Chapter 58
Alice climbed, her wet skirts slapping against the rock as she and the others—Blinkem, Tinkerton, and Nimmie—circled the vast perimeter of the crater.
Nimmie walked in front, setting a pace and pretending it was her own idea to go slowly.
Alice’s chest was tight, her breath coming short.
Her neck was wrapped in linen, wound twice and tied—Tattypoo’s work, done right there on the palace steps—snug enough that swallowing was a decision.
Under it, the two cuts kept their own hot time with her pulse.
Her voice had come back, but only the low, cracked half of it, and every word had a price.
Then, from a few steps away, Nimmie gasped.
“Aye, she be there.”
Alice quickened her pace—and then she saw it. The dragon. Dinah.
She lay sprawled across the ruins, her long neck draped over a fallen column. Silver blood seeped from a wound in her wing, pooling over her sleek black feathers.
Alice ran to her, heart hammering. Dinah’s head was massive now—her beak nearly as long as Alice was tall. Trembling, Alice placed a hand against the cool scales of Dinah’s face.
For a moment, nothing.
Then Dinah’s eyes, shut tight, fluttered open.
“Hello,” Alice breathed, her voice breaking as she smiled.
A soft clicking rumbled from Dinah’s throat. Her glimmering green eyes welled with silver light.
Nimmie and Tinkerton circled the dragon’s body while Blinkem stepped beside Alice. Slowly, he reached out, placing his hand over hers
Alice smiled through her tears, looking deep into the dragon’s brilliant green gaze.
“Hello,” Blinkem whispered.
The dragon let out a heavy sigh, body shuddering. Then, with a low, rumbling grunt, she began to purr. Alice let out a choked sob, pressing her palm more firmly to its head. “She says hello,” she struggled to say to Blinkem.
“Ayo! Tell ’er not to roast me up!” Nimmie called.
Before Alice could ask what she meant, Nimmie was already crawling onto Dinah’s feathered wing. The dragon’s eye widened, tracking Nimmie’s movements, as Alice and Blinkem instinctively stepped back.
“What in the hell are you doing, Nim?” Tinkerton demanded, edging farther away.
“Inspectin’.”
Nimmie yanked up a feather—it was just about her size—and examined it with a scrutinizing squint. “Ah, see it now,” she muttered before hobbling further up the Dinah’s wing.
The dragon let out a sharp squawk, snapping at her.
“Easy now! Don’t be bitin’ the hand that mends ya!
” Nimmie scolded, shaking a finger at the beast. Dinah, exhausted, huffed and dropped her head again.
She blinked sluggishly but kept her gaze locked on Alice.
Alice knelt beside that gaze and stayed there.
Kneeling was easier than standing. Her legs had opinions now about everything.
Nimmie clapped her hands and scurried down, landing with a soft thud.
“Right then!” She planted her fists on her belt.
“Here’s what I’m thinkin’. Wound’s mostly surface—she needs a proper Munchkin salve.
We use it on goats when they’re kickin’ each other in the face and rump.
What say I fetch me folk, we patch up yer dragon, and while we’re at it, haul some o’ these stones to pave Munchkin Lane? ”
She spoke as if sealing a business deal.
“She’s going to be okay?” Saying it took most of what voice Alice had. The rest of what Alice meant she put into a big and painful hug she gave Nimmie.
Nimmie nodded, swallowing her emotions, then clapped her hands together. “Right then—
Tink, go wind up Tick-Tock! Gonna need his machine arms to whip up a batch o’ salve big enough for Dinah!”
“Aye aye, captain!” Tinkerton called, casting one last glance at Alice and Blinkem before hurrying after Nimmie toward the palace.
Alice turned to Blinkem, watching as the sunlight dried his white hair, making it glow like silver thread.
Her own hair hung in ropes of wet fox-red, and her boots were full of the flood, and every part of her had been spent.
What was left was standing in the sun with him.
His deep cranberry eyes squinted at her; he smiled softly. She stepped closer.
He reached for her slowly, hands low, nothing rising past her collar.
Without a word, he wrapped his arms around her.
She melted into him, and he leaned in—gently, completely.
Their lips met. Alice’s stomach flipped as warmth rushed through her, and she clung to him, pressing herself closer.
It pulled at the cut beneath her jaw. She did not stop.
If she was being honest…This kiss was far better than any dream. When they parted, his eyes went, just once and quickly, to the linen at her throat, and came back up. Then they stood with their foreheads together, two people breathing, while the ruined maze steamed in the sun.
Languidere opened her eyes as if yanked from a dreamless sleep. Where was she?
The Red Jin stepped back. Her teeth clenched at the sight of his face—just as dumbfounded and useless as it had been in the solarium of the manor.
“You betrayed me!” she hissed, lunging toward him. Behind the Jin, Hungry Tiger snarled and scattered, his paws skittering on the marble as the Jin stumbled backward. “She was mine!” Languidere screamed.
“She was not. We wouldn’t have made it out if we’d stayed,” the Jin growled, swatting her hands away with force.
“Why have you brought me back here?” she demanded, eyes darting around the chamber in Thorncrest. It looked just as she left it—lavish, untouched, like time had been sealed inside it. “When is this?”
“We returned the day after we left.”
“Give me the stupid watch! I will go right back then and get what I wanted!”
“You cannot, we cannot. It will not allow us to enter a realm where we exist in that time.”
Her mind reeled. In her time, she’d spent years in London—collecting, curating, perfecting her heads.
But in Oz, only a day had passed? “Then Alice is here!” Languidere looked around for her heads.
They had been left behind? “What have you done with Guinevere? I was wearing her last before Mombi and you stopped me from taking Alice!”
“This has to stop. You have no control,” the Jin snapped.
“Where is Guinevere?” she barked. “I need to dumb her down and play as though I am Nan again.” She hated the way Nan sounded in her mouth, but if she needed to pretend to be a maid, she would.
“Rosemarie must know where Alice is!” The Jin glanced around the chamber, suddenly frantic, as though searching for something lost. “Where is her head?” Languidere shrieked, ready to claw his face for playing dumb.
“It—she—was right here on the table,” he muttered, poking the empty marble surface.
Then came a low, guttural growl. Languidere whirled. Hungry Tiger stood in the open doorway, ears flat, Nan’s head clenched between its teeth. Her perfectly coiffed bun was locked in the feline’s jaws, and her face was twitching in her inactive state.
“Sweet Hungry Tiger,” Languidere cooed, stepping forward. “Drop that. Right now.”
The cat growled and bolted from the room into the halls of Thorncrest. “You flea-bitten!” she screamed and lunged at the Jin. “Get her!”
Rosemarie sat in the whispers of Thorncrest’s garden, trying to push from her mind the words Roquat had spoken only that morning. “I will be here. As I always have.”
Her eyes squeezed shut as her child, strong and lively, kicked beneath her ribs. She saw the vision again—the crypt, crumbling into earth. She tried to shake it from her thoughts.
Then—shouting. From beyond the hedges. She turned. Languidere, wild-eyed, stormed after her pet tiger, with a man close behind. In the tiger’s jaws… something. An animal?
Closer now. Languidere screamed for the tiger to stop, but it did not yield.
It bounded straight for the fountain and slowed only when it reached Rosemarie.
There, it gently laid a head at her feet.
Rosemarie’s body shuddered, but she did not step away as she looked down at Nan’s head resting.
Painted like a doll. Diamond choker. Lips tinted. But her eyes—fluttered.
“She’s not dead!” Languidere panted, breathless. “And she’s mine!” Sparkling in the sun at the base of Languidere’s neck was the very same choker design. Twin collars.
Rosemarie didn’t flinch. She stared at the deranged princess, who darted forward to retrieve the head.
But the tiger snarled and lashed out, drawing a bright line of blood across her arm.
Languidere whined like an infant. Rosemarie saw it then: beneath the tiger’s striped coat, a collar.
The same cruel design as Nan’s, and the same that Languidere wore.
“What wicked magic is this, Languidere?”
“Oh, spare me,” Languidere sneered, arrogant, breathless, bleeding.
“Guards!” Rosemarie shouted. Two soldiers rushed in. Bernard followed behind—and stopped dead. His face turned to ash. “Sister,” he whispered. He didn’t move. How could he? What he felt must have been horrific.
“Can it be undone?” Rosemarie asked Languidere. The princess only shrugged. Infuriating. Careless.
“I believe so,” said the man beside her softly. “Most enchantments can be.”
“Guards, arrest him,” Rosemarie commanded. The man didn’t resist. He was led away slowly without protest. “You will find a way,” she called after him, “and then you will be tried.”
Rosemarie knelt. Her crimson scarf unfurled, and with aching tenderness, she swaddled Nan’s head and drew it into her arms. The head was warm. Nan was alive but somehow trapped in a lurlicite prison.
Bernard stepped around Languidere, who seethed, barely restrained. He held out his arms, and Rosemarie placed Nan’s head in them. “We will fix this,” she said. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he turned and followed the prisoner led by the guard.
Rosemarie turned to the remaining soldier and nodded. The guard seized Languidere, twisting her arms behind her back. “You witch! You can’t imprison me!” she spat.
“I wouldn’t punish you so mildly,” Rosemarie said calmly.
“How then? How will you punish me?” Languidere scoffed, nearly laughing, and Rosemarie felt a swell of rage in her entire body. She breathed in deeply to dampen the rising anger, and she looked away.
“Guard,” she said coolly. “Off with her head.”