14. Chapter 14
fourteen
Nick told Dorothy everything.
Well, almost everything.
He left Morella out, which I’d been all too grateful for, especially with the guards standing without the dining hall doors, potentially eavesdropping. Also, I didn’t want Dorothy to know I had been the one to unleash the wraith of the tyrannical witch she and the others had fought so hard to destroy. Maybe Nick left the details of Morella’s pseudo return and her possession of me out as a favor to me. Maybe he did it as a favor to Dorothy. Possibly, he was treading lightly on the subject of West for both our sakes.
Nick also failed to tell Dorothy about my faux relationship with Rye. Or, rather, he glossed over it by stating how, with Glinda gone, Rye had needed a witch.
Surprising me, he did tell Dorothy how Rye believed me to be Ozma.
That he divulged this bit of information in my presence made me both uncomfortable and optimistic. Uncomfortable because I could tell Dorothy doubted the claim. Optimistic because, if Nick himself hadn’t harbored the hope that I might be the princess, I was certain he would have waited to discuss that bit with Dorothy in private.
The two, Nick and Dorothy, shared a rapport, a comradery woven both from the frayed threads of communal strife and the glittering strands of shared joy. Theirs was a deep and nuanced affinity that glinted at me through the way they spoke to one another as if their words—though fully intelligible to me—carried within them a whole other language. One all their own. One that excluded me, but only because I had not been a player in the previous life they’d shared. The previous Oz…
Dorothy listened more than she spoke, absorbing everything Nick told her about Langwidere, the fall of the Emerald City, and Rye.
“I want to see him,” said Dorothy when Nick at last finished. Words that echoed those among my first to the “Tin Man” and Emperor of the West.
And so, Nick led the way to the bell tower.
Was it my imagination that the normally stalwart guards we passed brightened at the sight of Dorothy? All while reserving fear for me. The witch...
Nick had sworn Dorothy to secrecy regarding my identity as the lost sovereign of Oz, and I did not doubt she would, for now, keep the secret locked within her—but only because Nick had asked her.
If the guards were to find out, though, and if the people of Oz could be convinced, would they continue to regard me with so much suspicion and unease?
Or would they just wish Dorothy could be their princess…
Maybe she already was.
Slow steps brought Dorothy into the bell tower.
While Nick and I stood to one side, Dorothy approached Rye’s plinth, a hand lifting to her mouth as she drew nearer. Her eyes roved the stained-glass windows, too, which still portrayed animated subjects and scenery.
I had no idea how to turn the magic off. No more than I knew how I’d activated it.
“Oh,” Dorothy muttered when she made it to Rye’s side, her hand taking one of his and squeezing.
This motion, this contact. The familiarity it suggested gave birth to a strange sensation in my chest. Ugly jealousy mixed with acute understanding. I couldn’t be mad at her, though. Rye, in his own way, belonged to both of us, didn’t he?
“Everything’s gone to hay,” Dorothy said, her whisper carrying up and echoing through the solemn tower. “All my friends in pain...”
She squeezed Rye’s hand harder. Then her grip loosened, her fingers finding his ring, twisting it lightly as she studied his features. As though she expected this action would spur him awake. As though she thought she held the power within her to do what I had not been able to.
I waited, too, my breath caught in my throat. In case, somehow…she did.
“I meant to come back,” Dorothy said, her voice tighter now. She sniffed, too, as if fighting tears. Was she talking to us, though…or to Rye? “I meant to. I…I meant to.”
Tucked under Dorothy’s other arm, Toto whined—a mournful, high-pitched, keen I could hardly bear. The dog’s ceaseless sniffing at Rye made his reaction all the worse. Could he smell the poison? Did he know Rye had been dealt a death sentence?
Dorothy let the dog down at our feet. Then, eyes swimming, she whipped her head our way, gaze flying from me to Nick and back again. “We need to get him to that spring. There’s magic in the water there. Fairy magic. It pulled the poison from the poppies out of me, it can do the same for Rye.”
I let out the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding.
“When you’re ready,” said Nick, “I’ll—”
“I’m ready,” said Dorothy. “We’ve got to get Rye back. If anyone will know how to approach Langwidere about Cahal, he will.”
If Cahal was still alive.
“How long will the journey to Gillikin Country take?” I asked Nick.
“About four seconds.”
The voice had all three of us whirling to find Pae seated on the sill of the window depicting Dorothy, Nick, and Rye meeting Cahal. While the stained-glass lion roared behind the demon’s shoulder, Pae crunched into a ruby apple, fangs flashing.
Toto’s whimpers became a motorized growl, punctuated with vicious, snarling barks. Hackles raised, he flashed his own fangs.
“You,” said Dorothy, her tone dropping low, her voice tightening, her frame going rigid.
“Me,” growled Pae as he dropped to the floor, tail lashing behind him.
Hatred—or something like it—sizzled between them, intense and palpable, like a buzz of electricity in the air. They glared at one another, gazes locked and unwavering, unblinking.
Though neither said another word to the other, a silent conversation of some sort passed between them. One that had me bouncing my gaze from one to the other. A glance at Nick showed how this interaction, void of words but infused with tension, gave him pause, too. He tilted his head at them, his focus mainly owned by Dorothy.
“I’d ask you if you’re surprised to see me,” said Pae at last, “but…I know you’re not.”
“You should be dead,” Dorothy snapped, the shake in her voice suggesting her viciousness was a mask for fear.
“You’d miss me if I was,” the demon said—words that implied he was being maliciously playful. Still, he didn’t smile. And the gaze they shared—it never ended.
Not until Nick inserted himself between them, facing Dorothy. “He’s working for me now.”
“Are you out of your thick metal mind?” she challenged, at last tearing her gaze from the demon to glare at Nick.
My mouth popped open—I couldn’t help the reaction. But then I shut it quickly and squared my jaw. Dorothy, I had to remember, had known Nick before he was a king. When he was just a woodsman. They’d walked miles side by side, fought side by side, too.
“He was compelled to do the things he did for West,” said Nick.
“Not all of them!” shouted Dorothy, the argument drawing attention from the guards stationed outside the bell tower. “Aside from that, he’s a demon!”
“A demon who can open a portal to Gillikin Country,” Nick said. “Now. This very moment, in fact. Otherwise, the journey will take weeks. Time we do not have.”
I had no idea Nick had this plan up his sleeve, but gratitude swelled in me nonetheless. Even if this plot did involve a demon. But then, I already had a soft spot for Pae since he had been the one to liberate me from Morella. What, though, had given birth to this deep-seated ire in Dorothy? I would be a fool to assume it did not have valid origins.
“You trust that purple rat?” Dorothy asked, incensed.
“I don’t have to trust him,” said Nick, raising his voice to be heard over Toto, who only continued to snarl, growl, and yap. Pae returned the dog’s sentiments with a growl of his own.
“He’ll slit my throat the moment we’re out there,” snipped Dorothy.
“He won’t,” replied Nick.
“Then I’ll slit his!”
“Then I will send Tip instead of you.”
“What?”Dorothy and I both asked in unison.
“Can you pinpoint the spring on a map?” Nick asked, stress entering his voice for perhaps the first time since I’d met him.
Dorothy got quiet. Pae snapped another bite of his apple, smirking to himself while he glared at Dorothy, his tail continuing to lash behind him.
Toto’s growl remained steady.
“The general area where the spring can be found,” Nick said. “Do you think you could pinpoint it on a map of Gillikin Country?”
“It’s in a cave,” said Dorothy, “in the Silver Mountain range.”
As she spoke, her glare never strayed from Pae, even as the demon’s refused to release her in turn. Their staring contest only increased my curiosity over what exactly had transpired between them. Their feud… There was something personal to it. Deeply personal if I had to guess.
“Come,” Nick said, “to my study. There’s a map there.”
“I’ll go,” said Dorothy, her glare at last breaking from Pae to refocus on Nick. Then she peered back at Rye. “If you say this is the way, Nick, I will go with him.”
A long pause stretched on in which no one said anything.
And then, of course, Pae couldn’t help himself. “I missed you, too, Slippers.”
“Don’t call me that!” shouted Dorothy. And Toto at last lost control of himself. Launching forward, the little dog fastened himself to Pae’s ankle.
“Please help,” droned Pae as he glared down at the dog. “Someone, save my boot.”
I swept in to gather up Toto before Dorothy could try. Instinct told me it would be best to keep the distance between these two for now. And the dog didn’t fight me as I returned him to his mistress. Instead, the warm wiry bundle reverted to whining until Dorothy accepted him back in her arms.
“If Pae takes you to the mountains,” said Nick, “can you find the spring by memory? If you can, Pae can then open the portal a second time after the site is located. It is then that we will transport Rye.”
Dorothy took in a huge breath through her nose, her frame, small but outlined in curves, knit with tension and reluctance.
“I know where to find the spring,” said Dorothy. “But I have to ask, Nick. What have you promised that weasel?”
Nick didn’t answer. But Pae did.
“Same thing you wanted,” said the demon, gesturing to her with the now half-devoured apple. “Though with a dash of something extra. A home.” He grinned. “A kingdom, to be exact.”
Dorothy narrowed her eyes on Nick. “You promised him territory? Within the boundaries of Oz?”
“And power,” Pae added, lobbing the words at Dorothy from over Nick’s shoulder.
“Power?” she pressed, her attention trained on Nick. “What kind of power?”
“Kingly power,” said Pae. “The North is conspicuously absent of a monarch, anyway, wouldn’t you say?”
A statement that I knew to be accurate since I’d once asked Rye about the quadrants of Oz, and who presided over each.
“Nick,” she said, her tone falling hushed. “You didn’t.”
“Desperate times,” said Nick, echoing what he’d said to me. Even then, though, I’d had no idea one of the “installments” Nick had mentioned he’d be meting out to Pae included making the demon a fellow vassal.
“Hard to believe you could get as desperate as that,” she snipped.
“The king—” Nick began, but Dorothy cut him off.
“Rye would never have resorted to consorting with the demons!”
“I am not Rye,” said Nick, gruffness entering his normally mellow voice. “Who lies in this state because his measures—equally as desperate—failed. Though I cannot tell you why, striking a deal with Pae Woot was unavoidable. I have my reasons. And they’ve already proven worth it.”
I peeked at Nick, my cheeks burning. Because I was the reason that he had summoned Pae to his aid. Obviously, Nick didn’t regret helping me. But perhaps he only meant that promising a whole portion of Oz to Pae had been worth it because Morella had been involved.
“You mark my words,” said Dorothy, poking Nick’s chest with a finger—another action that had me suppressing the urge to gape. “Rye is going to have a hissy fit with a tail on it.”
“Until he awakens,” replied Nick, his tone falling into its solemn cadence once more, “I am regent for all of Oz. This choice is my own—as are the repercussions. I will deal with Rye’s displeasure when that becomes a more serious problem than his incapacitation.”
Dorothy’s eyes at last flitted reluctantly to me. But…I didn’t know her well enough to read the meaning behind that stare. Was she beseeching me to intercede? More likely, she was blaming me for everything. I was the one anomaly to her return. A blot on the Oz she’d known.
I lifted my chin, refusing to be branded an interloper in this situation or to show that I cared one way or another about any judgment she passed over me—no matter what that was.
She, after all, had left Oz. Maybe it had been her prerogative to go home. But her return hardly gave her leave to have opinions—ones that mattered—about anything that had transpired in her absence.
“What’s done is done,” said Dorothy, and she set Toto down. “Best to get a move on.”
“Morning will be here in a few hours,” said Nick. “It will be better to go in the light—”
“If you trust this monster,” said Dorothy, this time gesturing to Pae without looking his way, “then it doesn’t matter how much light there is. And I can find the spring better in the dark than in the day. Its waters…they glow.”
Silence settled over the bell tower again, and I peered from Dorothy to Nick…to Pae.
The demon lifted a brow at me, smirked, and winked. Just the way a stage magician might right before pulling off his greatest trick.
Not a comforting thought.
But…Dorothy was right. If Nick trusted Pae—or at least if he trusted his pact with Pae—what other choice did we have?
Like he’d said, Nick was regent. Technically, the current King of Oz. He hadn’t admitted this much out loud, not until now, but the delegation of power made sense. Who, after all, was left to rule in Rye’s stead?
Now, everything rested in Nick’s hands.
But not for much longer. That was my hope at least as I peered down on Rye.
Though I adored Nick, I missed the old king.
Most of all those eyes.
The ones that could cut as well as comfort.
Which of those reactions would I get from them when they reopened? Knowing Rye, a little of both.
But then…would I have it any other way?
“It’s settled then,” said Pae. “Slippers and Pae, off to see the Silver Mountains.”
“You’d better not betray us,” said Dorothy.
“You know as well as I do my hands are tied in that regard,” said the demon, a remark that had Dorothy casting her gaze to the stone floor and Nick tilting his head a second time, as though caught off guard once more. “At least when it comes to you.”
I had to frown at that last tidbit. And Dorothy’s reaction, too—which was telling.
Pae could be referring to the golden cap, but Nick hadn’t told her yet that he possessed it.
No… Something had happened between Pae and Dorothy. Something more even than what Nick knew. Something that Pae had suggested would prevent him from stabbing her in the back. Or at all.
“Make the portal,” said Dorothy who, with chin lifted, once more squared the demon in her gaze. “And pray that when Rye does wake, he won’t have your head stuffed and mounted.”
“He’d have to get his castle back first if he wanted to have a place to hang it,” said Pae even as he dipped into a low bow before Dorothy. “But that aside, your wish is, of course, my command.”
Pae’s smile remained for an instant but then, as he straightened, it fell.
His gaze stayed locked with Dorothy’s, though, as if he wished nothing more than to convey to her that, despite his fa?ade of nonchalance, he wasn’t happy about the current arrangement, either. And, possibly, that look betrayed something else.
That the same thing haunting Dorothy about his involvement—their nearness to one another—had a hold on him, too.
Another secret that could not be unraveled. At least not yet.
But then…one issue at a time.