Page 221 of The Consumption of Magic (Tales From Verania 3)

His eyes were dilated when he opened them. “I could go for that.”

“And notice how I’m not even mentioning how you got rid of the beard.”

“So we’re not including the nonstop complaining over the past four days?”

“I didn’t even get to jizz all over it! It’s a fucking travesty.”

Ryan Foxheart smiled at me, and it was such a radiant thing. “Gods, I love you.”

I grinned back at him, just as bright. “I know. I love you too.”

And later, when he rose above me, back arched, hips rolling as he rode me, I promised myself that I would never let anything tear us apart. Not Myrin. Not the Great White. Not any of the villains of the world.

He was my cornerstone.

Nothing would come between us.

Chapter 21: Superfans

IT WAS delivered by a harried-looking page three days later.

I was eating with the others out in the stable Kevin had commandeered as his own. Shortly after he’d come to stay at Castle Lockes for good, he’d gone back and forth between the City and his old keep over the period of a few months, slowly transferring his hoard into the stable. There were piles of gold and jewels, stacks of books in languages long forgotten, and at least four hundred brooms. When asked about them, Kevin would get confused, saying they were just as precious to him as the gigantic emerald Gary licked every time he passed it by.

Tiggy had told me that Gary had been staying in their old rooms since returning to the castle, evidently taking this trial reconciliation thing very seriously. But none of his stuff had been moved out of the stables, so I thought it wouldn’t be much longer before Gary gave up and admitted what all the rest of us already knew.

We hadn’t heard from Randall, but I wasn’t yet worried about that. I figured it’d take more time to get someone as ridiculously obstinate as the Great White to change his mind, if he would at all.

The map in the King’s office remained still. The Darks, whatever their intentions, were not on the move. It made me uneasy not knowing what Myrin was planning. Morgan thought he would be lying low, licking his wounds after suffering the defeat in Mashallaha, having underestimated my power. I wanted to believe him, but something just felt… off.

; But we were all here, we were all together, and we were happy and whole. Gary was snarking at Kevin, and Tiggy was grinning at the both of them, hands inching toward one of many brooms against the wall. Justin was doing that thing where he glared, but secretly he was thinking about how much he loved all of us and never wanted to be apart from anyone here, especially me, because we were best friends 5eva. Ryan and I sat side by side, Ryan’s hand on my knee, and for a moment, even with everything that had happened, even with everything that could still happen, I was content.

I was happy.

“And then I said, ‘Girl, you do not get to talk to me that way, do you know who I am?’” Gary huffed and flipped his mane dramatically. “Obviously she did not know who I was, because she looked at me with this look, this blank look, which did nothing to help her situation. So I said, ‘Girl, don’t you look at me like that,’ and she said, ‘Bitch, I don’t know you, bitch,’ and then I said, ‘Bitch, I’ll tell you who I am, bitch,’ and then I got up in her face, real close like, and said, ‘Bitch, I’m your motherfucking nightmare, bitch.’”

“Motherfucking nightmare,” Tiggy agreed. “This broom my broom now.”

“What happened next?” Kevin asked, sounding enraptured. “Did you become her nightmare as you foretold?”

“If you would let me finish the godsdamn story, you would learn that I did not in fact become her nightmare, because as it turned out, I was actually talking to my own reflection in a window of a shop that I’d just passed by. It was about that time that I realized that I should cut back on day drinking, because nobody likes a sloppy princess such as myself yelling at her reflection in the middle of a street.”

Justin frowned. “And what exactly does this have to do with negotiating tariff tax like we were talking about before?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Gary said. “But that was super boring, so I took over the conversation and turned it into something far more interesting by making it about me.”

“These are your people,” I said as I nudged Ryan.

“Don’t remind me,” he muttered as he cleaned his sword.

It was good.

It was good.

Then came the page.

He was a scrawny thing with big eyes and a nervous tremble in his lips. He squeaked a little as he announced his presence, bowing so low that I thought he’d fall face-first onto the sod that covered the ground in Kevin’s stable. He looked to be of age, no more than nineteen years old.