A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)(35)

I nodded.

“Magic works the same way. It builds upon itself after the foundation is laid. A cornerstone is needed to direct how the magic will grow. Without it, the magic would be shapeless. Or worse, it could grow out of control into something wicked. Something dark.”

“Like the Dark wizards?” I asked quietly.

“Yes, little one,” Morgan said. “Like the Dark wizards. Their magic is a misshapen thing, something grotesque and flawed. They think themselves above structure. Above a cornerstone. They see it as a hindrance. A restraint. Something that could hold them back.”

“But it isn’t.”

“No. It’s not.”

I scrunched up my forehead in thought. “But… I don’t want to carry a stone with me forever. It’d get heavy.”

There was a smile on my mentor’s face, and how my heart thumped at the sight of it. This man, this strange, strange man who had come out of nowhere to rescue my family from a life they didn’t deserve, had become very important to me. I don’t know that I was old enough to understand the specifics of love. I knew I loved my mother. I knew I loved my father. And I knew I loved Morgan of Shadows equally, but in a category all his own. I didn’t understand it, but I wouldn’t question it.

“You won’t have to carry anything physical, little one. Though there are times the weight of it will seem like a burden.”

I squinted at him. “Is this a riddle? I’m not very good at riddles. But I’m good at telling jokes. Everyone says so.”

He shook his head. “No. No riddles. Not about this. Sam, a cornerstone isn’t a thing. It’s a person.”

“A… person?”

“Yes,” he said. “A person who will come to mean more to you than almost any other. One day your magic will recognize them. It may not happen right away. You may know this person for years before it happens. But one day your magic will say, Here they are. Here is the person that will help us become more than we ever thought we could be.”

I understood, but only in that way that twelve-year-old boys understand things. “But… but what if it’s a girl?”

“Then so it will be.”

“But I don’t like girls,” I said. And I really didn’t. Most girls I dealt with in the castle that were my age didn’t have time for a boy who sometimes forgot that you couldn’t put your elbows on the table and that it’s not polite to blow your nose into a napkin, Sam, not everyone wants to see that.

“Would you rather it be a boy?” Morgan asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Can’t it just be you?” I asked. “You already make me happy.”

Something stuttered across his face, something I was too young to understand. He moved until he was leaning against the counter at my side, arm wrapped around me, holding me close. I lay my head on his shoulder, feeling our magic mingle as it always did when we were together. Little stray hairs from his beard tickled my nose as he laid his head atop mine. “And you make me happy too,” he said quietly. “More than you could possibly know. But no, Sam. I don’t think it’s me. But don’t you worry. You’ll find them.”

“But… but how do I find one person out of the whole world?”

He chuckled. “There’s more than one, Sam. It’s about fate and the ties that bind you together. Maybe you already know this person. Maybe you have yet to meet. But until fate is ready to reveal them to you, you’ll just have to wait. It’ll happen.”

“You promise? I don’t want to be a Dark. I like it here with you.”

He hesitated. But then he said, “I promise,” and I believed him.

There was a moment then, years later, when I stood in a restaurant, a hush falling on the people in the room. Behind me sat a man named Todd with the most adorable ears. In front of me was a group of Dark wizards, monologuing their intentions for revenge after the death of Lartin the Dark Leaf.

And beside me?

Beside me stood Ryan Foxheart, sword drawn and at the ready. He hadn’t even hesitated to stand with me at my side. He didn’t question me. He didn’t tell me to stand down. All it took was for a threat to rise against us before he prepared himself to fight at my side.

And there, in that moment, my magic sang.

There was no ritual. There was no process. He just was. We didn’t have to paint runes on our skin out of sheep’s blood and dance naked around a fire under a Hunter’s Moon. There was no archaic spell that had to be performed that created ties between us that would bind us together. Every cornerstone was different to every wizard. Some were romantic. Some were platonic. Some were even familial.

But the fact remained that there was no one way to find your cornerstone. There was no one way to act with your cornerstone. Ryan was enough because he was there. He kept me away from the dark. He led me toward the light. It was the way he smiled at me, eyes crinkling, a hint of teeth. It was the way he trailed his fingers along my bare skin as we lay side by side, the room only lit with faint candlelight. It was the way he trusted me to take care of myself, but also trusted me to have his back. It was the way he knew I would never take him for granted.

That was what it meant to be a cornerstone.

And in the time I’d accepted him as such, I’d only grown stronger.

There are limits to magic.