Oh my gods, I could—
“No,” he snapped, suddenly leaning forward, placing his gnarled hands on my knees, squeezing tightly. My Grimoire fell off his lap onto the ground. “You cannot, Sam. If that is to be his ending, then it must be the end. Should the Knight Commander fall, he will have had his shackles removed and he will be free. You cannot bind him to this life again. You cannot bring him back. The amount of energy for a bird destroyed part of the forest for good. What would it take to bring back a human with all his memories and all his thoughts, if that were even possible? What would the cost be?”
Worth it, a little voice whispered. Any price. I would pay any price.
“You can say that,” I said hoarsely. “You can say what I can and can’t do, because you’re not me. You can sit there and tell me what to do, resting easy in the knowledge that I am the one paying for your mistakes. That I have to be the one to kill Myrin or have him take everything. Not you. Yes, he’ll die. But I think for you, he died a long time ago. This man, he’s nothing but a shadow of what he once was. But Ryan… he—” My breath hitched in my chest. “—he would pay for your mistakes too. Only with his life. You can’t tell me that I can’t do anything to—”
His fingers dug into my knees. I was sure there’d be bruises there tomorrow. “I am sorry for what we’ve done, for all the mistakes that we have made. But Sam, you must heed my warning. It would change him. He would not be the same person he was before.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “You said that this was only ever theory before me. You don’t know what could happen.”
“Think about it! A bird, the smallest of birds, burned the life out of the earth. If this were to be a human, if this were Ryan, what would the end result be? If it were to work, what would you burn in order to save him? Your parents? The King? Gary and Tiggy?”
I recoiled away from him in shock. “Stop.”
“Stone crumbles, Sam. A path may be set, but stone crumbles. Zero was right to tell you this. Vadoma can say what she will. The damn gods can write the future in the stars, but I am telling you right here and now that stone crumbles, and we will do everything we can to help you, to help all of us.”
“But what if it’s not enough?”
He slumped back into his chair. “You have to have hope.”
Gods, that sounded so fucking trite. “Do you?” I retorted.
“I have to,” he said tiredly. “It’s all I have left. This hope. This belief that one day, the mistakes that I have made as a man who loved another will be washed clean and forgiven. That the world will continue to exist in the light long after my own candle has been snuffed out and I am but a wisp of smoke. I have made mistakes, Sam. So many mistakes. I am sorry for them. That you and yours have to live with the actions of an old man who thought he was doing the right thing. If I could relieve you of this burden, I would. More than anything else, that is what I wish when I look upon the stars. That you would be free from all of this, able to live the life you deserve. I have been… harsh with you, only because I see myself in you. Your strength, your attitude, rough though it may be, reminds me of how I acted for a very long time. And that’s not to say that you’re doing anything wrong. You’re not; you are living your life just as well as you should. Or at least you were before all of this.”
“Did you know?” I asked him quietly. “When Kevin came. That all of this was beginning?”
He nodded slowly. “It was a sign.”
“And you said you didn’t know it would be Myrin.”
“No.”
“The bird.”
“What you’re really asking is if I planned on using you all this time.”
I stared straight at him. “Yes.”
“At first.”
I swallowed thickly. “What changed your mind?”
“You did. You were me. And even if you weren’t, Sam, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have done anything. When I say at first, I mean that it was the briefest of thoughts, done so in passing. Something considered in the dead of night when I couldn’t sleep. It was… dark. It was dark, but I am not.”
“How did you stop him the first time?”
“Containment. Compression.”
“Morgan.”
“Yes.”
“How is it that you can’t do that?”
“How is it that Morgan cannot travel as I can? How is it that I do not have a lightning-struck heart as you do? It’s…. Magic is a fingerprint, Sam. It’s unique to the person. You can do things that I have never thought possible. There are things that I can do that you might never achieve, but I can’t be sure of that. You are… different. Than all of us that have come before you.”
“But you said that we’re the same, you and I.”
His smile was a fragile thing. “We were.”
“But not anymore?”
“I am far too old to have the wonder you carry for the world. And I don’t want to see that wonder burned from you.”
He fell silent after that, allowing me to process everything that had been said. I didn’t know what to do with most of it. I didn’t know what to say. I was angry at him yet again, but the anger was muted by the fact that I understood. I couldn’t blame him too much if I thought I’d have done the same thing had I been in his shoes.
We were human. We breathed. We lived. We laughed. We broke. And in the end, we loved each other down to our very souls. We moved with a strange grace, the dance of life that pushed us together, and didn’t we just cling to each other? Didn’t we just hold on as tightly as we could in fear that at any possible moment, we’d be torn away?
We did.
Randall had danced his life. He had made his choices. And now he sat across from me, slouched and weary.
“I don’t want to live forever,” I finally said.
“You won’t.”
“I don’t want to live as long as you.”
“You won’t. My heart beats because I am forcing it to. Apparently I can be quite stubborn when I need to be.”
“Or as long as Morgan.”
He closed his eyes. “Sam—”
“I don’t want longevity. I want—”
“Your magic will keep you alive.”
“Then maybe I don’t want it.”
His eyes snapped open. “How can you—”
For the first time in my life, I said, “I want to be normal.”
“Sam, if there is one thing you are not, it is normal. Normal does not have its fate written in the stars.”
“I can’t leave him,” I said. “I won’t. If stone crumbles, then I want to crumble right along with it. If we… survive this. If we defeat Myrin, I want to age like a human. I want to live a normal life.”
“You are meant to be the King’s Wizard,” Randall said, sitting up higher. He squared his shoulders. “You have a duty to the people of Verania. To the Crown.”
“I will find a way,” I said. “I will help you with your mistakes, but I will find a way.”
“Why?” he breathed, shaking his head.
I threw his words back in his face. “I love him. Maybe more than I’ve ever loved anything in this world, before and after. He is this light. This beautiful light that I think I can be consumed by. That’s what he—”
“Stop.”