Page 6

What did Samuel have?

* * * *

THORNE COULDN’T BELIEVE he’d almost grabbed Samuel. What had he been thinking? He’d never in his life been violent. He’d never had a reason to be. Even now, he hadn’t had a reason to be, and he hadn’t actually been planning on hitting Samuel. He just wanted to stop him from leaving and getting out of the conversation because it was about time they had it.

So when Samuel had turned around, Thorne had reached for him. Luckily, he’d realized what he was doing in time, and he dropped his hand. He was pretty sure that Samuel had noticed something was up, though. He’d paused and waited before leaving.

“Are you okay?” Matthias asked, reminding Thorne that he was there.

Thorne shook himself. This wasn’t like him, and he needed to get back to his usual self. He had work to do. “I’m all right,” he told Matthias.

“You sure?”

“I’ll be fine.” He turned to give Matthias a tight smile. “I apologize for this.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for. I guess he can be infuriating.”

“It is what it is. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Matthias looked like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t try to stop Thorne when he left. Thorne was glad. He didn’t need sympathy. He just needed to sit with his own thoughts for a while and ask himself why Samuel infuriated him the way he did.

There was no reason. Samuel infuriated him because he was an infuriating man. He was messy, and Thorne already had a hard enough time keeping the castle neat with the many people who lived there. With Samuel making his job harder, it was normal for Thorne to snap at him, right? But he’d always prided himself on doing his job right, and that wasn’t doing his job right. He would have to apologize to Samuel. He wasn’t afraid he would be fired if he didn’t—in fact, he was pretty sure Jarvis and the other mages would support him since they’d never had a problem with him in all the years he’d worked for them—but still. He didn’t want any bad blood with anyone who lived permanently in the castle. It would make things awkward for everyone, which wasn’t something Thorne wanted.

He turned a corner, still thinking about what had happened, and collided with someone. He reached out, grabbing the person before either of them could fall.

Penley laughed. “Thanks for that. I would’ve bounced off the wall if you hadn’t caught me.”

Thorne gave him a tight smile and let him go. Penley was the most perceptive of all of them, so of course, he noticed right away that something was up with Thorne.

“What’s wrong?”

Thorne opened his mouth to tell him that everything was fine and that he had work to do, but instead, the words that came out were, “Samuel is driving me crazy.”

Penley blinked at him. “Oh?”

Thorne wasn’t sure what came over him. Normally, he never would’ve talked about this to anyone, let alone one of the mages. If he really wanted to complain, Jillian was the best person to do so with. She’d been working here as long as he had, and she knew how everyone in the castle was. She wouldn’t complain herself, but she would have given him a listening ear and nodded in all the right places.

She wasn’t here, though. Penley was, with his sympathetic expression and worry clear in his eyes.

“He keeps leaving his things everywhere, even though I’ve told him not to several times,” Thorne explained, the words pouring out of his mouth before he could stop them. “I found a library book outside. A library book. What would’ve happened if it had gotten wet?”

“Did it?”

Thorne shook his head. “No. It didn’t rain. It’s the lack of respect, though. He leaves his training gear everywhere. He leaves empty glasses and coffee cups. It’s like the entire castle is his bedroom, and I can’t stand that. We all share the same living spaces. He needs to respect that.”

Even though Thorne was technically part of the staff, he and everyone else were allowed to use the same dining room and living rooms as the mages and their dragons. They worked for them, but at the same time, they were more like a family. Initially, it had been odd, but over the years, Thorne had gotten used to it. He even liked it. It made him feel like he was more than just someone who worked for the mages, and he appreciated that.

“We share the same living spaces because we’re like a family,” Penley said.

“I suppose we are.”

“And Samuel’s birth clan is the same. It’s how most dragon clans are, to be honest. They’re a big family. Haven’t you thought that maybe that’s why Samuel doesn’t pick up after himself as much as you expect him to? Why should he have to when he’s with family?”

That gave Thorne pause. “We’re not his family.”

“Maybe not yet, but he’s Winter’s best friend, and Winter isn’t going anywhere. That means Samuel’s going to stick around, just like he has since he arrived. He’s used to living with a lot of people, just like here at the castle. Even though he hasn’t been here long, it’s clear he considers us family just because of the situation and because he knows that Winter is one of us.”

“That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t respect us.”