The Consumption of Magic (Tales From Verania 3)

“Then a word of warning to my acquaintance,” Moishe said mockingly. “Make sure you’re seeing what you think you’ve been shown. Sight tends to lose itself in those paths that are set in stone.”

“You made that rhyme on purpose, you asshole. You’re terrible.”

“Sam.”

I sighed. “But stone can crumble. A snake dragon monster thing taught me that. Don’t ask.”

“It can,” Moishe agreed. “But it takes a great event to break it apart. One that I don’t know if you’re—”

“Moishe.”

He smiled and took a step back at the sound of the warning in Morgan’s voice. I looked over to see my mentor standing in the open doorway, watching the both of us with a blank look on his face. I hadn’t even heard him come in.

Moishe bowed, eyes never leaving mine. “I do hope you find your stay at Tilted Cross as illuminating as always, Sam of Wilds.” Then he turned on his heel and slunk toward the door. Morgan stepped aside, allowing Moishe to pass without comment. Morgan shut the door behind him.

“He’s lucky that it was you who came in and not Ryan,” I told Morgan. “Because Ryan absolutely does not like Moishe.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Morgan said, and I itched to go to him, to hug him tightly, given the weeks we’d been apart. Two things stopped me: I was still pretty much naked and still pretty much angry with him.

“Right? It’s because he wants all up on this,” I said, awkwardly pointing at myself, still holding the shirt in my other hand. I didn’t necessarily have a problem with nudity, and there were times in my earlier days when I’d accidently done a spell that had burned off all my clothes once or twice in front of Morgan, but the scars on my chest were… different. For him. And we both knew it. They meant something more. They meant Myrin was real.

And I wanted to talk about it even less than I wanted him to see them.

Unfortunately for me, it was too late for that already.

“He did this?” Morgan asked me.

I could do this. I could play this off. “Pretty gnarly, right? I don’t know if they’re going to stick around or if I’ll—”

“Sam.”

Okay. Maybe I couldn’t play this off. I sighed and pulled the shirt on. The fabric brushed against the raised scars, irritating them slightly, but nothing I couldn’t deal with. “He didn’t do anything. I did. I don’t know if it started with the sand mermaids—which, by the way, thanks for not ever telling me those things existed—or if it was just because of… the lake… thing, but it happened, okay? There’s nothing I can do to change it. There’s nothing that you can do to change it. Unless there’s something else you neglected to tell me.”

“I deserve that,” he said evenly.

“Damn right you do,” I said, turning and dropping the towel. I pulled on the sleep pants as quickly as possible. I pulled on the strings to tie them off. “And furthermore—”

“But what I do not deserve is your derision.”

My hands stilled. My shoulders tensed.

“I do not deserve to be treated like I am the enemy,” he continued flatly. “I do not deserve to have you act this way toward me. I’ve made a mistake. I have apologized for this mistake. I have given you the reasons as to why I made said mistake. And yet you stand here, treating me as if I am nothing to you. You don’t get to do that, Sam. Not to me. Not after everything we’ve been through. You are allowed to be angry with me. You are not allowed to dismiss me.”

He was right, of course. More than I cared to admit. I’d let this… this thing come between us, let my anger fill my heart and cover my eyes until I saw nothing but red. It wasn’t okay, what he did. What Randall did. Nothing about it was okay. They had kept this from me, this secret that essentially dictated my entire life. They allowed my parents to suffer in the slums. Yes, he came eventually, but only when I’d displayed a propensity for magic. If he believed the destiny laid out by the star dragon through Vadoma, shouldn’t he have done everything he could have to make sure my family and I were safe? People died in the slums every day, either from disease or starvation or having their lives ripped from them by someone else. That happened everywhere, sure, but it was more prone to happen in the slums.

We had been happy, my parents and I. But it could have been more.

And that’s where the betrayal came from. Not that he didn’t tell me.

It came from the nights when my father went hungry because he would rather see his wife and son with their bellies full than his own.

It came from the days when I’d heard my mother crying and I couldn’t find a way to make her happy.

It came from the rainy mornings when the roof of our shack leaked and we’d be huddled under blankets together, trying to stay warm.

I’d learned that every society has their rich. Their middle class. Their poor. It was how things worked.

But Morgan and, in turn, Randall had allowed us to stay where we were.