“—DRAGONS COMING! DON’T BE SCARED! THEY NO EAT—” Tiggy skidded to a halt next to Gary. “Done and done. I fast.” Gary hoof/fist-bumped him.
Randall looked up toward the heavens.
We all turned our heads skyward too.
“What are we looking at?” Gary whispered.
“I have no idea,” I whispered back. “That cloud over there looks like a dick.”
“Ha! The sky has a dick.”
We looked down when Randall did. He seemed like he was feeling a little better. His face wasn’t as red. I winked at him, just to let him know I totally got what he was doing.
“Sam,” he said, voice oddly flat. “Summon them.”
I sighed. “I was hoping you’d forgotten about that. Do I really have to?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. You all might want to take a step back. This could get a little sticky.”
“Why the hell would it get sticky—” I heard Justin say before I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
They were always there, these low pulses of light, these threads that had attached themselves to the electrical impulses of my brain, curling down my spine until they circled my lightning-struck heart. Kevin’s was the strongest. Yes, we’d all just spent a year practically in each other’s minds, but Kevin was… different. He fit with us here.
After him was Zero Ravyn Moonfire, the teenage emo snake dragon monster thing who acted like he had crows in his soul but only ever wanted someone to love as he grew his trees and his flowers. Zero’s pulse and thread were as red as his scales, burning under a desert sun.
Then came the blue pulses, the fluttering of feathers. Pat and Leslie, the mated snow dragons who had once chased Randall and me off the edge of a cliff as their way of seeing if I was worthy of their time.
The last thread was the brightest. Not because of our connection, but because he was the oldest living thing in the known world, and he was made of magic. The Great White was a dragon, but he was different. Kevin was a conduit, helping direct my magic. Pat and Leslie were dreamwalkers. Zero could grow his forests. That was their magic. Their gifts.
The Great White held us all together.
The Great White was who had imbued me with magic that should have taken decades for me to learn.
The Great White was the unifier, the reason I felt them all in my head and heart to begin with.
I’d learned in the woods that my link to the Great White was the reason my eyes had gone black for Kevin, red for Zero, and blue for Pat and Leslie. He was the reason I’d heard them in my head in the desert and the Northern Mountains. He’d been aware of our connection. Of me. Of everything. The whole time. From the first vision when Vadoma had appeared in Castle Lockes and pressed me up against a wall to the second time when he’d told me I wasn’t ready, he’d known. How much he knew was still a mystery. I didn’t know if he could see the future. I didn’t know if he was actually a god. The world had supposedly been built on his back. I didn’t know if that was true, but not for lack of trying.
I’d asked all these questions.
I’d usually been ignored.
Now, though.
Now he wasn’t ignoring me. I wondered if he’d been waiting for this moment.
The pulses were bright, and the lightning scars on my chest burned.
Come, I said to those lights.
I’m already here, the black one said, because he was an asshole.
I wasn’t talking about you.
Oh. Right. You can still ask me to come, if you want.
Gross. Stop it.