“He’s lucky that it was you who came in and not Ryan,” I told Morgan. “Because Ryan absolutely does not like Moishe.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Morgan said, and I itched to go to him, to hug him tightly, given the weeks we’d been apart. Two things stopped me: I was still pretty much naked and still pretty much angry with him.
“Right? It’s because he wants all up on this,” I said, awkwardly pointing at myself, still holding the shirt in my other hand. I didn’t necessarily have a problem with nudity, and there were times in my earlier days when I’d accidently done a spell that had burned off all my clothes once or twice in front of Morgan, but the scars on my chest were… different. For him. And we both knew it. They meant something more. They meant Myrin was real.
And I wanted to talk about it even less than I wanted him to see them.
Unfortunately for me, it was too late for that already.
“He did this?” Morgan asked me.
I could do this. I could play this off. “Pretty gnarly, right? I don’t know if they’re going to stick around or if I’ll—”
“Sam.”
Okay. Maybe I couldn’t play this off. I sighed and pulled the shirt on. The fabric brushed against the raised scars, irritating them slightly, but nothing I couldn’t deal with. “He didn’t do anything. I did. I don’t know if it started with the sand mermaids—which, by the way, thanks for not ever telling me those things existed—or if it was just because of… the lake… thing, but it happened, okay? There’s nothing I can do to change it. There’s nothing that you can do to change it. Unless there’s something else you neglected to tell me.”
“I deserve that,” he said evenly.
“Damn right you do,” I said, turning and dropping the towel. I pulled on the sleep pants as quickly as possible. I pulled on the strings to tie them off. “And furthermore—”
“But what I do not deserve is your derision.”
My hands stilled. My shoulders tensed.
“I do not deserve to be treated like I am the enemy,” he continued flatly. “I do not deserve to have you act this way toward me. I’ve made a mistake. I have apologized for this mistake. I have given you the reasons as to why I made said mistake. And yet you stand here, treating me as if I am nothing to you. You don’t get to do that, Sam. Not to me. Not after everything we’ve been through. You are allowed to be angry with me. You are not allowed to dismiss me.”
He was right, of course. More than I cared to admit. I’d let this… this thing come between us, let my anger fill my heart and cover my eyes until I saw nothing but red. It wasn’t okay, what he did. What Randall did. Nothing about it was okay. They had kept this from me, this secret that essentially dictated my entire life. They allowed my parents to suffer in the slums. Yes, he came eventually, but only when I’d displayed a propensity for magic. If he believed the destiny laid out by the star dragon through Vadoma, shouldn’t he have done everything he could have to make sure my family and I were safe? People died in the slums every day, either from disease or starvation or having their lives ripped from them by someone else. That happened everywhere, sure, but it was more prone to happen in the slums.
We had been happy, my parents and I. But it could have been more.
And that’s where the betrayal came from. Not that he didn’t tell me.
It came from the nights when my father went hungry because he would rather see his wife and son with their bellies full than his own.
It came from the days when I’d heard my mother crying and I couldn’t find a way to make her happy.
It came from the rainy mornings when the roof of our shack leaked and we’d be huddled under blankets together, trying to stay warm.
I’d learned that every society has their rich. Their middle class. Their poor. It was how things worked.
But Morgan and, in turn, Randall had allowed us to stay where we were.
That is why I was angry with him. Not just for me, but for my parents.
He loved me. I didn’t doubt that. Maybe, at the beginning, his actions had been motivated by what he’d been told, by what he’d seen I could do when I turned those boys to stone and back, but it’d grown organically, just like it should have.
He loved me.
“You may have made me angry, and I may not trust you as I once did, but I love you, Morgan. I pretty much always will. You’re my Brother Uncle Dad, remember?”
“You capitalized that, didn’t you.”
“Sure did. You couldn’t even take it back now if you wanted to.”
“Gods only know that I wouldn’t want that,” he said, dry as dust, and I felt this little pang in my chest, this little crack that I thought maybe came from the fact that my mentor was standing right in front of me for the first time in weeks and I wasn’t taking advantage.
Then he said, “Oh no, you have your hugging face on,” and I said, “You’re damn fucking right I do, you best be ready,” and he sighed, like he was put out by it, but there was a small smile on his face, as if he’d filled suddenly with relief and a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. I stomped over to him, and even though the lightning wounds pulled sharply, I gave it all I had.
I thought of the bird that day so long ago in the Dark Woods, how I had wished it wasn’t so and then suddenly it wasn’t, wings flapping as it flew away, the earth black and dead beneath my feet.
Life is like this: it aches. It’s biting, and you ache from it. You are strong, because they tell you that you are. You are stronger than anything they’ve ever seen. You have to be. It is what is expected of you.
But it can ache, and it pulls on you like nothing ever has. You breathe through it because that’s the only thing you can do. You push against it, and maybe you stumble. Maybe you trip and fall. Maybe you skin your hands and knees, your hair hanging around your face as you struggle for breath, blood oozing from your wounds.
Or maybe it’s worse. Maybe you break your bones and bite clear through your lip. Maybe you can’t find the strength to pick yourself up again. It’s easier, you think, to just stay where you are. Because if you get up, if you push yourself on, there’s a chance the same thing will happen and you’ll be right here where you are, curled up and in agony. And maybe you’ll eventually get to the point where you won’t get up at all.
But then there is a hand extended to you, and it’s kind and warm, and the arm attached to the hand is strong. And maybe, if you trust it enough, it can pull you up. And if you’re lucky, the arm will go around your waist, and even though you ache, even though it’s biting and you ache from it, you’ll be held up and you can breathe again for the first time. It expands inside your chest, and the crystal clarity of it all aches too, but it’s a good ache. Because sometimes hurt can be good too.
Life is like this: It’s biting, and you ache from it. But you are strong.
That’s what Morgan taught me.
I felt my magic curl with his, and I thought home. Maybe we wouldn’t be exactly like we were. A lot had happened, and I was still so angry with him. But one day, maybe things could be good again.