“Because I feel violent towards you sometimes. Like now, for instance.”
“Oh,” Gary said. “That makes more sense. I get it now. I wish I hadn’t thrown it—I mean, I’m glad I hung it up in my room for everyone to see whenever they like. Except for Sam. Because he’s not allowed in my room. For reasons. That have nothing to do with the painting.”
I frowned at him.
“And you must be Knight Commander,” Vadoma said to Ryan.
“I am,” Ryan said, posing slightly because he still couldn’t help himself. “I have pledged an oath to the King of Verania to protect the Crown at all—”
“Why you stand so close to my grandson?”
Ryan opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. He wasn’t used to anyone interrupting his ridiculously dashing and immaculate speech about his oath and fealty, even if most people in the room had heard it a hundred times. And I was fine with hearing it again, if I was being honest. First, because I was proud of him and how far he’d come. Second, because I had this weird kink where I found it to be ridiculously hot when he talked about loyalty to the Crown and would usually try to find the nearest available surface to pound him into.
“Why… what?” he eventually said.
“You stand on top of my grandson,” Vadoma said slowly, like she was speaking to an idiot. “Because….”
“Oh!” I said. “I can answer that one. Because he’s my boo.”
Ryan groaned.
“Don’t act like you don’t like it,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Everyone knows you do.”
“Literally everyone,” Justin said. “Because that’s all we had to hear about for months. Sam said this and Sam did that and isn’t Sam just the best thing to happen in the history of anything?” Justin made a face. “I honestly gave thought to having myself executed to escape hearing anything else.”
“You talk about me?” I asked Ryan.
Ryan flushed. “No,” he said, sounding petulant.
“Yes,” everyone else said. Including the knights along the walls.
“Wow,” I said in awe. “You think I’m incredible. Having validation is pretty much the best feeling ever.”
“I just like your face,” Ryan mumbled, shuffling his feet on the floor. “And stuff.”
“I am going to do so many things to you later,” I said. “Things I can’t talk about right now because my parents and my long-lost grandma are standing right near us and I want them to think I’m still a virgin.”
“We don’t think that,” Dad said. “Especially since you came to us the day after you lost it and announced it at breakfast.”
“He was so proud,” Mom said fondly. “Like that time he was nine and brought home a bug he’d found under a log.”
“Not quite the same thing,” Dad said, squeezing Mom tighter. “But we’ll count it as close enough.”
Ruv finally dropped his pose and leaned toward Vadoma, mouth near her ear. He spoke to her in a clipped foreign tongue that reminded me of my mother. Vadoma nodded along with whatever he was saying until she held up a hand, cutting him off.
“You are together?” she asked me, nodding over at Ryan.
“Yes,” Ryan said, taking my hand in his.
“In sin, even,” I said, waggling my eyebrows, because if there is one thing I apparently could not do, it was to not brag that I’d somehow snagged Ryan Foxheart.
“Sam,” Ryan chided gently, but I’m sure everyone in the room could see the smile quirking along his lips. I might have exasperated him and been more than frustrating, but for some reason, he loved me. And I would have done anything for him. We were kind of disgusting that way. “Maybe not tell that to your grandmother who you’re meeting for the first time.”
I sighed the sigh of the weary. “Whatever you say, babe.”
“And don’t call me that when I’m working.”
“Whatever you say, Knight Commander.”
He squeaked a little at that and started coughing, because he liked it as much as I did.
“Ugh,” Gary said, his nose wrinkling. “It’s like watching your mentally incapacitated great-aunt eating nothing but a jar of mayonnaise.”
“That’s…,” I said. “Huh. I don’t know quite how to take that.”
“Badly,” Gary said. “Preferably. Stop being so disgustingly precious in front of me. I’m going to vomit in the throne room, and no one wants to see that again.”
“It look like rainbows,” Tiggy said.
“Most things that come out of me look like rainbows,” Gary said.
“Seriously,” Kevin said. “By the time we finish our rigorous bouts of athletically tantric lovemaking, I look like the end result of a paint-by-numbers avant-garde tragedy done by a toddler.”
“And he says we’re gross,” I said, trying not to gag.
It was then that Vadoma addressed Morgan for the first time. But her tone had changed into something fiery, something angry. “And you allowed this, wizard?”
That irked me because I was standing right there. “Hey,” I snapped. “He doesn’t have to allow me to do—”
“Sam,” Morgan said, cutting me off. “That was not a question for you.”
“But she—”
“Sam.”
I knew that voice. That voice said I’d better shut my mouth before I was in trouble. I’d heard it more than I probably should have.
He waited just a beat more to make sure I’d heard him. Then he turned back to Vadoma. “He’s more than capable of making his own choices, Vadoma. If they lead to mistakes, I can only hope that he learns from them. The Knight Commander was his own choice in the end. And I believe there was never a mistake in that.”
She scoffed. “Foolish man. You know nothing. We had a deal.”
Wait. What. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I think I misheard you. You had a what now?”
“A deal,” Vadoma said. “Tell him, Wizard. Tell him how you know of him from the moment of birth. Tell him what the satarma called out the night he came to this world. You knew him as I did. And you agreed to be his mentor until the day I came for him.”
The room was ominously silent after that.
And it couldn’t be— “Morgan?”
He looked stricken. “It’s not as you’re thinking, Sam. Anything I have done, anything I agreed to was only to protect you. You are not bound by the promises of a foolish old man.”
That memory. That godsdamned memory.
Ah. I see. Your mamia was Vadoma, then.
Yes, my lord. You’ve heard of her?
Perhaps.
“You knew me,” I breathed. “That day in the alley. The first time. You knew who I was.”
“Yes,” Morgan of Shadows said. “I knew you.”
I couldn’t form my thoughts in a proper order. All I could think about were the times I’d felt Morgan was holding something back from me, was keeping his secrets held close to his heart. Wizarding is always about secrets, but hadn’t some part of me known that Morgan knew more than he had always said? I’d written it off as just him being Morgan. I’d trusted him when he said he’d tell me the things I needed to know when I needed to know them.