21. Chapter 21
twenty-one
I raised my hand just like I’d done with the Nomes. This time, though, no fire came out of me when the gemstones in my bracers, imbued with my power, flushed emerald. Instead, Rye’s sword rained down to clang hard against a green-tinted bubble that flashed into being around me with the impact. I’d conjured a shield—a forcefield, though not consciously.
But then, I hadn’t consciously chosen to fight the Nomes with fire, either. Something within me, my subconscious or even my soul, had done the work for me. Whatever part of me had taken over with the Nomes seemed to be doing so again. Because when Rye slashed at me a second time, the bubble, which existed only when the sword made contact with it, flared into being once more, repelling his attack—and him—with a strange and musical ping!
“This is your fault!” Rye railed at me, shouting over the wind. “All of it!”
I frowned. Because I’d never witnessed Rye shout before. But then, he’d never faced a foe he could not best.
My heart clenched with that thought—that I had become his enemy. Because I wasn’t. We weren’t…
And what was he talking about? I could only guess.
“I didn’t know Morella was in the clock tower,” I reminded him, keeping my hand raised in case dropping my arm might dispel the shield, which I needed since Rye had again, this time seemingly of his own free will, decided to try and kill me. But then, on our way here, to Nick’s castle, hadn’t Rye confessed that he could never harm me? “Not then or ever” he’d said—right before vowing never to “fail me” again.
This moment, this reaction from Rye, it wasn’t adding up.
“You didn’t know she was there, either!” I called. “And you know I didn’t tell you about her, that she was still with me because by your own admission, you would have killed me.”
“It would have been better if I had.”
Those words made me drop my arm. I marveled at him, at this level of callousness. Of cruelty.
And still, I loved him.
Maybe Oz had changed Rye like Nick said. Or maybe the throne of Oz had somehow crushed Rye’s mind as well as his spirit.
This latest turn, this battle with Rye, certainly made me feel as if Rye could be right. That somehow, I had brought the curse to Oz, and not Langwidere.
Really, though, I just seemed to be paying for her sins. And Morella’s. Eulalie’s…
“The Emerald City,” Rye growled as he rounded me, “Sebastian. Those guards. They would all still be as they were if you had never come.”
Now it was my turn to glare at him. And as I did, I forced my magic down into the frozen earth. It spread out from me, past the barrier of my forcefield and beneath Rye, transforming him instantly into his human self—no physical connection needed. My way, perhaps, of reminding him that, to me, he was not so invincible.
“And Jack,” he said, zeroing in on the one person I truly had failed. “He died because of you, Tip. Not that he should ever have existed in the first place.”
Wind rushed up around me—us—tossing my hair into a flurry, and my cloak as well.
“You can’t speak about Jack,” I warned him. “I know he died because of me.”
“Everyone is dying because of you,” he bellowed. “And I hate you for it.”
Within my chest, my heart ripped itself in two. And still, I could not bring myself to loathe Rye in return. Whatever had happened to him, whatever the cause of this shift, this…darkness. It had to be reversible. Rye—my Rye—had to be somewhere within those cold eyes.
“Die!” shouted Rye as he again rushed me.
I dropped my shield and let him come. When he lifted his sword to cut me down, I did not raise my hand to stop him.
With my mind, though, my powers, I shattered the blade into a hundred blue butterflies. They went flittering up and off into the cold clear air.
Rye’s determination did not falter. And when he got close enough, I stopped him with my palm, which I pressed to the center of his chest. Shock registered in his eyes when he froze, his entire body stopped by the magic I forced into him.
“Warrior,” I told him, “rest.”
His eyes fell shut with the command and did not open again. But keeping us locked this way, a current of magic running between us, I shut my own eyes and dove into him to find him like I’d done when he’d been unconscious on that plinth, dying not because of me…but for me. For Oz.
Everything he did, he did for Oz.
And it now occurred to me as I rooted through his mind to weed out where he had gone, that he hadn’t changed at all from the man I’d known before.
He’d just been doing everything and anything he knew how…to get me to change.
In my mind, I returned us to the sunflower-covered gazebo, the site of our fake wedding.
Rye stood in his scarecrow form, but I remained exactly as I had moments ago before forcing us into this dream state—a place where he could not attack me.Though I’d only just realized, having gotten what he’d truly wanted out of me, he wouldn’t try again.
“Forgive me, Tip,” were the first words out of his mouth, the phrase nearly dying halfway through. “I had to know. After what happened in the spring, I had to know.”
I lifted my chin. “You don’t know what happened in the spring.”
“You’re right,” he admitted, “I don’t. All the more reason to be sure.”
“To be sure,” I said, echoing his words.
“That if it came to it, you could…would…stop me.”
The tears that had threatened to spill before returned to brim my eyes. “Those things you said. About everyone. You didn’t really mean them.”
“I had to know,” he repeated.
“You had to know,” I snapped. “That I could and would defend myself against you. But for who’s sake, Rye? Mine or yours.”
“You didn’t just defend yourself,” he said and, impossibly, tears brimmed in his eyes, too. His glass scarecrow ones. Evidence that this interaction had cost him something, too? “There’s no denying Oz needs you more than it does me.”
“This was about Oz?” I asked him, taking my turn to play the stoicism card.
“I could have killed you in that spring. Something tells me I might have come close.”
“You saw what I did to those Nomes,” I said. “I didn’t have full control over that. And don’t you remember the fire from that day in your throne room…when we first met? What if your stunt, this latest stunt, had led me to kill you?”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re not like me. There’s no darkness in you. At least, none that I did not put there.”
God. That.
It was true. But not entirely.
“Langwidere is darkness,” I said. “The Nome King is darkness. Morella is darkness. And Eulalie.”
Rye flinched with the final name I spoke.
“Help me bring the light back to Oz,” I said, once more extending my wrists his way. “Rye…take off the bracers.”
He studied me for a long time without blinking, a single tear fighting its way free to roll down one gray cheek, the fabric of which absorbed it quickly.
His expression defiant despite his pain, Rye spoke his next words carefully and slowly, like he didn’t want me to miss a single one of them. Like he was daring me to ever ask him again.
“Take them off yourself…Ozma.”