“Morgan shouldn’t be your friend. He should be your mentor.”
“He can be both.”
“He’s always had a soft spot for you. Ever since the beginning. It killed him to know you were in the slums. He kept an eye on you as best he could and even went so far as to almost disobey a direct order from me to leave you until you showed signs of a propensity toward magic.”
“I didn’t know that,” I admitted. “I thought—”
“I know what you thought. You thought Morgan didn’t care enough about you to save you from the slums, to give you and your parents the life that you wished for. Well. Now you know. Blame me. Not him.”
“Why?”
His hand flexed on the Grimoire. “Why did I leave you there?”
I nodded.
“Because I hoped that Vadoma was a liar. A charlatan. A false prophet. That she would be proven wrong and there would be no need to involve you in the ways of magic. It’s wondrous, Sam, but it’s also seductive. It can take parts of you and mold them until they’re unrecognizable. To be good, to be a good wizard, there are rules and laws that must be followed. Paths diverge, and it’s so easy to meander among them. To stray. To allow yourself to be pulled further and further away. It’s hard, Sam, to be good. It’s not so very hard to skirt along the edges of the dark. And to be consumed by it? Why, that just might be the easiest thing of all.”
“You didn’t think I was capable?” That stung more than I thought it would.
He huffed out a bitter laugh. “It’s not that I thought you weren’t. It’s that I didn’t want to have to find out one way
or another. I was a selfish man, Sam, in that I wanted you to live a life where the worst thing for you would be to wonder where your next meal would come from. This life… it can take from you. Pieces that you weren’t aware could be taken. I’d seen what it’d done to one who I had mentored. What it’d done to myself.”
“Did you know? About the dark man in shadows. Who he was.”
“I don’t… no,” he said, not looking up at me. “I didn’t. I trusted what Morgan and I had done would have been enough. I trusted the families that had been entrusted with the keys to the seal. I convinced myself that at the very least, we were safe. From him.”
“But shouldn’t you have at least checked? I mean, what the hell, Randall.”
“The fallacy of an old man who thought his magic was enough.”
“Why keys at all?”
He sighed. “Because I didn’t trust myself to be in control of it. I had already shown what I was and wasn’t capable of by banishing him instead of killing him.”
“It…. I understand it. Why you did what you did. Mostly.”
His head snapped up, surprise on his face. “You do?”
I shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “He was your cornerstone. I don’t know that I could have done any different had it been Ryan.”
He stared at me.
I looked away.
Then, after another few moments of silence, he said, “Which is yet another reason I’ve brought you here alone.”
Because of course there was something else. “Randall, please. I told you. You’re not my type.”
“That mouth of yours is going to get you in more trouble than you’re worth.”
“It gets me out of trouble more often than not,” I said with a rakish grin. “And Ryan doesn’t complain about it.”
“That you know of.”
“Hey!”
“The levels of magic you’ve exhibited are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. You’ve come to depend upon your cornerstone and have shown spikes in your power when it comes to him. He cannot be your crutch, Sam. Or your weakness.”