“It certainly doesn’t hurt,” Gary muttered.
“You can’t blame Ruv for trying,” I teased Ryan. “I am quite the catch.”
“Eh,” he said. “You’re all right. A little overrated, but nothing I can’t work with.”
“Ha!” Tiggy said. “Knight Delicious Face for the win!”
Ryan looked rather pleased with himself as Tiggy held out his fist for a bump.
“You both suck,” I muttered. “Just you wait. I’ll show you overrated—”
But my witty and most likely devastating retort was cut off by a pair of approaching Meridian City Guards, huffing and panting as they ran toward us, wooden shields in one hand and long spears in another. One was taller than the other, and so that’s what I decided to name them rather than asking their names. “Sam,” Tall said. “Sam of Wilds!”
“That dragon is quite large,” Short said. “And I am learning suddenly that I have a fear of dragons. What a terrible time to have discovered this.”
“Hush,” Tall said, shoving his elbow against Short. “They’re standing right there. They can hear you!”
“But look at its teeth,” Short breathed, eyes wide, face pale under his helmet. “I bet those can bite right through armor like it was made of butter.”
“Forgive him, Mr. Wilds,” Tall said. “He’s a trainee. Today’s his second day. Unfortunately, he was assigned to shadow me.”
“Please,” I said. I gave my most charming smile. “Call me Sam. Mr. Wilds is my father.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Gary said. “Your dad is Mr. Haversford.”
“Ignore Gary,” I told the guards. “He just got done making love to the ground. You know how it is.”
The guards stared at Gary.
Gary stared right back at them. “I ain’t got no shame. I do what I want.”
“Of all the days for me to get assigned to the gates, it had to be today,” Short said. “Nobody else in my training class has to do this. They’re still in the barracks doing trust falls. I want to be doing trust falls.”
“You can trust fall right into my mouth,” Kevin said, grinning widely, showing many, many teeth. “You look… crunchy.”
“Eep,” Short said. “Oh no, my bowels.”
“Is there something you needed?” Ryan asked, crossing his arms.
Tall turned away from Gary to look at Ryan before bowing quickly. “Apologies, Knight Commander.”
“That’s the Knight Commander?” Short moaned. “Is everyone here famous? Oh my gods, even my knee pits are sweating.”
“HaveHeart for life, motherfuckers,” Tiggy said.
“Would you shut up?” Tall hissed at Short. His smile was forced when he looked back at us. “Once again, my apologies. If you would like, I can make a recommendation for his immediate dismissal.”
“Maybe even have him banished,” I teased. “Oh my gods, that was a joke! Seriously, I was just joking. You didn’t need to vomit!”
Short was wiping his mouth, the remains of some kind of meat on the front of his uniform. “I’m a nervous vomiter,” he said thickly. “When I get nervous, I throw up. And you make me—you make me hup. Hup. Hup.”
Tall smacked him in the back of the head with his spear.
“Ow!” Short cried. “What was that for?”
“So you wouldn’t embarrass me again,” Tall snapped. “Now you can focus on the pain in your head rather than throwing up on a wizard and the commander for the Castle Lockes Guard.”
“And the large dragon who could pop you into his mouth like the little human morsel that you are,” Kevin said.
“He done throwed up all over himself,” Gary said. “You would eat that.”
“Morgan of Shadows and Randall arrived this morning,” Tall said. “They are expecting you at the Tilted Cross.”
I frowned. “They shouldn’t be. They told me to head north. I ignored them.”
“Yes, well. They said you would do that.”
“Dammit,” I muttered. “I need to stop being so predictable.”
“Mama knows Morgan and Randall?” Ryan asked me. “Why does that terrify me?”
“Because it should,” I said. “Oh, and Mama doesn’t like Randall. And vice versa.”
“Oh dear gods,” Ryan said. “That’s… not good.”
“And Feng and Letnia are with them,” Tall said with a wince.
“No,” I groaned, my face in my hands. “No, no, no.”
There was an elected figurehead in Meridian City, and some semblance of a government. People voted in official elections for council members and mayors and whoever else they wanted, but it was essentially a fa?ade. Because everyone, and I mean everyone, knew the city was actually run by three different people.
Mama.
Feng.
And Letnia.
Feng ran the weapons and the gangs.
Letnia ran the drugs and the booze.
Mama ran the entertainment district.
No one crossed them. And if they did, chances are they probably weren’t heard from again.
But they were good people. Well. Mostly. The King had yet to see a need to put an end to their reign. Meridian City was… different. This was accepted. And the King knew that Mama, Feng, and Letnia would fall in line behind him should he call for it. They respected him, even if they didn’t always agree with him.
And given that everything in Meridian City was taxed heavily, it saw a lot of money going toward the Crown, money that was then turned into schools and hospitals. It went to orphanages and farmers who grew crops for Verania. It funded programs like putting more teachers in the slums. When I asked him about it, asked him how he could let them do what they did, the King had told me that sometimes, the path for the greater good was paved with unseemly things.
But having Letnia, Feng, Mama, Morgan, and Randall all in the same room?
It was like my nightmare had become corporeal. And to make things worse, I still wasn’t on even ground with Morgan and Randall after all they’d kept from me. I wondered if it was too late to run into the Dark Woods and never come out.
“Let me guess,” I said, dropping my hands. “They are demanding my immediate presence.”
“We were ordered to bring you as soon as you arrived,” Tall said, sounding rather apologetic, like he understood just how much this sucked.
“No one in my training class is going to believe this happened to me,” Short said, looking awfully green.
THE SOUNDS of normalcy we’d heard had been a lie.