Page 73 of The Mage and His Stolen Prince
She slumped in her chair, her ears and tail drooping. It was nice to see her in them again, I realized, even though I’d always hated them before. They drew too much attention from strangers and emboldened her actions until she leapt at giant centipedes with only her claws.
Well, that hadn’t happened yet and might not happen again. Maybe she’d be more cautious this time. I almost laughed aloud at the thought.
Delilah’s fur and energy quickly perked back up. “What about turning him good? What if we make friends with the Lord of Grimnight and he willingly gives up his evil ways?”
“Delilah, he cast this cursefifty years ago,” I reminded her. “He’s at least seventy, if not older. Why would he want to be friends with a bunch of twenty-year-olds and a teenager?”
“You didn’t have to single me out like that. Besides, he’s not even—ow!” She glared at Wilde and snatched her leg up from under the table, cradling her knee to her chest.
He stared placidly back at her.
“You don’t befriendevil,” Maximus said. “Especially ones who are Great and Terrible.”
“Exactly,” Wilde agreed. “If the Lord of Grimnight wanted to be good, he would have chosen that path a long time ago. He is an evil mage because hewantsto be, and there’s no point in convincing him otherwise.”
Why does it have to be anevilmage?
Because it’s the only way to get what I want.
I stared at Wilde, more pieces clicking into place. I’d thought the time-loop was a curse, and maybe I wasn’t far off. What kind of mages played around with curses? Evil ones. Who had caused time to keep repeating? Wilde. And now he talked about the Lord of Grimnight like he knew him personally.
Is he—no. I cut that thought off immediately. Someoneelsewas the Lord of Grimnight. Someone who practiced evil laughs and always wore a black hood. Someone who slipped out of contracts and promises like he was covered in grease. Someone with shadow and fury in his eyes as he raised a black sword—
I shoved away from the table. Wilde yelped in startled pain as he was dragged back with me. I’d forgotten we were connected. For his own good, which meant I couldn’t unlock him. But I needed a moment alone …
I looked at Delilah. Someone needed to keep an eye on Wilde, but I didn’t have to be his keeper one hundred percent of the time. I whispered the command word and unlocked only my cuff, then slid it onto Delilah’s wrist before Wilde realized he was free. “Look after him.”
“Trey, where are you going?” Delilah called as I stormed out of the dining room.
A chair scraped against the floor as someone got to their feet. Someone else told them to stay, let me go.
As I ran out into the night, confusing, panicked thoughts filled my head.
Brendon Banes was my father. Rick Woeful was my dad. The only ones I’d ever known. So why did I remember another voice, sneering and petulant, shouting, “I am your real father!”
What did ‘real’ father mean anyway? I may not be blood related to either Brendon or Rick, but they took me in when I had no one else. Not just as a citizen, an orphan, a ward. For every moment of my life, they treated me as their son, even so far as to give me the title of ‘prince.’ I couldn’t remember who I’d been before—
Why not? Why can’t I remember?I paced through the dark streets, thinking back on the memories of my first meeting with my fathers. Hector kindly holding my hand as he guided me to a magic tower that was like something out of a storybook. Prince Brendon slamming the door shut after he saw me—why did he do that?A frantic, frazzled conversation between the two. Pulling away from them, thinking, “I want to go home. I don’t like this plan.”
What plan?
My whole life felt like a portrait that had been sliced up and crudely stitched together. I picked at the threads, prying them apart to expose the ragged edges of a missing figure. A low warning throbbed through myhead, telling me to leave it alone, to stop before I learned something I’d regret.
I pushed past the pain and ripped open the past.
And finally, a single memory slipped through the gash.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Wilde
Four Years Ago
The Lord of Grimnight’s Evil Lair
Learning Through Independent Study
The Lord of Grimnight did not control the forest. He thought he did, because he sat on the throne and because the roots listened to him when he wanted them to grow. The rootsdid notlisten to him when he told them to stop. The forest wanted to grow more than anything, and one mage who had ‘inherited’ the lair at its center wouldn’t deter it.
Every time I cleaned a room, I could still feel the roots lurking beneath the floor, creeping along the walls, waiting for me to turn my back so they could grow again. It took me a whole year to realize that cutting them off wasn’t enough—I had to make them growbackwards. Force their reaching branches and stretching roots to curl back into themselves, into a sapling, into a sprout, into a seed.
