“And keep your magic under wraps.”
“I usually do.”
He nodded. “Okay. Let me do some digging.”
“Are you going to tell me where I’m going?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. You’re going to have to trust me on this. It’s probably time this happened anyway.”
“Oooh,” I said. “Ominous.”
He squeezed my hand again before he pulled away. “I’ll see to the Darks. I doubt we’ll get anything from them, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I want you to write a detailed account of what happened last night for posterity. It’ll help should there be… questions, down the road.”
The door unlocked and opened. He slipped through and it closed behind him.
I DIDN’T leave the labs until well past nightfall, not trusting myself or anyone around me not to say or do something stupid. Gary, Tiggy and my parents all knew me well enough to know that it was best to steer clear of me for a little while. I’d find them tomorrow and tell them what I knew. Well, most of what I knew. I didn’t think I needed to bring up the cornerstone thing again. That way lay heartache and misery, two things I could do without at the moment.
I detoured through the kitchens, grabbing some fruit and cheese as the cooks fussed over me. They gave me warm bread and milk and told me I was precious and handsome and I was so brave to have taken on an army of Darks with only a knight at my side. I told them that’s not what happened at all. They laughed and cooed at me, not believing a single word I said. I stuffed the cheese and bread in my mouth to avoid having to say anything further.
I went out to the gardens. The spring air was warm and redolent with my mother’s flowers. The lanterns were dark, but the moon and the stars shone down from above and fireflies flickered in and out, lighting my way.
I was in the deepest part of the gardens, a place where very few ventured. I considered it to be my own little secret, though others surely knew of it. Here the flowers were more experimental, more wild. They grew from the pots and plots, vines thick and thorns sharp. Had I been here in daylight, the flowers would have been open and wide. As it was, they were curled up against the dark, but that was okay. I wasn’t here for them.
I lowered myself to the ground and lay on my back in the grass. The night sky above was clear and bright, and while the moon was beautiful, yes, I had never been drawn to it. Not like the stars.
I had wished upon them as a child and had wished upon them as an adult. It was upon these stars that I had rested my hopes and dreams, my anger and frustrations. I wished because as a child, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You don’t know any better. I wished because as an adult, sometimes you don’t know what else to do. You know better, but you don’t care.
I could see the constellations of my childhood, and the stories that came with them: David’s Dragon. The Lightning-Struck Man. The Pegasus. Vhan’s Fury.
I hadn’t spoken to any of them in a very long time.
I said, “I don’t know what to do.”
Because I didn’t.
I was twenty years old.
I was son of Joshua. Son of Rosemary.
My best friends were Gary and Tiggy.
Somewhere inside of me was the capacity for great magic, both light and dark.
I was the apprentice to the prodigious Morgan of Shadows.
His magic was legendary. Had been for centuries.
And someday soon, I’d be stronger than him.
If I wasn’t already.
But he’d had his cornerstone at the age of seventeen. She’d helped him build his magic into what it was.
I couldn’t let myself go Dark.
Todd was… nice.
I liked his ears. His nervousness.