“Are you okay?” Ryan asked.
I hadn’t even realized I’d closed my eyes. I opened them, only to find Ryan standing in front of me, sword sheathed, a worried look on his face. I blinked at him, trying to clear my vision of the brighter colors that had begun to swirl around him.
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s fucking weird. You’re so colorful.”
His brow wrinkled. “Huh? Sam, your pupils are really blown out.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes I want to blow you out.”
There was a choking sound right next to me. I turned and looked and saw what was possibly the most amazing creature in all of existence.
“Oh my gods,” Gary said. “He’s tripping balls.”
“I’m not tripping balls,” I said, wondering when my voice had gotten so deep. “You’re tripping balls. I love you. You have no idea how much.”
A gigantic head came into my vision, a nose almost pressed against mine. “Sam really high?” the gigantic head asked.
“Tiggy,” I breathed. “Your very name is like a balm on my beleaguered soul. We should do a choreographed dance every time we enter a room so everyone will know how wonderful we are.”
“I will remember this forever,” Gary said. “I have been given no greater gift than this. Make him do funny shit so we can make fun of him forever! Sam, what do you think of Ryan?”
“His face,” I said. “I like that shit.” I bopped him on the nose.
“Yassss,” Gary hissed.
“Enough,” another voice said. I didn’t like that voice at all. “We do not have much time. It has already started.”
“Someone needs to take a chill pill,” I said. “We’re all just hanging out, man. You know? Just hanging out and chilling. My balls are cold, but it ain’t no thing. Ryan likes them a lot. He puts them in his—”
Ryan slapped a hand over my mouth, and my eyes widened at the contrails it left behind, like his fingers were leaking every color possible. “That’s probably enough of that.”
“I love you so hard,” I said, but it came out mghmghshhgh.
“I know,” he said, eyes crinkling because he could understand me like no one else did.
“Step back,” the voice I didn’t like said. “We must hurry.”
Ryan’s hand tensed on my face before it dropped away. “You said this wouldn’t hurt him.”
“And it won’t. Physically. But the longer we wait, the less of a chance I have to show him what he needs to see. Now step away.”
“Ryan,” another voice said. That voice I knew, even if I was a little mad at it right now. “I know you don’t trust her. But you can trust me. I wouldn’t let this happen if I thought it was going to harm him in any way.”
Ryan didn’t look very appeased at that. “And I’m supposed to believe you, Morgan? You’ve kept things from him all his life. What else haven’t you told us? Told him? Do you know what it means to grow up in the slums? What it does to a person? You could have saved him. You could have helped him.”
“It’s not as easy as you think.”
“It’s easier than you—”
“Knight Commander.”
“My King.”
“I give you my word. No harm will come to him.”
And even then, Ryan hesitated. Then he bowed. “My King.” It was said begrudgingly, as if it came at great expense. But before I could follow it, before I could chide the man I loved for being his usual self (and possibly fawn over him disgustingly for having my back as he did), I became distracted by these bright and shining threads that burst from my chest.
“Sweet molasses,” I managed to say. “This is some fucked-up shit right here. I’m made of glowing strings.”
“Yeah,” Gary said. “Really fucking tripping balls. Everyone watch out for pirate ships.”
The first strings were white and shining, thick and strong. There were a couple of them, and they curved through the air until they latched on to two different people.
My mother and father. There was a love to them, a bond that I didn’t think could ever be broken.
The next set of strings was red and powerful. There was a sense of duty in them, of loyalty that came from responsibility. There was love in them too, but it was of a different sort. It latched on to the King and the Prince. The King’s thread was like that of my parents in that I knew it would hold. The one with Justin was more tenuous, but I knew it would get stronger if we let it.
Randall’s string was yellowed, like the pages in an old book. It was stiffer than the others, but it held.
Morgan’s was a swirling green, and it came from just below my throat. It shook with magic that curled with my own, slow and familiar. It almost felt like my parents’, but there were minute differences to it, differences that I couldn’t quite parse out. For a moment, I thought I felt his sadness, his hurt over a perceived betrayal, but before I could follow it, it was gone.
Three more strings came forth, centered around my heart. They were blue, like the sky in the height of summer. Each one was firmly anchored within me, and they led to Gary and Tiggy and Kevin. It was friendship and brotherhood, the sense that I would die for these fools, if there was need for it. Gary’s and Tiggy’s were stronger than Kevin’s, the years between us binding us together in ways it couldn’t with the dragon. But the dragon’s had something else mixed into it that no other string had, a shot of heterochromia, the colors shifting so quickly that I couldn’t name a single one. It was at the core of his thread, and I felt it call to me, saying here, here, here, this is why you are here, this is providence, this is the future.
I didn’t like that part very much.
Nor did I like the threads, weak as they were, that reached toward Vadoma and Ruv. Vadoma’s was sickly in color, a pale orange that pulsed faintly. The thread to Ruv was a little stronger, a little healthier, though not by much, yellow like a muted sun. My magic reached for it tentatively but shied away before the connection could be made.
But it was the last thread that commanded my attention. It came from the center of my heart, bright gold and fibrous. I felt the pull of it, the way it tugged against the bonds in my chest. It had fastened itself securely in me, and even as I watched, little arcs of electricity shot through the thread like lightning in a storm. It crackled down the length of the thread until it reached Ryan Foxheart. My magic was not shy here. It didn’t pull away. No, it sang as the runes on my skin burned, as the world began to melt around me, the colors all bleeding together.
And even though my mind was a blurry place, where specific thoughts eluded me, I knew one thing to be fact above all others: that if these were the threads that tied us together, then Ryan was the tether that held me earthbound. This was the cornerstone, the building block, and I marveled how bright it was.