“Yes, yes,” Gary said. “We all know what you mean. You should really keep your sexual deviancy to yourself.”
“Um, are we, or are we not, captured by the centaur who you were going to have a threesome with.”
Gary grinned. “My life is so exciting.”
“And now that you mention it,” Jeffrey said faintly, “the rest of you are all fancied up too.”
And they were! Gary’s mane and tail were streaked with pinks and purples, flowers from my mother’s garden woven into his braided hair. His horn had been polished and his hooves painted. I thought he was wearing mascara too, but I didn’t ask, because one never asked if a unicorn was wearing mascara. I most certainly didn’t want to purchase a one-way ticket to Gore City, seeing as it was now a viable destination.
Tiggy, as he was wont to do, didn’t accept any help from anyone in choosing his outfit. He wore green breeches and a yellow shirt with puffy sleeves. He topped it all off with a purple top hat that Mama had made especially for him. He looked like the world’s largest pimp. Randall approved.
“Thank you for noticing,” Gary said, batting his eyelashes at our captor. “Enchanté.”
“You are so gross,” I muttered.
Jeffrey looked rather fearful. “So what you’re saying is that I’ve kidnapped you on your wedding day.”
“Wow. You’re so quick. Good job, dude.”
“And that probably means there are people looking for you.”
“Literally thousands, most like. I don’t know if you know this, but my latest polls came out, and apparently I’m quite popular now. People find me appealing.”
“Which was barely ahead of off-putting,” Gary said gleefully.
“I smash you soon,” Tiggy promised Jeffrey.
“Oh no,” Jeffrey said.
“So!” I said. “Since we’ve established that I’m going to be marrying the dreamiest dream who has ever been dreamed, and that a billion people are probably descending upon our very location as we speak, maybe just let us go, huh? I swear I won’t let Tiggy smash you.”
“I smash you gooood,” Tiggy said.
“Okay, so he’ll smash you,” I admitted. “But that’s just par for the course. Unless this is going to be another Lartin thing. Because dude, that sucked. Are you super famous in the centaur world?”
“No. Well, I mean, not super famous, but I get by—”
“Eh, close enough. Tiggy, maybe not kill him smash him, but the sort of smashing where his bones are broken and he’ll regret being alive for the next six months, and whenever he hears our names, he will quake in fear.”
“I do that,” Tiggy said.
“Good,” I said. “Now that that’s settled, what say you let us out of here so we can get this show on the—”
“No!” Jeffrey snapped. “You know what? I’m in charge here. Meaning we’re going to do what I say. I have captured you, and therefore, this moment is mine. You will listen as I lay out my plan to take over Verania, and you will like it.”
“Oh, bitch,” Gary breathed. “Shouldn’t have said that, bitch.”
“That’s how you want to do it?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “Fine.”
Jeffrey looked surprised. “Really?”
“I mean, yeah. Sure. I guess.”
“Oh. Okay. I just—I thought there’d be more resistance.”
“Nah, you were pretty forceful, dude. I was impressed.”
“Ha!” Jeffrey crowed. “If only my father could be here to hear you say that. You hear that, Dad? I’m forceful. Suck on that, you absentee asshole!”
“You were going to have sex with him,” I whispered to Gary.
“Yeah,” Gary said, staring at Jeffrey. “My bad.”
“I was seven when my father left to go get a pack of cigarettes and never returned,” Jeffrey began. “I’ll be right back, he said. Don’t you worry, he said. But I did. I did worry. And for good reason too! Because he never came back!”
“Why do so many villains have daddy issues?” I whispered to Gary and Tiggy.
“Tiggy smash now?”
“Not yet, my friend. Not quite yet.”
“I have daddy issues, and you don’t see me turning into a villain,” Gary said.
“We-ell,” I said. “You’re firmly planted in a morally gray area, so I wouldn’t try and hang your hat on that.”
“And so what if I wrote a play in forty-seven acts when I was in the sixth grade entitled Daddy, Why Won’t You Love Me? I was only trying to find a creative outlet in order to deal with my childhood trauma!”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I do believe I’m sick of this. I would like to be rescued right about now.”
“You know,” Gary said, “for someone who only recently defeated an evil wizard and saved the world, you still need to be rescued a lot.”
I shrugged. “I only do it so other people feel like they contribute. I don’t like taking all the credit.”
“Sam, the King threw a parade in your honor, and you insisted on being the grand marshal and having a float with your face on it.”
“I asked you if that was too much. You said no!”
“Yeah, not for a unicorn. You’re a human, Sam. Your ego needs to be kept in check. A unicorn, however, such as myself, needs to have their ego fed, because it helps to increase our magic, and therefore keeps us alive.”
“Tiggy, is that true?”
“No,” Tiggy said. “Gary a liar and a fat mouth.”
“Tiggy!” Gary gasped. “How dare you say such a truthful thing?”
Tiggy shrugged. “Just want to smash, but no one let Tiggy smash. What about what Tiggy want?”
“Aw,” Gary and I both said.
“Dude, I am going to hug you so hard when we get out of here.”
“Jeffrey, yoo-hoo, Jeffrey,” Gary said shrilly.
Jeffrey blinked, his words about something something daddy dying in his throat. “What?”
“Do you see that tall, strapping, handsome giant?”
“Um. Yes?”
“He is very dear to me.”
“O… kay?”
“Be a good fellow and release him so he can smash you. He’s earned it.”
Jeffrey frowned. “But… I don’t want to be smashed.”
Gary’s eyes narrowed. “Look, Jeffrey, it’s going to happen one way or another. I think it would be better for you if you just accepted that. You won’t like him when he’s angry.”
“Too late,” Tiggy growled.
“Uh-oh,” Gary said ominously.
“Uh-oh,” I agreed.
“Of course this is where I’d find you, Sam,” a voice said from the mouth of the cave.
And just like that, I knew we’d be okay.
Jeffrey whirled around just in time to see Morgan of Shadows step toward him. He looked fondly bemused as he took the scene before him in. Tiggy waved at him, and Gary blew kisses in his direction.
And me?
I just… stared in awe, as I’d done ever since the day I’d found him in the gardens. It’d been four months since the showdown with Myrin, and I still couldn’t get over the fact that Morgan was here, that he was alive, that he had chosen life, Verania, us, me, over crossing the veil.
When Myrin had taken his magic, Morgan had died. He sacrificed himself for me, for my Destiny of Dragons. But he hadn’t crossed the veil, not at that moment. He’d been in a sort of limbo that apparently wasn’t all that different than midtown City of Lockes. He’d conversed with gods on sidewalks lined with clouds, eaten with old friends in a diner run by elves almost as old as the Great White. I knew he’d seen Anya—his cornerstone—again, but he didn’t say much about that. I didn’t push. It wasn’t meant for me.
But even with all of that, even with the promise of a life ever after beckoning him, David’s Dragon had given Morgan a choice: either return to the living world or cross the veil to his reward for a life well lived.
He chose the King and the Prince. He chose his labs and his Grimoire. He chose Randall and Gary and Kevin and Tiggy. He chose Ryan. He chose Verania.
“But above all else,” he’d whispered in my ear as I sobbed into his shoulder in the garden, “I chose you, little one, because a world in which I could not see your face isn’t a world I’m ready to live in.”
So, yeah. Awe. Every godsdamn time.
“Oh girl,” Gary said to Jeffrey. “You’re in for it now.”
“Oh girl,” Tiggy agreed. “So in.”