“Sam.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
He sighed. “You didn’t. It’s not as if you did it on purpose. That’s not how it works. You can’t force something like that.”
“I know. It’s just….”
“What?”
“It’s just of course it’s him. You know? The one person I can’t have. Of course. Because that’s how my life works.”
“There doesn’t have to be romantic involvement in a cornerstone, Sam. You know this as well as I do. Mine was certainly never romantic.”
“Because you’re asexual,” I said, treading lightly, because things made so much more sense now. Morgan never talked about the past, at least not something this personal. A wizard’s cornerstone is private. The details of the relationship are usually only for the two involved. Most were romantic, but not all.
“Yes,” Morgan said. “But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t love involved. Because there was. That’s something the Darks can never understand, which is why they have never subscribed to the idea of cornerstones. Their magic is erratic for a reason. They have nothing to build it off of. It’s also why they’re so dangerous. And here you are, wrapped up in five of them in the last week alone.”
“What can I say? They must like me.”
“Sam,” he said in warning.
“I don’t know!”
“It’s about the connection. I said it doesn’t always have to be sexual or romantic and I meant that. Mine… well. She was like me. Asexual. And I loved her very much.”
I held my breath, not wanting to break the moment.
He smiled, and for the first time since I’d known him, I saw a wistful curve to it. “She laughed at me when I told her what she was. What she did for me. I was seventeen at the time. She was almost thirty. An odd pair, we were. But we made it work. She helped me build the foundation I needed, and we were very happy. By the time she passed, my magic was solid and strong. The decades we’d spent together made sure of that.”
I felt the sting of tears at the softness of his voice. “What was her name?” I asked, my voice slightly rough.
“Anya,” he said.
“She sounds wonderful,” I said.
He reached over and patted my hand. “She was.”
“Maybe you could tell me more about her some day?”
“Sure, Sam. I think I’d like that. She would have loved you.”
“It can’t be Ryan,” I said quietly. “It can never be him.”
Morgan cocked his head at me. “And why is that, little one?”
“Because… I just.” I looked away. “It could never be… platonic. With him. From me. I would always… want. And that’s not fair to him. Or me. Because I can’t have that. And I would never do anything to hurt him or Justin.”
He grabbed my hand and held it tightly. “And Todd?”
I shrugged. “He’s nice.”
“And his ears.”
“His ears,” I agreed.
“But?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel the same.”
“You can’t force it.”
“I know.”
“Maybe….”
I looked up at him. “Maybe what?”
“Maybe you need to get out of here for a while,” he said slowly. “Clear your head.”
I laughed. “You’d let me go out? After everything that’s happened in the past few days?”
“You’d have to stay away from the Darks.”
“Yeah. That’s a given.”
“And keep your magic under wraps.”
“I usually do.”
He nodded. “Okay. Let me do some digging.”
“Are you going to tell me where I’m going?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. You’re going to have to trust me on this. It’s probably time this happened anyway.”
“Oooh,” I said. “Ominous.”
He squeezed my hand again before he pulled away. “I’ll see to the Darks. I doubt we’ll get anything from them, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I want you to write a detailed account of what happened last night for posterity. It’ll help should there be… questions, down the road.”
The door unlocked and opened. He slipped through and it closed behind him.
I DIDN’T leave the labs until well past nightfall, not trusting myself or anyone around me not to say or do something stupid. Gary, Tiggy and my parents all knew me well enough to know that it was best to steer clear of me for a little while. I’d find them tomorrow and tell them what I knew. Well, most of what I knew. I didn’t think I needed to bring up the cornerstone thing again. That way lay heartache and misery, two things I could do without at the moment.
I detoured through the kitchens, grabbing some fruit and cheese as the cooks fussed over me. They gave me warm bread and milk and told me I was precious and handsome and I was so brave to have taken on an army of Darks with only a knight at my side. I told them that’s not what happened at all. They laughed and cooed at me, not believing a single word I said. I stuffed the cheese and bread in my mouth to avoid having to say anything further.
I went out to the gardens. The spring air was warm and redolent with my mother’s flowers. The lanterns were dark, but the moon and the stars shone down from above and fireflies flickered in and out, lighting my way.
I was in the deepest part of the gardens, a place where very few ventured. I considered it to be my own little secret, though others surely knew of it. Here the flowers were more experimental, more wild. They grew from the pots and plots, vines thick and thorns sharp. Had I been here in daylight, the flowers would have been open and wide. As it was, they were curled up against the dark, but that was okay. I wasn’t here for them.
I lowered myself to the ground and lay on my back in the grass. The night sky above was clear and bright, and while the moon was beautiful, yes, I had never been drawn to it. Not like the stars.
I had wished upon them as a child and had wished upon them as an adult. It was upon these stars that I had rested my hopes and dreams, my anger and frustrations. I wished because as a child, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You don’t know any better. I wished because as an adult, sometimes you don’t know what else to do. You know better, but you don’t care.
I could see the constellations of my childhood, and the stories that came with them: David’s Dragon. The Lightning-Struck Man. The Pegasus. Vhan’s Fury.
I hadn’t spoken to any of them in a very long time.
I said, “I don’t know what to do.”
Because I didn’t.
I was twenty years old.
I was son of Joshua. Son of Rosemary.
My best friends were Gary and Tiggy.
Somewhere inside of me was the capacity for great magic, both light and dark.
I was the apprentice to the prodigious Morgan of Shadows.
His magic was legendary. Had been for centuries.
And someday soon, I’d be stronger than him.
If I wasn’t already.
But he’d had his cornerstone at the age of seventeen. She’d helped him build his magic into what it was.
I couldn’t let myself go Dark.
Todd was… nice.
I liked his ears. His nervousness.
But he could never be my cornerstone. No matter how hard I wished it so. I could never twist and shape him into being what I needed. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Or to me. Especially if I ended up hurting him because I lost control.
And Ryan… well. That was always going to be a mistake. Because he was promised to another and regardless how I felt about the Prince of Douchedom, I would never do something like that to Justin. And not as if Ryan would anyway. He had a fucking prince. I was nothing more than an apprentice.
Justin looked like a god.
I looked like a peasant.
Justin was royalty.
I was from the slums.
Justin was—
“Oh my gods
,” I groaned. “I am so pathetic.”
Fuck that, because that wasn’t who I was.
I was awesome.
I was epic.
I was a badass fucking wizard’s apprentice who would one day change the way people looked at magic.
I was going to rescue people from the slums and make their lives better.
I was going to open a shop where anyone got to come in and hug puppies for free and leave with a balloon, ice cream, and a compliment. “Here’s your pistachio cream. I made you a balloon animal in the shape of a walrus. You have very nice knuckles.”
I was going to finish my Grimoire, and five hundred years from now, people would be studying it and thinking to themselves, Wow. That Sam was pretty neat. I wish I could have been his best friend forever.
Because I was Sam of Wilds.
Maybe I didn’t look like I was a god.
(More like the gods had a sense of humor.)
But I could do things that were almost godlike.
I could create. I could rejuvenate. I could make something out of nothing because I was godlike—
Yikes.
“Curb the ego, Sam,” I muttered to myself.
But I was something, okay? I was. I’d come from a place where not much hope resided, and whether by accident or design, I’d changed the shape of my future and not just for me. For my mother. For my father. They had given me everything they had, and I was able to give them something back.
That should have counted for something.
And it did.
But still….
There was an ache in my heart.
To know my cornerstone was here and I could never have him.
It wasn’t the be-all and end-all.
There could be others.
I would find them. The one for me. It would all be okay.
And so I looked back up at the sky, took a breath, and wished upon the stars.
I wish I could find that one person made for me so that way I can show them why I was made for them.
Selfish? Maybe. Sad? Definitely. But I knew—
“Sam?”
I squawked attractively.
Okay. That was a lie.
There is no way to squawk attractively.
It was rather unattractive. Arms flailing, legs kicking. It was just awful.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Knight Ryan Asshole said, sounding amused.
I sat up and glared at him. “I wasn’t scared.”
“You screamed like a frightened little girl.”
“I squawked like an indifferent tall man.” Because that was a sound and logical argument. “What are you doing out here?” I hadn’t seen him since we’d been escorted back to the castle the night before by Pete, who’d kept laughing at me like I’d done something hysterical.
He shrugged and glanced away. He looked tired. He was dressed down more than I’d ever seen before, wearing trousers and a soft-looking tunic with embroidered edges. It was open at the throat, and my mouth went dry. “Just… checking things out.”
“Things.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Sam. Things.”
“Well. I hope things are okay.” I paused. “Are they?”
“What are you asking?”
“Honestly? I have no idea. You startled me and my brain isn’t working yet.”
“Scared you,” he corrected.
“Ass. How did you know about this part of the garden?”
He fidgeted. “Well.”
I waited.
“Your mother… might have showed me?” He sounded embarrassed.
“Did she?” I said, already plotting revenge.
“A long time ago,” he said. He brushed a hand over the furled petal of an orange wildflower. “I needed it, I guess.”
“What? Why?”
“Said it was a good place to come if I ever needed solitude. It gets… loud. In the castle.”
“Understatement. Why do you think I was holed up in the labs all day today?”
“Yeah. Uh. About that.”
“It’s okay,” I said with a straight face. “I know it’s hard being dashing and immaculate.”
He groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Of course you saw that.”
“Do you ever go anywhere and not be dashing and immaculate? It must get tiring. You know. With all the dashing.”
“You think I’m dashing?” he asked, dropping his hands, eyebrows arching.
It was suddenly very hard to breathe as I realized he was towering over me and that my penis found that to be very attractive. “What? Just. What? Shut up. With your. Face.” Smooth. Real smooth. “Just quoting your adoring fans.”
“I don’t have fans,” he snapped.
“Wow. Bitchy. And wrong. You do. You have fans. They have clubs. Did you know that? There are actual legitimate Ryan Foxheart Fan Clubs in Verania. They meet and talk about your eyebrows and when it’s better if you part your hair left or right and how fantastic you look when you pose everywhere you go.”
“I don’t pose!” he said like it was the most outrageous thing he’d ever heard.
I pushed myself up off the ground. “First of all, lie. You totally do.” I lowered my voice just a tad to do an extraordinarily accurate impression of him. “Hi, my name is Ryan Foxheart. Oh no! There’s danger afoot! Let me pull out my sword and pose.” I mimed pulling a sword from my side and cocked an eyebrow. “Notice how dashing I am. And immaculate. And today, my hair is parted on the right. Wink.”
“Oh my gods.”
“Spot-on, right?” I thought about putting the sword away, but then I realized there wasn’t one and that I was still posing. I stopped that immediately. “I bet it was like looking in a mirror.”
He was flustered. It was awesome. “No. That’s not even close to what I sound like.”
“But the rest of it, then, huh? I knew it!”
He scowled at me. “You aggravate me.”
“I aggravate everyone. It’s part of my charm.” And this conversation was weird. I didn’t even know why we were having it. Why I was allowing it. I’d sworn to myself to stay far away from Ryan Foxheart until Morgan sent me out again. And yet, I’d left the labs for less than an hour and here he was. It was unnerving.
“I wouldn’t call it charm exactly,” he said.
“Oh? What would you call it?” I asked and thought, Walk away walk away walk away.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he said stiffly, “Todd seems… nice.”
And that was a change of subject I almost couldn’t follow. “Huh?”
“Todd,” he said slowly, as if I was an idiot. “Your fiancé.”
My eyes bulged. “My what now?”
The scowl deepened. “Your future husband. It was all over the news.” He looked angry, and I had no idea why.
“I’m not getting married!”
“Then why would they print that?”
“Because the freedom of press has gone too far in this country? I don’t know!”
“They can’t just print whatever they want!”
Poor, sweet foolish child. “Uh. Yeah. They can. It’s called sensationalism. They were calling you dashing and immaculate!”
“I am dashing and immaculate!”
“Aha!” I cried. “I knew you did that shit on purpose. Oh my gods. That’s so embarrassing for you. My impression was so right it’s not even funny. I am going to tell all your fan clubs.”
He grinned and it was evil. “And how do you even know about the fan clubs?”
ABORT. ABORT. ABORT. Because he didn’t need to know that I went to one once while in disguise. That was just ridiculous. And creepy. “Gods. It’s late. Look at the time. Actually, I can’t because I don’t have my watch. I assume it’s late. So.”
“It’s barely ten.” He took a step toward me.
“Late,” I insisted. “I’m tired. Someone decided to keep me out till the wee hours of the morning last night.”
“You were attacked,” he said,
“by Dark wizards. Again.”
“It doesn’t happen as often as you might think,” I said, taking a step back. “I just have one of those faces that people want to shoot things at.” And I immediately made that dirty in my head.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Seriously,” I said, eyes wide. “You’re not even Queen Sass anymore. You’re like the God of Sass. You created all the sass the world knows. Why don’t more people know this? Instead of dashing and immaculate, they should be describing you as sassy and bitchy. I am going to write a letter to the editor first thing in the morning. It must be reported on immediately.”
“Maybe you can bring that up at the next fan club meeting too.”
“Hey! I don’t even know what you’re talking about, okay? I hear things when I’m on my travels. I don’t even care about stuff like that.” I cared so hard. I had actually gone three times to the fan club meeting. They knew me as Mervin. I had a backstory and everything. It was my turn to bring muffins next time. I was considering poppy seed. Or cranberry. Fun.
“So you’re not marrying Todd?” he growled, taking another step toward me. “That’s probably a good thing. He was going to kill you with ducks and blueberries.”
“I’m not. Trust me on that. I like his ears but really, that only goes so far.”
He grimaced. “You and his ears.”
“They stuck out. I thought they were adorable.”
“If that’s your qualifier for a relationship, then you’re screwed.”
“That’s the idea, isn’t it?” I said, trying to grin salaciously. I think I missed the mark and went directly to constipated.
He grunted and closed his eyes. “You can’t say stuff like that.”
“Why not? Gary says I’m a prude. I don’t think I am. I can talk about stuff like that. It’s not that hard. Or. Well. It could be. Ha! See? I just made a sexual pun, and everyone knows that sex puns are the highest form of humor. Fuck you, Gary! Sex and fucking and balls!”