“He was my mentor.”
I took a step back. “What?”
“My mentor,” Randall said slowly, as if I was stupid. Which, given the look on my face, probably wasn’t too far off. “Like Morgan is to you. Like I was to Morgan. The Great White was mine.”
I gaped at him.
“I do believe you’ve broken him,” Pat said scornfully. “So soft his mind is.”
“Oh dear,” Leslie said, squinting at me. “I hope that’s not true. I was just beginning to enjoy him.”
“He’s human,” Pat said. “There is nothing to enjoy about him.”
“Pat,” Leslie scolded. “Bite your tongue. He’s in the middle of a revelation. You know how tiny their brains are. It’s a lot to process. And they only have one heart. All that blood and only one organ to pump it? Why, it’s no wonder he’s drooling a little.”
“Wet and sticky,” Pat muttered. “That’s all humans are. If it’s not coming out one end, it’s out the other.”
“I find I rather like their ends,” Kevin said.
Pat glared at him.
“Um,” Kevin said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You are precious,” Leslie said. “Like a little puppy.”
“Thank… you?”
“Roll over, little puppy. I think your tummy needs to be rubbed.”
And wonder of all wonders, Kevin did, the ground shaking beneath our feet.
But I was still gaping at Randall.
“Are you finished?” Randall asked irritably. “I don’t know that we have time to deal with how you normally are right now.”
“But—but—”
“Sputtering,” Randall said. “That’s just great. Maybe you are broken.”
“Good puppy,” Leslie said, lifting herself out from underneath Pat. She trudged over to where Kevin lay, his tail twitching. Her wings fluttered briefly as she lifted from the ground and landed on Kevin’s stomach, where she proceeded to knead the soft and vulnerable skin of his underbelly like a cat.
“I don’t even know what’s happening right now,” I said faintly. “I feel like I’ve ingested a shit-ton of drugs and am tripping my balls off.”
“I am the happiest I’ve ever been,” Kevin purred.
“So many drugs,” I breathed.
“She’s mothering him,” Pat said, managing to sound fond and disgusted all at the same time. “She tends to do that with any creature she can find.”
“But dragons don’t have mothers,” I said without thinking.
Pat’s head snapped toward me, teeth bared. “Your point? You think that just because we aren’t born like other creatures that we are not capable of showing care and concern?”
“No,” I said hastily. “No, of course not.”
“He tends to move his mouth without the benefit of thought,” Randall said dryly.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You so don’t get to give me shit right now. Not after finding out the Great White was your mentor. How is that even possible? He’s a dragon. You’re a human.”
“Are dragons not magic?” he asked, arching a massive eyebrow.
“Yes, but—”
“And are they not capable of teaching others?”
“But you can’t even talk to them! Only I can do that. How the hell did you learn anything if you couldn’t even speak to the Great White?”
“I never said I couldn’t speak to dragons,” Randall said.
I was confused. “But Morgan said he’d never heard of anyone speaking to dragons before. He didn’t even know dragons could speak!”
“Veranian, yes. The language of men.”
I squinted at him. “So, you speak… dragon? Like… grr? Snarl? Rawr?”
“And this is the chosen one,” Pat said. “And that is one of the five dragons.”
I looked over at Kevin. Leslie was cooing down at him, her claws dimpling his skin. His tongue was lolling out of his mouth, and his right leg was kicking.
“Curious, isn’t it?” Randall said. “It appears the gods find this whole thing most amusing.”
“I am so confused,” I moaned. “I don’t know anything about dragons.”
“I’m different than you are,” Randall said with a put-upon sigh.
“Yeah, no fucking shit.”
“Mind your tone, boy.”
I winced. “My bad, dude. Totally sorry.”
Pat didn’t look very impressed.
“Magic is a language all on its own,” Randall said. “When magic is compatible with another, language isn’t much of a barrier. Have you ever felt your magic when it combines with Morgan’s? Have you ever worked at his side without speaking but known what he expected of you?”
I… had. Come to think of it, there were many occasions where Morgan and I would be in the labs at Castle Lockes and hours would go by without a word spoken. There was always a sense of something between his magic and mine, something that felt like home. I couldn’t quite know what he was thinking—it wasn’t telepathy; his voice wasn’t ever in my head—but it was an awareness of him.
To a lesser extent, I had the same feeling with Randall.
And the dragons.
They were pulses in my head, though it appeared distance muted them, as Zero was the faintest of blips. Not like Kevin and the feathered dragons, who were bright and strong.
“And so you learned from the Great White,” I said slowly. “He instructed you in magic?” Then I remembered the conversation we’d had before. “He’s the one who told you cornerstones were the folly of men.”
“He mentored me, yes,” Randall said, stroking his beard. “And because of him, I was able to pass the Trials without a cornerstone. I believed him. Until…”
“Until Myrin.” Gods.
He looked away.
“You’ll have to forgive me,” I said weakly. “Because I’m having a hard time processing all of this.”
“He’s not very quick, is he?” Pat asked.
“Most of the time,” Randall said. “It can be quite frustrating. He also has the tendency to turn objects into phalluses.”
“How uncouth,” Pat sniffed.
“Gwar gurgh blargh,” Kevin said.
“Who’s a big boy?” Leslie asked. “Yes, you’re a big precious boy, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
“I don’t understand,” I said, ignoring all of them. “Did he tell you about me? Did you know about me all this time?”
“No, Sam,” Randall said, his glower softening ever so lightly. “I swear to you that I knew nothing about you until Vadoma. And that is the truth.”
“So he hid this from you too?”
Randall sighed. “I have made my peace with it. He was never as Morgan is with you. He was not my friend. He was not my family. He did not care for me as Morgan cares for you.”
“So you say,” Pat chided. “You have not spoken to him in centuries. You know not of how he felt.”
Randall scowled at her. “I had a pretty good idea when he disappeared shortly after Myrin came into my life.”
And I could hear the anger then, in his voice, and knew the betrayal Randall had experienced went so much further than just Myrin. If Randall was telling the truth—and I had no reason to think he wasn’t, as preposterous as it sounded—it meant his mentor had known of the future, had known what it would bring.