I felt a little pang at that. “I’m sorry,” I said, because it seemed like the right thing to do.
He looked startled at that. “What on earth could you be sorry for?”
I shrugged, unable to look my father in the eye. “For… all of this. If… I don’t know. If I hadn’t been magic, if I’d just been normal like everyone else, we wouldn’t be here right now. You and Mom wouldn’t have to worry, and I could just… be. It’s heavy. Dad. This weight. This responsibility. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have this. That I didn’t—”
He slapped me upside the back of the head.
“Ow.” I glared at him.
“Yes, well,” he said. “You deserved that, talking nonsense like you are. You’re gonna listen to me. You got that, boy?”
“Yessir.”
“There is much in my life I wish I could change. That I wish I could do over again. But if there is one thing I’m sure of, it’s that I wouldn’t change a godsdamned second, not a second, of the time I’ve had with you since you were born. You are the greatest thing that has ever been mine, and I know your mother agrees. We are as proud of you as we have ever been. The only thing you need to do is come home in one piece. You do that and we won’t have a problem. You get me?”
I hugged the fuck out of him. He laughed wetly in my ear. We didn’t move away from each other for a long time.
THREE DAYS after that:
“What is it?” Ryan asked as we stood on top of a sand dune. In the distance, shimmering in the sun as if it were a mirage, was a large stone complex, rising out of the middle of the desert. There were towers spread out around the outside of it, rising above the large wall that surrounded the buildings.
“It’s Mantok,” I said, voice low, even though it didn’t matter. Gary and Tiggy knew where we were.
“The prison in the desert,” Ryan said. “I’ve never seen it before. It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s meant to be. It houses the worst of the worst. The murderers. The rapists. Those that deal in dark magic.” I took a breath and let it out slowly to try and rein in the rage that ran through me. “Those that would keep magical creatures in cages and parade them around Verania in a carnival.”
Ryan tensed beside me. “Fuck,” he said. “The one that had Gary and Tiggy before you met them? What was his name?”
“Koklanaris.”
“He’s in there?”
“Yes. We should go before I do something I’ll regret.”
So we went, Kevin and Gary and Tiggy waiting for us at the bottom of the sand dune. Tiggy was trembling. Gary wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, kicking at the sand with his right front hoof, nostrils flaring.
And if that night, Tiggy gathered Gary and me in his arms to keep us close, no one said anything to the contrary. Gary woke me up in the middle of the night, whimpering in some dream I couldn’t chase away. I was going to reach over and run my hand over his snout to try and calm him, but the tip of a scaly tail was already there doing just that. Kevin was pretending to be asleep, but he didn’t fool me.
I lay awake for a long time that night, watching the stars.
“WHY DO you do this?” the King asked as I stood before him and the Prince in the throne room. They were seated, and I was at the bottom of the dais, more formal than we normally were. Justin was sitting as if uninterested, but I could see the stiffness in his shoulders. “Why do you think I would ask this of you?”
I watched him closely, trying to find the right words to say. “Am I yours?” I finally asked.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “You are mine.”
“An extension of the Crown.”
“And my family.”
Justin didn’t scowl at that.
I felt a little flustered at the King’s pronouncement, even if it warmed me to the core. “Then you know why I have to do this. I am an extension of the Crown. I act in your stead. You trust me to make the decisions I have to in order to keep you safe.” I glanced at Justin. “You and the Prince.”
“Morgan told me,” the King said. “About what happened.”
I said nothing.