“She a nasty girl,” Tiggy agreed.
“Right? But get this. While she was saying I was nasty, I noticed that her roots were showing, so I said, Girl, your hair looks like a tragedy up in here, and she said, Oh, I know, it’s so embarrassing. My stylist died from a combination of gangrene and getting caught in a stampede of manticores. So I said, Listen. Just. Listen. You go down to Ming Win and she’ll take care of you. She’ll do your hair and your nails, and you tell her that Gary sent you because then she’ll give me a five percent discount on my next visit because money doesn’t grow on trees, if you know what I mean. So she was all like, Really, that’s sounds awesome, thank you so much. And I said, Of course, that’s why I’m here, and if you ever call me nasty again, I will fucking cut you. And now we have tea once a month.”
“I like tea,” Tiggy said. “And pencils. And rocks and cats. And friendship stories.”
“Of course you do, dear heart,” Gary said. “You are precious, and I love you so. Now, on the forty-second time I got called a bitch, I deserved it, seeing as how I had been with her man. But did I know that he was married? Of course I did. But only because he needed unicorn jizz in order to free himself from the entrapment spell she’d put him under. And who was I to say no to that? He had hair on the back of his knuckles. You know how I feel about that.”
“You feel good about that,” Tiggy said.
“Exactly. So of course I called her a bitch back and—”
It’d been going on.
For two hours.
In very, very loud voices.
My everything was twitching.
“Bathe in your blood,” I hissed under my breath. “Just bathe, motherfuckers.”
I could outlast them.
I could.
I would.
Two minutes and sixteen seconds later, I threw open the door, ready to choke the life out of two of my closest friends.
Who immediately broke off when they saw me.
“Oh good,” Gary said. “It worked.”
“What worked?” I snapped at him, trying to resist the urge to reach out and squeeze.
“I knew there was only so much of my bitch stories you could take before you came out,” he said, tossing his mane prettily. “Those amateurs before me don’t know how to get under your skin as quickly as I do.”
“I came out here to murder you,” I admitted, because it was the right thing to do.
“Oh, tiny human,” Tiggy said, patting me on the head with a big hand. “You try. You just try.”
I knocked his hand away, but not before Gary was crowding me against the wall, his snout pressed against my face, eyes inches from my own.
“Sam,” he said, breathing rather heavily. He didn’t blink.
It was terrifying. “What?”
“How are you?”
“I’ve… been better?”
He nodded, which, given the fact that he was smashing his face against mine, caused me to nod too. “I understand,” he said. “Now repeat after me. I am Sam of Wilds.”
“I am Sam of Wilds.”
“Not some punk-ass bitch.”
“Not some punk-ass bitch.”
“Gary is awesome.”
“Gary is awesome—oh godsdammit.”
Gary preened as he took a step back. “Thank you. It’s about time I get the recognition I so obviously deserve. Tiggy, oh Tiggy, please take note of this date. The apprentice to the King’s Wizard has declared me awesome.”
Tiggy tapped the side of his head and winked at Gary. “Noted.”
“Good,” Gary said. “Now that that’s out of the way—” He turned and snarled at me, eyes blazing.
“Eep!” I said, because even though it was scary, it was still a scary unicorn, and I couldn’t help but fall in love just a little bit more.
“If you ever lock yourself in a room like a spoiled brat again, I will track down my horn, go on a quest to get said horn, defeat whatever creature has the horn, restore it to its rightful place atop my head, come back to the City of Lockes, march in a parade in my honor, and then come up to your room and gore you to death. Do you understand?”
“Your eyelashes are made of stars,” I whispered reverently.
“I know,” he hissed angrily. “It’s because I’m beautiful. Now are we clear?”
“I understand,” I said, because I did. Even without the overtly plotted threat of being gored, he was right. I couldn’t lock myself away. Not with the threat of a destiny hanging over me. I had to face it head-on.
Like a man.
“Oh goodie,” Gary said, dropping the rage fa?ade like it was nothing. “Because you just have to see how Ryan is acting around Ruv. It’s positively adorable. But mostly embarrassing. I’m embarrassed for him. And for you.”
I sighed dreamily. Like a man. “He does posture whenever his masculinity is threatened.”
“Knight Delicious Face threatened all the time,” Tiggy said wisely.
“This is true,” Gary said. “Why, even before we left, Ryan was challenging Ruv to a shirtless pull-up contest in the gym.”
That… made my mouth a little dry. “And you didn’t stay to watch?”
“Now you see what I do for you,” Gary said. “I could have been watching sweaty muscled torsos, but instead I was up here saving your life.” His eyes glistened suddenly with tears. “Why would you do this to me?” he asked, lip trembling.
I knew then what was the right thing to do. “To the gym!” I cried.
I SHOULD have realized that we weren’t the only ones who would have found a Ryan versus Ruv shirtless pull-up contest to be the event of the season. The castle was eerily quiet as we made our way down the stairs toward the labs.
“Where the hell is everyone?” I asked, wondering what would have caused the guards to mostly abandon their posts and the maids to leave their cleaning supplies haphazardly strewn across the floor. Even the kitchen was empty, large mixing bowls left on countertops, the smell of something burning slightly coming from the oven.
“Oh, my young, na?ve little boy,” Gary said. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing that you still have some innocence left. On one hand, it means you’re still starry-eyed. On the other, it means that I need to work that much harder in corrupting you.”
The closer we got to the gym, the louder it got, until it hit me where everyone was. And that… was both amazing and annoying. “Everyone is ogling my man?” I asked incredulously.