“You do it to me all the time.”
“I do not.”
“Gary, one time you had your face pressed flat against a window watching Ryan and I have sex.”
“I wasn’t spying. I heard you making this awful banshee wailing noise and had somehow convinced myself that you were either passing a gallstone the size of a lemur, or you were getting murdered by an actual lemur. I was coming to save you.”
“And instead of saving me, you were being a creeper instead.”
“It’s not my fault Knight Delicious Face was choking on your dick. Honestly, Sam. I could see it bulging in his throat.”
“Good job,” Tiggy said, patting my shoulder.
I glared at both of them.
“Fine.” Gary rolled his eyes. “Maybe we talked about this behind your back and then practiced what we were going to say. But it’s only because we love you, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“A lot,” Tiggy added. “This much.” He held his arms out as wide as they could go.
“Damn you,” I said with a sniff. “You make me have feelings when I’m trying to be annoyed. It’s your face. It does things to me.”
“I got good face,” Tiggy said. And he was certainly right about that.
“I’ll start,” Gary said. “Randall and Morgan are both idiots. Vadoma can’t be trusted. Ruv is hot, and if you were single, I’d tell you to stick your dick in his butt, but you have Ryan, and he’s your cornerstone, and you love him and his asshole.”
“Preach,” Tiggy said. “Also, people be cray-cray.”
“Exactly,” Gary said. “People be cray-cray. This whole prophecy thing, which, do we even need to discuss why Tiggy and I weren’t mentioned? We’re not sidekicks.”
“Nope,” Tiggy said. “Tiggy no sidekick.”
“You’re my sidekick,” Gary said.
“Oh. Right. Okay.”
“Anyway,” Gary said. “This whole prophecy thing. Maybe it’s made up. Maybe it’s not. Maybe a star dragon did come out of the sky and tell your crazy grandma that you were going to be born and do some shit, or whatever it said.”
“Save the world from falling into darkness?” I said, trying not to be amused but failing miserably.
“Right,” Gary said dismissively. “Saving the world and stuff. Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t. But you know what is true?”
“What?”
He looked right at me, eyes impossibly wide and glistening. “You’ll always have us by your side,” he whispered.
And no, no I would not break—
He fluttered his eyelashes.
“Damn you!” I cried at him, breath hitching in my chest. “Why must you do that to me?”
“I’m sorry!” he wailed. “We just need you to know you mean something to us!”
“Yeah,” Tiggy said, great globular tears on his cheeks. “Mean something and stuff.”
“You’re so manipulative! The both of you.”
“Yes, well,” Gary said, suddenly dry-eyed. “It’s necessary for the next part.”
I groaned as I put my face in my hands. “I don’t even want to know, do I?”
“Knight Delicious Face,” Tiggy said.
I groaned even louder.
“We thought…,” Gary started before trailing off. And there was something in his voice that made me think he was being serious now. “We thought you already knew.”
I dropped my hands. “About what?” But I knew where this was going, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Mortality,” Tiggy said. “Everyone’s mortal. Some more than others.”
“Can we not do this now?” I asked gruffly. “We don’t have time to—”
“Sam,” Gary said. “You need to talk about this.”
“I don’t,” I retorted. “I don’t need to think about it at all. Because nothing is going to happen to him. Not now. Not ever.”
“Sam,” Gary said. “That’s not how this works. You know that. Maybe nothing happens to him from the man in shadows. We’ll all be there together, and we’ll do our best to protect him, even if that’s going to piss him off. But what happens later?”
“Don’t.”
“He’s going to age, Sam. And you won’t. Your magic won’t let you. Not like a normal human.”
“I said don’t.”
“It part of you,” Tiggy said. “Inside. It big. Felt it first day.”
“We both did,” Gary said. “It’s connected to you. It’s what you’re made of. Sam, I’m magic because of what I am, even if I don’t have my horn anymore. Tiggy’s magic because his blood is literally made of the stuff. You? You’re more than both of us combined.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be magic, then!”
The sound of my voice rolled down the dunes in front of us.
In the distance, Kevin and Ryan turned around.
Gary and Tiggy were staring at me in shock.
“Did you ever think that?” I said to them, voice lowered. “Everything I am, every part of me, this magic, has been manipulated, guided. Vadoma knew about me. Randall knew about me. Morgan knew about me. What part of me is actually me if they all had a hand in it? Why would I want any part of something that will take me away from him, or him from me?”
“Without it,” Gary said quietly, “you wouldn’t have been with him—”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “You can’t know that. Life is supposed to be about random chances. About choices. I randomly found the both of you. I got to choose the both of you.”
“And you got to choose him,” Gary said slowly. “Even if Vadoma had other plans for you.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to him,” I said. “I will stop this, whatever it is. And then I’ll figure out the rest. I’d rather be with him without my magic than be with him and have it. Some things are important. Other things are more important.”
“And what of the kingdom?” Gary asked. “Isn’t that the most important of all?”
I didn’t respond, which was an answer in and of itself.
I didn’t miss the look exchanged between them.
But I was good at ignoring things until I had to.
It was easier that way.
“YOU’LL TRAVEL to the desert, then?” Vadoma asked, a glint in her eyes that I didn’t like one bit. We stood alone in the throne room per my request, though I was sure everyone was trying to eavesdrop through the Great Doors. They were nosy fuckers like that.
“I will,” I said.
“Hmm,” she said. “It seems as if we could have come to this agreement days ago.”
“And yet here we are.”
“Here we are,” she agreed. “We shall leave immediately. Time, I fear, is of the essence.”
I barely restrained the eye roll. “It’s waited a couple of decades. I’m sure it can wait a little bit longer.”
“For?”
I shook my head. “I don’t trust you.”
“So you’ve said. But no matter how you feel on the matter, you are still my blood.”
“Well, we all can’t be perfect.”
“Your tone,” she said. “I have no use for it.”
“Of that I don’t give two shits. I’m going to tell you how this is going to go.”
“Oh? Please. Enlighten me.”
I ignored that. “You will take Ruv and leave tomorrow to travel back to the desert. We will follow by the end of the week.”
“I don’t see why we wouldn’t just travel together when—”
“You’ll be on horseback, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Gary will kill you, because that’s racist.”
“How is that racist—”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be on foot.”
“That’ll take weeks,” she said.
“Probably,” I said. “But that’s the way it’s going to be. Think of it this way. It’ll give you time to get to the desert before us, and you can plan further ways to try and use me.”
&nb
sp; “This is not about being used,” she said.
“Isn’t it?” I asked, daring her to be contrary. “Because that’s exactly what it sounds like to me. You’re here to use me.”
She watched me for a moment, her dark eyes assessing. “I knew not of the dark man in shadows, aside from what was shown to me. His identity has always been a mystery. The secret kept from you about him was not my doing. Do not direct your anger at me for something I did not do. And if you let it fester, if you let it boil, it will spill over until it consumes you, chava. Anger in your heart will lead only to misfortune and misery.”
I snorted. “Fortune-telling again?”
“Personal experience,” she said, and that shut me up right quick. “I agree to your terms, as long as you do not dally. It may have taken this long for us to arrive at the point we have, but there are many parts in motion right now, Sam of Wilds. You are a cog in a machine that will shred you to pieces if you do not keep up.”
She left me alone in the throne room.
I SAT on the top of a large sand dune, the sky above bright with stars. The others lay asleep near the fire below, the thin line of smoke rising up into the air. The stars seemed to be bigger out here, away from all the light and noise of the cities. And I thought maybe there were more of them, more than I’d ever seen before.
I hadn’t wished upon them in a very long time.
I hadn’t needed to.
But now?
Now I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if the path I was taking was the right one. I didn’t know if I’d made the right choices. I didn’t know if I could trust the people that I had thought could always be trusted.
“Shit,” I said to the stars.
They blinked back at me, ever watchful and silent.
“I’m a little lost,” I told them. “Maybe more than I think I am. I don’t…. I knew my place. I knew what was expected of me. Do this, Sam. Learn this, Sam. I’m going to monologue at your face after I’ve captured you for some stupid reason, Sam. There was good. And there was evil. And nothing in between. I am a good guy. I know I am. And I try to do what’s right. Always. Even if it hurts.” I sighed. “Why does this all feel so wrong, then?”
The stars didn’t respond, of course. They never really did, at least not that I could hear.
I found David’s Dragon, the cluster of stars to the north. I watched it for a long time. It didn’t move as it had for Vadoma, if it ever did at all. I didn’t know if what I’d seen was even real.
But still.
I said, “I’ll do this. For you. But you have to do something in return for me.”
A breeze blew across my face, warm even in the cool night.
It was probably nothing.
I said, “Make me mortal. When all is said and done. I will protect my King, this one and the next. I will protect my kingdom. I will do all that you ask, but I want a mortal life for my happy ending. This is my wish.”
“Sam.”
I squawked quite loudly and fell over, sure the star dragon was right behind me and was going to eat my brains and—
“Godsdammit,” I growled as I looked up at Ryan standing above me. “Don’t do that! You can’t sneak up on me because I make weird noises!”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “As opposed to any of the other times you make weird noises?”
“You think you’re funny, but you’re not funny.”
“Kind of funny.”
“Kind of stupid. With your face.”
He held a hand out toward me, and I allowed myself to be pulled back up to a sitting position. I glared at him until he moved behind me, sinking down and pulling me between his legs until I lay against his chest, his chin near my shoulder.
“Is that better?” he asked quietly.
“No. You jerk.” It was a billion times better.
“Good,” he said, because he could see right through me. “What were you saying?”
“Huh?”
“You were talking when I was coming up here. What were you saying?”
I stiffened, and I knew he could feel it. “Wizarding… things?”
He chuckled near my ear. “Really. You don’t sound too sure about it.”
“I’m sure,” I insisted. “You don’t even know how sure I am.”
“Sam.”
“I hate it when you use that tone of voice.”
“Nah. You love it. Like you love everything else about me.”
“Wow. You really are sure of yourself.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
And if I laid my head back on his shoulder and relaxed into him, well. That was just between the two of us.
He waited for me, like I knew he would, giving me time to parse through everything. We hadn’t yet talked about this, and I didn’t know how much I wanted to. He, like the others both with us and back at the castle, knew the extent of what I’d seen. I couldn’t justify keeping it from them, like Morgan and Randall had kept things from me. I was a lot of things. But I wasn’t a hypocrite. Mostly.
Finally, I said, “I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t.”
“I could.”
“Everyone dies, Sam.”
“Some sooner than others.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said lightly. He kissed the skin behind my ear. “You know that. We’re together, okay? All of us. We can do this. You can do this. I know you can. I believe in you.”
“Sap,” I muttered, even though I thought I was blushing.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Probably. Just don’t tell anyone, huh?”
“I think pretty much everyone knows.”
“There goes my street cred.”
“You never had any street cred,” I said and then shrieked with laughter as he knocked me over while tickling my sides. He came to rest atop me, hands on either side of my head, face hidden in shadow as he was backlit by a sea of stars. I don’t think I’d ever seen him look more handsome than he did at that moment, sand-swept and smiling like he didn’t have a care in the world.
I kissed him as hard as I could.
For as long as I could.
I didn’t think he realized I’d never answered his question about what I’d been saying as he approached. If anything, I was good at distracting.
And besides. Everyone knows you can’t tell others what you wish upon the stars for.
It won’t come true if you do.
“SO YOU’RE leaving,” Gary said, cocking his head at me. “To the desert. To the mountains. To the Dark Woods. To find these dragons.”
“Yes,” I said slowly.
“And you think we’re going to stay here,” Kevin said.
“Ye-es?” I said.
“Sweet Sam,” Tiggy said.
“Lovely Tiggy.”
“You an idiot.”
“Hey!”
“Well you are,” Gary said. “Did you really think we’re just going to sit here and let you go off on an adventure without us? Sam. Are you fucking high?”
“No,” I said. “Not since that one time.”
“Do I even want to know?” Ryan asked.
“Sam eat forest mushrooms,” Tiggy said. “That he found in forest.”
“Of course he did,” Ryan said.
“Way to generalize, Tiggy,” I said. “You know it was part of the ritual I needed to perform in order to escape the clutches of my captors who were convinced they could sacrifice me to an evil sprite in the Dark Woods.”
“Of course they did,” Ryan said.
“Riiiiight,” Gary said. “Which is why when Tiggy and I rescued you, you were sitting on the back of one of the bandits, singing about how you could taste colors and that the grass was alive and whispering grassy secrets.”
“Of course you—”
“Ryan! Not helping!”
“I took drugs once,” Kevin said. “At this orgy I went to. Crazy, crazy night. Long story short, it wasn’t actually drugs, and I’d somehow crushed and snorted sixteen sug
ar cubes and then eaten a lot of centaur ass—”
“Excuse me,” Gary trilled. “I could have sworn we were trying to stay on topic.”
“We never stay on topic,” Tiggy said, sounding confused.
“Well, yes,” Gary said. “But we don’t need to hear anything Kevin might say.”
“Oh, here we go.” Kevin rolled his eyes. “One moment we’re happy and jolly, and the next, oh look! Gary has an issue with something. Shocker.”
“I have issues? Oh, do we even need to go over the veritable laundry list that is the psychotic psychosis of the dragon named—”
“You’re not coming with me,” I said.
“Yes, we are,” they all said at the same time.
And that was that.
“HOLY BALLS,” Gary said as we crested the sand dune.
“That’s… not what I expected,” Kevin said.
“No more sand,” Tiggy said, sounding giddy.
“Is that…?” Ryan started, eyes wide as he took in what lay before us.
Rising out of an oasis in the middle of the desert, surrounded by a forest of palm trees, was a city built upon a desert lake that shimmered in the heat of the sun. It looked cool and inviting, but I couldn’t help but feel unease at the sight of it. I knew what waited for us there. I knew what waited just beyond the city in a cave that led underneath the desert.
“Mashallaha,” I said. “The gypsy city.”
“What does it mean?” Ryan asked. “The name.”
“As the gods will,” I said, trying not to focus on that part at all. “Come on. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can go home.”
“DON’T FORGET your Grimoire,” a voice said behind me. I cursed under my breath, sure I’d come into the labs undetected. Which, in all honesty, was probably my first mistake. Undoubtedly, he had the entire castle warded so he knew who was where at any given time. He’d told me once that of course that was ridiculous, being such an invasion of privacy, but I wasn’t feeling very charitable toward Morgan of Shadows right then.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said airily, wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. Mean and petty, sure, but I was more than a little annoyed.
I took my Grimoire down from its place next to his on the shelf. My fingers brushed against the binding on his book, and I felt his magic jolt through me, sweet and familiar. I realized he’d never told me what his Grimoire was bound with, telling me I’d know when the time was right. I wondered what else he’d kept from me. What other secrets he had. Where was Myrin’s Grimoire? Had he even had one?