“And we’ve been looking forward to it since the moment we left.”
“This is true.”
“Then why do we feel this way?”
He didn’t speak for a while, just kept breathing in deep and letting it out slowly. It was soothing, and it helped a little. He said, “Because we don’t yet know if we made the right decision in going with the Great White. In doing what your destiny expected of you.”
“I still hate that word,” I grumbled.
“I can see why. I think most people that have one grow to despise it. But it’s what you do with it in the end that counts the most.”
“That was pretty lame.”
“And yet, there it is.”
“Ugh.”
“Right?”
I looked back up at him again. His eye was still on me. “What if I’m not me anymore?”
“Who would you be?”
“I was Sam of Wilds before. Now I’m… not that.”
“Do you feel different?”
I did. Magic had always been a part of me, even if I hadn’t known it. And when I finally became aware of who I was, what I could do, it was always flitting along the edges of my vision, those bright colors that only I could see. When I used them, when I pulled them into me and shoved them outward, there was always a sense of force behind it, like I was exerting copious amounts of energy to use it.
Now, though? Now it was the easiest thing in the world. I was mired in the green and gold, moving in concert with it, manipulating it at whim. I’d seen the extent of Randall’s magic, the power of his lightning, and the strength of Morgan’s in his containme
nt and compression, and they had always been drained after, and rightly so. Magic had a cost to it, a price to pay for using it.
A ceiling, even.
And when I was an apprentice, I knew that. I experienced that. Anytime I was forced to use large quantities of magic, having it burst from my head and heart, I was weak and practically useless afterward.
It wasn’t like that anymore.
And even though he didn’t say anything out loud, I knew it concerned GW. Whether because of the implications of my strength or the potential to use me as a weapon, I didn’t know. If I turned Dark, there would be no Resistance. They would be wiped out before they could even fight back. I knew it worried him, especially when he tried to drill into my head that I had to depend on myself and no one else. “A cornerstone is a human,” he’d told me. “Humans are fallible. Fragile. They bend and then they break. Or worse, they turn on a wizard and force them into a spiral, taking everything they hold dear away. Why should you have so much faith in a single person? Why can you not stand on your own?”
That had resonated with me for the longest time.
It was bullshit. It had to be bullshit.
Because I firmly believed that Morgan and Randall wouldn’t have encouraged my relationship with Ryan after all they’d been through if they hadn’t thought it was worth it. That it was the right thing to do.
But there were thoughts, late at night while I lay in the hut I’d built deep in the Dark Woods under the Great White’s instruction, where I wondered if they’d lied about that too.
“I’m Sam of Dragons now,” I told Kevin. “It’s not the same.”
“Pretty badass, if I say so myself.”
“Because you’re one of those dragons.”
“Well, yes. But still. It’s a good name for you. But it’s just a name. It doesn’t define you.”
I snorted. “We both know that’s not true. The whole point of this was to be defined. To become this person I am now.”