I blinked up at Kevin, who towered above me as we made our way through the Dark Woods. “Yeah. Sure. I know that. It’s very nice, and I appreciate it quite a bit.”
“So don’t take this the wrong way.”
“Wow. Nothing good ever follows someone saying something like that. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but here are reasons you suck and nobody likes you and you should die a horrible death.’”
“If you want to talk about something to suck, might I suggest my penis?”
“No. No, you may not. In fact, that might be the worst suggestion I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, then. I don’t feel bad about what I’m going to say next.”
“Remember, I’m fragile, even though I don’t look like it.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way.”
“Shoring myself up emotionally.”
“But you’ve been narrating yourself in the third person for the last hour, and you have yet to come up with an excuse to not get our asses handed to us when we get back home after ditching everyone for a year. I thought that was the entire point of this. That’s what you told me. So don’t take this the wrong way—”
“Here it comes,” I whispered fervently.
“—but you are not a beacon in the dark. And you are going to get so much shit once we get back to the others, given that Verania probably wouldn’t have fallen had we stayed. And I’m going to blame you. For everything.”
I winced. “Yep, there it is. The pain. It hurts.”
“Do you know what Gary’s going to do to us?” Kevin asked with a huff.
“He’s never going to stop murdering us, that’s for damn sure. Did you know that unicorns can hold grudges for their entire lives? It’s a species trait. If you slight a unicorn, it can sit on it for decades before one day, fifty-seven years into the future, you suddenly find yourself trampled to death in what will officially be described as a workplace accident but will be outright murder. It would be marvelous if it wasn’t so terrifying. If I die under mysterious circumstances, you should look at him first.”
>
“Yeah,” Kevin sighed. “Isn’t he wonderful? It’s a good thing I’m planning on telling them that you forced me to come with you.”
“Hey! I did not! You came after me!”
His eyes went wide as his bottom lip trembled. “I don’t even know what happened, Gary. One moment I was asleep by your side where I belong, and then the next I’d been bewitched by the terrible wizard who made me do things to him that were not entirely consented to but I rather enjoyed anyway.”
I snorted. “Oh please. If I ever chose to do anything to you, you’d give so much consent. Like, all the consent.”
“Enthusiastically so,” Kevin agreed. “But you’ve seen what happens when Gary gets mad. He’s going to Unicorn Rage all over your face. You’re going to look like the aftermath of a gangbang at an arts and crafts store. So much rainbow and glitter.”
“If you had finished letting me tell my awesome story, you would have heard the way I was going to get us out of being in trouble.”
“You may continue.”
“Maybe I don’t want to now.”
“Yeah. You had no plan, did you.”
“Not even remotely. But I’m sure something would have come to me. But since you interrupted my narrative, we’re screwed, and neither of us will get laid.” I paused, considering. “Or rescue our loved ones and save the kingdom from the clutches of villains. Because I should have said that one first.”
“Priorities. You have them. Do you think it’s as bad as Dimitri said?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll see soon enough. He tends to be all doom and gloom. That’s what happens when you’re six inches tall.”
“But….”
“But we’ve been gone for eleven months. That’s a long time.”