think about it, you’re sort of responsible for everything that happened afterward.”
“That’s… one way of looking at it.”
I beamed at him. “Thanks for being a teenage dick bag, Ryan.”
“Exactly what I was aiming for,” he said, dry as dust.
“Then you succeeded admirably.” I laid my head back down on my pack and looked back up at the stars. “What happened then?”
He was quiet for a moment. Then, “You left.”
“To the castle.”
“Yeah. It was all anyone could talk about. ‘Little Sam and his magic.’ ‘Little Sam would be a wizard.’ ‘Little Sam ascended from the slums into Castle Locke.’” It was said without a hint of bitterness. In fact, if I had to put a name to the tone in his voice, I would have thought it was something like pride. “Before then. You’d never done anything like that?”
“No,” I said. “Not once. Morgan thought it might have been a combination of being close to puberty and a survival instinct. It manifested itself then because I needed it to. You know. Because you were an asshole.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you dashing and immaculate now?” I demanded. “People like Nox don’t grow up to be people like you. You should be overweight and balding and have no teeth and awful body odor to go with your surly attitude. But no! You’re all muscular and gorgeous and sassy and awesome and holy fucking shit I am not talking right now.” Because what the fuck was I thinking? Why could I never keep my mouth shut?
And his smile was blinding.
“Oh crap. That’s not what I meant to say. At all. Oh, look over there. There’s a tree that looks like a dragon. That’s surely a sign.”
“Right. A sign that you needed a distraction and have failed miserably at finding one.”
“Says you. It was a perfect distraction. We’re talking about it, aren’t we?”
“Uh-huh. Muscular and gorgeous, you say?”
“From a purely clinical standpoint,” I assured him. “Absolutely nothing more.”
“Absolutely nothing more.”
I despised when he repeated my own words back to me and made them sound absolutely ridiculous. “At least some things don’t change. You were a bastard then and you’re a bastard now. Sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” he said, the grin never wavering. “Is that right?”
I scowled at him. “I take it back. All of the time.”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“The effect you have on people.”
That… was odd. I had never really thought about it, to be honest. I didn’t go through life wanting to affect other people. I wanted to learn magic and become a wizard. I wanted Morgan to be proud of me and confident in my abilities. I wanted my mom to smile every day and my dad to be able to put his feet up at the end of the day and not worry about what tomorrow would bring. I wanted Gary and Tiggy to never again know the sting of a whip or the confines of a cage. I wanted Ryan. I wanted Ryan to be happy and alive and to smile all the time. I wanted more, but since that couldn’t happen, I would take what I could get.
“The King said you didn’t smile,” I blurted out.
Ryan looked startled. “What?”
“At your ceremony. He said he never sees you smile anymore. And I thought that was weird because I see you smile all the time.”
“Do you?”
“Well, yeah. Like right now.”