The Lightning-Struck Heart (35 page)

“Self-centered and ambitious?” I asked quietly.

Her smile took on a melancholic curve. “Not quite. The ambition, maybe. I don’t know that you have it in you to be selfish. But sometimes I wish you did. Because then you’d see what should be yours for the taking.”

“I can’t,” I said, because I knew now what she was talking about.

“I know, precious. Because that’s not who you are.”

“It’s not fair.”
To Justin. To Ryan.

To me.

“Such things never are,” she said.

“It’s not….”

She waited.

Instead, I said, “I have to go.”

“Do you?”

“I’m not running away from you,” I promised her. Even though I sort of was.

“As if you ever could,” she said. “I’d be liable to chase you until your legs tired and then drag you back to my den and never let you leave.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

“Sam. You need to watch your back, okay? I don’t know what’s out there. I don’t know what’s coming. But you need to make sure that you’re ready for it. If I find out you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed, I’ll murder you. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

She stood up from her desk and walked around it, never taking her eyes from me. She towered above me as she put her strong hands on my arms, squeezing them tightly. She bent over and kissed my forehead, a loud smack that itched. “Life is about chances. Unless you take them, you’ll never know what they could bring.”

I nodded, because it was the only way she’d let me leave. And I think she knew that.

“I’ll be okay, Mama,” I said. “You’ll see.”

She looked like she didn’t believe me. “I hope so, Sam. For all our sakes. Watch yourself, precious. The world has teeth and wouldn’t care if one such as yourself got bit.”

I turned and left my fairy drag mother standing alone in her office.

R
YAN
WAS
waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. Moishe was glaring at him, and the other courtesans were watching him with thinly veiled lust and interest in their eyes. He didn’t look at any of them, only at me.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and he said, “Sam, what I said in there—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Whatever you did, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“I had to get out,” he said, looking away. “Of the slums. It cost money I didn’t have. Favors.”

I kept my face blank at the stark admission. He’d whored himself out so he could leave the slums behind. My stomach felt sour at the thought of it. He’d told me that I’d been a big reason for him leaving the slums. So, of course, I took it now as I’d forced him into this. It hurt. It burned. Guilt weighed me down, and I wanted nothing more than to put my arms around him and hold him close. To tell him that it would be okay. That everything would be okay. That I didn’t care what he’d done in the past because all we had to do now was look to the future.

But I didn’t.

I was getting too close to something that wasn’t mine to have.

So I said, “We all do what we have to.” I patted his shoulder and moved around him. Every step I took hurt more than the one before it.

Oops

T
HE
SUMMONING
crystal lit up three days later. We were on the road to Tarker Mills, and I felt we didn’t know much more than we had when we’d started out. In fact, even knowing the possible location of the Prince only led to more questions, and if there was one thing I fucking hated more than
anything
, it was unanswered questions.

So I brooded.

Gary, Tiggy, and Ryan noticed, of course. I scowled at them and rolled my eyes any time they interrupted my thoughts. Gary told me I was acting like a little bitch. Tiggy said I was being rude. Ryan just looked at me with big eyes that made me want to hug him forever and not let anyone hurt him ever again.

Naturally, that pissed me off even more.

There were secrets between us all. Well.
I
had secrets, specifically the cornerstone business, and it was itching and crawling along my skin, a low-level irritation that was starting to build.

Life was hard and I felt like whining, so I kept my mouth shut and glared.

The problem was that I
never
kept anything from Gary and Tiggy. And Morgan. Mostly. But Gary and Tiggy?
Never
. And the fact that the one time I did was something as huge as finding my magical anchor was only going to lead to a shitstorm when it all inevitably came out. Which, it would. Of
course
it would. That’s just how my life went.

And yet, I said nothing.

I felt it justified, though. We had a quest to complete. Justin needed to be saved, the dragon defeated, and then we’d head to Castle Freeze Your Ass Off. I could worry about the cornerstone later. And the whole doing-magic-with-my-mind thing. There were more pressing concerns.

I wasn’t in the mood, then, when the crystal started pinging.

“Motherfucker,” I muttered.

“Are you going to get that?” Gary asked. “Maybe it will help you come out of your I’m-trying-to-be-a-martyr-but-am-really-acting-like-an-asshole phase. The gods only know how much more I can take before I give serious consideration to ending our friendship and your life.”

“No killing,” Tiggy said. “Even if Sam being a jerk.”

“Tiggy! You’re supposed to be on
my
side!”

Tiggy rolled his eyes. “Always am. Except for right now.”

I dug through my pack and pulled out the crystal. It warmed as soon as it hit my hands. “Hello.”

Silence.

“Morgan?”

A low curse.

“Not Morgan.”

“Hello!” a voice blared loudly.

I sighed because I’d recognize that voice anywhere. After all, I’d once turned his nose into a penis. It’s hard to forget someone like that. “Randall.”

“Hello!” he shouted again. “Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“Very well,” Gary said. “Too well. Like, you’re shrieking.”

Tiggy covered his ears.

“Be nice,” I whispered. “He’s old. He probably doesn’t know any better.”

“Damn things never work right,” Randall muttered to no one in particular. “Hello!”

“Randall, we can hear you just fine.”

“I’m trying to reach Sam of Wilds!”

“It’s me, Randall. You’ve got to speak into the—”

The crystal went dark. We all stared down at it.

“Did he just hang up on you?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t even know,” I said.

“Shouldn’t he know how these things work?” Gary asked. “Didn’t he invent them? Or something?”

“To be honest, I didn’t ask questions,” I said. “Morgan handed me a magic jewel and said use it and I said okay. I’m easy like that.”

“And in other ways too,” Gary muttered.

“
What
?”

“What?” he asked, batting his eyelashes. My heart instantly melted because a unicorn batting his eyelashes is
precious
.

“Gah,” I said, unable to help myself. “Your
face
. I
love
it.”

The crystal started pinging and glowing again.

“Randall?” I said.

A voice responded, but it came out muffled and intelligible.

“Randall, you’ve got to move your hand off the crystal,” I said. “We can’t hear you.”

The muffled voice grew louder and angrier.

“How old is he?” Ryan whispered to Gary.

“No one knows,” Gary whispered back. “They say he rose up when the world was created and was formed out of ash and rock and—”

“He’s almost six hundred and seventy, and he was born in a village in the east,” I said. “His parents were mill workers.”

Gary scowled at me.

“Sam of Wilds!” Randall shouted through the crystal, voice clear and cracking.

“Randall.”

“Are you there?”

“Yeah. Can you hear me?”

“Barely. These stupid things never work. You kids today with your toys and your crystals and your exploding corn. Back in
my
day, we didn’t
need
summoning crystals. If we wanted to hear from someone, we wrote a
letter
and got a response in three months.
That
was considered fast. Now, everyone is all about now, now, now. Tell me, Sam. Why is everyone in such a rush?”

“Rhetorical,” I muttered to the others. “Don’t answer it. It’ll never end.”

“I heard that, Sam of Wilds!”

“Of course you did.” I sighed. Leave it to him to be able to hear whispered sarcasm.

“Don’t you get snarky with me, you baby wizard,” he snapped. “I know how to turn your little pecker into a chicken and you will
never
be able to change it back.”

We all gaped at the crystal.

“Randall?” Gary said.

“Yes? Who’s this?”

“This is Gary, Sam’s friend.”

“Are you the giant or the unicorn?”

“The unicorn. I just have to say that you’re my new hero. ‘Baby wizard’ is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. And
please
teach me the chick-dick spell. I have to know it. Immediately.”

“A unicorn tried to kill me once,” Randall said, completely ignoring Gary. “Well, I’d just tried to kill it myself, but only because it’d come down with a case of Raging Hubris for which there was no cure. I thought I was doing it a favor, but instead, it saw it as an act of violence. Of course, this was back in my younger days when I was a bit more fit than I am now. I could run a three-minute mile and still have enough endurance left over to have relations with…”

“Nope,” I said. “Nope, nope, nope. This is not going to be a thing.”

“…the Drumond sisters,” he said, completely overriding me. “Now, the Drumond sisters were lookers, and both of them seemed to be in love with me. And by lookers, I mean you looked at them and said, eh, why not? But given the size of my…”

“Oh gods no,” I whispered.

“…heart, I could not choose between them. Needless to say, they were extraordinarily jealous of each other, but I made sure to spread my time equally between them so each of them could have a little bit of Randall. Now back in those days, it wasn’t required that one be accompanied by a chaperone. It certainly made things easier when we wanted to…”

“It’s like we aren’t even here,” Ryan said in awe.

“…go dancing. Now people are so concerned with
virtue
and
innocence
that they are
blinded
to the fact that when people get together, sex happens. We are held by societal standards that the body needs to be covered up and that we need to speak in prim and proper tones and words. Why, back in
my
day, clothing was optional! If you didn’t want to wear trousers, you didn’t have to! It was okay to go out and for everyone to see your…”

“My stomach hurts,” Gary said.

“…dedication to freeing your spirit from the confines of rigid morals and ethics that had no bearing on who we were as individuals and as a whole. But, I digress. The
Drumond
sisters were more than willing to step out with me, knowing my position on clothing and they
never
had to worry about my…”

“I no wear pants now,” Tiggy said, reaching for his waist.

“Sam, Randall had better be wearing pants when we’re at Castle Freeze Your Ass Off,” Gary warned. “I am not traveling across the country just to have to spend four months in an ice castle with an old naked wizard.”

“Tiggy, put your pants back on!” I shouted as he ran around laughing, bits and bobs flopping around.

“No!”

“I feel like this is pretty much your lives all the time,” Ryan said.

“We normally don’t get naked this much,” Gary said.

“You’re naked all the time,” I said to Gary. “You don’t wear clothes. By definition, you’re a nudist.”

“Just because I have no body issues,
Sam
.”

“I don’t have body issues!”

“Then take off your clothes!”

“Fine!” I handed Ryan the crystal and my hands went to the buttons on my trousers, unsnapping them quickly and efficiently. “I’ll show
you
body issues.”

“Whaaaat?” Ryan said, eyes wide.

I slid my pants down to my ankles to prove a point. “See! I don’t give a shit.”

“Holy shit,” Gary said. “You’ve got a gigantic—”

“…personality to think I’d ever be okay with dating two women at once,” Randall said, oblivious to everything else. “And so I told them that I—”

“This wasn’t what I had in mind,” I said, face flushing, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to bend down and pull my trousers back up. I was frozen solid.

Gary said, “You certainly are… packing. My, my, my. Little Sam is all grown up, isn’t he?”

“Whaaaaaat?” Ryan said, eyes glazing over.

“Are you hitting on me?” I squeaked.

“No!” Ryan said, flushing brightly.

“Uh. I was talking to Gary?” Weird. Why would Ryan think I was talking to him?

“No,” Gary said. “I was merely extolling virtues that I didn’t know you possessed. I could never hit on you. You’re like my much older, less fortunate stepsister.”

“
Step
sister?”

“Is it getting warm out here?” Ryan asked no one in particular. “It feels like I’m on fire.”

“No pants!” Tiggy shouted. “Hi, people! No pants. Wear no pants!”

I looked over to see who he was talking to. There was a group of travelers on the road, three men and two women. All of them were staring at us with shock evident on their faces. I covered myself with my hands while Tiggy stopped and cocked his head.

We fell silent.

“…and that’s how I managed to escape the unicorn suffering from Raging Hubris,” Randall finished.

A
FTER
SCREAMING
quite loudly and pulling up my trousers as quickly as I could, I apologized profusely to the travelers who had stumbled upon us. One of the women growled at me and called me her little minx before the other woman reined her back in.