by T. J. Klune
“Heyyy,” I said with a wave. “What. Is. Up.”
“Hey, he says,” Gary snapped, flipping his mane prettily. “Can you believe this? You raise a child most of his life, watch him go through painful years of puberty to become a reasonably attractive man, only to find him negotiating kink contracts with a leather Dom and saying hey.” He sniffled. “I’ve never been more proud of anything in my life.”
Tiggy frowned. “Sam a pain slut?”
“I highly doubt that, kitten. You know how he gets when he stubs a toe. He doesn’t pop a boner, that’s for sure.”
“He’s growing up so fast,” the dragon named Kevin rumbled. “I remember when he was just a wee slip of a lad. Now he’s this young man finding his way in the world. A sexy way that I will probably actively participate in because that’s just who I am. No judgments. We’re all gods’ creatures, right? Just writhing on top of each—”
“Do I even want to know what you’re doing?” the knight asked, cocking a devastatingly unfair eyebrow.
Knight Commander Ryan Foxheart, the dreamiest dream to have ever been dreamed.
And probably currently not very happy with me.
“It’s not what it looks like?” I tried.
They all stared at me.
“Okay, it probably is what it looks like, but not for me. I’m not some kind of pain slut like Justin is. I’m here for moral support and nothing else.”
“Really,” Sir said. “You sure about that?”
“Wow,” I said. “Your voice is deeply intimidating. That’s impressive. I’m impressed.” I turned back to the others. “Did you hear that? He makes us call him Sir. This is fun. I’m having such a good time. Please save me.”
“Sam put a personal ad in the newspaper to try and make up for the fact that he is a home-wrecker,” Justin said.
“See, that makes sense,” Gary said.
“Hey! What about what I said?”
“Sam,” Gary said, sounding disappointed. “Honestly, what do you expect me to believe? I know Justin’s not a pain slut, because I’ve never seen him at the club getting flogged by Honest Helga.”
“That’s not a club I want to go to,” I said. “Because of Honest Helga.”
“She certainly knows how to pack a punch,” Kevin agreed.
“And,” Gary said, “I know you’re a home-wrecker because I witnessed it with my own eyes. Remember that? Sam? Do you? When you wrecked their home? I remember when you wrecked their home.”
Tiggy crossed his arms over his considerable chest. “That’s not nice, Sam. Even if Knight Delicious Face ate your flower.”
“He most certainly did,” Kevin said. “We all heard it too. The acoustics in the castle are just extraordinary. Raise your hand if you thought Sam would be a screamer.”
Tiggy raised his hand. Kevin raised a claw. Gary stood on three legs.
“I didn’t scream,” I said, scowling at all of them. “I was providing encouragement to my boo so he knew he was doing a good job. It’s called positive reinforcement.”
Ryan turned his face toward the heavens and sighed. He was either silently agreeing with me or deciding now was a good time to study up on constellations.
Kevin snorted a little lick of fire. “It sure sounded like you were positively reinforcing his—”
“Dear,” Gary said. “We’ve talked about this. It’s not polite to discuss other people’s sex lives when one or more of them is a prude.”
“I’m not a prude. Do you know how many things Ryan has done to me? Like, seventeen things.”
“Name three,” Gary said rather gleefully as he pranced in place.
“Easily,” I said. “This one time, he put his toes in my—”
“That’s probably enough of that,” Ryan said.
I mimed the rest to Gary. It was the most accurate thing I’d ever done.
Gary squinted at me. “Are you pretending to eat a watermelon covered in peanut butter?”
“Close enough. I couldn’t walk straight for like three days.”
“I bet I could make it four,” Sir said as he leered at me.
“I like him,” Kevin announced. “We should all be sex friends and go on team-building retreats where none of us wear clothing and we all lay on top of each other.”
“Yep,” I said. “Time to go. This has just been lovely. Justin, will you be signing any contract or having any follow-up with Sir? I take it by the way you’re squeezing my hand to the point of excruciating pain, that’s a no. Sorry, Sir. Looks like the date was a bust. Next time, huh?”
“Or maybe,” Sir said slowly, “you owe me for wasting my time.” He glanced at Ryan. “He your bitch?”
“Oh, girl, that was a bad idea,” Gary muttered.
“I smash?” Tiggy growled.
“Kind of my bitch,” Ryan said.
“No shit,” Justin said.
“Ha,” Kevin said. “I knew it. That’s so hot.”
“Hey! Okay, I am, but that’s still rude. Or maybe I’m my own man, and I can speak for myself. Maybe I want to go with him.” I looked back at Sir. “I really don’t want to go with you. I’m just trying to prove a point.”
“Autonomy is very important,” Sir said. “Unless I take it from you and cover you with my semen.”
“You are the greatest man alive,” Kevin said. “Teach me all your secrets.”
“One day,” Ryan said, “we’re going to meet someone new who doesn’t want to capture and/or have sex with you.”
“I never did,” Gary said. “He’s a little too stringy for my tastes. Not enough meat on dem bones, if you know what I mean. Unicorns need a little more oomph since we’re such voracious lovers.”
“Stringy?” I gasped.
“It okay,” Tiggy said, reaching down and patting me roughly on the head. “I do you.”
“Aw. Really?”
“No.”
“Dammit.”
“I can’t comment on this,” Kevin said. “Given my position as his stepfather.”
“You’re not my—”
“I’d hit that so hard,” Kevin told Sir.
“This did not turn out how I thought it would,” I said.
“Does it ever?” Justin asked. “That was a legitimate question, by the way. Does anything ever turn out like you think it will?”
I nodded toward Ryan. “Locked that shit down, didn’t I?”
“Oh snap,” Tiggy said.
“Fist-bump me, babe,” I said to Ryan, holding out my hand.
“Yeah, I’m not going to do that,” Ryan said.
“Watch,” Gary whispered to Tiggy. “It’ll take five to ten seconds for him to give in. I’ve been teaching Sam how to unicorn.”
I widened my eyes as much as possible and fluttered my eyelashes. “But, I want you to. For me? Please?”
Ryan sighed and fist-bumped me.
“Works every time,” Gary said.
“I can hear you,” Ryan said. “You’re standing right next to me and not trying to hide the fact that you’re talking about me.”
“I thought we talked about how stalking me is wrong now that you’re in a monogamous relationship with one of my best friends,” Gary said. “Get a grip, Ryan. This obsession you have with me is going to ruin the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
“You talked about that,” Ryan reminded him. “Loudly and repeatedly. Once you woke me up at three in the morning by standing above me and breathing on my face, only to tell me to stop following you.”
“Maybe you should listen!”
“You were in my room.”
“I’ll find you true love,” I told Justin. “If it’s the last thing I do.”
“That feels like a threat,” he said slowly.
“A threat of love,” I agreed. “Now, I think it’s time we head back to the castle. I’m famished and I’m probably going to get yelled at by four or five different people for sneaking you out to meet with a leather daddy.”
“The castle?” Sir sai
d.
“Oh, right,” I said. “Yeah, this is Justin, the Prince of Verania, that you just tried to violate with your existence. Good job.”
“Holy shit,” he said, paling considerably. “The Prince? That means—” He looked from Gary to Tiggy. From Kevin to Ryan. Then back to me. “That means you’re—”
I grinned at him. “Damn right. I’m Sam of Wilds, King’s Wizard.”
“Apprentice,” Gary coughed.
“Don’t explode my nipples!” Sir said as he stood up quickly, knocking his chair back. “I didn’t know it was you!”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s still a thing? And now it’s said about me? Sweet molasses.”
“Oh boy,” Ryan sighed. “This is something I’m never going to hear the end of.”
This might have been the greatest day of my life. “Babe! Did you hear that? He said—”
“Still standing right here.”
“But—”
“Don’t need to repeat it. Heard it enough the first time.”
And that’s when Tiggy decided to smash the table. But that was okay. He’d earned it.
“HOW’D YOU figure out we were gone?” I asked Ryan as we walked side by side toward the castle. The others were ahead of us, Gary and Justin bickering back and forth as Kevin tried to get them to agree to a threesome, Tiggy muttering to himself about his broom collection.
Ryan bumped his shoulder against mine. “Hadn’t seen you in ten minutes or so. I figured you were probably getting into trouble.”
Huh. That was… probably more accurate than I cared to think about. “I could have handled it.”
“Oh, I know.”
“Do you?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to have backup.” He blushed a little at that, and I struggled to not launch myself at him and potentially be arrested for lewd and lascivious conduct in the streets of the city.
“You’re my backup?”
“Shut up, Sam.”
“Nah, it’s out there, dude. You can never take it back now.”
“I regret everything.”
And I doubted that quite a bit. I could see the way he was fighting a losing battle against smiling, his lips quirking, eyes crinkling. To the world, Knight Commander Ryan Foxheart was strong and brave, dashing and immaculate. And he was all those things, even to me. But he was so much more than that, more than what the people of Verania thought he was. For one, he was the world’s sappiest dork, something I never expected and would lord over him for the rest of our days.
“Came riding in to my rescue,” I teased him. “Someone might think you’re a knight or something.”
“I always have to rescue you.”
“Pfft. I think you’ve got that a bit backward there.”
“Probably. But that’s okay.”
“How’d you know where we were?”
He reached up and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. My arm went around his waist and he tilted his forehead against me as we walked. “I always know where you are,” he murmured against my hair.
And my heart absolutely did not trip all over itself at that. Not at all, no sir. “Yeah, Gary was right. That does sound stalkery. You might want to curb that a little before someone gets the wrong idea that you want to put them in a hole in the basement. Pete told you, didn’t he.”
“Didn’t even hesitate when he narced on you.”
“That bastard. He needs to hurry up and retire so I can get away with things. I don’t know why he decided to stay on. I think it was probably just to stop me from doing amazing things.”
Ryan laughed in my ear. I didn’t think I’d ever heard a sound so wondrous.
“You guys coming, or are you going to be grossly in love some more and make everyone hate you?” Gary called back, sounding appropriately disgusted.
“HaveHeart forever, motherfuckers,” Tiggy said.
“We need to have a name like that,” Kevin said to Gary. “So everyone will know our love is real. Something wicked. Like… Kery. Or Gavin. Oooh. Or Dragoncorn.”
I can’t say that I was really listening to them. No, I was getting kissed within an inch of my life and thinking, Nothing can get better than this. This is my happy ending.
But it wasn’t, though.
Because things were just getting started.
Chapter 2: A Vision and a Warning
ONCE UPON a time in the Kingdom of Verania, there was a kickass boy born in the slums of the City of Lockes. His parents were hardworking, and at times life could be difficult, but they were alive and had all their teeth. Which was very important.
Now for the remix.
The kickass boy was apparently magic, turned his future boyfriend (who, at the time, was the world’s biggest asshole) into stone, and was taken away from the life of poverty by a magical man in pink shoes to a castle where he met a wonderful King and a not-so-wonderful Prince. His parents came along for the ride and cheered and fretted like most parents do. The boy was sent into the Dark Woods one day and came back, unexpectedly having made friends with a hornless unicorn and a half-giant. He was given his first wizarding name of Sam of Wilds.
From there, the boy had many adventures as a wizard’s apprentice, knowing one day all of Verania would depend upon him as the King’s Wizard. Sure, he thought that was the coolest thing he’d ever heard, but it was years and years away. He had plenty of time to worry about things such as responsibility to King and Crown. So, during those first years, he did magic (somewhat successfully—though, as was pointed out on a regular basis, the magic he did do was never what he started out trying to do; the boy was of the belief that it was the thought that counted). He was captured a lot for some unknown reason, and villains tended to monologue whenever they were around him, as if they couldn’t help but broadcast their plans in addition to spilling their life’s stories while he usually was bound to a chair or a wall (or, on one notable occasion, the front of a pirate ship as a group of lesbian pirates called the Tuna Fishes were trying to use his magic to force mermaids into revealing their treasures—but never mind that now. It’s a long story that involves a sea chanty about scissoring that the pirates insisted the boy learn and he has never forgotten).
But through it all, with his friends and parents and a great wizard named Morgan of Shadows by his side, he was happy. He looked upon the stars and found he could wish for nothing more, given all that he had.
Sure, maybe he was lonely every now and then, but it was a small thing, a negligible thing that he could ignore if he tried hard enough. He didn’t allow himself to dwell upon it. There were too many things to see. New magic to explore. Obstacles to overcome. One day he would face the Trials to become a true wizard. He had his Grimoire he needed to complete. His friend, the unicorn, needed to find his horn. All of these things came first. Because that’s just who the boy was.
But.
The boy was still human, regardless of his elevated station and lot in life. He was still prone to that humanity just like everyone else.
For you see, one day there came a knight to the castle. A knight unlike anyone the boy had ever seen before. He was beautiful and kind and smiled like sunshine, and the boy said to his friends, “I might be super gay right now.”
His friends were not surprised.
Yes, he was a wizard and had many things to do. But he was human, and with it came the longing for something more. He was embarrassed by this feeling, after all he’d been given, but he couldn’t help but dream about green eyes and locks of blond hair and wish that he could have what he felt in his heart.
Of course, things like that rarely work out, and the knight began to date the Prince, for which the King was happy, so the boy suffered in silence, resolutely not attempting to put together a spell to give said Prince the disposition of a flatulent selkie, even if he already had the personality to match.
But fate is a funny thing. It weaves its threads through the loom with steady hands. At first, the result is seemingly a distorted m
ess, but if one can wait long enough, the full picture comes into focus, the threads tightly intertwined, strong and true.
Maybe it’s too grand a thought to think the boy had a fate beyond what he’d already been given, but he was still a boy and prone to boyish thoughts and wishes.
He was sure the knight never even knew his name.
The boy was wrong. So very, very wrong.
The boy was loved as much as he loved in return.
But it’s a known fact that boys are stupid, stupid creatures without nary a lick of common sense between them, and so it took ages for anything to come of it. It also required the presence of a ridiculous amount of Dark wizards, a date with a man who had wonderful ears (though the knight didn’t quite understand what the big deal was, if the scowl on his face meant anything), a dragon kidnapping the Prince, a forest full of secrets, an extraordinarily perverted disgruntled ex who was six inches tall with wings, a fairy drag mother with eyes and tongue as sharp as a knife, an elf who wanted to relieve the boy of all vestiges of his virginity, and a crazy corn cult who felt the need to build a religion around the dragon in fifty-seven days. (The boy still marvels at the tenacity of insanity.)
And then the boy stood atop the dragon’s keep and a secret was revealed, something he’d kept locked away in his heart in hopes that it would never be discovered. The pain he felt then matched the look on the knight’s face.
For the boy was powerful, maybe more powerful than anyone who had ever come before. The caveat to all the extent of his magic was this: he must find the person in the world who could stabilize his magic. A person who could hold the foundation for his magic together. A person who, without them, the boy could descend into darkness.
The cornerstone.
To a wizard, the cornerstone is the most precious thing in the world. Something revered, something treasured. Those that have forsaken the idea of a cornerstone have done so knowing they will be consumed by the darkness inherent in all magic.
The boy didn’t know the extent of his magic. Neither did his mentor, though the boy thought Morgan of Shadows knew more than he was saying. As did the man even higher up, the grand wizard known as Randall, a terrifying man whose nose the boy had once turned into a dick. The boy could see the concern when he returned to the castle after making the knight choose between himself and the Prince. The knight had chosen to follow his oath rather than his heart.
