The Lightning-Struck Heart (5 page)

“That doesn’t mean he
knows
me! He doesn’t even say hi to me at all!”

“That’s because you run far when he show his face near your face,” Tiggy said.

“That is not even remotely true.”

“I hope not,” Pete said. “Because here he comes right now.”

I had run twenty feet before I realized he was lying. I turned and they were all laughing at me.

“You assholes,” I said with a scowl. “We need to go see Morgan. I want to get the yelling out of the way so I can sleep for hours and hours.”

“Think about it!” Pete called after us. “You’re not getting any younger.”

“Fuck yourself!” I called back sweetly.

Y
EAH
, M
ORGAN
was pissed.

My arrival was announced as soon as I entered the gates of Castle Lockes. I tried to get the announcer to shut his face, but he had already blown his horn and yelled out my name, so I instead focused on tamping down the urge to shove said horn down his throat.

It took Morgan less than twenty seconds to come storming into the lobby of the throne room. I was dutifully impressed, especially when he came in with long red
robes flowing, looking all kinds of badass. I told him as much as I looked down at my road-weary clothes, trousers and boots covered in dust. My jerkin was torn at the sleeves. I was not presenting very well. No wonder people were giving me weird looks.

“Two days, Sam,” he said, voice flat.

“And I am aware of that,” I said. “And I have a perfectly good explanation.”

“Oh really?” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “It wouldn’t potentially have anything to do with the fact that there’s a dead Dark wizard in a cave in the Dark Woods?”

I winced. “Ah. Huh. I was kind of hoping news would not travel that fast and I would have a chance to totally lie to you about not being captured.”

He looked unimpressed. He pulled it off very well.

“In his defense,” Gary said, “Lartin was a jerk who called me a horse and bound us with vermilion root so he totally deserved to be smashed to bits.”

“Not helping,” I muttered.

“I smash him good,” Tiggy said. “He look like squashed tomato.”

“He was monologuing!” I said to Morgan. “You know how I feel about villains
monologuing
. Seriously, just do what you’re going to do and stop telling people about it.”

Morgan rubbed his head like he was getting a headache. Which, to be fair, he often did around me. So I was completely unsure if he
actually
was getting a headache or if it was more of a Sam, You Suck kind of thing. “My life,” he muttered. “This is my life. I chose this to be my life. By choice.”

We all smiled at him because he was so lucky and he totally knew it.

He sighed. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to hand over the wormwood because I’m assuming you wouldn’t show your face back here unless you got it. You’re going to go see your parents, and then you’re going to bathe and sleep because you look like shit. You are going to wake up quiet and refreshed and you will stay as such as we attend the feast tonight. You will stay in my sight at all times, and tomorrow, I will kick your ass. And then we’ll figure out what to do in case the Darks seek any kind of retribution for the fact that one of their own is dead. Do we have an understanding?”

“Mostly,” I said. “I’m not so sure about the ass-kicking part—”

He arched a dangerous eyebrow.

“Complete,” I said. “Complete understanding. I’m so understanding, I can’t even get more understanding than I am right now.”

“Good.” He reached out and grabbed my neck, pulling our foreheads together. I felt our magic mingle, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It felt so good to be home. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said quietly. He pulled away and turned to Gary to rub his right ear in the way that made his back leg shake and kick. Gary sighed happily, and Morgan asked Tiggy to come with him because he wanted to show him something in the lab. Tiggy took the wormwood from the pack on Gary and muttered quietly to Morgan as they disappeared through a stone archway that led toward the lower quarters of the castle where our laboratory was.

Gary yawned, ears flicking back and forth. “I’m gonna head to bed. Tell your mom and dad I’ll see them tonight.” He pressed his snout to my cheek and I protested the wet kiss, but only because that’s what we did. It wasn’t so much a secret that I secretly loved it.

“Later,” I told him, and he went the opposite direction.

I went through the throne room, where tables were being set up in preparation for that night’s feast. Festive lanterns were being hung overhead, greens and yellows. Blues and reds. People bustled back and forth. They called out to me in greeting, and I waved tiredly as I pushed through toward the gardens at the back of the castle.

I knew my parents would have today off, and since it was not yet eleven, they’d be out in the garden, Mom drinking her tea and Dad stretching out in the sun. If anyone had earned it, it was them, so I was happy to see I wasn’t too far off the mark when I went back out into the sunshine.

Well, Mom wasn’t drinking tea, and Dad wasn’t relaxing in the grass. They were both sitting at an iron table glaring at me.

“Dammit,” I muttered. I fixed a big smile on my face and waved at them. “Hey, guys! Fancy meeting you here.”

Mom was not amused. She stood up and stalked toward me. She at least had the decency to check me over first to make sure I wasn’t injured before she injured me by smacking me upside the head. “To be fair,” I told her, “it wasn’t my fault.”

“It never is,” she said, lips in a thin line, dark eyes flashing. I took more after her in looks with dark hair and eyes, but I was caught in between her and Dad in skin color. My mother was olive and my father was snow, and I was somewhere in between, like I’d been in sunlight all my life. But I was tall like him, though I decidedly lacked the bulk he carried around, no matter how hard I tried to build it up.

“Gary said I was skinny and adorable,” I told her because I’d just remembered. “I told him I was muscular and dangerous.”

She rolled her eyes as Dad came to stand beside her. “You are skinny,” she said in that melodious accent of hers, words falling out of her mouth like musical notes. “And you
are
adorable, but I still would like to wring your neck.”

“Aww,” I said. “I love you too.”

“Not funny.” Dad scowled. “We were worried.”

“You know I can handle myself,” I said, trying to keep any and all hurt out of my voice. They were my parents. They were supposed to worry. “I’m not a little boy anymore.”

“We know,” Dad said. “But that doesn’t matter. We’re going to worry no matter how old you are. Especially when you get yourself captured. Again.”

“Gods,” I marveled. “How fast does news travel around here? This
just
happened!”

“And a Dark?” Mom asked. “Seriously, Sam? When are you going to learn?”

“Hey! I learned! I learned so hard.”

“Gary and Tiggy all right?” Dad asked, because they were family as much as I was.

I nodded. “With all their pieces attached and everything.”

“You need a haircut,” Mom said, changing the subject and causing me emotional whiplash. But she was right. It was getting to that point where it was starting to curl over the tops of my ears and I looked like I was twelve years old.

“I’ll have it buzzed before I come back down,” I assured them. “Gotta look my best, you know? Speaking of, I need to go crash for a few hours because I am pretty sure I look like death.”

They both got this gleam in their eyes at the same time and I knew I was about to get a face full of sass. “Oh, that’s
right
,” Mom said with an evil smile. “There’s that
thing
tonight.”

“For the
knights
,” Dad said. “For a
specific
knight.”

“I am going to ask that the King grant me a secession from your parentage,” I warned them both. “He will say yes because he thinks I’m wicked awesome and I’m the future King’s Wizard. And then I will curse you both so hard. You’ll have extra fingers. Coming out of your faces.”

“Make sure you wear that red tunic tonight,” Mom said, ignoring me completely. “It brings out your eyes and skin so well. And those tailored black pants. Shine your boots.”

“And don’t buzz your hair totally,” Dad said. “Leave some length. Makes you look more distinguished.”

“For the feast,” I said, because I refused to believe my parents were attempting to pimp me out.

“Yes,” they both said, “for the feast.” Totally pimping.

“So many curses,” I mumbled. I hugged them both and promised I’d see them later that night. I turned and headed back into the castle, wondering if I’d have enough time to grab something to eat, but deciding against it in favor of sleep.

So there I was: looking like crap with what I’m sure were large bags under my eyes and dirt smearing my face. Grumbling to myself about parents and Morgan and best friends who got snarky and murdered evil wizards to protect me. Yawning so wide that my jaw cracked.

Of course, since I was looking my absolute worst and talking to myself like a crazy person, I ran into the one person I didn’t want to run into. Ever. Well, that’s a lie. I totally wanted to run into him while I looked absolutely amazing and he’d say something like “Hey, Sam, I have this extraordinary fascination with your equipment. Let’s go somewhere and I’ll show you what it feels like to have your balls worshipped.”

But there was no sexy running-into. There was a flail of limbs and a questionably manly squawk as my face collided with a chest undoubtedly built from pieces of my dreams, and a surprised grunt that fell from lips that angels themselves must have had a hand in creating.

Knight Ryan Foxheart. Soon to be Knight Commander Ryan Foxheart. The dreamiest dream to have ever been dreamed. The current holder of all my masturbatory fantasies. (“Oh, who’s a bad knight?
You’re
a bad knight. You’ve been so bad that I’m going to joust with your butthole.”)

He said in a surprised voice, “Sam.”

So I said, “Meep,” because apparently Knight Delicious Face
knew my name
and any and all command of the Veranian language was gone at such an impossible thought. It made me have
feelings
. Massive, throbbing
feelings
.

“You okay?” he asked, sounding worried, and I thought that maybe if he had one flaw, it was that his voice wasn’t as deep as what someone of his size and stature should have. But then I remembered that it was the most perfect voice I’d ever heard, and he was always so
soft
and
quiet
that it didn’t matter to me in the slightest.

And, of course, that’s when I realized my face was still pressed against his chest because he was a single step above where I stood and that he smelled
amazing
, like sweat and metal and horses and hay and grass and leaves and fires, and I really needed to stop doing that before we had an inappropriate situation on our hands. So, in a move graced with pitch-perfect dignity, I pulled back sharply, slipped on the stairs, and fell onto the stone ground, knocking my head a bit. Because my life couldn’t get any more embarrassing.

“Holy crap,” Ryan said from somewhere above me.

I opened my eyes and things were slightly fuzzy around the edges. But then my world was filled with the most beautiful green eyes to have ever greened. A lock of hair hung down on his forehead, and I knew I must have been rattled because I was giving very serious consideration to reaching up and brushing it away. I mastered control of my faculties just in time to stop my hand from moving, but that desperate action left all my brain function on my arm and away from my mouth. Which is the only explanation for why I said in a breathy whisper, “You are way too pretty to exist in this world with us mere mortals.” I somehow managed to stop myself from calling him Knight Delicious Face. It was close.

And he
smiled
. Like I had
amused him
. There were full-on white teeth just
inches
from my face, and the corners of his eyes crinkled so endearingly that I wanted to wax poetically about his every feature so that he’d smile at me for the rest of our lives. Bards would be singing his praises for
centuries
by the time I was done with him.

“Think you hit your head,” he said, and I felt his breath on my face. He must have had eggs and coffee for breakfast and there is no reason why that smell should have been as hot as it was. I would never be able to have that combination again without going full mast. He had
ruined
breakfast for me
forever
.

And we just
stared
at each other, faces so close. I was a magical being, so I had no qualms admitting that the moment was
magical
.

Which is why it ended less than seven seconds later when another voice said, “
There
you are. I’ve been looking all over for you. What the hell are you doing on the floor?”