“You are still foolish, chava. No amount of time will cure you of that.”
“I’d like to think I’m a work in progress.”
“You have them?”
“What?”
“The dragons.”
“Yes,” I said slowly.
Vadoma nodded. “Good. You will need them. And you must not let him take you. If he should consume your magic, he will control them too. I think that’s what he wanted, in the end. Your magic, it radiates from you. But it will attract attention, as all power does. He will see you. And he will come for you.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“Why now?”
“What?”
“Why have you returned now?”
“Because it was time.” Mostly. Partially. Okay, sure, GW wanted to wait a while longer, and yeah, that argument had been very loud, but I was tired of being in the forest, tired of seeing trees and grass and leaves and stupid dragon faces. I wanted to go home. I wanted a real bed, real food, real people that I was worried about. It was… hazy, almost dreamlike, my time in the Dark Woods with the Great White and the others. There were days that would go by in a flash, weeks passing without me acknowledging them, only for me to later realize in a slow, dawning horror that a month had gone by.
And then there would be days that would just crawl, my teeth grinding together as magic coursed through me, as GW loomed above us all, snarling and snapping his teeth as I made mistake after mistake after mistake. Days of me hunched over my Grimoire, hand aching as I wrote feverishly, scrawling page after page, mind expanding at the thought of all the types of magic there could be. It must have been the same for Randall, except that Myrin had pulled him away and distracted him. The Great White must have hated that, in the end.
“Foolish business, cornerstones,” he’d rumble from somewhere above me. “A wizard must learn to control his own magic and not put faith in the strength of others.”
Part of me wanted to believe him.
That was the part that saw Ryan, blood leaking from his chest, head slumped forward, skin pale, breath shallow.
That was the part made up of my nightmares.
“And how did you know it was time?” Vadoma asked.
“How did you know it was time to come to Castle Lockes when you did?”
“I just knew.”
“There you go.”
“I worry.”
Great. Just great. “About what?”
“The prophecy. About what I saw. What I showed you.”
“We don’t know how much of that was real. How much was you, or the gods, or Ruv playing all of us.”
She nodded slowly. “This is true. But Sam, I don’t know that it matters. You saw him as clear as day. Ryan, your cornerstone, the life taken from him, his body cold. He escaped death once, but I fear that won’t happen again. I know you think my magic false, that I am nothing but a street magician, but I promise you, that isn’t the case. I worry it may come to pass. That Ryan Foxheart will meet his end in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled.”
“But you were wrong,” I told her stiffly. “It wasn’t Ryan. It was Morgan. Morgan is who lay upon the stone. It was never supposed to be Ryan. It was a trick. A sleight of hand. Either by you. Or Ruv. Or the gods. But it doesn’t matter now. I don’t trust any of you.”
She blew out another plume of smoke. It hung heavy about her head. “Or maybe Morgan’s fate was hidden from me and what we saw has not yet come to pass. You cannot dismiss it, Sam. Or you run the risk of losing everything you love. The Knight will fall. Nothing you can do will stop it, if that’s what the gods demand.”
“Are you done?”
She chuckled bitterly. “I was wrong. About you.”