Neither of us had spoken for a while, content with only the sounds of the camp coming through the window. Randall said he didn’t expect Kevin back until the next day, and even though he wouldn’t tell me who the dragon would return with, I hadn’t had the strength to argue with him.
Ryan broke the silence first. “What they said. In the barn. Mama. Randall.”
I’d been on the verge of dozing, and it took me a moment to parse through his words. “They said a lot of things.”
“About you being a weapon. About using you.”
“Oh. That.”
“I didn’t like it.”
I kissed his chest. “Glad you got my back.”
He huffed out a breath. “I’m being serious.”
“I know. But they had a point.”
“No. They didn’t. You’re not something to be used.”
“Well, you just used me pretty damn well, so.”
“Sam.”
I sighed. “Look. I—I get it. Okay? I do. I really, really do. You know better than anyone how much I hate this whole… thing. Having all of this put on me. I mean, dude. Have you seen me? Who in their right mind would put the fate of Verania in my hands?”
“Right?”
“Rude. But also true. I’m not… mad. At them. For saying what they did. Because you can’t help how you feel. And I can’t say if our roles were reversed that I wouldn’t have thought the same thing they did.”
“How close was it?”
“What?”
“At Morgan’s funeral. How close were you to bringing him back?”
I closed my eyes. I hadn’t told anyone about that, but of course he knew. “It was close,” I admitted. “More than I care to think about. I was hurting and scared and… I don’t know. I didn’t know where Randall was. I didn’t know where Myrin was. I didn’t know if you were going to wake up. The King proclaimed I was to be his wizard, and I had this voice in my head, this stupid fucking voice that kept saying come away with me, o human child, in the forest deep, in the dark of the wild, and I told myself that I had to do what was right, and that it wasn’t going to be what I wanted to do.”
“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.”
I shook my head. “If it’d been you there on that slab, I don’t know if I could have stopped myself.”
“Sam—”
“No. You don’t get to take that away from me. Everyone expects me to save them because that’s what they were told I was going to do. That I’m this good person, that I’m this light, but if it’d been you instead of Morgan, I don’t know if I would have cared. I would have burned the life out of them if only it meant you could take another breath.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know if I need you to.”
“What happened to you? In the forest?”
I ran a finger along the jut of his hip bone. “You ever wake from a dream, and it’s so clear that you’re sure you’ll remember it forever? But then you go about your day and it fades slowly and surely until you can only remember bits and pieces, and even then, you’re not sure if you’re remembering it correctly.”
“Like that?”
“A lot of it. But what I can remember is Kevin hitting on me, Leslie mothering him and Pat getting annoyed, Zero complaining about everything, and GW wishing we would all go away and leave him alone.”
“So… pretty much normal, then.”