I said nothing. Not because I didn’t want to. No, of course not. I had never seen my mentor look so… defeated before. Broken down. I said nothing because I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“He was kind, but then that’s how we were raised. Our parents were powerful. Our father was a wizard. Our mother was… well. I don’t know exactly what our mother was. She was magic, yes, but it wasn’t like being a wizard. She wasn’t a seer. She wasn’t a fortune-teller. She was not a mage or a witch or any other form of magical being that I’ve ever come across. She defied description. I don’t know that there has ever been one quite like her before or since. The things she was capable of, Sam. Such beautiful things. You remind me of her, in that way. Magic is stringent. It’s governed by a specific set of rules. Those rules didn’t seem to apply to her.” He looked up at me with a quiet smile on his face. “Or to you. You’re alike that way. There is a power in you that I don’t know that I will ever understand. Like her. I’ve often wondered if she knew. If she knew what would become of us. Of what I, as her son, would have to do to Myrin, her other son. If she loved him even though his heart would become corrupted. If she did her all to correct the path he was set upon before she followed my father through the veil. By the time I’d thought to ask her, it was far too late. For all of us.”
Gods, how my heart hurt already. I almost opened my mouth to stop him. To keep him from speaking further about deceit and betrayal. I—
—MOVED QUIETLY, trying not to wake Ryan. It was probably nothing, this feeling I had. I was tired. We’d been through a lot. My mind was probably just playing tricks on me. It was nothing.
It was nothing.
The hairs on my arms stood on end. My skin was covered in gooseflesh. My eyes were wide.
Sam.
Sam.
Sam.
“What the hell,” I muttered.
I rose from the bed. Ryan mumbled something in his sleep, moving over to the spot I’d vacated, face pressed into my pillow. Firelight from the lamps around Mashallaha filtered in through the slats of the wall, illuminating his naked back, the blanket pooled at his waist. My heart tripped all over itself at the sight, and I reached down, trailing my fingers along his skin. He hummed quietly, leaning into the touch, eyes remaining closed.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered.
And still he slept.
Sam.
I jerked up and whirled around, because that voice sounded like it’d come from right behind me.
There was nothing there.
The hook pulled.
I told myself to crawl back into bed.
Instead, I moved toward the door and—
“—HE TREATED me as if I was the greatest thing in the world,” Morgan said, a far-off look in his eyes. “He was older than me, far older, but he didn’t treat me as if I was a burden. Didn’t think I was a nuisance. He cared for me, maybe more than our parents did. For all intents and purposes, he raised me. Our parents were… distant, for lack of a better term. Oh, they loved us, and they made sure we had anything we could ever want, but they had other things to focus on. Stretching the boundaries of magic. Defining what it meant to be a wizard. Speaking out against the rejecting of a cornerstone. I never begrudged them for what they did. And I thought Myrin didn’t either. I would be wrong about that.”
He laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “Randall was everything to him. I was told that even before they were actually… them, you could tell Myrin thought Randall had hung the sun and the moon. Had placed all of the stars in the sky. I told you that Randall was a builder. An architect. That it took him decades to construct his magic, to create the outline for who he would become. He had long since passed the Trials, but it was… different. For him. His magic was theory before it was anything else. By the time he was ready for a cornerstone, by the time he opened his eyes, he was able to see what had been right in front of him the entire time. What Myrin had known all along. That they belonged to each other. That they loved each other. That they were each other’s cornerstones. My brother had been a patient man. He knew that one day Randall would see him for what he was. And he did.” Morgan wiped his eyes. “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
“Morgan, you don’t have to—”
“But I do, Sam. Because you have to know what lies ahead. You have to know what may come down upon us. This is your history as much as it is mine. This is the legacy I will leave to you, and I would have you know it. Will you listen?”
I was helpless, so all I could say was “Yes.”
He took a breath, held it for a count, and then let it out slowly, something I knew he did when he was attempting to calm himself. I didn’t want to hear how this story ended, even though I thought I knew.
“They… completed each other,” he continued. “Unlike anything I’d ever seen before. A wizard’s cornerstone isn’t usually another wizard. We’re taught that there’s too much instability, too much of a chance for whatever has been built to come crumbling down. That it’s not safe. But it happens. It’s rare, but it happens. And even though there were people trying to convince them that they should find another, that they shouldn’t depend on each other as they did, they laughed and scoffed and went on as they were. And it was wonderful. I didn’t see them as others did. I saw them as something to aspire to be. Something that I would one day want for myself. Randall was old, far older than a wizard should have been before finding their cornerstone. But the power that they had negated any argument against them.
“Randall became the King’s Wizard. They worked here, in the labs, together, every day. They taught me. They taught each other. They laughed and loved and made promises that we all thought would always be kept.
“And then things began to change. I noticed it first, when I—”
—STEPPED OUT into the warm night air. The stars were bright above. I immediately sought out David’s Dragon, but it said nothing to me, just blinking in the sky as it always had. I wondered if maybe I was dreaming, but it didn’t feel like a dream. I did feel awake, but I also felt… more. Like my eyes were open for the very first time in my life. Everything around me felt like it’d come into sharper focus. The crystal clarity of the water around Mashallaha in the starlight. The grain of the wood beneath my feet. The colors of the flags that hung above me.
It was quiet, this late. I heard not a single soul.
Sam.
I took a stumbling step forward as a burst of magic crawled through me. Green and gold and an infected yellow swirled just along the edges of my vision.
I took a breath.
“What is this?” I said. “Who are you?”
There was no one there. Not in front of me. Not behind me.
“I’m losing my mind,” I muttered. “That’s it. That’s all.”
The hook pulled and—