A Wish Upon the Stars (Tales From Verania 4)

Prologue: The Fall of Verania

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.

One day the boy was chased into an alley by a group of teenage douchebags, only to accidentally turn them all to stone. Including, as fate would have it, the love of his life. Only the boy didn’t know about that then. In fact, the boy thought love was kind of gross, because his parents kissed all the time, and it looked rather messy. He didn’t want anyone eating his face like that.

It was probably for the best the boy didn’t know about the one who would be his cornerstone. Things might have gone down a different path, and not necessarily a better one.

A man in pointy pink shoes came for him in the alley, telling him he had magic inside him and that one day he would be a wizard.

“You will do wonderful things,” the man in the pointy pink shoes said. “I promise you.”

“I’m amazing,” the boy breathed. “I knew it!”

And the man would know, wouldn’t he? Because he was Morgan of Shadows, the King’s Wizard. But even more than that, he had an awesome beard.

The boy was taken from the slums along with his mother and father and given a life most would only ever dream of.

But no matter what happened, what adventures his new and exciting life would lead him on, the boy never forgot where he came from.

Sometimes he still wished upon the stars that others would be as fortunate as him.

And he grew! He grew and grew until he was a rather handsome young man. Yes, possibly his nose was a little crooked, and maybe his eyebrows were a little bushy, but hey, it was part of his natural charm. And besides, there were people out there who thought crooked noses and unibrows were dreamy, if the fan mail he got every now and then gave any indication. (“Aw, this nice woman wrote to me that she wants me to come to her house for tea and cake and a mature discussion about how she would like for me to sit on her face so she can lick my—wow, okay. That escalated quickly. I did not expect that. Yikes. Burn this. Burn this letter now.”)

It could have been a lonely life, given that the boy was taken from the slums into a world he had no clue about, but he didn’t have to do it alone. He had his parents and the King. He had Morgan. And he had more than that too, after the wizard sent him into the woods to find something unexpected. The boy came back with a hornless gay unicorn and a half-giant, and was given the name Sam of Wilds.

The unicorn and the half-giant became his constant companions, those who would stand by his side and have his back whenever he found himself in a precarious situation.

Which, to be fair, happened a lot.

“Why are you hanging in a net upside down in the tree?” Gary asked him one time, snorting pink and white sparks from his nose. “And why is there an unconscious man below you?”

Sam sighed. “It’s this whole—thing. I don’t know. All I was doing was minding my own business, and then this guy came up to me and said he wanted my autograph, and then I said sure, dude, sounds cool, and then he said step over here off the road away from everyone because I get shy in front of other people, and then I said that seems like a perfectly reasonable request and so I did, but then he said aha, I have you now, and I am going to hold you for ransom, and you will get me all the special edition centennial stamps issued by the postmaster last week to honor the anniversary of the Veranian accord with the Eastern Sea Mermaids. And then I said, dude, what are you even talking about? Stamps? This is all about stamps? And then he said it was all about stamps, which is stupid because who collects stamps? And then he started to monologue about how his father taught him philately—which is apparently the study of stamps, for fuck’s sakes—and that he wanted to honor his dad by getting the centennial ones. And you know how I feel about monologuing. And stamps.”

“I do,” Gary said. “Oddly enough, I know your position on both those topics quite well.”

“Tiggy know too,” Tiggy said. “Sam hate stamps.”

“You’re damn right I do!” Sam groused, still hanging upside down in a net in a tree. “And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the postmaster laughed at me last month at the state dinner when I asked him to put my face on a stamp because of how spectacular I am. It is completely unrelated.”

“Of course, kitten,” Gary said. “Absolutely unrelated. So, how are you up in the tree?”

“I have no idea. One minute this doofus was talking about his dad and feelings and motherfucking stamps, and the next I was in a net made from vermilion root so I can’t use my magic. But I still managed to kick him in the head, and then he fell into the tree, and now here we are.”

“That pretty much sounds like a summary of your life,” Gary said.

“Boom,” Tiggy said, and fist/hoof-bumped the unicorn.

“So lame,” Sam muttered.

So the boy from the slums couldn’t have had a lonely life, because he was surrounded by people who loved him (mostly; Prince Justin hadn’t seemed to jump on that bandwagon yet, though not for lack of trying on Sam’s part. The Prince just didn’t seem to appreciate Sam’s finer qualities). He had friends, he had family, he had Morgan

and the King and Pete the guard, and sure, Randall was terrifying and an asshole, but Sam could work with that. He didn’t need anything or anyone else.

“Who is that?” Sam breathed as he watched a new batch of knights enter the castle.

“Oh my gods,” Gary screeched. “Do you have a boner? Hey! Sam! Why do you have an erection right now!”

Everyone turned to look at Sam, including the recruit with blond hair and green eyes and an ass that looked like it should have pie eaten off it.

“Eep,” Sam said.

Maybe it wasn’t love. Not right away. It was certainly lust, sure; Sam was a teenager, after all, and pretty much anything turned him on.

“Why are mashed potatoes making me horny?” Sam muttered under his breath at a dinner for some visiting dignitary.

Morgan started choking next to him.

Sam helped by patting him on the back because that was what one did when another choked on mashed potatoes.

So no, it wasn’t love at first sight, because a teenage Sam of Wilds was ruled by hormones and sex-fueled fantasies of being stuck in a tower with really long hair and having a certain knight use said hair as a rope and climb up his tower and then suck his dick and then maybe cuddle or have some cake or whatever it was people did after fellatio. Sam wasn’t too sure on that part, but that didn’t stop him from wishing.

But it did grow. Whatever it was at the beginning became so much more. As Sam grew older, he understood that he had given his heart to a man who didn’t even know he existed.

Ryan Foxheart, the dreamiest dream to have ever been dreamed.

Who then started dating Prince Justin, because life wasn’t fair.

“Why are you crying in the dark in your room and eating pudding topped with—are those… is that bacon? Sam? Are you crying in the dark in your room and eating a bowl of pudding with bacon on it?”

“Look away from me!” Sam wailed through a mouthful of pig meat and vanilla. “I’m hideous! And also, my heart has been shattered and I shall never love again.”

“Oh boy,” Tiggy said.

“Indeed,” Gary said.

Sam accepted Ryan’s disgusting and frankly bewildering decision to date the Prince like a mature and responsible wizard.

“Apprentice,” Gary coughed. “And also, you spent four hours yesterday trying to come up with a spell that would make Justin break out in boils.”

Sam accepted Ryan’s disgusting and frankly bewildering decision to date the Prince like a mature and responsible wizard. Besides, he didn’t need Ryan Foxheart! He was going to become the world’s best wizard, and he was going to pass the Trials by the time he was thirty, younger than anyone else had ever done it before. He didn’t have time for romance, no, sir! Not when his Grimoire still needed to be bound and completed and when Gary’s horn needed to be located. He had priorities.

But the heart doesn’t listen to the mind. Not always. There are days they move independently of each other, and even though he told himself he needed to move on, his heart still ached at the sight of Ryan and Justin smiling at each other like they were so in love that nothing else mattered.