I said nothing, because there was nothing to say that wouldn’t make me sound petty.
“The King went mad,” Morgan said flatly. “His mind was taken from him because of Myrin. He was nothing but a shadow puppet, a falsity that danced in the firelight. Through Myrin, the King gave orders that led to war. Wizards began to rise from the Dark Woods in numbers that we did not expect, and they looked to Myrin as their leader. Many people died without understanding what they were dying for. Randall and I… we did everything we could think of. But I was an apprentice who didn’t yet have a cornerstone, and Randall was a wizard in the process of losing his. Sam, it—nothing can prepare you for that. Nothing can prepare you for how it’s going to feel when your other half, the person on which you’ve built your life, your magic, is tearing themselves away from you while they break themselves apart. Losing a cornerstone to death is always a difficult time for a wizard. But losing your cornerstone to the Dark, it… changes you, Sam. It makes you angry and bitter, it feels like burning oil is in your veins. At least, that’s what Randall told me many decades later.”
“How did you stop him?” I asked hoarsely. “How did you end it?”
He closed his eyes and said—
SAM.
Come to me.
Come and see what they have made.
I opened my eyes.
I stood at the edge of the dock. The water lapped underneath me. The dock itself swayed gently. Every part of me was electrified.
I looked down into the lake. The water was clear and smooth and echoed the night sky above. It looked as if I was trapped between two mirrors, and I didn’t know which cast the true reflection. I was barefoot. I didn’t know why that stuck out to me.
A ripple came toward me, spreading wider and wider as it rolled through the water. There came another. And another. And another. The stars were shaking.
I looked up.
A man walked toward me. Each step was deliberate, measuredly paced. He wore a pair of tight-fitting trousers and a jerkin with rows of buttons down the front. It curved up into a collar around his neck.
And he was walking on water.
It shouldn’t have been possible.
This had to be a dream.
He was familiar. I could see it in his face. He had the same eyes as the man who’d found me in the alley after I’d turned a group of teenage douchebags to stone. The same beard that curled down the front of him, long and luxuriant. It was such a discordant image that I expected to see pink shoes that curled at the tips on his feet. There weren’t. He was barefoot. Each step he took, his feet barely sank below the surface of the water. He even almost looked to be the same age as my mentor, though I knew him to be far older.
I knew this man, though I’d never seen his face before in my life.
He stopped some distance away, a smile playing on his lips. Now that he was closer, I could see the similarities between him and his brother were an illusion. Yes, he had the eyes and the beard, yes, they were from the same blood, but that’s where it ended. Morgan’s eyes were kind and strong. He held himself high because it was what was expected of him. The power that emanated from him was there because of the sum of the parts that made up his life, both the good and the bad. Morgan was my friend. He was my mentor. I trusted him with my life.
This man couldn’t be further from Morgan had he tried. Morgan’s magic had always meshed well with mine. It came from our years together. This man’s magic tried to do the same, but it felt slick and oily and wrong, and I could only think of how my magic had felt around Ruv, how there was a recognition there since he could have been a cornerstone. But it hadn’t been right, because I already had Ryan.
This wasn’t right, because I already had Morgan.
There were shadows curling around him like liquid smoke. I wondered if that was his magic. I saw the green and the gold. The colors of the world I’d been brought into.
It looked as if all he saw was black.
“Sam of Wilds,” he said, his voice softer than I’d been expecting. It had a lilt to it, almost musically so. It was… calm. Soothing. And oh so wrong. “How lovely it is to look upon your face free from the confines of a dream. I shall remember this moment for an eternity.”
“Myrin,” I breathed.
ONCE UPON a time, there was a wizard who was loved deeply by two different men.
One was the love of a brother.
The other was the love fated by the stars.
It was a bright and fierce thing, their love. Capable of such wondrous things.
But in the end, it mattered not.
The wizard lost himself on a path that those who loved him could never understand. He descended into the Dark, consumed by the temptation of a magic that should not have existed. But boundaries had been broken; barriers had been shattered. There was poison in his words, poison that was dripped into the ears of the weak of heart. Follow me, he whispered. Follow me and I will show you the way.
And the weak of heart had followed.
The brother begged him when they met in a clearing in the Dark Woods. The brother pleaded with him. Think of Randall! Think of our parents! Think of me! Gods, please, Myrin, I beg you. Think of me.
But the wizard known as Myrin did not.
The love fated by the stars was a great wizard in his own right, and did not beg. He did not plead. Instead, Randall gave an ultimatum, though it broke his heart: Turn away. Turn away and renounce your magic. End this nonsense, Myrin, and I will see to it that you are brought home.
And for a moment, it looked as if Myrin would consider it. There was a flash in his eyes, a crack of the mask. The brother saw the man that had once been before all of this. He saw his brother before him, and he thought it’d be enough. That this would end here as the Dark Woods burned around them and they wouldn’t have to go through with what they had planned.
Stone crumbled. It always did.
But Myrin did not.
I cannot do that, he said. I am too far gone to ever return.
Then so be it, Randall said. Morgan.
And Morgan said, I can’t.
The air stilled around them.
Myrin cocked his head. Second thoughts, little brother?
But Morgan only had eyes for Randall. Please. There has to be another way.
There isn’t, Randall said. You knew it would come to this.
But—
Morgan. As my pupil, I am commanding you.
Morgan hung his head.
Myrin laughed. What’s all this, then? You think you can defeat me? Oh, Randall. Love. You have no idea what I’m capable of.
And Randall looked into the eyes of his cornerstone and said, I know. I know what you’re capable of. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that you underestimated what I am capable of.
There was a crack in the sky.
A crack in the air.
A crack in the earth.
Randall’s hands were raised before him, palms toward Myrin.
And with a song of sorrow in his heart, Morgan did the same.
At first, Myrin laughed.