7. Chapter 7
seven
Rye would not like what I was planning. In fact, my emerging plot might have sent him into a panic.
But I had never liked much of what his plans had entailed either.
Aside from that, he wasn’t here to propose a better plan. Or, for that matter, to stop me.
Mostly, he wouldn’t like my idea because of Morella. Because, wherever I went, so did the Wicked Witch of the West.
And was there anyone else Morella hated more than Dorothy Gale?
Bringing the two of them together would equate to a gamble of lives. Mine, Dorothy’s, and anyone else’s in our vicinity. What was more, Morella had to already know what I was planning since she’d no doubt overheard my conversation with Nick. She would have time to conspire and counterplan.
I couldn’t see any other solution, though.
We needed Rye. I needed Rye.
I also needed to help Cahal to the best of my ability while honoring Rye’s sacrifice. To do either of those things, I would have to remain here with Nick while Rye was transported to the spring.
This metal man, was he not Oz’s last standing pillar? The current rightful king?
I didn’t know how the rules worked, but with Rye down, Cahal captured, and Glinda held prisoner as well, logic dictated that Nick would be regent.
I didn’t count. But…Rye had wanted me to. Badly enough to almost die.
Even if I was Ozma, that still didn’t make me a queen. Not really. But this kingdom still needed me. And so did Nick. No matter what, I could not abandon Nick to shoulder the burden of this war all on his own so that I could transport Rye to a spring I didn’t know how to get to in the first place. But Dorothy could.
Rye would never forgive me for bringing Dorothy within West’s reach, no matter what incarnation the witch took or how limited her powers. But, well, “Oz first” had always been his motto, hadn’t it?
Besides, if I was successful in bringing Dorothy back to Oz, something I remained uncertain could be accomplished even if I hadn’t been shackled with these bracers, her proximity to Morella would be short-lived. With the bracers on, Morella could only bluster and fume until Nick sent Dorothy on her way with Rye. Which he’d do immediately, I wagered.
No. It wasn’t the best plan.
Deep down, a part of me knew that.
But, when I had first shown up in Rye’s palace, a stranger to Oz with too much power I didn’t know how to wield, I had not been an ideal candidate for Rye’s plan, either. I had, however, been his only option.
And at this moment? Dorothy remained mine.
After my proposal to Nick, that I use a mirror to open a portal to my world, to Kansas, Nick had gone silent, deliberating. He had no expression I could read, no detectible emotions if they did not come through his voice or body language. All the same, at my mention of Kansas, there’d been a shift in the room, in the air between us, like I’d whispered a magic word capable of wiping away years of accumulated gloom and despair.
He’d stayed quiet for a long time, too. As if I’d placed before him an impossible dream he didn’t want to waste too much of his heart hoping for.
Finally, Nick had muttered something about needing to think it over. Then he left the room.
Unceremonious as far as exits went? Yes.
Telling in its abruptness? Very.
Dorothy Gale. What was it about her that had the people who had known her, not to mention all of Oz, in such reverence of her?
Yet another unanswered question for me to sigh and stew over.
I left Nick’s office shortly after Nick and returned to the bell tower room—to Rye.
Except there was someone inside. Chomping on an apple—while rifling through Rye’s pockets.
“Hey!” I shouted at the man—the creature?
Garbed in a long dark gray highwayman’s trench coat, the figure swung around to face me, his luminescent yellow eyes wide with shock, his dark and full violet-mauve lips parted to show the tips of sharp white canines.
Whatever this being was, though, he was not a Winkie. The fangs alone proved that.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I piped when he just kept staring at me with that stunned expression. In addition to fangs, he possessed pointed ears pierced with silver hoops, and long black hair tipped in silver and shaved on one side of his head. He had a pierced brow, too, and several of the jagged locks framed his stunned face.
He blinked once, then pointed one clawed finger of his apple-holding hand at me.
“You can see me,” the man said. “Not…supposed to be able to…”
I started to speak again, but one of the guards called to me from his post just outside the doorway.
“My lady,” said the guard, “is everything all right?”
I gaped at the guard as he turned his helmed head to peer inside, then I shot my gaze back to the lavender-skinned apple-eating thief with—was that a tail?
Like it had a mind of its own, the long, thin, and hairless tail of the young man—was he a man?—swished and swayed behind him like that of an agitated cat. His yellow eyes darted, scanning the still-animated stained-glass windows as if trying to decide which one to dive out of.
“Tell the guard everything is fine, Tip,” came another voice—Morella’s.
“Oh, fuck me.” Dropping the apple, Tail Man backpedaled from Morella. Who he shouldn’t have been able to see. Because normally, only I could see her. Morella could make herself visible to others, but she wouldn’t have dared do so here in Nick’s castle.
As soon as the man realized his actions had edged him nearer to me, he skittered back a second time, the soles of black leather knee-high boots scuffing against stone.
“Were you speaking to…someone?” asked the guard whose form filled the doorway. He peered between me, Rye, and our surroundings, searching for the source of my alarm.
“Um,” I said, eyes darting between the guard, Morella, and the man, who must have been as invisible to the guards as Morella.
“You are so supposed to be dead,” Tail Man said to Morella, his spine finding the wall.
“I just...” I said to the guard, gaze still bouncing from one invisible—invisible to him—figure to the other and back again. “Talking to myself.”
The guard frowned at me. He spared one final glance to Rye as if assuming I’d been yelling at the unconscious king. And of course, what else was there for anyone in his position to conclude?
Without another word, the guard issued a small bow and retreated to his post. And the clearing of that exit route prompted Tail Man to bolt for the door.
Morella stepped in his way, and in response, the man released an almost girlish yelp.
“Ella,” he said, holding up his hands and backing away again, “look, I’ll give it all back. No hard feelings.”
As West glared at him, he began pulling things from the inner pockets of his long overcoat: gemstones, silver coins, a necklace embedded with a gargantuan sapphire. Some bit of black lace?
These things he deposited on the sill of the nearest stained-glass window—the one featuring Dorothy and Rye’s first meeting, with Rye still on the pike amid a cornfield, his head hung so that his floppy brown hat obscured his stitched face.
“Pae Woot,” growled Morella. “What the hell are you doing so far away from Gillikin Country?”
“I…well, they said the king was dead.”
“He’s not dead,” I hissed.
“Stay out of this, Tip,” snapped Morella, viciousness underscoring her voice.
“Tip?” said Tail Man with a tilt of his head. “Pae,” Morella had called him, a name I was certain I’d heard her utter before, though I couldn’t recall when. “Tip as in the sorceress? Tipapotamus? Tiptatious? Tiptacular?”
“Tippetarius,” I corrected, hands curling into fists at my side.
“That’s the one,” he said, snapping and pointing at me. “They’re saying you married the king and then had him killed. Ambitious.”
“He’s not dead!” I seethed between my teeth, trying to keep my voice down so as not to spawn more horrible rumors about me or Rye. And the people of Oz... Were they really saying I’d killed Rye? Did…did they truly think he was dead? Word of his incapacitation had spread fast. The gossip must have originated from someone in Nick’s service. Unless, of course, this report had been sparked by the fall of the Emerald City.
“I take it back,” said Pae, once more holding up his hands, which had black claw-like nails and, between the base of each finger, the faintest bit of violet webbing. “The unmoving scarecrow laid out on that slab over there like a stale bread loaf left for the birds is not dead. How ever could I have assumed such an erroneous thing? My mistake.”
“I thought I told you never to come back here,” said Morella.
“Yesss,” said Pae through a forced smile, his teeth white and straight, fangs pronounced. “But that was before you died. I thought it went without saying that all agreements were null and void upon the death of…well, either one of us. Sorry that it was you, Ella.”
“I’m coming back,” said Morella.
“S-splendid,” said Pae, but now his smile fell. “So, you did die? I mean—it’s not splendid that you died. Are dead. But that you’re coming back. I mean, I know you still hate me but…I… Well, you know how I feel about what happened. And just…just out of curiosity, while I’ve got you, how…exactly…are you, uh…coming back?”
“Like this,” said Morella and, without warning, she blitzed toward me—into me—merging her spirit with my body in an instant.
I tried to fight her, to resist, but she came on too strong, all but ripping control from me, her invasion bringing the heat of rage and…something else I’d never felt myself.
Something like desire wrapped up in despise. Hate imbued with affection.
Using my body, Morella turned and strode toward Pae, who again skittered back, hands held out to stall her.
“Ella,” he said, “I would have come if you’d called me.”
“I didn’t need you,” she whispered through my lips.
“I know,” he said, sadness creeping into his tone as he gazed down at me, a touch of rueful tenderness coloring those strange eyes. “There toward the end, you didn’t need anyone, did you?”
Morella, using my form, closed the distance between her and Pae. She raised a palm, rearing back. Pae, in response, caught my wrist in one encompassing lavender hand before Morella could strike his cheek.
“Pardon us, Tippy-tantrum,” said Pae as he steered me—Morella—backward until our shared spine met with the edge of Rye’s marble bed. “This is all very complicated as I’m sure you’ve deduced and, well, as you likely already know, Morella doesn’t do words.”
I didn’t get a chance to wrest back my body, my mobility, to protest what happened next.
Leaning into me, bending me backward over Rye’s immobile form, Pae kissed me hard on the lips.
Even if I had been in control at that moment, I wasn’t sure what I would have done.
For Morella’s part, she scowled as the snarled tangle of love-hate in her, in us, built to a crescendo until it bubbled over into…something else.
My hands, still piloted by Morella, went to catch Pae’s face. To my horror, my lips also began to chase his.
Inwardly, I gasped at the sensation of something faintly fuzzy, warm, and serpentine winding my right ankle in a caress. That tail.
Then, just as suddenly as the kiss had been enacted, Pae pulled away.
“Betrayal and love,” he said, those lamp-like eyes boring into me—into Morella—“despite what you think, they are not mutually exclusive, my darling. No more than you have proven life and death to be.”
With that, Pae darted from the room to literally vanish through the archway, the air through which he dove rippling as though with heat haze before settling into normality.
My movements—my body—at once my own again, I lifted a hand to my lips, which still tingled from the press of his, and I gaped at the doorway.
Then, as if I feared Rye might have seen, I swung my head to look at him.
Only to discover…someone had taken his crown.