need to think iov and twe and freeze Mama’s lungs in her chest. There was only calm and peace and I was settled in a way I hadn’t felt in a very long time. It was warm and sweet and I never wanted to feel any other way ever again.
It was absolutely awful. Because it wasn’t mine.
But didn’t I press back into his hand, for just a moment?
Well. If I did, that would be my little secret.
“We don’t have time for this,” I said to Mama, voice rough. I stepped away from Ryan. His hand dropped back down to his side.
“And yet, here you are,” she said. “A prince is held by a dragon in a keep far away from here, but you still bless us with your presence. How delightful, Sam. We’ve missed you, of course.”
“I came because we needed answers. We thought it was the dragon.”
“Now you know it wasn’t,” she said. “It’s something else.”
“We’re done here,” I told Ryan. “Mama, thank you. You’re most… informative. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
She bowed her head. “Of course.”
I turned and pushed Ryan toward the door. I needed to get the both of us out of here before someone did something stupid. Most likely me.
“Sam,” Mama said. “A minute of your time. Alone.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Ryan looked over his shoulder at me, worry marring his handsome face. I shook my head once at him. “It’s fine. I’ll follow you downstairs. Won’t be but a moment.” I smiled at him, but it was forced and I think he knew it.
He closed the door behind him and I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
“So,” Mama said.
“So.” I turned back around and met her gaze, no matter how hard it was to do so.
“Really, Sam? That’s what you’re going with.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
“None at all,” she said.
“Nope.”
“Let me tell you a story.”
I sighed. “Seriously? A whole story?”
“Once upon a time, there was a little drag queen with big dreams.”
“This sounds like it’s based on someone I know,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed.
I said, “And no commentary. Got it.”
She tapped her fingernails on the desk. “This little drag queen met a man when she was nineteen. This man was the sweetest man and he did everything for the little
drag queen. He adored her. He worshipped her. He was everything she could possibly imagine. But this little drag queen was ambitious and self-centered and didn’t appreciate the man as she should have. Eventually, she drove the man away. She told herself it didn’t matter. That she didn’t need him. That he was holding her back. It took her a very long time to realize that he was only holding her up. And when it hit her, she did everything she could to get him back. But it was too late. The man had found another who loved him as he should have been loved and they were happy. The little drag queen left him to his happiness and regretted all her choices every day thereafter.”
I watched in fascination as the mask that Mama wore slipped for just a brief moment, and I saw the man underneath and he was sweet and kind and scared. But then Mama came back and the nails stopped rapping on the desk.
I said, “Regrets are hard to live with.”
“Especially when they’re from chances lost,” she said. “Do you understand?”
“I don’t think I do,” I admitted.
“You’re a smart boy, Sam.”
“Thank you?”
“But sometimes, you’re an idiot.”
“I take it back now.”
“We hide,” she said. “The two of us. Me behind Mama. You behind your words.”
I took a step back.
“Ever since I saw you, you know what I wanted for you, precious?”
I shook my head.
She smiled, and it was warmer than any other smile I’d seen from her. “I wanted you to be happy. I wanted little Sam to find something big and wonderful in the world, a love as bright as he is. My old, shriveled heart just pounded with it. You and I are so very different, but not so different that I can’t see myself in you.”
“Self-centered and ambitious?” I asked quietly.
Her smile took on a melancholic curve. “Not quite. The ambition, maybe. I don’t know that you have it in you to be selfish. But sometimes I wish you did. Because then you’d see what should be yours for the taking.”
“I can’t,” I said, because I knew now what she was talking about.
“I know, precious. Because that’s not who you are.”
“It’s not fair.” To Justin. To Ryan.
To me.
“Such things never are,” she said.
“It’s not….”
She waited.
Instead, I said, “I have to go.”
“Do you?”
“I’m not running away from you,” I promised her. Even though I sort of was.
“As if you ever could,” she said. “I’d be liable to chase you until your legs tired and then drag you back to my den and never let you leave.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Sam. You need to watch your back, okay? I don’t know what’s out there. I don’t know what’s coming. But you need to make sure that you’re ready for it. If I find out you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed, I’ll murder you. Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
She stood up from her desk and walked around it, never taking her eyes from me. She towered above me as she put her strong hands on my arms, squeezing them tightly. She bent over and kissed my forehead, a loud smack that itched. “Life is about chances. Unless you take them, you’ll never know what they could bring.”
I nodded, because it was the only way she’d let me leave. And I think she knew that.
“I’ll be okay, Mama,” I said. “You’ll see.”
She looked like she didn’t believe me. “I hope so, Sam. For all our sakes. Watch yourself, precious. The world has teeth and wouldn’t care if one such as yourself got bit.”
I turned and left my fairy drag mother standing alone in her office.
RYAN WAS waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. Moishe was glaring at him, and the other courtesans were watching him with thinly veiled lust and interest in their eyes. He didn’t look at any of them, only at me.
I reached the bottom of the stairs and he said, “Sam, what I said in there—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Whatever you did, it doesn’t matter to me.”
“I had to get out,” he said, looking away. “Of the slums. It cost money I didn’t have. Favors.”
I kept my face blank at the stark admission. He’d whored himself out so he could leave the slums behind. My stomach felt sour at the thought of it. He’d told me that I’d been a big reason for him leaving the slums. So, of course, I took it now as I’d forced him into this. It hurt. It burned. Guilt weighed me down, and I wanted nothing more than to put my arms around him and hold him close. To tell him that it would be okay. That everything would be okay. That I didn’t care what he’d done in the past because all we had to do now was look to the future.
But I didn’t.
I was getting too close to something that wasn’t mine to have.
So I said, “We all do what we have to.” I patted his shoulder and moved around him. Every step I took hurt more than the one before it.
CHAPTER 16
Oops
THE SUMMONING crystal lit up three days later. We were on the road to Tarker Mills, and I felt we didn’t know much more than we had when we’d started out. In fact, even knowing the possible location of the Prince only led to more questions, and if there was one thing I fucking hated more than anything, it was unanswered questions.
So I brooded.
Gary, Tiggy, and Ryan noticed, of course. I scowled at them and rolled my eyes any time they interrupted my thoughts. Gary told me I was acting like a little bitch. Tiggy said I was being rude. Ryan just looked at me with big eyes that made me want to hug him forever and not let anyone hurt him ever again.
Naturally, that pissed me off even more.
There were secrets between us all. Well. I had secrets, specifically the cornerstone business, and it was itching and crawling along my skin, a low-level irritation that was starting to build.
Life was hard and I felt like whining, so I kept my mouth shut and glared.
The problem was that I never kept anything from Gary and Tiggy. And Morgan. Mostly. But Gary and Tiggy? Never. And the fact that the one time I did was something as huge as finding my magical anchor was only going to lead to a shitstorm when it all inevitably came out. Which, it would. Of course it would. That’s just how my life went.
And yet, I said nothing.
I felt it justified, though. We had a quest to complete. Justin needed to be saved, the dragon defeated, and then we’d head to Castle Freeze Your Ass Off. I could worry about the cornerstone later. And the whole doing-magic-with-my-mind thing. There were more pressing concerns.
I wasn’t in the mood, then, when the crystal started pinging.
“Motherfucker,” I muttered.
“Are you going to get that?” Gary asked. “Maybe it will help you come out of your I’m-trying-to-be-a-martyr-but-am-really-acting-like-an-asshole phase. The gods only know how much more I can take before I give serious consideration to ending our friendship and your life.”
“No killing,” Tiggy said. “Even if Sam being a jerk.”
“Tiggy! You’re supposed to be on my side!”
Tiggy rolled his eyes. “Always am. Except for right now.”
I dug through my pack and pulled out the crystal. It warmed as soon as it hit my hands. “Hello.”
Silence.
“Morgan?”
A low curse.
“Not Morgan.”
“Hello!” a voice blared loudly.
I sighed because I’d recognize that voice anywhere. After all, I’d once turned his nose into a penis. It’s hard to forget someone like that. “Randall.”
“Hello!” he shouted again. “Can. You. Hear. Me?”
“Very well,” Gary said. “Too well. Like, you’re shrieking.”
Tiggy covered his ears.
“Be nice,” I whispered. “He’s old. He probably doesn’t know any better.”
“Damn things never work right,” Ra
ndall muttered to no one in particular. “Hello!”
“Randall, we can hear you just fine.”
“I’m trying to reach Sam of Wilds!”
“It’s me, Randall. You’ve got to speak into the—”
The crystal went dark. We all stared down at it.
“Did he just hang up on you?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t even know,” I said.
“Shouldn’t he know how these things work?” Gary asked. “Didn’t he invent them? Or something?”
“To be honest, I didn’t ask questions,” I said. “Morgan handed me a magic jewel and said use it and I said okay. I’m easy like that.”
“And in other ways too,” Gary muttered.
“What?”
“What?” he asked, batting his eyelashes. My heart instantly melted because a unicorn batting his eyelashes is precious.
“Gah,” I said, unable to help myself. “Your face. I love it.”
The crystal started pinging and glowing again.
“Randall?” I said.
A voice responded, but it came out muffled and intelligible.
“Randall, you’ve got to move your hand off the crystal,” I said. “We can’t hear you.”
The muffled voice grew louder and angrier.
“How old is he?” Ryan whispered to Gary.
“No one knows,” Gary whispered back. “They say he rose up when the world was created and was formed out of ash and rock and—”
“He’s almost six hundred and seventy, and he was born in a village in the east,” I said. “His parents were mill workers.”
Gary scowled at me.
“Sam of Wilds!” Randall shouted through the crystal, voice clear and cracking.
“Randall.”
“Are you there?”
“Yeah. Can you hear me?”
“Barely. These stupid things never work. You kids today with your toys and your crystals and your exploding corn. Back in my day, we didn’t need summoning crystals. If we wanted to hear from someone, we wrote a letter and got a response in three months. That was considered fast. Now, everyone is all about now, now, now. Tell me, Sam. Why is everyone in such a rush?”
“Rhetorical,” I muttered to the others. “Don’t answer it. It’ll never end.”
“I heard that, Sam of Wilds!”