I have awoken, O human child. In this forest deep, in the dark of the wild. And I have seen what is in your heart. Take heed of my warning: you are not ready.
“Nothing,” I said. “He didn’t say anything because it wasn’t real. None of it was real. You tricked me. Somehow. Poisoned me. Made me hallucinate. I don’t know what you’re planning. I don’t know why you’re here. But it’s not going to work. The dragon said nothing. He said nothing because it wasn’t real. No one has seen the Great White in centuries. He’s long dead. His bones are somewhere that will never be found.”
“Not a word?”
I didn’t look away. “Not a word.”
“Morgan,” she said.
“I’ve told you, Sam,” Morgan said. “About the rumors. About a dark man rising.”
“Have they been substantiated? By anything?”
“No,” he said. “Nothing that can be considered concrete. But if there is a threat against the Crown, if there’s the smallest chance that she’s right, we owe it to Verania to investigate. Sam, we are the hands of the King, and sometimes the hand must make a fist even if the threat is hidden in shadow.”
“So we’re supposed to take her word on it?” I asked angrily. “This woman who banished my mother as if she was nothing? She took away everything because who she fell in love with didn’t have the same skin color.”
“Dika made her choice—”
“Only because you didn’t give her anything else to choose!”
“Your ire comes quickly,” Vadoma said. “Is this because you are frightened, or is this how you are? Does your fury flow through you at the slightest of provocations?”
“No,” I said.
“No to which? Chava, we are governed by thousands of years of tradition. You may think it archaic. You may think it unfair. But this is the way it has always been. Just because she is my daughter did not give me the right to ignore what my ancestors had given me.”
“She didn’t need you,” I said. “Look where she is. She’s happy. She’s healthy. She has a family. She is loved. If she had stayed with you, if she had forsaken my father, could she have said the same?”
“Her path split,” Vadoma said simply. “Because she chose to follow her heart. Like yours. I have seen the path you are taking, Sam of Wilds. I have seen the possibilities that lie before you. He will come for you and take all that you hold dear.”
A hand fell on my shoulder. I thought it’d be Ryan or Morgan, offering the smallest of comforts the way they did best. Imagine my surprise, then, when I glanced over and saw it was Randall. “Sam,” he said. “We wouldn’t ask you this if we didn’t think it was important.”
I swallowed back the sharp retort. “You haven’t asked me anything yet.”
“And I’m not going to,” Vadoma said.
Randall’s hand tightened on my shoulder.
The phuro began to smile. “I’m going to show you.”
“ARE YOU sure about this?” Gary asked me. “I mean, the last time you were mostly nude, covered in ancient symbols, and about to have weird powder blown in your face, you woke up after having been randomly adopted by cave trolls in the middle of the Dark Woods.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, wincing as Vadoma slathered more green paste on my back, muttering in an ancient tongue as she drew on my bare skin. The only thing keeping me from a public indecency charge was a thin cotton wrap around my hips, but even that almost wasn’t enough. I was pretty sure if anyone looked hard enough, they’d be able to see my balls. “I’d forgotten about that. Sometimes I wish our adventures weren’t so zany. Why can’t we have normal adventures?”
“I can see your balls,” Gary said, looking hard enough.
“Godsdammit,” I said.
Gary looked away from my testicles like a true friend. “And we do have normal adventures. It’s everyone else that’s weird and boring and stupid. Also, don’t use the word zany. It sounds stupid, and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Last month we went to the Port,” I reminded him. “And somehow found a magic mirror that wanted to imprison us forever in a realm where everything was some kind of opposite.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“I was a butch lesbian! You were a heterosexual virgin pigeon. Tiggy was a flower. A flower, Gary.”
“About that,” Gary said. “I still haven’t figured out how that was an opposite of what we already were.”
“It was a talking mirror,” I said. “It wasn’t supposed to make sense.”
“I mean, your opposite being a bull dyke makes sense, but the rest? Not so much.”
“How does the opposite of me being a bull dyke make sense?”
Gary looked at me with a blank expression.
“You’re insulting me, aren’t you.”
“Well I’m certainly not insulting bull dykes. I love them too much. They give me things like self-esteem and fancy woodwork.”
“Hey,” I snapped at Vadoma. “I don’t care if I don’t know you. You are still my grandmother. Get your hands out from my inner thigh. I swear to the gods. You don’t need to draw symbols there, you pervert.”
“I can still see your balls,” Gary whispered.
“Today is terrible,” I grumbled. “Absolutely terrible.”
“He never shuts up, does he?” Randall asked Morgan.
“Not even when he’s sleeping,” Morgan said.
I glared over at them, using my hand to shield my eyes from the warm sunlight. We were outside in the middle of the fields to the east of the City of Lockes. We stood inside the fenced grounds that the knights used for training. The wooden dummies were anchored into the earth, slashed and chipped from repeated sword strikes.
Kevin was currently standing over by a rebuilt shed, laughing with Justin as they reenacted the time that Kevin had kidnapped the Prince and knocked me through the weapons’ storage. I glared at the both of them as Kevin gave a whiny shriek I was sure was supposed to be me as he flailed backward toward the shed. Justin roared with laughter until they caught me watching them. Then they pointed at me and started all over again, because they were assholes and I hated the both of them.