Chapter 2: A Vision and a Warning

 

 

ONCE UPON a time in the Kingdom of Verania, there was a kickass boy born in the slums of the City of Lockes. His parents were hardworking, and at times life could be difficult, but they were alive and had all their teeth. Which was very important.

Now for the remix.

The kickass boy was apparently magic, turned his future boyfriend (who, at the time, was the world’s biggest asshole) into stone, and was taken away from the life of poverty by a magical man in pink shoes to a castle where he met a wonderful King and a not-so-wonderful Prince. His parents came along for the ride and cheered and fretted like most parents do. The boy was sent into the Dark Woods one day and came back, unexpectedly having made friends with a hornless unicorn and a half-giant. He was given his first wizarding name of Sam of Wilds.

From there, the boy had many adventures as a wizard’s apprentice, knowing one day all of Verania would depend upon him as the King’s Wizard. Sure, he thought that was the coolest thing he’d ever heard, but it was years and years away. He had plenty of time to worry about things such as responsibility to King and Crown. So, during those first years, he did magic (somewhat successfully—though, as was pointed out on a regular basis, the magic he did do was never what he started out trying to do; the boy was of the belief that it was the thought that counted). He was captured a lot for some unknown reason, and villains tended to monologue whenever they were around him, as if they couldn’t help but broadcast their plans in addition to spilling their life’s stories while he usually was bound to a chair or a wall (or, on one notable occasion, the front of a pirate ship as a group of lesbian pirates called the Tuna Fishes were trying to use his magic to force mermaids into revealing their treasures—but never mind that now. It’s a long story that involves a sea chanty about scissoring that the pirates insisted the boy learn and he has never forgotten).

But through it all, with his friends and parents and a great wizard named Morgan of Shadows by his side, he was happy. He looked upon the stars and found he could wish for nothing more, given all that he had.

Sure, maybe he was lonely every now and then, but it was a small thing, a negligible thing that he could ignore if he tried hard enough. He didn’t allow himself to dwell upon it. There were too many things to see. New magic to explore. Obstacles to overcome. One day he would face the Trials to become a true wizard. He had his Grimoire he needed to complete. His friend, the unicorn, needed to find his horn. All of these things came first. Because that’s just who the boy was.

But.

The boy was still human, regardless of his elevated station and lot in life. He was still prone to that humanity just like everyone else.

For you see, one day there came a knight to the castle. A knight unlike anyone the boy had ever seen before. He was beautiful and kind and smiled like sunshine, and the boy said to his friends, “I might be super gay right now.”

His friends were not surprised.

Yes, he was a wizard and had many things to do. But he was human, and with it came the longing for something more. He was embarrassed by this feeling, after all he’d been given, but he couldn’t help but dream about green eyes and locks of blond hair and wish that he could have what he felt in his heart.

Of course, things like that rarely work out, and the knight began to date the Prince, for which the King was happy, so the boy suffered in silence, resolutely not attempting to put together a spell to give said Prince the disposition of a flatulent selkie, even if he already had the personality to match.

But fate is a funny thing. It weaves its threads through the loom with steady hands. At first, the result is seemingly a distorted mess, but if one can wait long enough, the full picture comes into focus, the threads tightly intertwined, strong and true.

Maybe it’s too grand a thought to think the boy had a fate beyond what he’d already been given, but he was still a boy and prone to boyish thoughts and wishes.

He was sure the knight never even knew his name.

The boy was wrong. So very, very wrong.

The boy was loved as much as he loved in return.

But it’s a known fact that boys are stupid, stupid creatures without nary a lick of common sense between them, and so it took ages for anything to come of it. It also required the presence of a ridiculous amount of Dark wizards, a date with a man who had wonderful ears (though the knight didn’t quite understand what the big deal was, if the scowl on his face meant anything), a dragon kidnapping the Prince, a forest full of secrets, an extraordinarily perverted disgruntled ex who was six inches tall with wings, a fairy drag mother with eyes and tongue as sharp as a knife, an elf who wanted to relieve the boy of all vestiges of his virginity, and a crazy corn cult who felt the need to build a religion around the dragon in fifty-seven days. (The boy still marvels at the tenacity of insanity.)

And then the boy stood atop the dragon’s keep and a secret was revealed, something he’d kept locked away in his heart in hopes that it would never be discovered. The pain he felt then matched the look on the knight’s face.

For the boy was powerful, maybe more powerful than anyone who had ever come before. The caveat to all the extent of his magic was this: he must find the person in the world who could stabilize his magic. A person who could hold the foundation for his magic together. A person who, without them, the boy could descend into darkness.

The cornerstone.

To a wizard, the cornerstone is the most precious thing in the world. Something revered, something treasured. Those that have forsaken the idea of a cornerstone have done so knowing they will be consumed by the darkness inherent in all magic.

The boy didn’t know the extent of his magic. Neither did his mentor, though the boy thought Morgan of Shadows knew more than he was saying. As did the man even higher up, the grand wizard known as Randall, a terrifying man whose nose the boy had once turned into a dick. The boy could see the concern when he returned to the castle after making the knight choose between himself and the Prince. The knight had chosen to follow his oath rather than his heart.

He threw himself back into living. He told himself he would never forget, and if there was one person for him, then there could be another. He was stronger than he’d given himself credit for, and while it cracked his heart, he was not broken.

But he hadn’t seen the full picture woven by fate.

Because sometimes, the power of love is greater than an oath could ever be. And as soon as the knight saw the boy standing near him on his wedding day, he realized that some things were meant to be broken so that others could be made whole.

And then they fucked.

Holy shit, did they fuck. In so many godsdamned positions, it wasn’t even funny. It shouldn’t have been possible, some of the ways they were able to bend. This one time, the boy took the knight up against a wall and just railed into him and—

 

 

“REALLY, SAM?” Morgan of Shadows said, face in his hands. “This is what you’ve spent your time on?”

I looked up from where I’d been reading to him from my Grimoire. He sat across from me in our laboratories underneath Castle Lockes in his old rocking chair that he’d had for a century or two. I thought it’d been a gift from someone important, possibly even her, the one who’d helped him build his magic, but I’d never gotten the courage to ask. All I knew was that no one aside from Morgan could sit in that chair for fear of having their fingers turned to spiders (a threat I wasn’t sure I wanted to see if would be carried out).

I sat opposite him, resting my Grimoire in my lap, carefully turning the thick pages as I read off my condensed (and highly accurate) biography, something Morgan said was necessary. A wizard’s Grimoire wasn’t just for ingredients for potions or steps to a spell. It was a wizard’s history, both personal and professional. Morgan had tasked me with writing down my history in order to make sure that anyone who followed me understood the steps I’d taken to become the person I was. Granted, he’d been kind of vague when giving me this assignment, but I could admit to taking a few creative liberties. To be fair, though, I thought future generations should be aware of just how much sex I was having and who I was having it with so they could completely understand me as a person and realize how awesome I was. There were even pornographic stick figure drawings in the margins that illustrated my prowess.

“Yes, well, there’s nothing wrong with having a healthy libido,” I said, trying to figure out if I should write the time I sat on Ryan’s face or if I should maybe go to church a little bit more. It really could have gone either way.

“I’m sure there isn’t,” Morgan said. “Not that I would know anything about that.”

“Oh, right. The asexual thing.”

“Yes, the asexual thing.”

“So, how does that work, honestly? You didn’t find anything about what I just wrote titillating?”

There was the side-eye I knew and loved so well. “You might have lost me at the part of Ryan getting… how did you so eloquently put it? Oh yes. Getting railed.”

I frowned. “Huh. Well, to each his own, I guess. I am so happy that you know that about yourself. It truly shows a mark of a great man when he knows who he is through and through. Personally, I am so okay with the sex, you don’t even know.”

“Oh, I think I do, given that I hear about it all the time.”

“We’re bros. I’m supposed to tell you stuff like that.”

“Bros,” Morgan repeated.

“Exactly. Bros tell each other everything. It’s the bro-code. Everyone knows that.”

“Maybe bros should learn to practice some restraint.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very bro thing to do. As a matter of fact, that might be anti-bro, and I would never do that to you. Now, should I continue, or…?”

He didn’t look pleased at such a prospect. “How much more does it go on?”

Pages upon pages. “Oh. Um. Not long.”

“Sam.” Only he could say my name with so much exasperation and fondness all at the same time. It was really quite remarkable.

“I might have written an ode to his penis in iambic pentameter that goes on for forty-seven stanzas,” I admitted. “I feel better now that I’ve said that out loud.”

“Of course you did.” Morgan sighed.

“Did you know that penis doesn’t rhyme with as many things as one might think? That was a lesson I learned far too late.”

“Oddly enough, I don’t spend time trying to rhyme words with penis.”

“Wow,” I said. “You put a lot of disdain in such a short sentence. I wish I could do that.”

“It comes with recent experience,” he said dryly.

“I’ll get there, I’m sure.”

“Of that I have no doubt.”

“Did you hear that one part, though? About the secrets? It might have been easy to miss. I can read it again if you’d like.”

He leveled me with a flat look. “How could I miss it? You are many, many things, Sam, but subtle is not one of them. I don’t know if you even have a passing familiarity with the concept.”

“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment,” I decided. “Because I have a fragile sense of self and must do such things to protect my ego.”

He snorted before scrubbing his hands over his face. “I tell you things when you need to know them. Anything more will distract you from what’s truly important. Sam, I need to know that you’re taking this seriously. That everything we’re working toward is something you can face head-on without disruption.”

That might have stung more than I thought it would. “I do my best,” I said, trying to not sound as small as I felt.

He sighed and sat up in his chair. His long black beard trailed in his lap and hung over his knees. He wore magenta robes today, with periwinkle clogs sticking out underneath. I had asked him once if he was color blind. He told me he was old enough that he could wear whatever he wanted. And when someone had been alive for nearly three centuries, it’s hard to try and find any argument against that.

But what I noticed even more than his eccentric clothing was how tired he looked. He had shadows like bruises under his eyes, and his shoulders were slightly slumped. His beard was shaggier than normal, and his hair was sticking up every which way, like he’d been running his fingers through it.

I glanced around the lab, trying to see any evidence of what he might be up to in my absence, but everything seemed to be in its place. The only thing unkempt was Morgan himself, and that was only noticeable if you knew him as well as I did. I wondered if he—

“I know you do,” he said. “Your tenacity in all things has never been found to be lacking. And I’m not trying to scold you. I know that all of… this can be overwhelming.”

“All of this,” I said slowly, tasting the words, trying to find meaning in the enigmatic.

“You’re a wizard, Sam. Possibly the most powerful one in an age. The fact that we haven’t yet even begun to scratch the surface of what you’re capable of would be overwhelming even for someone with far more experience. It’s not a detriment, but merely an observation.”

But I wasn’t overwhelmed. Disconcerted maybe. Slightly fearful, sure. But I wouldn’t let it become my sole focus. I’d been taught there was a ceiling to all magic, a point where it could go no further. Just because we hadn’t yet found that ceiling for me didn’t mean it didn’t exist. I just chose not to dwell on it. “I’m okay,” I told him, hoping that if this was what was bothering him, I could attempt to put his mind at ease. “Really. I’ve got you and Ryan and everyone else. I’m handling things all right.” Then a thought struck me. “Wait a minute. Did Randall say something? He did, didn’t he? Of course he did, that old bastard, I knew he had it in for me!”

After the debacle of the wedding and the deflowering of my body, Randall hadn’t stuck around very long. “Castle Lockes is too loud, and people here smell bad,” he’d said, glaring at anyone that tried to come within ten feet of him. “And absolutely nothing is made of ice! How can you people exist like this?”

He was gone a day later, either by foot or horseback or some ancient magic that I would probably never understand. Morgan had said he’d gone back to Castle Freeze Your Ass Off (“It’s Castle Freesias, Sam. I’ve told you that a thousand times.”) in the snowy lands of the North, but I had spent weeks following his supposed departure jumping at shadows, sure that this was just another test and that Randall was watching me from everywhere, waiting for any sign of weakness to turn some part of me into a gigantic dick as revenge.

I still didn’t necessarily believe that wasn’t the case. For all I knew, Morgan was scheming along with Randall to enact some revenge for something I deserved. The sting of possible betrayal was bitter indeed.

Morgan sighed. “Randall doesn’t have it out for you.”

“That’s what you think. You don’t see the way he stares at me sometimes.”

“I’ll bite,” he said. “How does he stare at you?”

“Like I’m an idiot.”

“Sam. You are an idiot.”

“Oh. Things suddenly make much more sense right now.”

“Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

“Eye-opening to say the least. I might have to course correct a few things in my life. Or just keep them as they are to see how much shit I can get into.”

Morgan folded his hands in his lap. “Randall’s just… concerned.”

That didn’t sound good. “About?”

“You,” Morgan said. He hesitated for a moment, like he was trying to pick and choose his words. That didn’t sit right with me. “The last year has been a whirlwind for you.”

“But everything turned out all right,” I said. “Right? We rescued Justin, Kevin followed us home and can only talk when I’m near, and has somehow formed a weird psychosexual bond with Gary, and now, for reasons we don’t quite understand, they think they’re my pseudoparents. I found my cornerstone, and he loves me just as much as I love him. Justin is on his way to tolerating my existence, even though we’re already total BFFs. We may have a viable lead to track down Gary’s horn for the first time in years. What’s there to be concerned about?”

“Whirlwind,” he said again. “Things have changed greatly for you.”

Which, okay. Fair point. “But it’s all been for the better…?”

“Is that a question?”

“Yes. Wait. No. Things are better.” And they were. I couldn’t remember a time that I’d been happier. I’d found what I was looking for, what I’d been waiting for. This wasn’t an end. This was only the beginning. “Where is this coming from?”

“We just want you to succeed,” Morgan said. “I’m not going to be around forever, Sam. Neither will Randall. One day we’ll both cross the veil into whatever waits beyond it. I need to know you’ll be okay when that happens.”

And maybe I started panicking a little at the thought. “Are you dying?” I said, sounding rather shrill. “Is that what all this is? A lead-up to where you tell me you’re wasting away and will vomit profusely and then fall over and convulse obscenely in your death throes? You know I don’t like it when people die, and I really don’t like it when people vomit. Why would you do that to me—oh my gods, are you insane?”

“And of course that’s what you took away from that,” Morgan said, shaking his head. “Dear gods, Sam, take a breath before you pass out. You’re turning blue.”

I did as he said because breathing was good. “You can’t die!” I demanded. “I won’t allow it. If you even think of doing it, I will hunt you down and kill you myself. Are we clear?”

He smiled at me then, as rare as it was beautiful. “Crystal. And I’m not dying, Sam. Neither is Randall. We’ll be around a long time yet.”

“Either that or Randall will outlive us all just to spite me,” I muttered.

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“You’re mocking me, aren’t you.”

“Why, where would you ever get an idea like that?”

I eyed him up and down, trying to find any evidence of impending death. Aside from the tiredness, there wasn’t any. “You sure there’s nothing wrong with you?”

He didn’t hesitate. “I’m sure.”

“And you would tell me if there was.”

“When the time came—and if you needed to know—yes.”

“Morgan.”

He wouldn’t budge an inch. “Sam.”

I groaned. “Gods, you’re infuriating sometimes.”

“You’re infuriating all the time.”

“When I tell people you’re sassy,” I told him, “no one believes me. They just look at me like I’m the weird one.”

“So, how they always look at you, then.”

I scowled at him.

He looked rather pleased with himself.

“I guess we’re stuck with each other,” I said, trying to make it sound like it was the absolute worst thing in the world but not fooling anyone.

There was that smile again. “I guess we are.”

I hesitated, trying to find the right words to put his mind at ease. Words were never a problem for me. I could speak about anything and everything, though sometimes I tended to use them as a distraction or a shield. The more I talked, the less anyone would be able to see what I was really feeling. It worked, mostly.

But this was Morgan. He didn’t deserve that from me. Not now. “You know I’ll make you proud, right? Like, I know I can do stupid things sometimes. And maybe I don’t always think things through. But I’m going to be a good wizard. For you.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time, just sat there watching me. I tried not to squirm while I waited. Then, “You already make me proud, Sam of Wilds. Every day.”

“Should we hug now?”

“I’d prefer if we didn’t.”

“Are you sure? Because I feel like we should hug.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “we shouldn’t act on feelings, no matter how strong they may be. Now, since I’m sure I will not escape it, I suppose I should hear your epic ode to penises.”

“It’s long,” I warned him.

“So you’ve said.”

“And hard.”

“I am regretting so much already.”

 

 

MORGAN LEFT me alone with specific instructions to keep going as I was, no distractions. “Your Grimoire isn’t going to finish itself, Sam.” Which, of course, gave me the idea of making a spell in which my Grimoire would complete itself, which, you know. Genius. But I obviously spent too much time around Morgan because he must have seen my entire train of thought coming a mile away and threatened me with bodily harm if I even considered cheating in such a way. Oh, and no more dick poems, because his heart could only take so much before it stopped itself just to get away from me.

He was such a drama queen.

He’d said he’d thought it was almost time to begin considering a binding for my Grimoire, either the skin of a fallen enemy defeated in battle or a material hard-won in the face of adversity. It would probably be years, he warned me, before I found such a thing, but the fact that he thought I was ready was monumental. I hadn’t expected such a thing to fall from his lips for another five years at least, or even as much as a decade. It meant that my plan to be the youngest wizard to take the Trials would be within my reach. I had wanted to attempt them (complete them, I reminded myself) by the time I was thirty. If things kept going the way they were, maybe I could get to them sooner. Of course, that would be only if Randall would let me, seeing as how he administered the Trials. He was an obstacle that I was sure would find some way to muck up my plans, just because he could.

I was lost in a fantasy of finding a way to banish Randall to the far reaches of the earth, and I didn’t hear the door to the labs open. Probably not the best idea, given my propensity for having trouble find me at the most random of times.

But then there were hands on my waist and lips trailing along my neck, and my magic said yes and home and mineminemine. I tilted my head back, letting it lie on his shoulder as he pressed himself against my back.

“Hey,” Ryan Foxheart murmured against my skin.

“Hi,” I said, closing my eyes and relaxing.

“You didn’t hear me come in, did you?”

I scoffed. “Of course I did.”

I felt his smile. “Liar.”

“I was busy doing very important things.”

“Uh-huh. So, do we need to talk about why your Grimoire is open to a page that says His shaft is thick and epic / without it I feel apoplectic?”

“Nope,” I said hurriedly, reaching forward and slamming the Grimoire shut. “Nothing for you to see here. Secret wizarding stuff. Very hush-hush. Ancient and all that. Why, even seeing the words could cause your eyes to melt right out of your face.”

“Really,” he said, gripping my hips. “Is that what you’re going with?”

“It wasn’t even about you,” I said. “Not everything is about you, you know. Gods, how self-centered can you get? I’m a wizard, Ryan. I will have secrets. You’re tearing us apart.”

“Uh-huh.” He moved his hands from my hips, trailing them along to the front of my trousers.

“Ngh,” I said, because I had no blood left in my brain.

“Eloquent as always. Maybe I should just jack you off right here. Think that’ll help you become vocal again?”

Yes. Yes it would. He had the best ideas. I always thought so.

“Except,” he said, sounding regretful. He gripped my dick through my trousers with his big hand, holding it tight. “Except, didn’t Morgan say that if he ever caught us having sex in the labs again, he’d curse us both and make it so the thought of touching each other was the most disgusting thing that could ever happen?”

“I don’t remember that at all,” I said, arching into him. I brought my hand up to the back of his head, trying to hold it in place. “You must have dreamed it.”

“I don’t know if I did,” he said, teeth scraping against my neck. “In fact, I’m pretty sure we were standing right about here when it happened. And you squeaked a little bit, just like—”

His grip tightened, and the noise that came from my mouth was something I would never be proud of.

“—that,” he finished, sounding unbearably smug. “Now, I remember it.”

He laughed as I turned around and shoved him away, but he grabbed on to my hand and wouldn’t let me go.

“You’re an ass,” I said.

He shrugged. “Probably. But then, you are too. It’s why we go so well together.”

“I’ve obviously made a very big mistake. You should go and see if Justin will take you back and I will find someone who isn’t a cock tease and who is also vascular and has nicer nipples.”

He rolled his eyes as he tugged me forward. “Because that’s going to happen. You’re stuck with me and my average nipples. I mean, who else is going to be my own personal Foxy Lady?”

He kissed me, and I bit his lip just this side of too hard. He didn’t seem to mind, if his tongue had anything to say about it. I let him mack on my face (because I was a nice person) for a little bit, before he pulled away, eyes crinkling in the corners. Somehow, my hands had found their way to his chest and were curled into the leather jerkin he wore. He smelled like sun and sweat and grass. He had a smudge of dirt on his cheek and a thin, clotted cut on his bicep that I’d have to look at to make sure it didn’t need stitching.

“Training went well, then?” I asked.

He nodded. “For the most part.”

“Still getting shit?”

“Daily.” Which, really, I should have felt bad about, what with the Castle Guard firmly planted in my corner and their rah-rah Go Sam mentality. They hadn’t been too happy with him for waiting until the last (and worst) possible second to finally own up to his feelings for me. Don’t get me wrong, knights were strong and hardworking and some of the fiercest people I had ever known. But they could also be the bitchiest, especially when they or someone they cared about had been wronged. How I’d come to foster that level of devotion, I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to question it.

Honestly, though, I felt bad. I really did. I grinned at him. “Shouldn’t have fucked up, then, huh?”

“Or maybe,” he said, arching an eyebrow, “you could go and tell them they no longer need to defend your honor, given that I realized the error of my ways over a year ago.”

“Nah,” I said, poking him in the chest. “You chose not to jerk me off. I choose to let them jerk you around.”

“I don’t know that the punishment fits the crime,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Not that I mind, but what’re you doing here? I thought we were supposed to meet for dinner.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We were. About an hour ago.”

I winced. “Shit. My bad, dude. I got caught up in… uh. Working. On stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Magic stuff. You wouldn’t understand.”

“That’s odd, because I already got stopped by Morgan on my way down here,” he said, looking smug again. “He said something entirely different. And he wouldn’t stop looking at my crotch with a rather fearful expression on his face.”

“Godsdammit,” I muttered.

“You couldn’t have gotten to fifty stanzas?”

I laughed and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Bastard.”

He leaned forward, lips trailing along my cheek until he reached my ear. “Bring it with you,” he whispered. “You can read it to me later.”

Hell fucking yeah I was going to do that. I was going to read it the fuck all over him.

 

 

WE WERE up the stairs, laughing quietly to ourselves, shoulders bumping, hands clasped between us. It was easy, this thing between us, easier than it had any right to be given all the shit we’d gone through to get to this point. It’d hurt when I thought I could never have it. When we’d danced the night he was promoted to Knight Commander and became engaged to the Prince, I’d told myself that that was all I was going to have. That was all I was going to let myself have. It’d been too much to pine away in silent misery wanting something that I could never call my own. I wallowed, sure, but I knew the difference between the fantasy in my head and the reality in front of me.

But it’s a funny thing, life is. No matter what you have planned, there’s always going to be that one thing that comes along and says, ha ha, fuck you, this is what’s going to happen now.

I could admit to being worried that, after all was said and done, if it’d be the same between us. That without being chased by Darks or cults or rabid fangirls, if we could just be Ryan and Sam without any of the bullshit.

Turns out we could.

Quite well in fact.

Sure, I grated on his nerves every now and then, and he really needed to learn not to be a douchebag all the time, but it was working for us. Mom and Dad had been hinting that they’d like to see something come of it before long, but I’d made sure to shut that shit down right away before Ryan could hear anything and before the idea could take root in my head. I had too much on my plate already as it was. Besides, we had time for all of that later.

Aside from an overzealous manticore that thought I would look better if my skin had been burnt to a crisp, everything had been quiet.

The Darks stayed away after their ill-advised attack on the castle.

Verania was safe.

People were happy.

Eventually, I just stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. And even if it had, I was surrounded by people who would do everything for me, much like I’d do anything for them.

So there we were, jostling each other back and forth, only paying attention to each other, the way it should have been. We were young and in love and stupid, but we were allowed to be. After everything we’d been through, this was our happy ending.

I didn’t see the woman in front of us. Didn’t see her until I crashed into her.

I tried to apologize, but she slapped her hand over my mouth and dragged me into the shadows of the flickering torch on the wall. She was old, the lines and crags on her face pronounced, like a map to all her years. Her eyes shone darkly, her raven hair falling on her shoulders. Her wrinkled hand was warm against my face, her grip strong and sure for such an old thing. She had large metal bangles on her wrists that clanged together as she pressed me up against the wall.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ryan demanded, taking a step toward us.

The woman paid him no mind, like he wasn’t even there. And for all intents and purposes, maybe he wasn’t for her, because she only had eyes for me.

For the briefest of moments, I thought she was a Dark and that they were trying to take me yet again. I almost wanted to laugh at her audacity if that was the case, given how thoroughly we’d beaten the Darks last time we faced them and how there was a pissed-off Knight Commander standing right behind her in Castle Lockes, of all places. But there was something familiar about her, something in the way she looked at me that told me I wasn’t quite right. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw flashes of green and gold as I pulled my magic toward me, ready to knock her on her ass, when her other hand came up in front of my face, her thumb and middle finger rubbing together briefly before she snapped.

“Insolent,” she hissed. “Sneaking with your sneaks. Dilo. And here of all places. Like your dook could touch me, chava.”

My eyes widened over her hand.

Because I literally had no idea what she was talking about. Her voice was low and smoky, her accent thick and melodious, the words falling from her lips like musical notes to a song I swore I’d heard before. It was like she had felt my magic, which could only mean she had some kind of magic herself. Normal people could feel it if there was an extreme concentration of it, like the static in the air before a storm. But this had been subtle, low, just beginning to pull itself together. I was impressed. I was going to kick her ass, sure, if she meant to do me and mine any harm, but still. Impressed.

Ryan drew his sword. “Let him go. I won’t tell you again.”

Her eye softened slightly, like the threat was something sweet to her. “You are not what I expected. I don’t know why I thought you would be. There may be hope for us all yet. But I am sorry for this. I hope you remember that. In the end.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss against my cheek. It felt almost like it was scalding.

And then she was just gone, like she hadn’t been there at all.

One moment she was pressed up against me, and then she wasn’t.

I stumbled forward, unable to catch myself before falling to my knees.

Except the ground wasn’t made of stone, like all the floors in the castle were.

No, my knees hit earth and leaves, wet and clumped together. The air was humid and thick, every breath I drew in harder than the one before it. From all around me came the sounds of wind blowing through trees, but that was impossible, because I wasn’t in the woods, I wasn’t in the—

I opened my eyes.

It was dark.

And I was in the woods.

“Well, fuck,” I muttered, pushing myself to my feet. I wiped my hands off on my trousers as I looked around, trying to get my bearings. The sky above was obscured by the canopy of the trees. I couldn’t see any landmark I was familiar with.

It seemed as if an old lady had transported me into the middle of nowhere.

“Oh my gods,” I growled to no one in particular. “I am so going to punch her in the godsdamned tit the next time I see her.”

The only response I got was the calling of birds in the trees, the singing of crickets in the tall grass that swayed back and forth.

There was a large hill in front of me, rising up and out of the forest floor, trees having grown around it. I thought it’d be best to climb it to get above the canopy and hopefully see the lights of the City, or at least some town or village where I could go to find out exactly where she’d sent me. Maybe I was closer than I thought I was. I hoped that was the case. The Dark Woods were an expansive thing right in the heart of Verania. I don’t know that any human had actually ever reached the true middle, though many had claimed to. And with those claims came stories of Dark creatures that caused insanity if one but laid eyes upon them. Bullshit, probably, but compelling bullshit nonetheless. Maybe I could ask Dimitri the next time he tried to make me marry him.

The hill, though. I would get to the hill and find a way to get the hell out of here.

If I hurried, it had absolutely nothing to do with being in some unknown part of the Dark Woods in the middle of the night. I just wanted to go home.

The closer I got to the hill, the more the wind groaned through the trees.

The more gooseflesh prickled along my skin.

The more I had the uneasy feeling of being watched by something.

The air felt lightning-struck, like electricity crackling unseen.

Like magic was building.

From the ground rose pinpricks of light, green and gold and white, and it felt like mine, it felt like it belonged to me. The lights flitted around me, slow and heavy like cumbersome fireflies late in summer. I raised my hand to them, and they brushed along my fingers, warm and weighted.

But it was more than that. This was magic, purer than I’d ever felt before, and it wasn’t coming from just me. If it was my magic, it was reacting to something already there. If it wasn’t mine, I was reacting to it.

I looked back behind me to see the lights trailing after me. Each footstep I’d left in the soft earth was illuminated and flickering, the little lights landing upon them one by one.

I felt… safe, oddly enough.

Like nothing here could hurt me.

Like I had no reason to worry. These lights, whatever they were, wouldn’t allow any harm to come to me. I didn’t know how I knew that. I just did.

And so of course, that’s when the little lights began to tremble and dim.

The wind picked up until it sounded like it was growling through the trees, like the Dark Woods were a thing that was alive.

Except… that didn’t sound like the wind.

I turned back around.

For a long second, nothing happened.

Then the large hill in front of me moved up.

Then down.

Up and down. Up and down. Slowly and with great deliberation, like the very ground beneath my feet was taking in a lumbering breath and—

A chill crawled down my spine like ice.

“What is that?” I whispered as I took a step back.

Because the earth wasn’t breathing. No. That wasn’t possible.

But the gigantic thing in front of me was.

And now that I was closer, I could see it wasn’t a hill at all. What rose from the ground wasn’t made up entirely of dirt and grass and brush. There was growth upon it, as if it’d lain where it had for centuries and the forest had continued on around it. But through the vegetation there was something else, something mottled white.

Something scaled.

The hill moved.

Trees crashed down off it.

The earth groaned beneath it as roots snapped and broke apart.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. All I could do was take in what was rising in front of me, larger than anything I’d ever seen before. There were brief flashes, impressions that broke through the haze that had fallen over my eyes and mind—claws and teeth and wing, oh my gods that was a wing—until a great eye turned toward me.

It blinked, slow and unfocused. The eye was bigger than I was, the skin around it cracked deeply. The iris itself was heterochromous, shoots of red and green and blue. Even as I watched, the colors seemed to swirl together, moving around the iris like waves crashing.

The eye itself moved left to right, and the little lights around me flew forward, running along the hardened skin.

The creature groaned, a deep rumbling thing that I felt vibrate from the ground up through my legs and hips until it buried itself in my chest, wrapping around my heart and squeezing.

The eye focused now, sharper, the gaze knowing.

And it was centered on me.

I took another step back.

I opened my mouth once, twice, but no sound came out.

Because I was at a loss. I had all the pieces to put together what I was seeing in front of me, but they were all jumbled in my head. I couldn’t find or sense the pattern in them.

Finally, I did the only thing a person could do if they were in my position and faced with a gigantic hill monster after having been bad-touched by an old lady into the middle of the woods.

I waved and said, “Heeeyyy there.”

The eye blinked.

“I’m just gonna back away slowly,” I told it. “We can pretend this never happened. You… you just go back to sleep. Or whatever you were doing. I didn’t mean to wake you up, and I promise it’ll never happen again. Don’t mind me at all.”

It started to growl.

“Okay, so you do mind me. That’s just swell. I’m going to get out of your hair. Not that you have any hair. No, you just have scales and teeth the size of Tiggy, and oh my gods, why are you moving toward me, you fucking psycho! I’m going to punch both her tits, I swear to—”

The eye tilted away.

Only to have a great gaping maw pointed at me instead.

And even though I was whiting out in terror, I had a vague understanding of the shape of the head in front of me, the way the reptilian lips curled around teeth, the twin slits at the end of the snout that were its nostrils. A hard ridge rose on the top of its head, fanning out in a half-spherical protrusion, like a bony crown. Sharp, pointed juts of bone stuck out from the top of the crown, gleaming brightly in the starlight.

I knew what this was.

It was a dragon.

Bigger than any other I’d seen before.

In the Dark Woods, which meant it was—

It opened its jaws and—

“Sam!”

I jerked my head left. Ryan was there. I was in the castle, staring up at the ceiling. I was in the—

I looked right. The dragon took a step toward me that caused the earth to quake under my feet. Its foot was gigantic, easily the size of a carriage, with wicked sharp claws digging into the ground.

“Sam, wake up!”

“I am,” I said in the castle.

“I am,” I said in the woods.

I said, “I am, I am, I am—”

And then all the sounds in all the world fell away as the dragon spoke. His voice was a deep rumble, as if the words were heaving from the very depths of him. I felt every word vibrating down into my bones.

The great dragon said, “I have awoken, O human child. In this forest deep, in the dark of the wild. And I have seen what is in your heart. Take heed of my warning: you are not ready.”

And then everything was melting, the dragon, the forest, the colors bleeding together as I took in a gasping breath. The ground split apart beneath my feet and I was falling, I was falling, I was—

A sharp crack across my face. My head rocked to the side.

“Motherfucker,” I groaned.

“Oh, now you wake up?” Ryan growled above me. “You asshole. Don’t you ever scare me like that again!”

I opened my eyes as I clutched my cheek. I was on my back on the floor in Castle Lockes, in the same hallway we’d been in before… whatever had just happened. I glared up at Ryan, who was at my side, leaning over me, an annoyed look on his face.

“You hit me!”

“No shit,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do!”

“So you hit me? Who does that?”

“Your eyes were rolling back in your head, and you were shaking.”

I pushed myself up as he fell back on his knees. There were a couple of guards standing a little farther down the hall, watching us warily, but I ignored them. “So the first thing you think of when you see me having a seizure is to hit me?”

“I said your name first,” he said with a frown. “Like… three times.”

“Oh, that makes it better. Sam, Sam, Sam, oh it’s not working. I should probably domestically violence my boyfriend by punching him in the mouth. For shame. We need couples therapy if we’re ever going to survive this.”

He rolled his eyes. “Glad to know you’re just as you always are.”

“Amazing?”

“Maybe not quite the word I was going to use.”

“Yes, well, abusers probably don’t.”

“I didn’t abuse—you know what, no. You are not going to distract me. What the hell was that about?”

And I could see it then, the pinched look on his face, the way the corners of his mouth were drawn down. He looked scared and worried, and even if he beat me, I swore I could change him and make him love me. “I’m fine,” I said. “Your forehead is doing that wrinkle thing when I’ve done something dumb and you don’t know whether to hug me or yell at me.”

“It is not,” he muttered, forehead wrinkling further. “I wasn’t even worried. And fair warning, I am going to probably hug and yell at you.”

I snorted. “I see no problem with any of that. How long was I down for?”

“Five minutes? Maybe a little more. What happened?”

“And I was always here? I didn’t… disappear or anything?”

That certainly didn’t make the expression on his face go away. If anything, his eyes narrowed further. “Disappeared where?”

“Fuck if I know,” I said, scrubbing my hand over my face. “I was in the middle of the Dark Woods, I think. Some place I didn’t recognize. After she—wait. Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “One minute she had you up against a wall, and the next it was like she wasn’t there. You fell and you wouldn’t wake up. You were shaking and I couldn’t—”

I reached up and cupped his face. “I’m okay,” I said.

“I know,” he said, but he leaned into my hands. “It’s just that—fuck. Don’t do that again, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “I won’t let old women press me against walls and make me have weird visions. Got it.”

“Asshole,” he said, sounding disgustingly fond.

Gods, I loved the fuck out of him.

And I was about to tell him as much when another thought hit me, one far more important. “The King,” I said. “Oh fuck, we have to get to the King.”

Ryan’s eyes hardened because he immediately went to the same thought I had: assassin. A change overcame him, skin thrumming, hands tightening. I wasn’t dealing with a concerned boyfriend anymore. This was the Knight Commander of the Castle Guard, whose one job was to protect the Crown and all its extensions.

And he was fucking pissed.

Knight Commander Ryan Foxheart looked up at the guards down the hall and barked, “Sound the alarm. Now.”