A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)(162)

“All right?” he whispered.

“All right. Just… checking on you.”

“Good. We good.”

“I can see that.”

“You good?” he said, brow furrowing.

I pulled a smile out of nowhere and said, “Sure, dude. I’m good. I’m gonna head back, okay?”

“I walk with you?”

“Nah. Get back to sleep. We gotta long trip ahead of us.”

He blinked sleepily at me. “Castle Freeze Your Ass Off?”

“Castle Freeze Your Ass Off,” I agreed.

He yawned, jaw cracking. “Okay. G’night, Sam. Love you.”

“I love you too, buddy. Night.”

And I closed the door behind me as he fell back asleep. I thought about going back in, letting Ryan hold me close, of being surrounded by those I loved, but the hook was pulling me harder now. It was pulling me away from them.

I left them behind and moved deeper into Mashallaha.

It felt like a ghost town. Like everyone had disappeared and I was all that was left.

I thought about using the summoning crystal to call Morgan, but I’d left it in the room with Ryan.

Besides, I told myself. Morgan would be asleep right now. Like a normal person.

Sam.

My hands shook at my sides. I balled them into fists.

“Who are you?” I said through gritted teeth.

Oh, Sam. I’ll show you.

Come to me, and I will show you everything.

And I did the only thing I could.

I went.

I didn’t have—




“—A CHANCE against it,” Morgan said. “The King was weak, and Myrin had begun whispering poison in his ear, although we hadn’t known it. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. Because if I allow myself to ruminate upon it, if I allow myself to give it any more thought than I already have, I’ll look back and see that I, like Randall, turned a blind eye to what was happening. I would see that I refused to believe in what was happening right in front of me. That the Myrin we’d known, the Myrin we’d loved, had become lost to us. He had chosen to turn in a direction that we could not follow, no matter how much we wanted to be with him.”

He looked up at me. “Do you know what that’s like, Sam? To feel the sting and burn of such duplicity? I know you think you might, that you think that I, and Randall, have betrayed your trust in us. I understand that. I don’t repudiate your right to feel that way. I don’t. But I ask that you see it from our perspective. To feel what we did. You may not understand why we did what we did, but the choices we made came from a place born of betrayal.”

I said nothing, because there was nothing to say that wouldn’t make me sound petty.

“The King went mad,” Morgan said flatly. “His mind was taken from him because of Myrin. He was nothing but a shadow puppet, a falsity that danced in the firelight. Through Myrin, the King gave orders that led to war. Wizards began to rise from the Dark Woods in numbers that we did not expect, and they looked to Myrin as their leader. Many people died without understanding what they were dying for. Randall and I… we did everything we could think of. But I was an apprentice who didn’t yet have a cornerstone, and Randall was a wizard in the process of losing his. Sam, it—nothing can prepare you for that. Nothing can prepare you for how it’s going to feel when your other half, the person on which you’ve built your life, your magic, is tearing themselves away from you while they break themselves apart. Losing a cornerstone to death is always a difficult time for a wizard. But losing your cornerstone to the Dark, it… changes you, Sam. It makes you angry and bitter, it feels like burning oil is in your veins. At least, that’s what Randall told me many decades later.”

“How did you stop him?” I asked hoarsely. “How did you end it?”

He closed his eyes and said—




SAM.

Come to me.

Come and see what they have made.

I opened my eyes.

I stood at the edge of the dock. The water lapped underneath me. The dock itself swayed gently. Every part of me was electrified.

I looked down into the lake. The water was clear and smooth and echoed the night sky above. It looked as if I was trapped between two mirrors, and I didn’t know which cast the true reflection. I was barefoot. I didn’t know why that stuck out to me.

A ripple came toward me, spreading wider and wider as it rolled through the water. There came another. And another. And another. The stars were shaking.

I looked up.

A man walked toward me. Each step was deliberate, measuredly paced. He wore a pair of tight-fitting trousers and a jerkin with rows of buttons down the front. It curved up into a collar around his neck.

And he was walking on water.

It shouldn’t have been possible.

This had to be a dream.

He was familiar. I could see it in his face. He had the same eyes as the man who’d found me in the alley after I’d turned a group of teenage douchebags to stone. The same beard that curled down the front of him, long and luxuriant. It was such a discordant image that I expected to see pink shoes that curled at the tips on his feet. There weren’t. He was barefoot. Each step he took, his feet barely sank below the surface of the water. He even almost looked to be the same age as my mentor, though I knew him to be far older.