I’m a Sam Girl too.
Our secret?
Ryan Foxheart.
RANDALL LIVED alone in Castle Freesias, and I thought now it was more because he had exiled himself here rather than out of any need for an icy fortress of solitude. I didn’t understand it, necessarily, but the picture I had of the man Randall was coming into more startling clarity. This place was a tomb, but it was a living one, in that Randall haunted the hallways. I’d asked Morgan once what Randall did up here in the mountains all day every day.
“He exists,” Morgan had said.
I hadn’t understood that before. And maybe I still didn’t, not completely. There was no way in hell I’d ever ask Randall about it, because he’d probably light my skin on fire, but the curiosity was there. The rooms that were sealed—particularly the library—held new meaning for me, and I wanted to know what he had hidden away behind the doors.
Even with all he’d been through, with all he’d done, I didn’t quite get how he could live up here all by himself. Maybe it was because I was a social creature and needed the safety of others around me, but the thought of becoming a recluse made my skin crawl. I wondered if Morgan would follow him up here one day, after I passed the Trials and became the King’s Wizard. If they would be two old men bound together by the memory of the man who’d betrayed them.
Granted, in order for that to happen, I had a shit-ton of work to do.
Collecting dragons, stopping villains.
My life was strange.
The ice of the castle creaked ominously as I left the kitchens, gnawing on some slightly chilled bread that had been left atop the fireplace. This was probably as good as it was going to get when it came to food. We didn’t eat here like we did in Castle Lockes, but it was still better than when I’d been in the slums. Barely.
I made my way back to my room with the intention of opening my Grimoire and trying to make some headway so that when tomorrow came and Randall asked to see it, the disdain would be somewhat diminished.
That was the plan.
The problem with having plans to do what essentially amounted to writing in a diary (which, those first pages when I started the Grimoire were extraordinarily cringe-worthy, as there were pages where MRS. SAM FOXHEART was written in the corners, surrounded by little hearts and squiggly lines—but hey, it all worked out, so dream big, kids!) is that sometimes gods feel it necessary to appear in the ice.
My life.
I was crossing the grand foyer just inside the entrance to the castle on my way back to my room. The foyer was large, with a double staircase that led to the upper levels of the castle. There were roaring fires on either side of the room, and it lessened the biting chill. A crystal chandelier hung above us, grand and ornate and probably older than fuck. I eyed it as it swayed from side to side as I entered the foyer, mouth full of dry bread, thoughts on how badass I should make myself sound when writing about my desert adventures (and coming to the decision that I wouldn’t need to embellish because I had been super badass). Before I could make my way across the foyer to the hallway on the opposite wall, there was a loud crack.
I stopped, ready to run in case Castle Freeze Your Ass Off was about to come crashing down around me, sure I’d see the wall of ice with a split down the middle. I had the brief thought that this whole thing had been a trap, that Randall had brought me here, locked me inside, but that disappeared as soon as I saw a spark of blue light shoot through the wall like a falling star.
I watched as more and more lights began to fall, and sighed as I chewed, knowing exactly what this was. I wasn’t looking forward to it, especially given how our last conversation had gone, what with him predicting death and burning and blah, blah, blah.
But apparently how I felt didn’t matter to the gods, because one formed in the ice wall before me, made of twinkling stars.
David’s Dragon.
“Hullo, Sam,” the star dragon said.
“I just saw you,” I groused, not giving two shits that he could probably smite me where I stood. I was cranky, I missed my friends and my boyfriend, I was cold and stuck in a tomb with the oldest person alive who didn’t understand that eyebrow maintenance was a thing that normal people partook in. “Whatever dire thing you want to tell me now can wait. I’m eating cold bread for dinner. Cold bread. It tastes like sadness.”
The dragon didn’t look moved at my plight. “Time has no meaning to a god.”
“Yes, well, bully for you. I have to go write in my dia—I mean, my Grimoire, so if we could make this quick, that’d be great.”
“You survived Meridian City. This pleases me.”
I rolled my eyes. “No shit. Thanks for the heads-up, by the way.”
“We do not—”
“Interfere. I know. You’ve told me before. And then you also told me that you hoped I won and that someone would die but that you wouldn’t say any more. So forgive me if I don’t give two shits if you’re pleased.”
“You’re a mouthy little thing, aren’t you? One would think a god would have garnered a tad bit more respect.”
I winced. “Yeah, okay. I deserved that. But you gotta admit this whole thing is a shitstorm.”