Much to my relief, this time we weren’t traveling by Wheeler. I had seen so many creepy things in Oz that it was surprising anything could still make my skin crawl, but I would be happy if I never saw those awful creatures again as long as I lived. Instead, Lang led us underground, down a twisting series of steps and tunnels that led to a huge, torch-lit cavern.
At one end of the cave a black stream flowed into a high-ceilinged tunnel; nearer to us, it spread into a broad, shallow pool. A long dock stretched out into the water, and tied to it was a black boat carved into the shape of a dragon. Jet-black scales glimmered along its sides, and leathery black sails shaped like wings waved gently in the breeze drifting off the river.
Another many-headed beetle dressed in a captain’s uniform—complete with tiny sailor hats perched atop each of his heads—jumped to attention as we approached. Lang led us out onto the dock, and the captain helped each of us climb aboard.
Madison refused his outstretched, segmented leg with a shudder, muttering a curse under her breath as she whacked her shins on the edge of the boat. The beetle untied us from the dock—and the boat stretched its wings. Madison squeaked in surprise and even Nox looked alarmed.
“It’s alive!” I exclaimed.
“Of course she’s alive,” Lang said, looking at me in puzzlement. “How do you travel by water in the Other Place?”
I thought about explaining that Kansas was landlocked, and that we used cars, not dragons, but decided against it. Instead, I sank back into the bench carved into the boat’s hollow body.
Except it wasn’t carved, I realized—it was a smooth ridge of bone covered in leathery skin that was warm from the heat of the dragon boat’s body. Peeking over the side, I saw huge, scaly legs paddling strongly underneath us. The captain controlled the dragon boat with a set of long leather reins. I tried not to think about our boat’s long, sharp, and very deadly-looking teeth.
The river carried us through a seemingly endless series of dimly lit tunnels and underground canals. In places, we saw other traffic—mostly emaciated-looking peasants dressed in tattered rags, poling along in skiffs pieced together from bits and scraps, but also a few boats like ours ferrying people who were obviously much richer.
As we traveled, I told Nox and Lang about what Lurline had showed me. And I couldn’t be sure, but I almost sensed Lang softening as I talked. As if she was finally, finally starting to believe that we might be on her side, too.
Each time we passed another boat, Lang gestured for us to duck down. The boat spread its wings even wider as we sailed past, hiding us under its huge wings.
I was well aware of how important it was to stay hidden. Still, I couldn’t help looking around every chance I got. The scenery was eerily beautiful and totally unlike anything I’d ever seen in Oz.
Nox caught my eye and I leaned over to him.
“Are you sure it was real?” he asked.
“She’s alive. And they’re winning.”
Nox leaned into my shoulder. “I hate her sometimes. Most of the time. But I want her to be in the world so I can keep hating her until I can’t anymore. Does that make sense?”
I nodded. “I could have said the same thing about my mother for most of my life.”
“But not now?”
“She’s better. She’s trying. It doesn’t erase the years when she was so messed up. And it doesn’t mean it won’t happen again. But I don’t hate her today.”
The boat shifted suddenly, knocking me into him. Before I could right myself, Nox pulled me closer and kissed me. It wasn’t like our other kisses. It was deeper and needier. I left myself fall into it, blocking out our surroundings if just for a moment.
Lang cleared her throat and we broke apart.
“We’re getting close now. It’s time for me to change.” She turned away from us and I saw the silver choker glow brightly for an instant. Lang faced us again, and I gasped. She now wore the face—or was it the head?—of a homely old woman. Her clothes had been replaced by a nondescript coverall made of unremarkable gray-green fabric. She looked like a workman borrowing her boss’s fancy boat to run an errand.
Which was exactly the point, I realized. Lang was turning out to be a master of disguise.
“So some of the rumor is true,” I said grimly.
She shrugged. “I don’t actually kill people and take off their heads. With magic I’m able to ‘borrow’ other people.” Madison looked green, as though she might hurl over the side of the boat at any minute.
“Does everyone in Ev live underground?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“Some of the farmers keep surface settlements,” Lang said. I thought of the sad, shabby villages we’d passed on the way to her palace. “Most people work as slave labor in the Nome King’s jewel mines and forges.”
“Slaves?” Nox asked. Lang gave him a sharp look.
“We’re not as enlightened here as you are in Oz,” she said sarcastically. I thought of seeing the Munchkins mining for magic when I first landed in Oz.
“Dorothy’s Oz isn’t exactly what I’d call enlightened,” I said. “What about the Wheelers?” I asked, grimacing at the memory of the awful creatures who’d so cavalierly borne us across the desert.
“They serve a purpose,” she said. “They keep people afraid of me.”
“By terrorizing the farms around your palace?” Nox asked drily.
She bristled. “The Wheelers are the only creatures of Ev that are surface-bound. They’re easy enough to escape in the underground tunnels; they never go belowground. And they make good guardians, if unpredictable ones.”
“But they were ready to burn people’s villages on the way,” Madison said. “And they wanted to hurt us.”
“They know their place,” Lang said curtly. “They would never dare contradict my orders. And as for the villages . . .” She shrugged. “A few casualties are unavoidable in service to the larger cause. I learned that from the best, after all.”
She shot Nox a bitter look. Something like pain flashed across his face and was gone so fast I wondered if I’d seen it at all. I had to know their history or it was going to drive me out of my mind, but I’d have to wait until I could talk to Nox alone. It was anyone’s guess when that might be.
Lang was matter-of-fact about the extreme poverty, which was obvious all around us, despite the beautifully carved tunnels decorated with jeweled murals and elaborate dragon boats. I thought about Dusty Acres as we floated by the tiny structures that passed for homes along the river’s banks. Injustice seemed like a way of life here. I wondered if Lang had always been so hardened to it, or if something had happened to her when she was part of the Order that had made her into this ruthless, pragmatic double agent. Perhaps that was the point of all the different faces she wore—she didn’t want to remain as one person.
Everything I’d seen and done, all the suffering I’d witnessed, starting with my very first hour in Oz—I’d thought I’d hardened myself to it, just the way she had. That had become clear when I’d been explaining things to Madison earlier. I’d had to, or else I’d have lost my mind. I’d had to fight to kill without regretting the death I left behind me. So did Nox.
And ultimately, so did Dorothy.
But Dorothy had taken it a step further from the very beginning. She wasn’t fighting injustice—she was creating it, ever since she’d returned to Oz. The first time she’d come to Oz, she’d been like me. She’d just tried to help her friends and keep them safe. But when she came back, she’d killed and tortured people for fun. She’d made war into a hobby. She’d enslaved her subjects and warped them into her soldiers. Something had happened to make her that way. Something had turned her from a girl like me into the monster she’d become. Whatever that thing was, it was the key. I knew it. That was what I had to find out if I wanted to end her power forever without killing her. If I wanted to use compassion—but still win. I’d stopped short of killing her directly, so I knew I was different.
I felt like I had a dozen different strands of varying textures and lengths, and I was almost ready to braid them together—but threads were still slipping through my fingers. There was something important I was missing. Something about how all of this tied together. Something that Lurline had hinted at.
The thing that bound me to Dorothy and turned orphaned kids like Nox—and, presumably, Lang—into battle-scarred warriors. If I could just undo the tangle and weave the threads together . . . but for now, the knot was too dense for me to unravel.
And, I realized, I didn’t just want to defeat Dorothy because it was my mission. I wanted to defeat her because I wanted to stay alive. I wanted to see my mom again. I wanted to have a chance at a real life with Nox—a relationship that wasn’t constantly thrown into turmoil by war and intrigue. I wanted to make sure that Madison got home safely to her family and her kid. I had responsibilities that were bigger than me. Bigger than the Order and what they wanted for me. I had family. I had friends.
The dragon boat slowed down and I stopped thinking. For now, we just had to stay alive. I could figure out the next step when we were safe.
As safe as you could get in Ev, anyway. Which didn’t seem very safe at all.
“My lady, we’re here,” the captain said, several of his mouths speaking at once. His eerie, rustling voices broke the silence.
“Good,” Lang said, her voice flat and distant. “You know the way in. Take us home.”
The dragon boat stilled in the fast-moving water, its legs moving powerfully against the current to hold us in place. The captain held up long, segmented limbs and began to chant in a low, haunting singsong. Each of his mouths shaped different words and different melodies, the individual songs weaving together into a tapestry of sound that sent a chill down my spine. The music was full of pain and longing and somehow, even though I didn’t understand any of the words, I knew all of them were sad.
Was there anything in Ev that wasn’t about heartbreak and loss?
As the boatman continued his song, a fissure appeared in the rock face in front of us. Slowly the boat moved toward it as the chant increased in intensity. The fissure widened just enough for us to slip through, and then the rock slammed closed behind us and the boatman’s song trailed off into the sudden silence.
The darkness was so intense it seemed almost alive. Suddenly I could feel the tons of rock above us, the distance between us and the open sky. I swallowed hard, trying to ease the suffocating feeling that was taking over me. Breathe, I told myself firmly. Just breathe. The ceiling isn’t collapsing. The stone isn’t moving. You’re fine.
“It takes some getting used to,” Lang said in the darkness beside me. I jumped. She sounded almost sympathetic.
There was a crack and a hiss, and then the boatman was lighting a lantern with a match. The light barely made a dent in the smothering darkness around us, but at least I could see something now. We were in a low, narrow tunnel, the rock just inches over our heads. The boat’s wings were furled tightly to its sides now, and its head was lowered close to the water to avoid brushing the tunnel roof.
“I think I liked it better when it was dark,” Madison said. Even in this dim light I could see that she was pale.
“I hated it at first, too,” Lang said as the boat moved forward again. “It’s funny how much a person can change. Now, when I go aboveground I feel naked. It’d take years up there to get used to it again.”
Nox was looking a little pale, too. I reached over and squeezed his hand, and he gave me a brief, grateful glance. Lang saw the touch and frowned, looking away again.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “Just a few more minutes.”
“What was that song?” I asked the boatman, but he didn’t respond.
“He only speaks to me,” Lang said. “It’s a spell that all my servants know; it can only be sung by a single person with many voices. It’s the only way to get to the place I’m taking you.”
“Why’d you set the magic up that way?” Madison asked. Lang was silent and Nox answered her.
“So no one can torture it out of her,” he said. “I’m guessing her servants don’t feel pain.”
After that, none of us felt like talking for a while.
Finally, the tunnel opened up into a larger cavern where the water formed a broad, flat lake that was big enough that the lantern light didn’t reach to its shore. I felt my spirits lift as the ceiling did, as if the rock itself had been oppressing us. The dragon boat sped up, probably sensing it was nearly at the end of its journey, and soon the lamplight fell on a narrow, pebbled beach. Lang kicked off her shoes. In one smooth motion, she swung herself over the boat’s side and into the water, wading toward shore.
“I guess we follow,” Nox said under his breath.
I climbed out of the boat as Nox offered Madison a hand. She waved it away. The pitch-black water was almost hip-deep, and freezing cold. I splashed my way toward the beach and something very large and very scaly slithered past my calves. Panic flooded through me and I half ran, half sloshed toward the shore. Madison made an awful noise behind me and I knew that she’d just encountered whatever it was that had passed me.
“They’re harmless!” Lang called from the beach. I didn’t stay in the water long enough to find out whether or not she was telling the truth, and Nox and Madison were right behind me.
“You can change,” Lang said, indicating our soaked clothes with a jerk of her head. She’d unearthed a waterproofed leather bag of supplies from somewhere and was pulling on tight black leather leggings, a loose shirt, and boots. With her dark hair pulled back from her face in a high ponytail, she looked like a cross between a rocker and an aerobics instructor.
I rummaged through the bag, choosing a similar outfit. My shoes had stayed miraculously dry despite the slog to shore; apparently magic boots were water-resistant. Who knew. Nox changed with his back to us, his lean muscles rippling as he pulled on a clean shirt.
“You’re staring,” Madison said, elbowing me in the ribs.
“I am not,” I said, blushing.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, and rolled her eyes.
Behind us, the dragon boat was paddling away, steered by its strange captain. Lang lit another lantern, its flickering amber light playing over the rocky beach and sending looming, sinister shadows ahead of us.
“Come on,” she said. “You can rest for a few hours before we figure out what to do next. I have enough alarm spells set up to wake the dead, but we shouldn’t need them for a while. No one but me knows this place exists.”
Rest. Just the word sent a flood of longing through me. When was the last time I’d really been able to rest?
I thought of the little bedroom my mom had set up for me in Kansas while she waited for me to come home, even though everything pointed to the fact that I was dead. How she’d refused to give up on me, gotten sober in case I came back, finally started dating someone who wasn’t a greaseball or a loser. I plodded after Lang’s wobbly beacon, across the stone beach and into yet another tunnel. This one was more rough-hewn than anything in her palace. Thankfully, it also didn’t sport the Headless Horseman–themed decor. There were fewer branches and turnings; it was as if Lang was leading us deep into the heart of the earth itself. We were silent, our breath echoing in the dimly lit, narrow tunnel.
For the millionth time I wondered what my mom was doing now.
It wasn’t just me who’d vanished this time—the Nome King’s magic had destroyed the high school and pulled Madison into Oz, too. We were both missing persons—me for a second time. I wanted to believe my mom would be okay, but I knew better. She’d barely been sober for a month when I disappeared a second time. She’d lost our home, me, everything. Even her pet rat, Star. Her new boyfriend, Jake, seemed like a nice enough guy but I wondered how good he’d be at helping her stay sober, or if she’d fall back into her old bad habits.
She’d been right to hope that I was alive the first time I’d disappeared. But I couldn’t imagine that she’d be able to keep up hope a second time.
And even if we finally defeated Dorothy and I found a way to get back to Kansas, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go.
“You look really sad,” Madison said quietly.
I jumped. “Yeah, sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about . . .”
“Kansas?” she supplied.
“Yeah. Are you—”
“Trying not to think about it? Yeah,” she said. “I just keep going over that moment in my head, you know? When Assistant Principal Strachan turned into that freaky-ass dude and dragged me through—well, through whatever that was. And I dropped Dustin Jr. I dropped him! My kid!” She shook her head. “I can’t stop wondering if there’s something I could’ve done different. What mistake I made to end up here without him. I don’t belong here, Ames. I don’t want to be here. And now everything is . . . This all seems like some awful, fucked-up dream.”
“I know,” I said.
I did know, was the thing. I knew what she was going through in a way that no one else in Oz possibly could. Lang and Nox might’ve lost their parents, but they were still living in the place where they were from. They hadn’t literally been pulled out of their own world and into one that they’d grown up believing was just a story—a funny movie with cheesy old actors in bad face paint and a pretty girl in a checked dress.
There was no way to describe what that felt like to someone who’d grown up in a world where magic was normal, witches were real, and the Cowardly Lion ate people in front of you.
But what I wasn’t telling Madison was that when I first landed in Oz, I was happy to not be in Kansas anymore. Happy to have escaped the trailer, and my mom—and Madison. Happy to be needed by the Order, and to be chosen for something for the first time in my life. Oz had made me stronger, had given me magic and friends and love. Oz had given me something to fight for.
But I didn’t say any of that to Madison, who was missing her baby. Who was one crazy, creepy thing away from having a meltdown.
“There’s nothing you could’ve done,” I said. “I mean, I know that doesn’t help, but you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I dropped him,” she said again, and then she looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Did you ever visit Sky Island, Amy?” Lang cut into our conversation as if she hadn’t been paying attention, but I knew she’d been listening. She was giving Madison something else to think about. For the first time, I felt almost grateful to her.
“No,” I said.
“Amy learned magic in the caves,” Nox said. “After you—left, it got too dangerous to take people there. Maybe when all of this is over, Amy, you can see it.”
“What’s Sky Island?” Madison asked.
So, as we walked, Lang told us. About the place where she’d learned magic from Mombi, the old, abandoned tourist resort: a floating island, clear as glass, that drifted through rainbow-colored clouds that changed colors to the beat of your heart. The river made of lemonade, the clear blue sky, the way it was always sunny and never too hot. After all the time we’d spent underground, even just the thought of blue sky seemed so impossibly, unreachably beautiful, but the way Lang talked about the swirling, colorful mists that moved across the island was so vivid I could picture myself there. Next to me, Madison sighed softly.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” she said.
“It’s hard here, I know,” Nox said. “But there are beautiful things, too. That’s what we’re fighting for.”
I could see Lang’s back stiffen and I knew Nox had said something wrong. “Is it?” she said, her voice low and hard. “Is that what the Order does, Nox? You’d think you would have at least changed the speech after all these years.”
“Langwidere . . . Lanadel,” he said, and then sighed and shrugged. “Believe what you want,” he said. “For now, we all want the same thing. To take care of Dorothy once and for all.”
“For now,” Lang agreed in that same rough tone.
All visions of Sky Island were pushed aside by the harsh intrusion of reality. Because I knew that Lang was only protecting us to protect herself. And as soon as she found a way to leave us behind, she would. I had to find a way to convince her to fight with us, or we were screwed.
Luckily, we didn’t have to walk much farther before the tunnel ended in a solid iron door. Lang placed one palm on the metal and murmured something that sounded similar to the chant her boatman had sung. At first, nothing happened. Then the door swung open with a creaking groan.
“Need to oil the hinges,” Lang remarked. “Haven’t had to use this place in a while.”
On the other side of the door, the tunnel broadened into a room off of which branched out several hallways. One led to a little kitchen, another to a bathroom where, I saw happily, there was a tub. Others led to small sleeping chambers. The main room had a rough wooden table and few comfortable-looking chairs scattered here and there. The whole place was lit by glowing veins of crystals in the walls. It was small and modest, but extremely cozy.
Lang showed us the pantry, where shelves practically groaned under the weight of jars and barrels of preserved food.
“You could last a long time in here,” Nox said.
“That’s the point,” she said coldly.
“Well, I’m passing out now,” Madison announced, and Lang softened.
“You can take any of those rooms,” she said. “Mine’s farther down the hallway. Help yourself to anything you want to eat or drink. I need to figure out what to do with you. It’s almost morning. It won’t take long for the Nome King to realize he doesn’t know where I am—and put two and two together.” She glanced involuntarily at the silver bracelet around her wrist. She saw me follow her look.
“It tells him where I am,” she said quietly. “But the wards around this place are too strong for it. He’ll figure out soon enough that I’ve gone somewhere he can’t find me.”
I still didn’t completely trust her, but I realized how much Lang was risking to help us even this much. She could just as easily have thrown us out of her palace—or turned us over to the Nome King. She didn’t care about helping us, she cared about hurting Dorothy. But for whatever reason, she was keeping us safe, no matter how she talked to us.
Somewhere, some part of her was on our side. Enough to keep us alive, anyway, even though it put her in terrible danger. For the first time in a while, I started to actually feel hopeful. Maybe there was a way out of Ev for us. Maybe we could defeat Dorothy after all. And when we did, I was getting out of this underground hell as quickly as I could.
Lang might be used to the unending, unrelenting darkness, but I ached for open air and sunlight, the smell of flowers and growing things. Anything but cold stone and blackness and dark, cold water full of unseen, terrifying creatures.
Lang brushed past us and was gone, her footsteps swallowed up by the stone as she walked down the hall.
“Okay then, good night, I guess,” Madison said.
Her voice sounded small and sad. But I knew there was nothing I could say or do to make it better. I’d check in with her in the morning, but it wasn’t like I could reunite her with her kid or send her back to Kansas with a snap of my fingers. She disappeared into one of the bedrooms, closing the door behind her with an unmistakably firm snick. She didn’t want to talk, and I wasn’t going to push her.
“I’m going to look for some tea or something,” I said. I was exhausted, but too jittery to sleep. I had suddenly realized that I was alone with Nox for the first time in a very long while and I was nervous. Despite all the drama with witches trying to separate us and pit us against each other, and then dying and not-dying, Nox and I were getting closer.
The truth was, I didn’t have much—okay, any—experience with guys, aside from fending off my mom’s creepy ex-boyfriends and their super-inappropriate interest in her teenage daughter. When it came to someone like Nox, I still had no idea what I was doing.
“Tea sounds good,” he said.
I poked through Lang’s pantry until I found something that looked vaguely tealike—a jar of small, dried gray-brown twigs that smelled like the green tea my mom drank by the bucketful when she got clean—and hoped I wasn’t accidentally brewing up a potion that would turn us into frogs, or beetles, or something even worse.
While I heated water on the stove, Nox threw together some odd-looking green batter and poured it into a pan.
“Who are you and what did you do with Nox?” I joked.
He smiled. “Mombi never stopped being a witch, even when I was a little kid. She kept odd hours and was sometimes gone all night—but whenever she came home, she would make these.” He plated two green pancakes and handed one to me.
“Her Mombi way of taking care of you?” I quipped as I took the tea to the table. Nox sat next to me on the wooden bench, so close our thighs touched, and my heart skipped a beat.
“I should tell you about Melindra,” he said quietly, and my thoughts screeched to a halt.
“Okay,” I said neutrally.
He licked his lips and pressed them together, staring off into space as though he couldn’t figure out how to start. I took a deep breath.
“You’re in love with her?” I offered.
He looked startled. “What? No! Is that what you—no, Amy, that’s not it at all. Lang was in love with her.”
I stared at him. “Wait, what?”
“When Lang came to train with the Order, she had no one. Her family had been killed in one of Dorothy’s early raids. This was a long time before you came, before we understood just how bad Dorothy was going to be. All we had were rumors at that point—we just knew we had to be prepared to fight if it came to that.” He laughed softly, bitterly. “Which, as you know, it did. Anyway, Lanadel journeyed through the mountains alone, on foot, starving. For weeks after her family was murdered. Trying to find the Order based on stories she’d heard that we existed. She almost died, but Gert found her. She started training with us. She was good. Very good, actually. One of the better fighters I’d ever worked with, even though she had no training, no experience. She was driven. All she had left to keep her going was the idea of avenging her family. And then she got close to Melindra.”
He took a deep, ragged breath. I didn’t say anything. The pain in his face was awful. Without thinking, I put one hand on his knee and he took it, lacing his cool, dry fingers through my own. “You never met Melindra before she went through . . .” He cleared his throat and continued more strongly. “Before she went through the Scarecrow’s . . . workshop. She was the most gifted fighter I’d ever seen. But it was something more than that. She had this warmth, this kindness, this generosity. Other people with her strength could’ve turned into a bully, but not her.”
Melindra? Warm and kind? That didn’t sound anything like the bitter, scarred warrior I knew, the half-tin, half-human girl the Scarecrow had turned into the Order’s resident mean girl. But I might not have much kindness left in me either, if I’d been through his torture.
“Lang—Lanadel—hadn’t had much friendship in her life, I don’t think, even before her family was killed. And Melindra took her under her wing. For Melindra, it was just the way she was. But for Lanadel—I couldn’t see it then, but I think it was much, much more. And then Melindra—” He stopped. His fingers were squeezing mine so tightly that my hand was losing sensation. I held my breath, not wanting him to stop. “This is the hard part,” he said. “The part where I—where I made a mistake.”
I’d never heard him admit anything like this. That he could be wrong. That something he’d done for the Order was a bad decision. My heart ached for him. But at the same time, I couldn’t help feeling an admittedly selfish sense of relief. He wasn’t in love with Melindra—or Lang. I knew that should have been the least of my concerns, but my feelings about Nox didn’t obey rational rules.
“Melindra didn’t feel the same way about Lang, but she did feel that way about me,” he said uncomfortably. “I . . . I cared about her, of course. I think if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in the Order, in trying to take care of all the trainees while keeping the witches happy, I might have been able to love her, too. But it wasn’t the right time. She wasn’t the right person. I didn’t have anything to give someone else then. I could have handled it better. She—we—had an awful fight about it, and Lanadel overheard. The next day, I sent Melindra to spy on the Scarecrow. She went because I’d told her I could never return her feelings. Lanadel thought I’d sent her away because I couldn’t stand what she’d said to me, that I didn’t know how to think for myself, that I was just Gert and Mombi’s puppet.”
“But you didn’t,” I said.
“I don’t know, Amy,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “That’s what I’m telling you. I sent one of our best fighters into a situation she couldn’t possibly survive. She knew it. I knew it. Lanadel certainly knew it. And I didn’t know why. I told myself it was because we needed the information. But for all I know, Lang was right. And she’s right to hate me for what I did. Gert and Mombi sent Lanadel to Ev to spy on the Nome King right after Melindra left for the Emerald City. They worked up some kind of spell to get her across the Deadly Desert. She was supposed to send back reports but we never heard from her again. I thought—we all thought—she was dead. When we started hearing rumors about Princess Langwidere, some crazy tyrant who worked for the Nome King and who cut off her subjects’ heads and wore them as her own . . . well, none of us even thought of connecting her to Lanadel.”
“Can we trust her?”
“Lanadel?” He sighed, running his hands through his blue-black hair. “I don’t know. Probably not. Although now that she knows Melindra is alive, she doesn’t have the same reasons for revenge. But the road brought us here for a reason, and the road always does what it does for the good of Oz. It comes from Lurline; its magic is older than anything else in Oz except for the Great Clock. I think there’s something much, much bigger going on here than just Dorothy and the Nome King. And maybe that’s ultimately what we have to find out if we want to end all of this.”
“I wonder why the Nome King rescued Dorothy,” I said thoughtfully. “He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who needed much help in the magic department.”
“The Nome King has always wanted to rule Oz,” Nox said.
I groaned and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. “Three worlds, two pairs of shoes, sixteen villains . . . It’s too much. But I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about that right now. We’re stuck here with that crazy mobster, or whatever she is. In all these years, she’s never taken him down and she seems awfully comfortable here.”
“She’s not crazy,” Nox said gently. “She’s in pain. More pain than you can imagine.” I nodded. Lurline had said the same thing. “She has nothing,” he continued. “She’s lost everyone she loves, everything she cares about. For better or for worse, our paths are tied to hers now. And I think she’s right, about taking care of Dorothy for good. I know how hard it was for you back in the Emerald City to be faced with that choice. And I don’t want you to be the one to have to do it. But as long as Dorothy’s alive, we’re in danger. There’s no other way.”
“But I still don’t understand why Lang—Lanadel—hates you so much. You were just following orders.”
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t. I was the one who decided to send Melindra to the Scarecrow. That’s the thing Lanadel will never forgive me for. Gert and Mombi sent her to Ev, and she came here thinking that Melindra was dead, and that I’d good as killed her. And if Melindra had died, it would’ve been my fault. What happened to her was my fault. She would still—”
“You can’t blame yourself for what the Scarecrow did, Nox,” I said urgently. “You can’t carry this thing around for the rest of your life, letting it eat you up inside. You told me every time I had to do something awful that we were at war. We’re fighting so that other people don’t have to make the kinds of decisions we do. I understand that you think everything the Order does is your responsibility—but you can’t blame yourself forever. You just can’t. Melindra wouldn’t have gone if she didn’t think she could survive.”
“Melindra wouldn’t have gone if she thought I loved her,” he said.
My heart hurt so badly, thinking of what Nox was putting himself through, all for something that was so much larger than anything he could control.
For so long, we’d all been Gert and Mombi and Glamora’s pawns. He might’ve made a decision he regretted, but they were just as responsible. They had been calling the shots all along until now. They’d literally controlled him until the road had taken us out of Oz. They’d told him he and I could never be together. They’d controlled his entire life.
And now he had to carry this burden, feeling like he deserved Lang’s hatred, all because of what he’d done trying to save the world.
“Nox, do you believe that I make my own choices?”
“Of course.”
“I chose to join the Order. I chose to take the mission. I choose you. Melindra and Lang, they chose, too. It’s not on you.”
He opened his mouth to protest but he closed it again.
“And I choose to do this now.” I kissed him with all the love and compassion I had in me, with everything inside me that told him I understood that there was nothing to forgive.
I didn’t need magic to tell him everything I wanted to know with that kiss: that I was hopelessly, helplessly, unconditionally in love with him, that I’d stick it out with him until the end, whatever that end looked like.
And he kissed me back—hesitantly at first, and then with a hunger I could feel through his mouth, his hands buried in my hair. It was a long time before we came up for air.
“Amy—” he said hoarsely, but I put a finger across his lips.
“No talking,” I said. I took his hand and pulled him up from the table and practically dragged him into one of Lang’s open bedrooms. He kicked the door shut behind us and I shoved him backward onto the bed. Finally, he smiled, grabbing my hands and pulling me down on top of him.
We had made out before. But this felt different. When Nox’s lips brushed my neck, I felt the kiss wash over me.
I sat up, and my hands hesitated at the hem of my dress. And then I pulled it upward. I had taken off my dress a hundred times without falling over, but this time I began to. Nox caught me and helped me off with the dress. When I emerged from underneath it, he threw it on the floor. We were both laughing until I placed my hand on his chest.
He paused for a moment, running one callused palm down the bare skin of my back. “Are you okay?”
I rolled over to face him, covering my chest with one arm. “I’m, um, really nervous,” I said. I felt myself blushing. And then I blushed some more because I knew he could see me blushing.
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice gentle. “We don’t have to do . . . this. We don’t have to do anything at all. I can go. Do you want me to go?”
“No!” My voice came out as an urgent squeak. “It’s just that I, um, I’ve never . . . I’ve never done this before. The thing that, um, it seems like we’re maybe about to do.”
“Oh,” he said. He blushed too. “I, well.” He sat up, and I thought I’d ruined everything. My heart sank. “I’ve never done this—um, that—before either.”
“But . . . Melindra?”
“No!” he exclaimed, and then backpedaled. “I mean not that, no. We were just . . . we just, um . . .”
“Got it,” I said quickly. I definitely did not need the gory details. Or the comparison.
“When I first met you and I saw you fight, I told you you had to change. That you had to learn to be the knife. But I was the one who needed to learn. I never thought about myself. I thought of the Order. But I was the knife. I was the fight. You taught me how to love. You taught me how to choose. And I choose you. Always.”
My heart clenched in my chest. “Nox . . .”
Nox and I had fought back to back on the battlefield. We had kissed and touched before, but there was always a stopping point. A holding back. This was letting go. I felt almost more a part of my own skin and at the same time more in the moment than I had ever been. Every touch and kiss was a call and response of skin and feeling. But it wasn’t like the movies. We still giggled a lot and it was awkward and funny and a little weird but also completely, totally perfect. It was nothing like I thought it would be and everything that I ever thought it would be all at once. Afterward I pillowed my head on his lean, muscular chest and his sandalwood smell enveloped me like a cloud as the pounding of his heart slowed to a regular beat. He put an arm around me and I burrowed into his side.
“I love you,” he said softly into my hair.
“I know,” I said, yawning, and then I fell into the deepest, most contented sleep of my life.