A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)(80)

“Yeah, I don’t think I—”

“Or,” Kevin said, “you could tell Gary that maybe he should just calm the fuck down because some of us are sick of his shit?”

“I don’t know why you put me—”

“You tell Kevin that he wasn’t even invited on this adventure,” Gary hissed.

“Invited?” Kevin snapped. “Uh, excuse me, sweetheart. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but this whole adventure is about me. I’m someone’s destiny, after all. You know what your destiny is? Never getting to have a piece of this fine ass ever again. So suck it.”

“Oh nooo,” Gary mocked. “Whatever shall I do? How will I possibly survive not getting something that I’ve already had a million times over like everyone else in Verania.”

“Hey! I have a sexually adventurous spirit! You know I am a lover of many, many things. You liked it before you decided to put your head up your ass!”

“People grow up,” Gary said loftily. “Things they wanted when they were far, far younger don’t satisfy them like they used to. I am today’s mature and modern unicorn. I don’t take your shit for anything. My body, my rights. You don’t own any of this.”

And this had been going on since we’d left the castle.

Three weeks ago.

To say I was ready to choke a bitch would be an understatement.

“They still in love?” Tiggy muttered as Gary and Kevin continued to snipe back and forth.

I rolled my eyes. “Disgustingly so.”

“Bet you broom they get back together by time we get to Freeze Your Ass Off?”

“Nah,” I said. “It’ll take them until at least the Dark Woods.”

“Four brooms.”

“Tiggy, that’s still not how you barter when you—”

“Seven brooms!”

I sighed.

We shook on it.

“Sucker,” Tiggy said.

“Hey!”

He went back to listening as Gary and Kevin volleyed insults back and forth.

“You know,” Ryan said, voice slightly muffled from the cloth he had wrapped around his head and mouth, “you could probably just use magic to keep their mouths shut, right?”

“Probably,” I said. “But you would just pop a boner, and I think it’d be uncomfortable to walk with that. And, as a side note, penises are so weird. They broadcast far too much and in such awkward ways. Oh look, an attractive something. Let’s have all my blood rush to this one appendage and make it stick out during church.”

“During… church?”

“I was thirteen,” I mumbled. “The priest was hot. Whatever.”

“I don’t always pop boners when you do magic,” he said. “And gods, I am never saying pop boners ever again. It’s all your fault I talk like that to begin with now.”

“Really?” I said, bringing my hand up, palm toward the sky. “My magic does nothing for you?” I barely had to concentrate before a smidge of sand was floating above my hand, forming a sphere that circled slowly. It caused the barest of tugs around my head and heart, and I knew that Ryan was probably feeling it too, given his propensity these days to be almost an extension of my magic.

“Ungh,” he said, eyes glazing over slightly. He licked his lips, eyes darting from my hand down to my crotch.

“You’re so easy,” I said, letting my hand drop and the sand fall away. “It’s one of the things I love about you.”

“The first minute we get to ourselves,” he muttered, “I’m going to suck your brain out through your dick and make you come on my face.”

I tripped, falling face-first into the sand and rolling down a little dune.

Gods, I hated the desert.




“ARE YOU sure about this?” Mom asked, watching as I rolled an extra pair of trousers before shoving them into my pack. “She’s getting what she wants now. Sam, she’s my mother and I love her, but you shouldn’t trust her.”

I shook my head. “I don’t. And I won’t. This isn’t about her. Not anymore.”

She reached over and touched my arm, causing me to pause. “Then what is this about?”

I couldn’t look her in the eye, because if I did, I knew I’d spill everything to her, every single fear that I had: that I couldn’t trust Morgan, that I couldn’t trust Randall, that I was so angry at them for keeping this from me, that I was worried that I was going to fail. That I wasn’t going to be enough. That I was making all the wrong decisions. That I should be listening with my head instead of my heart.

“It’s about doing what’s right,” I said instead. “It’s about doing what I have to.”

She sighed. “I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen to me. All right?”

“Yeah.”

“Gypsy magic is mostly farce. It’s guesswork and fraud. Manipulation. For the most part, that’s all it will ever be. There are times when something else pokes through, something beyond the veil. Vadoma can do those things. I can’t explain it, but I can’t explain your magic either. You can do things that I can never even dream of. But the only thing that matters to me is that you’re making the choice you are, not because of what others want, but because it’s what you believe in. Prophecies, no matter who they come from, no matter what they say, are never written in stone. You can change the future, Sam. No matter what anyone else says, nothing is set in stone. You are your own destiny.”