The Consumption of Magic (Tales From Verania 3)

“It’s not that baffling,” I assured him. “It’s because Kevin and Gary are the stupidest magical creatures alive. It’s as simple as that.”

“Gary,” Kevin said, “your son is acting up again.”

“Oh really?” Gary snapped. “So he’s my son when he’s being a little asshole, but he’s your son whenever he does something right. Which, admittedly, isn’t very often, but you get my point.”

“If I’d left him in the woods when I first met him, I might not be here right in this moment,” I pondered aloud.

“No,” Tiggy said, and I could hear the frown in his voice. “No, Sam. You found us. We go home with you. We stay with you. Forever. And ever. And ever.”

“Gaaaahhh,” I said. “I can’t even with you. I’m going to give you such a hug when we land, you don’t even know.”

Tiggy was perfectly okay with that.

So Kevin and Gary continued to bicker, and Tiggy started humming to himself. Ryan leaned forward, lips near my ear.

“Bad dream?” he asked quietly.

I shrugged, unsure of how to answer. After all, how do you tell the love of your life that your grandmother and a dragon made of stars had predicted his death? And that was the crux of it, too, because the death could be soon, or the death could be years down the road, but the fact remained that one day, Ryan would die, either at the hands of Myrin or in the cold grasp of age. And either way, he would leave me behind. I was a wizard. My magic wouldn’t allow me to age like a normal person.

Granted, it might not even matter if Myrin got what he wanted, whatever that was. I highly doubted that any of us would be alive for long after that.

“I guess,” I said. “It’s just… everything, you know?”

“I know. The last few weeks have been—”

“Ridiculous?”

“I was going to say trying, but yes, ridiculous works too. But then, most of the stuff that seems to happen to us is ridiculous.”

And that… well. That worried me. More than it should have, given all that was going on. Ever since Ryan and I had met (actually met—not the days where he was Nox and I was a little shit in the slums, not the days when he came to the castle and I pined creepily after him from afar, but the days before Justin was kidnapped by the very dragon upon whose back we now sat), it had been one thing after another. Adventures and villains and plots that made absolutely no sense but still happened anyway—we’d never really had a break. From anything.

And then the icing on the cake was the fact that I was the star of an ancient prophecy involving dragons and an evil wizard who apparently wanted nothing more than to monologue about killing my face.

With all this on our shoulders, I felt like shit for having dragged Ryan into this mess. If he’d never met me, he’d probably be married to the Prince by now, living the life of a knight commander in charge of the Castle Guard like he wanted to, instead of retaining the title but spending more time on the road than in the castle. He’d said once that I inspired him back in the days of the slums to make something of himself, but who’s to say there couldn’t have been another genesis to inspire him? He was meant to do what he did—I believed that with all my heart—and it didn’t have to be me that had motivated it.

The problem with thinking such thoughts was that more and more, Ryan was getting a better sense of my moods, whether I said anything about them or not. It seemed to be a byproduct of being a cornerstone. He helped me to control my magic, allowing me to build upon it, to make it stronger. And in turn, it was like there was an almost extrasensory link between us.

Either that or I still couldn’t keep everything I was feeling off my face. I was really shit about that too.

So when he broke through my self-pitying thoughts by saying, “You’re being stupid, aren’t you,” I wasn’t surprised. By now Ryan Foxheart was fluent in Sam of Wilds, which I loved. Mostly.

“I’m not being stupid,” I said. “You’re being stupid.”

“Yeah, because that was the mature response to go with.”

“You’re a mature response to go with—”

“Sam.”

“Mr. Foxheart.”

He jostled me a little, causing me to sigh and slump back against him, the stars above us beginning to fade with the sunrise. I purposely didn’t seek out David’s Dragon, because I didn’t think the best use of my time was to glare at a constellation.

“You’re being stupid,” he said again, quieter this time. “I know you. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Maybe I think that’s cheating a little.”

“I’m sure you’ll get over it,” he said wryly.