The Lightning-Struck Heart

  “And his death was the only way out?” Randall asked.

  I shrugged. “For Tiggy, it was. He’d trussed us up in vermilion root, and Tiggy doesn’t take too kindly to his family being threatened.”

  “Vermilion root,” Randall said. “Fairy rings. Truth corn, as you call it. Maybe instead of learning how to be a wizard, you could start teaching people all the ways it takes for you to not be a wizard.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” I said, glancing at Morgan. “Randall’s got jokes. I would have thought any sense of humor you had died centuries ago.”

  “He’s always been funny,” Morgan said.

  “Really.”

  “I’m hysterical,” Randall said, voice as dry as his skin. “You just fail to see it.”

  “I made your nose a dick,” I said. “I see the humor just fine.”

  “Got those urges under control now, have you?”

  “I’m twenty years old,” I said. “Of course not. I’m made of hormones and an overactive imagination. Be thankful nothing else has been dicked out since you got here.”

  “I thank the gods every day for your restraint,” Randall said, and I got the feeling he didn’t mean that at all, the bastard. “The Grimoire, though. It is not something you can neglect, Sam. It is important to your education.”

  “I know,” I said with a sigh. “But between the Prince and the godsdamn cornerstone bullshit, I haven’t even thought about it. That’s on me. I’d like to say I will make it a priority, but I can’t make many promises until the wedding is done and over with. I’ll be able to focus better then.”

  Randall studied me for a moment, then said, “Morgan, would you give us the room, please.”

  Morgan looked to argue, but Randall shook his head once. Morgan bowed slightly and left the labs, the door closing behind him.

  “You’re foolish,” Randall said.

  “Past the niceties already,” I said. “That has to be a record.”

  He ignored me. “You are a foolish boy. You think too much. You talk too much. You’re never serious. You fight your way with words more than the magic you were given. You argue with Morgan at every possible turn. You disobey direct orders. You think you know more than anyone else. And sometimes, I get the feeling you think you’re above this. The training. The lessons. After all, what could two old wizards possibly have to teach you?”

  I stayed silent, because the words hurt and because they were true.

  “And yet,” he said. He shook his head and traced his fingers along the Grimoire. “Your heart is bigger than anyone else’s I’ve ever met. You are smart and fearless. You are talented and compassionate. You, by right, could be locked up in your room lamenting as to how unfair the world is, how unjust after everything you’ve done, but instead, you’re here, head held high, listening to me at first talk shit about you, and then unfortunately gushing about your more tolerable qualities.”

  “Tolerable, huh?” I managed to say because Randall never said anything nice. About anyone. But especially me. I didn’t even think he was capable of doling out compliments, even if they were slightly backward.

  “Barely,” he said. “And in small doses.”

  “You like me,” I said, starting to smile, my fingers itching to hug him.

  “Like is such a strong word.”

  “Admire.”

  “Tolerate.”

  “Adore.”

  “Endure.”

  “Love.”

  He sighed. “Why are you walking toward me?”

  “Because I’m about to hug the fuck out of you,” I said. “That’s how we roll when we talk about feelings. We hug it out. For minutes. Fair warning: it’s about to get awkward up in here.”

  “Sam, if you touch me in any way shape or form, I will hex you so that you have bloody, leaking pustules on your nether regions.”

  “I’ve changed my mind about that hug,” I told him.

  “Good decision. Now. Are you going to let this beat you?”

  “What?” Because there were so many things. Darks. Ryan. Magic.

  “All of it.”

  Of course he was all encompassing. “I want to say no.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because I don’t know.”

  He rolled his eyes. “What do you know?”

  “Honestly? Not as much as I think I do.”

  “I could have told you that. Let’s start with something easy.”

  And then he began to smile at me and I knew I was in deep shit.

  I HONESTLY never thought I’d get to say that I was on my back because of Randall. The thought alone was enough to make me cringe.

  But here I was.

  On my back.

  Because of Randall.

  “That looked like it hurt,” Gary called out unnecessarily. “Especially that part when you got knocked back like ten feet. And then landed on the ground.”

  “Ow,” I moaned. “Ow. Seriously. Ow. My body is not ready. It is not ready.”

  “Huh,” Randall said. “Really didn’t redirect the lightning that time, did you?”

  “You’re a big bag of assholes, Randall,” I gritted out. “You flipping toe remover. I’ll corrugate your metatarsals.”

  “Uh-oh, everyone,” Gary said. “Sam is hurling nonsensical insults. That means he’s pissed off. Watch out. Wouldn’t want your feelings to be semihurt and confused.”

  “If Randall gets to shoot lightning at him,” Kevin said, “then people should forgive me for knocking him into the side of a shed. I feel that’s only fair. His mom and dad yelled at me for ten minutes. I felt sort of bad.”

  “Don’t hurt Sam!” Tiggy growled, taking a menacing step toward Randall. “I smash you hard.”

  “He’s not doing it on purpose,” Morgan said, running his fingers along Tiggy’s arms to calm the half-giant.

  “Well, not too much on purpose,” Randall said. “Sam, are you going to get up, or is this the part of the day where we lie down in the dirt?”

  “Dirt time,” I said, waiting for my limbs to stop twitching with residual electricity. “Definitely dirt time.”

  We were out at the sparring fields. The early morning fog was burning away with the rising sun. The Eighth Battalion was due out here in a bit to go through their exercises. Morgan told me that Ryan had delegated the training to another knight as apparently his sole focus needed to be on the wedding. Since that didn’t sound like Ryan at all, I figured Justin must have had something to do with it. Ryan wasn’t the type to delegate. He was dashing and immaculate, after all. I couldn’t see him stepping down from his duties as Knight Commander now that he was finally back in the position.

  Still, it made things easier, knowing I’d be able to avoid him yet again. In the week since we’d been back, I’d seen him once, briefly. I was in the gardens with my mother and he was moving toward the throne room and our eyes caught, stuttered. Held. I was the first to look away, resolutely so. When I looked back, he was gone.

  It was better this way.

  That and the fact that Randall hadn’t left me alone even for a godsdamn minute, insisting that since he’d traveled all this way (and the bastard still wouldn’t tell me how he beat me back to Castle Lockes), we might as well make the most of our time together. Which meant he followed me everywhere, berating me about my lack of focus, demanding that I explain to him the effects of the truth corn, requesting I list, in order, everyone single King’s Wizard for the last thousand years.

  In other words, he was being a pain in my ass. But I was so busy fighting the urge to punch him in the face that I didn’t have much time to spare a thought for anything else.

  Which is how I found myself woken up at the ass crack of dawn, told to get to the sparring fields immediately, only to be attacked the moment my feet hit the grass.

  This was not going to be a good day.

  …was the thought I had when I got knocked down for the sixth time.

  “Are you sure you redirected the Dark’s magic?” R
andall asked, sounding amused as my appendages continued to spasm. “Because it doesn’t seem like you can redirect much of anything right now.”

  “Maybe I just don’t want to do it right away,” I managed to say. “I’m just testing you to see if you still got it and all that. You do. Good job.”

  “How kind of you,” Randall said. “To test me. Get up.”

  “I would,” I said, “but apparently that much electricity tends to make muscles weak. Who knew?”

  “Too bad his words couldn’t actually physically cut someone,” Kevin said to Gary. “His mouth would be his greatest weapon.”

  “I don’t know if I want him using his mouth on Randall,” Gary said.

  “Oh my gods,” I moaned. “Stop it. Bad thoughts. Bad thoughts.”

  “I’ll have you know I was considered quite the catch in my day,” Randall said. “Did I ever tell you the story of the Morcadi triplets? Terrence, Theresa, and Trevor. All of them wanted a piece of my…”

  “Not again,” I muttered.

  “…mind because everyone knows the mind is the most attractive organ on the body. However, the triplets didn’t really understand the idea of individualism. When they did something, they did it together. And that included me. Why, I remember this one time, we decided to be sufficiently lubricated…”

  “You’re my hero,” Kevin breathed. “Reveal to me your secrets.”

  “…on mulberry wine. The four of us held hands as we strolled through town, not caring that we were nude. You see, in those days, people didn’t have problems with nudity. We always let our bobs and bits hang free because it as the natural thing to do.”

  “Déjà vu,” I said. “Déjà vu and it’s not any better the second time around.”

  “…and it didn’t matter that Mr. McKlusky wouldn’t do anything with his mouth but talk so we had to improvise…”

  “I want to be him when I grow up,” Kevin told Gary. “Triplets. Triplets.”

  “Not in front of the children,” Gary hissed. “They don’t understand what we do behind closed doors.”

  “Or in the middle of the woods where everyone can hear you,” I pointed out, finally able to push myself up.

  “…and we never even really thought about whether or not we could bend that way. Unfortunately for Terrence, it turned out he could not and ended up with a sprain in his groin that hurt for days…”

  “People wonder why I am the way I am,” I said. “I tell them it’s because I was always told to respect my elders and these are my elders.”

  “I am going to pretend that you meant that as a compliment,” Morgan said.

  “I didn’t,” I told him. “And this is pretty much all your fault. You found me.”

  “A decision I must live with every day,” he said.

  “…and that’s how I ended up eating pie off the Morcadi triplets in the middle of a city fountain,” Randall said, looking pleased with himself. “Now, Sam, if you please. Up and let us try again. Focus this time.”

  “I would like to,” I told him. “But all I can focus on is how much it hurts when you electrocute me.”

  It happened three more times. And after each time, I found myself getting more and more frustrated at my apparent lack of ability to do something I’d already done before. It was embarrassing, especially in front of Morgan and Randall, the latter judging me harshly even though he never said a word about it. I knew what those furrowed eyebrows meant. Morgan, for his part, kept a straight face the whole time, though internally, he was probably bemoaning the fact that he ever knew my name.

  I looked up at the sky, waiting for the seizing to stop, wondering just how I’d gotten to this point in my life. Granted, I supposed it was better to be constantly electrocuted by an old man whose nose I’d once turned into a penis rather than to focus on the penis of Ryan Foxheart that I would never have.

  I know, I know. I could be philosophically poetic when I was morose. It’s a gift.

  “Maybe we should stop for the day,” Gary said, as if he were actually doing something aside from watching me get knocked on my ass. “I don’t know how much longer I can watch this sadness.”

  “Ah,” Kevin said. “A mother’s love knows no bounds.”

  “What the hell is wrong with the two of you?” I asked incredulously.

  “I certainly didn’t teach him that language,” Gary said, frowning at Kevin. “What have you been saying around him?”

  “Uh, yeah you did,” I said. “The first day I brought you to the castle, you told me your room had better be nice because you, and I quote, ‘Sure as shit wouldn’t be staying in no crap shack. I’m a respectable fucking unicorn and my ass deserves only the finest of comfort.’”

  “For fuck’s sake, Sam,” Gary said. “I don’t talk like that. You bitch.”

  “The joys of parenting,” Kevin said. “I never knew how wonderful it could be.”

  “My life is so weird,” I muttered as I yet again picked myself up off the ground.

  “Hi, Sam!”

  “Hi, Tiggy.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yes, Tiggy.”

  “Tiggy smash something for Sam?”

  “No, Tiggy.”

  “Tiggy smash something for Sam.”

  He smashed one of the wooden sparring dummies.

  “Thank you, Tiggy.”

  “Tiggy smash!” he bellowed and then proceeded to smash three more.

  “Does he do that often?” Randall asked Morgan as they both watched splinters of wood fly into the air.

  “Only when Sam or Gary gets hurt and or captured right in front of him.”

  “Ah,” Randall said. “Lartin?”

  “Lartin,” Morgan agreed.

  “And he wants to do that to me,” Randall said as Tiggy ripped the head off one of the wood dummies and then drop-kicked it high into the air.

  “Most likely,” Morgan said. “He’s showing remarkable restraint, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, remarkable,” Randall said as Tiggy started growling and chewing on the arms of one of his victims.

  And during Tiggy’s Tirade of Destruction (capitalized, to make it important as it sounds), I felt my magic settle within me, more than I’d felt in days. I didn’t understand how I’d suddenly overcome the blockage, but I wasn’t going to argue. I felt almost like myself again, like I could do what I was supposed to do. Like I could be the wizard I knew I could be.

  I looked up at Randall and said, “Again.”

  He must have heard something in my voice that hadn’t been there before. He said, “Interesting how that works.”

  Morgan was looking toward the castle. “Maybe we should postpone this.”

  “A test is a test is a test,” Randall said. “We just need to change the variables.”

  I didn’t understand what they were talking about, but it didn’t matter. I said, “Again.”

  Randall moved quicker than he had before, quicker than a man of his age should have any right to. I was struck, for a moment, by what he must have been like at my age, or even Morgan’s. There were stories, of course. One cannot live as long as Randall and not have been made into legend. Morgan had assured me many times that all of what I heard couldn’t be trusted (the time Randall rode the Great White Dragon into battle against an army of Darks or how he’d once saved an entire mermaid kingdom by marrying their princess and therefore allowing the mermaid to assume her rightful place as queen).

  But it was the stories that didn’t get spoken aloud as often that I listened to the most. The stories not repeated by word or text with great relish.

  How Randall had served a great king who had fallen into madness, brought back to sanity by the sheer force of Randall’s will alone.

  Of a darkness that rose beyond Verania’s borders, a man bent on destroying all he could lay his hands on before Randall ended his life almost at the cost of his own.

  And, if you dug further, you would find bare mention of Myrin. Myrin, who was never identified as man or wom
an, or even human at all. Myrin, who became Randall’s cornerstone, who stood by his side, oft hidden in shadow. Myrin, who was Randall’s great love. That last bit might have been a romantic talking, a wish to make the story more palatable. But regardless, I knew Randall’s strength. I knew what a cornerstone meant. Regardless of who Myrin was, or what the relationship was with Randall, Myrin must have been an incredible individual to help Randall construct the level of magic he had.

  Like now.

  He moved with such grace, almost as if he were dancing. The movements of his hands, the muttering of the dark syllables underneath his breath as he called upon the lightning.

  But this time was different.

  Before, I could feel him holding back. I could feel the hesitation behind it, the need to make sure I wasn’t seriously hurt. Beyond that, there was doubt. Doubt that I could even do it in the first place. Doubt that I had what it took. Doubt because regardless of what Randall thought of me, at that moment, he hadn’t believed in me.

  Now he did. Or, rather, he acted like he wanted to believe.

  Or he just wanted to fry my ass for turning his nose into a dick.

  That could be it too.

  Because the sky above darkened, and there was a crash of thunder. For a moment, I thought his eyes glowed briefly blue. I considered it a very real possibility that I was about to die. There was a shout of warning from behind me, but before I could figure out who it could be from, Randall’s lightning was called, arcing toward me, leaving burned trails in the grass. I thought now now nownownow, and it was like I was back on the dirt road near the Dark Woods. The Dark wizards standing in front of me, fire geckos bursting out from amongst the trees, the sounds of my friends escaping from behind me. My only thought was of their (Ryan’s) safety, that they (Ryan) would have time to escape. That they (Ryan) would be clear and free and nothing could hurt them ever again.

  The electricity struck my palm.

  It curled up my arm and poured into my chest.

  I had a lightning-struck heart and my gods did it beat.

  And here it was again, this moment, this indefinable moment when I could so easily take this magic and make it my own. Take from Randall and keep it for myself. I could turn it on him, knock him around, fry him until his eyes melted in his sockets and his beard began to burn and curl into little heated black wisps of ash and smoke, and he would know who was the stronger of us, he would know who held the most power, and I would fucking take it from him and—