The Lightning-Struck Heart (Tales From Verania 1)

I sighed. “Crap. You would use the puppy eyes. You jerk.”

“I’ll go,” Morgan said. “Sam doesn’t need to do this. He’ll head north, and I’ll go with Ryan. We’ll get Justin back.”

“Sam?” the King asked.

Motherfucker. The King knew exactly how to play this. “It can’t be you, Morgan,” I replied. “You know that as well as I do. Because we need to show that we can work together if we’re going to be in charge of Verania one day. You shouldn’t have to worry about my magic. Ryan will be there until we find Justin and that will be enough. After that, I’ll go to Randall.”

“It’s not your magic I’m worried about,” Morgan said. “It’s your heart.”

Gods, that hurt. I laughed weakly. “It’s stronger than you think. Consider it a penance. I should have done more to protect Justin. I should have never let the dragon take him. If it’d been you and the King out there, you would have never let that happen. I have to get him back because I allowed him to be taken in the first place.”

“No one blames you,” the King said, touching my hand.

“Maybe not,” I said, looking away. “But I do.”

THEY LEFT me, then. Per my request. I needed time to clear my head.

So of course, only a few minutes later, there was a knock on the door.

I knew who it was. I didn’t know how, but I did.

“Yeah,” I said.

Ryan came in, face stony. The King had promised to keep the cornerstone thing to himself, so at the very least, he couldn’t be pissed off at me for that.

So that left the fact that I had somehow managed to let Justin get taken by the dragon. His fiancé was somewhere in Verania with a sexually aggressive dragon (which I was still offended about, by the way), and Ryan was stuck here with a malfunctioning wizard apprentice who secretly pined after him.

My life was a tragic farce of epic proportions.

He closed the door behind him and leaned against it.

I thought of at least a billion things to say, each one more ridiculous than the last (You mad, bro? You look mad), so I decided on keeping it simple. “Sorry.”

He arched a pissed-off eyebrow at me. Before that moment, I didn’t think eyebrows could be pissed off. I now knew otherwise. “For what?” he asked, voice hard. “Going out unescorted with the Prince? Facing off with a dragon? Almost getting yourself killed yet again? Which one, Sam? Hurry up and pick. I can’t wait to hear how you explain it away.”

Huh. That… wasn’t what I expected. “You mad, bro?” I asked and immediately winced.

“Am I mad,” he said flatly. “Am I mad? No, Sam. I’m not mad. I only came around the corner of the castle in time to see a fucking dragon rearing back to blow fire at you and Justin. I could only stand there when you turned the air around you to ice and the fire descended on you. I could only scream your name when he struck you and knocked you thirty feet into the side of a building. I could only run much too late when the dragon grabbed Justin and took off. Do you know what happened then? Do you, Sam? The pressure from its wings coming down collapsed the building on top of you. I sat there, watching it fly away as a building fell on top of you. So no. I’m not mad. I’m fucking furious.”

I didn’t do well with anger, especially when it was directed toward me. Especially when directed by Ryan. His lips were curved in a snarl and his eyes were flashing, and all I could think was Back off back off back off.

Flippant, I was. “It wasn’t a building,” I said. “Just a shed.”

He laughed bitterly. “Sure. Just a shed. Exactly what I told myself when I pulled your unconscious body out from underneath the rubble. I thought you were—we thought you had—” He rubbed a hand over his flushed face, the words seemingly stuck in his throat.

So I said, “I’m sorry,” in a small voice.

“Sorry,” he said. “You’re sorry.” Because apparently he thought repeating my sorry-ass words back to me was making this conversation easier.

“What do you want me to say? I didn’t ask to be attacked by a fucking dragon!”

“You shouldn’t have been out there in the first place!” he shouted at me. “What the hell were you thinking, taking Justin out to the sparring fields? Without an escort? How could you ever think that was a good idea?”

“You think I took him out there?” I snapped. “That’s what you think.”

“Why else would he be out there? Just because you have no regard for your own life, doesn’t mean y

ou get to endanger others.”