“How do we even know she’s telling the truth?” I asked him.
“Could she be making this up?”
I shrugged. “Anything is possible.”
“Do you think she is?”
And I hesitated, which was answer enough.
He sighed and leaned over to kiss my bare shoulder. “You know I’ll follow you in whatever you decide.”
And I knew that. Of course I did. The thought scared the hell out of me. Because I couldn’t get the image out of my head of him as a young man, or him as an old man, in death upon that cold slab of stone, eyes closed, heart stopped, sword atop his chest.
And if I was a little rougher that night when we fucked, he didn’t say a single thing about it.
“YOU CAN’T ignore us forever,” Morgan said when we were next in the labs. “Honestly, Sam. It’s getting ridiculous.”
I ignored him, focusing instead on my Grimoire. It was my job as a wizard’s apprentice, after all. And there had to be some secret, something I hadn’t yet thought of so that Ryan and I would never have to be apart. Romantic, yes, and ultimately foolish, but I wanted to explore every avenue I could.
“He’s behaving like a child,” Randall said from his chair in front of the fire. “I don’t know why we thought he’d be mature about this. There’s enough evidence to the contrary.”
I had to grind my teeth together to choke back any response while writing.
“Not helping,” Morgan said.
“And you’re coddling again,” Randall said, grunting as he massaged his knee. “I’ve told you time after time that you handle the boy with kid gloves. Maybe it’s time the gloves come off and he be given a proper spanking.”
Which… okay. That was an image I really didn’t need in my head.
“It’s a lot to take in for anyone,” Morgan said. “To find out you have some prophecy hanging over your head.”
Yeah, and that maybe everyone in this room aside from myself knew about it.
Randall snorted. “Back in my day, we didn’t let things like prophecies knock us on our asses. We actually listened to what they were about and faced them head-on rather than mope around like a little bitch.”
I was going to turn so many things of his into penises.
“And I suppose there’s the feeling that he thinks we lied to him,” Morgan said. “Like I lied to him.”
Bingo.
“Of course he would think that,” Randall said. “Because he’s selfish. He doesn’t think of anyone but himself. He can’t possibly see anything as being for the greater good. Can you imagine having to tell an eleven-year-old boy that one day, he’ll be facing a potentially insurmountable obstacle? Even now, I don’t think he has the faculties to grasp the extent of it. And it’s not lying, per se. It was more of an omission of the truth.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Morgan said with a sigh. “I couldn’t have actually told a child that his grandmother he’d never met had told me of his birth beforehand and that he would be responsible for a great many things.”
“Why, that way would just lay madness,” Randall said wryly. “Could you imagine the ego involved in hearing such a thing? Granted, he obviously didn’t need that to have an ego. Maybe that Lady Tina had a point. Sam might just need to be knocked down a few—”
“She did not have a point, oh my gods,” I exclaimed shrilly. “Are you insane? She was created for nothing but the sole purpose of waging war against me, and I will see her vanquished on the battlefield with her blood squelching between my fingers, mark my words.”
Randall and Morgan gaped at me.
“I went to a very dark place,” I said. “I admit that freely. And I don’t feel sorry about it at all.”
“Told you it would work,” Randall said to Morgan. “Just had to get him riled up is all. He’s so predictable.”
“You manipulated me!”
“Gods, maybe I liked it better when he wasn’t talking,” Randall said. “It all has to do with the volume. It’s either nothing or too much. There’s no in between with him.”