“Moment ruined! I am losing my erection. I am the opposite of Sam right now. I am not even remotely Sam right now.”
“Whyyyy,” I moaned up at the night sky that stretched above us as we camped along the edge of the Dark Woods. “Whyyyy does this have to be a thing?”
“You’re telling me,” a voice muttered.
I turned my head to see Justin sitting near the fire, stoking it with a burned stick. Sparks rose up in the smoke, blinking in and out.
“They’re supposed to be on watch,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my face. “How long have they been at it?”
“At least an hour.” Justin made a face. “They’re… exuberant.”
“That’s not the word I’d use.” I tried to sit up from my bedroll, but there was a heavy arm across my chest. I looked over and saw Ryan asleep and drooling on my shoulder. It should not have been as endearing as it was, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up next to him and follow him back into sleep, but then Gary started making his I’m-getting-revved-up-again noises, and I knew it wasn’t going to happen.
“I’m going to kill him,” I said as I wriggled out from underneath Ryan’s arm, careful not to wake him. “I am going to murder my best friend, and I won’t even feel bad about it.”
There was an answering snore, and I glanced over to see Tiggy asleep up against a large boulder, his chin against his chest, his hands in his lap, where Gary had been when we’d lain down for the night.
“These are your people,” Justin reminded me. “That reflects on you.”
“You’re also my people,” I said as I stood and stretched, back popping. “So take that as you will.”
“I am not your people.”
“I am a love dragon!” Kevin shouted in the distance. “Feel my love as it pulses through you!”
“There is so much pulsing!” Gary screeched in response. “I am filled with your pulses!”
I shuddered.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked Justin as I sat down beside him, our shoulders touching. He scowled at me, shoving me over to put a small distance between us.
“No one should be able to sleep through that racket,” he said.
“Eh. We’re used to it by now.” Something sounded like it squelched. “Mostly.”
“It says a lot about you as a person if you can be used to something so vile.”
I shrugged. “It’s love.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Eh, to each their own. You’ll see. One day.” I glanced at Ryan and smiled softly. He’d rolled over onto my pillow, smashing his lovely bearded face into it.
“I sure hope not,” Justin said. “I don’t ever want to get the look you have on your face right now. It’s ridiculous.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure, dude.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Okay, best friend 5eva.”
He scoffed but said nothing more. I was thrilled. Pretty soon our best friend 5eva friendship would be sealed and nothing would be able to break it.
I opened my mouth to tell him as much but instead said, “You can’t have sex with Ryan.” And then slapped my hand over my mouth because what.
Justin choked. “Excuse me?”
I shook my head frantically, not trusting myself to remove my hand.
“Sam,” Justin hissed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I squeaked through my hand. “Absolutely nothing.”
Justin glanced back and forth between Ryan and me. Then he grinned.
Evilly.
“You’re jealous,” he said, sounding far too gleeful.
And I wasn’t. So what if Ryan hadn’t appeared until the next morning after I’d met with the feathered dragons. So what if he’d been slightly distant since the secrets I’d been carrying had been revealed. So what if in the weeks since we’d left Castle Freesias, he and Justin had been all buddy-buddy. It was fine. Everything about it was fine.
I wasn’t jealous.
Not at all.
(Okay, I was roiling with it.)
I glowered at the fire, Justin cackling next to me, the sounds of Gary getting plowed by a dragon while screaming just how Sam he was in the background.
All in all, not one of my best nights.
“Oh gods,” Justin said, wiping his eyes. “Get that look off your face, you fool. It’s not like that.”
“So you wouldn’t take him back if he asked?”
Justin sighed. “Sam.”
“What? It’s just a question.”
“Right. Look. What you did, the secrets you kept, it…. No, Sam. I wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t ask, regardless of what my answer would be. He doesn’t see me like that. As disgusting as it is, his heart belongs to you. And I don’t know that I ever loved him that way. I cared for him, sure. But… it was a power move. For the both of us. I wanted my father off my back, and Ryan wanted to prove himself to the knights. It was mutually beneficial, and it really wasn’t anything more than that.”
“You slept together,” I said, the words slightly choked.
He shrugged. “And? He’s hot. Of course I did.”
“He really is.”
“The beard is gross, though.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I demanded. “The beard makes me want to sex his face.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, that’s not something I ever want to hear about. Especially with the sounds of a unicorn achieving orgasm somewhere behind us.”
He was right. Gary was making his orgasm wail. The fact that I knew what that sound meant made me realize it was time to set some boundaries for our friendship.
“His beard is sexy,” I said.
“It makes him look like a beggar.”
I felt a little cold at that. “Well, the both of us used to be, Your Highness.”
Justin shoved me on my good shoulder. I’d taken the sling off the week before, but it was still slightly tender. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I don’t see it like that anymore. People can change, Sam. And as loath as I am to admit it, I am one of those people. Working closer with my father has… broadened my horizons.”
It’d been a point of contention for Justin, feeling like the King hadn’t cared about him as much as he did the people of Verania. It’d been bullshit, of course, because I didn’t think there was anyone the King loved more than his son. Granted, he might not have known how to show it, and Justin had had a point where it seemed as if the King had been more interested in marrying Justin off than allowing him to make his own choices, but that was all in the past.
“I know,” I said, sitting back up. “Old habits, I guess. I’m still protective of where I came from.”
“And can you say they feel the same for you?” he asked. “It seems to me that part of Lady Tina’s army is built of people from the slums, even if that seems to be to her distaste.”
“Ugh,” I said. “Can I tell you something, not as the Prince of Verania, but as my best friend 5eva?”
“We’re not—”
“I knew I could trust you. Secret handshake!” I started the intricately complicated motions for our handshake.
He just sat there.
“You’re right,” I said. “We can just practice later.”
“I didn’t say—”
“So, as my best friend 5eva and not the Prince of Verania, how would you go about plotting the demise of a teenage girl?”
He stared at me.
I waggled my eyebrows at him.
“How did we even get here?” he asked.