He shook his head. “No. No riddles. Not about this. Sam, a cornerstone isn’t a thing. It’s a person.”
“A… person?”
“Yes,” he said. “A person who will come to mean more to you than almost any other. One day your magic will recognize them. It may not happen right away. You may know this person for years before it happens. But one day your magic will say, Here they are. Here is the person that will help us become more than we ever thought we could be.”
I understood, but only in that way that twelve-year-old boys understand things. “But… but what if it’s a girl?”
“Then so it will be.”
“But I don’t like girls,” I said. And I really didn’t. Most girls I dealt with in the castle that were my age didn’t have time for a boy who sometimes forgot that you couldn’t put your elbows on the table and that it’s not polite to blow your nose into a napkin, Sam, not everyone wants to see that.
“Would you rather it be a boy?” Morgan asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Can’t it just be you?” I asked. “You already make me happy.”
Something stuttered across his face, something I was too young to understand. He moved until he was leaning against the counter at my side, arm wrapped around me, holding me close. I lay my head on his shoulder, feeling our magic mingle as it always did when we were together. Little stray hairs from his beard tickled my nose as he laid his head atop mine. “And you make me happy too,” he said quietly. “More than you could possibly know. But no, Sam. I don’t think it’s me. But don’t you worry. You’ll find them.”
“But… but how do I find one person out of the whole world?”
He chuckled. “There’s more than one, Sam. It’s about fate and the ties that bind you together. Maybe you already know this person. Maybe you have yet to meet. But until fate is ready to reveal them to you, you’ll just have to wait. It’ll happen.”
“You promise? I don’t want to be a Dark. I like it here with you.”
He hesitated. But then he said, “I promise,” and I believed him.
There was a moment then, years later, when I stood in a restaurant, a hush falling on the people in the room. Behind me sat a man named Todd with the most adorable ears. In front of me was a group of Dark wizards, monologuing their intentions for revenge after the death of Lartin the Dark Leaf.
And beside me?
Beside me stood Ryan Foxheart, sword drawn and at the ready. He hadn’t even hesitated to stand with me at my side. He didn’t question me. He didn’t tell me to stand down. All it took was for a threat to rise against us before he prepared himself to fight at my side.
And there, in that moment, my magic sang.
There was no ritual. There was no process. He just was. We didn’t have to paint runes on our skin out of sheep’s blood and dance naked around a fire under a Hunter’s Moon. There was no archaic spell that had to be performed that created ties between us that would bind us together. Every cornerstone was different to every wizard. Some were romantic. Some were platonic. Some were even familial.
But the fact remained that there was no one way to find your cornerstone. There was no one way to act with your cornerstone. Ryan was enough because he was there. He kept me away from the dark. He led me toward the light. It was the way he smiled at me, eyes crinkling, a hint of teeth. It was the way he trailed his fingers along my bare skin as we lay side by side, the room only lit with faint candlelight. It was the way he trusted me to take care of myself, but also trusted me to have his back. It was the way he knew I would never take him for granted.
That was what it meant to be a cornerstone.
And in the time I’d accepted him as such, I’d only grown stronger.
There are limits to magic.
But I didn’t know if there were limits to me.
AND NOW I stood with my arms crossed, glaring at Morgan. He leaned against a stone counter in the labs, a far-off look on his face. Ryan was next to me, twitching like he wanted to stab the problem to death. Which, honestly, I didn’t blame him for. The others were upstairs after Vadoma’s announcement had dissolved the tense conversation into utter chaos, with Gary asking if he had to choke a bitch, Tiggy threatening to smash everything in sight, Kevin suggesting all the men in the room solve their problems with an orgy, my mother having to be held back by my father, Justin looking supremely annoyed (which, in retrospect, wasn’t really any different), and the King proclaiming no one would come into his castle and tell his wizard (Apprentice, Gary had coughed obnoxiously) what to do.
Morgan, however, had gotten the same look on his face that he had right now. Like he was thinking back on all the mistakes in his life that had led to this point and was getting ready to apologize for everything he’d done so we could hug it out like bros and move past this.
“I’m not apologizing for anything,” he said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“What?” I said, sufficiently outraged. “I wasn’t thinking that at all. And why not? You totally owe me! You practically had me wedded off to someone I don’t even know! Did you sell me for some chickens? I swear to the gods, Morgan, if you didn’t hold off for at least a goat, we’re going to have a fucking problem here.”
“Really, Sam?” Ryan growled. “A goat? That’s going to be the problem here?”
“Relax, babe,” I said, relaxing my scowl so I could kiss Ryan on the cheek. “You know you’re my one and only. I don’t care if it was two goats. You’re stuck with me forever.”
“It’d better at least been two goats and a pig or something,” Ryan mumbled. “You’re worth at least that much.”
“Wow,” I said. “I don’t know how I feel about that at all.”
Morgan sighed. “Can we focus here? Please? If that’s not too much to ask.”
I glared at him again. “Right. Because you’re in so much trouble, you don’t even know. What the hell was she talking about? I don’t have another cornerstone. And even if I did, I choose Ryan. I will always choose Ryan.”
“Damn right,” Ryan said. “Because I’m awesome. I don’t stand and pose like that asshole—”
“Not the best argument,” I muttered to him under my breath. “You do that all the time.”
“—I mean call myself the Wolf. You know who does that? Jackasses do that.”
“Fist-pound me,” I demanded.
Ryan didn’t even hesitate. Like a boss.
We were a godsdamned united front against the tyranny of outside forces who wanted to do nothing more than to break our epic love apart. Well, we wouldn’t stand for it! We would rise up against—
“You’re narrating in your head, aren’t you?” Morgan asked.