The Consumption of Magic

  I scowled up at the stars. “Am I ready?”

  “Are you? Oh, I see what you mean now.” The constellation shifted. “My bad.”

  “You’re the worst god ever.”

  “I wasn’t aware you knew that many to make the comparison.”

  “Bag of assholes,” I muttered. “I’m ready.”

  “Are you?”

  “You dick. I got four of them. What’s one more?”

  “Careful, Sam of Wilds. You cannot gauge future success by past triumphs.”

  “Of course you can,” I said. “That’s kind of how it works.”

  “Mistakes can still be made.”

  “I won’t,” I said, suddenly confident. “I’ve gotten this far. It’s only one more. I can do this.” I grinned rakishly up at the star dragon. “I’m Sam of Wilds.”

  “That’s what concerns me. Wizard, you would do well to remember that the higher you are, the farther you have to fall.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “You’ll see. I’ve got this. And then I’ll be ready. For him. For the end.”

  “I told you before, Sam of Wilds. There will be sacrifice—”

  “Don’t,” I said, standing and glaring up at the sky. “Unless you tell me how to stop it, then don’t. You say you’re impartial. You speak in nothing but vague bullshit. Nothing is going to happen to any of them. Not while I still draw breath. You will not take them from me.”

  “Sometimes,” the star dragon said sadly, “I do not have a choice.”

  Then the sky exploded and I—

  III: The Dark Woods

  Chapter 17: The King of the Dark Woods Fairies (Gonna Go for a Mustache Ride)

  SAM.

  Sam.

  Sam!

  SAM!

  I opened my eyes.

  “Oooh, I am so Sam right now!”

  “Yes, yes you are! I am just railing into you. Giving it to you like a boss.”

  “Oh, yes! Boss me around. I’m your slutty secretary that will get you coffee and then bend over your desk!”

  “Wait. Wait. Wait. Are we role-playing right now? Because I need to know if we’re role-playing right now. If we are, you have to give me time to get into character. I can’t just—”

  “Moment ruined! I am losing my erection. I am the opposite of Sam right now. I am not even remotely Sam right now.”

  “Whyyyy,” I moaned up at the night sky that stretched above us as we camped along the edge of the Dark Woods. “Whyyyy does this have to be a thing?”

  “You’re telling me,” a voice muttered.

  I turned my head to see Justin sitting near the fire, stoking it with a burned stick. Sparks rose up in the smoke, blinking in and out.

  “They’re supposed to be on watch,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my face. “How long have they been at it?”

  “At least an hour.” Justin made a face. “They’re… exuberant.”

  “That’s not the word I’d use.” I tried to sit up from my bedroll, but there was a heavy arm across my chest. I looked over and saw Ryan asleep and drooling on my shoulder. It should not have been as endearing as it was, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up next to him and follow him back into sleep, but then Gary started making his I’m-getting-revved-up-again noises, and I knew it wasn’t going to happen.

  “I’m going to kill him,” I said as I wriggled out from underneath Ryan’s arm, careful not to wake him. “I am going to murder my best friend, and I won’t even feel bad about it.”

  There was an answering snore, and I glanced over to see Tiggy asleep up against a large boulder, his chin against his chest, his hands in his lap, where Gary had been when we’d lain down for the night.

  “These are your people,” Justin reminded me. “That reflects on you.”

  “You’re also my people,” I said as I stood and stretched, back popping. “So take that as you will.”

  “I am not your people.”

  “I am a love dragon!” Kevin shouted in the distance. “Feel my love as it pulses through you!”

  “There is so much pulsing!” Gary screeched in response. “I am filled with your pulses!”

  I shuddered.

  “Can’t sleep?” I asked Justin as I sat down beside him, our shoulders touching. He scowled at me, shoving me over to put a small distance between us.

  “No one should be able to sleep through that racket,” he said.

  “Eh. We’re used to it by now.” Something sounded like it squelched. “Mostly.”

  “It says a lot about you as a person if you can be used to something so vile.”

  I shrugged. “It’s love.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “Eh, to each their own. You’ll see. One day.” I glanced at Ryan and smiled softly. He’d rolled over onto my pillow, smashing his lovely bearded face into it.

  “I sure hope not,” Justin said. “I don’t ever want to get the look you have on your face right now. It’s ridiculous.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sure, dude.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Okay, best friend 5eva.”

  He scoffed but said nothing more. I was thrilled. Pretty soon our best friend 5eva friendship would be sealed and nothing would be able to break it.

  I opened my mouth to tell him as much but instead said, “You can’t have sex with Ryan.” And then slapped my hand over my mouth because what.

  Justin choked. “Excuse me?”

  I shook my head frantically, not trusting myself to remove my hand.

  “Sam,” Justin hissed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I squeaked through my hand. “Absolutely nothing.”

  Justin glanced back and forth between Ryan and me. Then he grinned.

  Evilly.

  “You’re jealous,” he said, sounding far too gleeful.

  And I wasn’t. So what if Ryan hadn’t appeared until the next morning after I’d met with the feathered dragons. So what if he’d been slightly distant since the secrets I’d been carrying had been revealed. So what if in the weeks since we’d left Castle Freesias, he and Justin had been all buddy-buddy. It was fine. Everything about it was fine.

  I wasn’t jealous.

  Not at all.

  (Okay, I was roiling with it.)

  I glowered at the fire, Justin cackling next to me, the sounds of Gary getting plowed by a dragon while screaming just how Sam he was in the background.

  All in all, not one of my best nights.

  “Oh gods,” Justin said, wiping his eyes. “Get that look off your face, you fool. It’s not like that.”

  “So you wouldn’t take him back if he asked?”

  Justin sighed. “Sam.”

  “What? It’s just a question.”

  “Right. Look. What you did, the secrets you kept, it…. No, Sam. I wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t ask, regardless of what my answer would be. He doesn’t see me like that. As disgusting as it is, his heart belongs to you. And I don’t know that I ever loved him that way. I cared for him, sure. But… it was a power move. For the both of us. I wanted my father off my back, and Ryan wanted to prove himself to the knights. It was mutually beneficial, and it really wasn’t anything more than that.”

  “You slept together,” I said, the words slightly choked.

  He shrugged. “And? He’s hot. Of course I did.”

  “He really is.”

  “The beard is gross, though.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” I demanded. “The beard makes me want to sex his face.”

  He grimaced. “Yeah, that’s not something I ever want to hear about. Especially with the sounds of a unicorn achieving orgasm somewhere behind us.”

  He was right. Gary was making his orgasm wail. The fact that I knew what that sound meant made me realize it was time to set some boundaries for our friendship.

  “His beard is sexy,” I said.

  “It makes him look like a beggar.”

  I felt a little cold at that. “Well,
the both of us used to be, Your Highness.”

  Justin shoved me on my good shoulder. I’d taken the sling off the week before, but it was still slightly tender. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I don’t see it like that anymore. People can change, Sam. And as loath as I am to admit it, I am one of those people. Working closer with my father has… broadened my horizons.”

  It’d been a point of contention for Justin, feeling like the King hadn’t cared about him as much as he did the people of Verania. It’d been bullshit, of course, because I didn’t think there was anyone the King loved more than his son. Granted, he might not have known how to show it, and Justin had had a point where it seemed as if the King had been more interested in marrying Justin off than allowing him to make his own choices, but that was all in the past.

  “I know,” I said, sitting back up. “Old habits, I guess. I’m still protective of where I came from.”

  “And can you say they feel the same for you?” he asked. “It seems to me that part of Lady Tina’s army is built of people from the slums, even if that seems to be to her distaste.”

  “Ugh,” I said. “Can I tell you something, not as the Prince of Verania, but as my best friend 5eva?”

  “We’re not—”

  “I knew I could trust you. Secret handshake!” I started the intricately complicated motions for our handshake.

  He just sat there.

  “You’re right,” I said. “We can just practice later.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “So, as my best friend 5eva and not the Prince of Verania, how would you go about plotting the demise of a teenage girl?”

  He stared at me.

  I waggled my eyebrows at him.

  “How did we even get here?” he asked.

  I frowned. “People often say that to me in our conversations. I have no idea why.”

  “I’m sure you don’t.”

  “The King and Morgan wouldn’t tell me about anything happening in the City of Lockes. At least having to do with the We-Hate-Sam-A-Lots.”

  “That’s because you have other things to be focusing on.”

  “Maybe you could just tell me. Has the movement died down because everyone realized that they love me and Lady Tina was fed to a pack of wild fire geckos while the people of the City of Lockes cheered?”

  He hesitated.

  Which, of course, I understood completely. “Something even better happened? Great! As long as she is in pieces, I am perfectly fine with whatever it is.”

  “A large crowd burned you in effigy in the city square near the castle.”

  “See? That’s even better. Why, I knew everyone would come—say what?”

  He almost looked amused, but since he was my best friend 5eva, I knew that couldn’t be the case. “Yes. It was really quite spectacular, if I say so myself. It was perhaps the size of two of you stacked atop each other and made completely of straw. Granted, they couldn’t get the face quite right, given that it was a burlap sack, but I do believe they got your dazed expression as close as possible.”

  I was aghast. “And no one stopped this?”

  He shrugged. “Pete said they had a permit.”

  “How in the hell are there permits to burn effigies!”

  “Freedom of speech? Also, there are permits for almost anything. It’s up to the permit office to approve them, though I thought I saw a few of the workers at the burning, so I wasn’t surprised they had one.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t me.”

  “There was a sign attached to it that said THIS IS SAM OF WILDS.”

  “Maybe it was another Sam of Wilds.”

  “Lady Tina was shouting at the front that it represented the apprentice to the King’s Wizard and that she meant it to be only that Sam of Wilds.”

  “Curses,” I said. “She thought of everything.”

  “She is pretty nuts,” Justin agreed.

  “Huh,” I said. “I don’t know how I feel about this. I mean, yeah, one part of me is totally upset that people hate me that much. On the other hand, how cool is it they literally built a straw effigy of me with the sole purpose of burning it? Like, I am on their minds that much that they do something like that? It’ll probably take just one little push to get them to loving me.”

  Justin sighed. “Your wishful thinking will be your undoing.”

  “Eh,” I said. “I prefer to think of it as eternal optimism. How long did it burn for?”

  “Ages.”

  “Damn right,” I said. “If I’m going to burn, it’s gonna last a long time.”

  He shook his head, giving me that look that said I was an idiot. “I don’t understand you.”

  I cocked my head at him. “Why? I’m pretty simple if you think about it.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you there. You are very simple.”

  “Thank you!” I said, beaming at him.

  “That’s not what I meant, though.”

  “What did you mean, then?”

  He hesitated.

  “Come on,” I said, poking him on the arm. “Tell me. Tell me. Tellmetellmetellme—”

  He glared at me. “If you stop, I will consider it.”

  I stopped.

  He considered. Then, “If you speak of this to anyone, I will deny it and then see that the rest of your life is made miserable. Are we clear?”

  “Are we telling each other secrets?” I asked, wide-eyed. “Because that would be incredible. I’ll go first so you know you can trust me! Do you remember when we had that state dinner and Ryan and I disappeared for a good twenty minutes and you were really mad at me when we got back for leaving you with that old coot who liked to bad-touch your biceps? You’ll never guess where we were.”

  “You were having sex in a hall closet.”

  “We were having sex in a hall—oh. Dammit. How did you know?”

  “It was the first thing you told me when you came back in. Loudly.”

  “Riiiiiight,” I said. “I remember that now. Your turn. I’ll think of another.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Tell me! Tell me tell me—”

  “Fine!”

  I grinned at him.

  He stoked the fire again, the embers burning bright. “My father is popular. Almost universally beloved. I will never be like him. I don’t know if I have it in me. And that worries me, sometimes, that I won’t measure up. That I cannot be the king Verania needs me to be. My father leaves large footsteps that I don’t know that I could fill.

  “And for a long time, I was convinced I never would. I was… angry. Angry that I had no choice on the set path of my life. Sit up straighter, Prince. You have dance lessons today, Prince. No, no, you cannot play like a normal child, Prince; you must learn today how to act like a King-in-Waiting. You must marry, Prince, whether it be a match of convenience or love, it matters not. A king needs a queen or a consort.” His laugh was a hollow thing. “That one was hard. I felt cornered and mean. I very calmly pointed out to my father that he didn’t have a queen by his side because she saw fit to leave him behind.”

  I winced at that.

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “Not my best move. But words spoken in anger are the hardest to take back. And even though I wanted to, I didn’t. I got it in my head that my father cared more for his people than he did for me. And then you came.”

  “Hurray,” I said weakly. “I’m in this story too. Neat.”

  “You came,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “And everyone loved you. This little kid with wide eyes that said please and thank you and seemed to find wonder in everything. I hated you. I hated you because my father adored you. It wasn’t fair, to see him dote upon you when he’d never done the same to me.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “I wouldn’t have—”

  He held up his hand, cutting me off. “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault that people tend to find you… fascinating. Which is something I will never u
nderstand.”

  I snorted. “Dude, don’t front. You love me.”

  “And then I found Ryan and he was ambitious and… I thought it would be enough. It wasn’t, of course, and looking back, I don’t know why I thought it was. But back then, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because I knew. The moment he laid eyes upon you, I knew.”

  “Aw,” I said. “I was only fifteen. He would have been twenty. Ryan’s gross.”

  “Not that,” Justin said, rolling his eyes. “There was this… awareness. Of you. He was always aware of you. Whenever you walked into a room. Whenever your voice echoed across the halls. I told myself it was nothing.”

  “Maybe it was, back then.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Nah. He wanted up on my nuts. Sorry.”

  “Eloquent as always.”

  “I try.”

  “The point is that it was simple for you, Sam. It always has been.”

  “Except for now,” I mumbled.

  “Except for now,” he agreed. “And here you are, a destiny of dragons upon your shoulders, the will of the people turning against you, keeping secrets from those you consider dear. A madman nipping at your heels.”

  “Succinct summation of the events. My life is terrible.”

  “And yet you are alive.”

  I squinted at him. “How’s that now?”

  He looked up to the heavens as if asking for strength. “Sam, for all intents and purposes, you’re an idiot.”

  “Hey!”

  “You are reckless and careless, brash and callous. You act without thinking and hope for the best. And most of the time, for reasons only the gods can understand, it has worked. But now, when you should be as surefooted as you’ve ever been, you’re stumbling. Because you’ve decided to overthink things. Stop thinking, Sam. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re complimenting me or destroying me.”

  “Both,” Justin said promptly. “But maybe more the former than the latter. I am envious of you. Because of your abilities. Not the magic. I couldn’t care less about magic. But how you are, how you live your life. That, Sam, is enviable. And when I see you as you are now, suspicious and hiding things… it’s concerning.”

  Well, if I hadn’t felt like an asshole before, I sure did now. “Wow,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been more emotionally manipulated in my life. Good on you.”