37. Chapter 37
thirty-seven
Sebastian was taken to one of the countless rooms in the castle and, since I needed to speak with Nick straight away, Dorothy accompanied him.
I wasn’t sure what revelations would come from Sebastian when he woke. And I wanted to be there when he did awaken, but I had to triage my problems. Sebastian was unconscious but, for the moment, all right. He was under our protection now. Yet his arrival at Nick’s castle meant I owed two kings an explanation—and one very powerful demon payment.
Payment I did not possess.
Nick escorted me to a secluded sitting room. He shut the doors after posting guards.
For a long time, I stood in front of yet another huge fireplace, the dancing flames painting me with a warmth that couldn’t seem to seep into my rattled bones or dispel the growing dread within me. Nick, standing at the opposite end of the fireplace, the flames reflected in those goggles, gave me plenty of time in silence, too. Likely more than I deserved.
Eventually, though, he spoke.
“You’ll recall I told you Rye wouldn’t go in himself.”
“I’m sorry,” was all I said.
“I never would have said a word about the cap if I’d known you would insist on going, too. Dorothy had no business being there either.”
He must have seen me come back through the mirror.
“It’s not her fault,” I said. “She was trying to stop me. She ended up going through the portal, too.”
“You are unharmed?” he asked, his voice still gruff. “You seem so. It is a wonder neither of you are dead. Or worse. It would have been my fault, too, if either of you had been captured or killed.”
“That’s not true,” I said, taking a step toward him. “I know you didn’t mean for me to go. And Dorothy’s presence was an accident.”
“I trusted you.”
Those words ripped my heart. I broke forward and took one of his metal hands in mine. I squeezed hard.
“I couldn’t leave him there, Nick,” I said. “I couldn’t abandon him agai—”
The heavy doors flew open, and Rye stalked in—a brewing black thunderstorm.
To say I hadn’t expected this would be a lie.
Of course, I’d known Rye would be livid.
“Nickletin, please leave,” said Rye, his tone bleak.
I released Nick’s hand, but Nick hesitated. Then, without a word—none about the cap, Sebastian, or the deal I’d made with Pae, he turned and left.
I peered after him, gaze trained on the doors as he pulled them shut behind him with a low clunk, sealing me in with the grim King of Oz.
For a long time, silence pulsed through the room, broken only by the soft crackle of the fire, which Rye stared hard into, his expression slate—unreadable.
Anger poured off him in waves. His rage couldn’t penetrate me, though. Not as it once had been able to. Perhaps he perceived that. And perhaps that only stoked his fury further.
Rye let the silence drag on and on. But I was in no hurry for his tirade.
Finally, though, Rye spoke.
“You directly disobeyed me.”
“It likely won’t be the last time.”
I almost wanted to suck in a breath at my gall. Perhaps I was too numb to be shocked with myself. Also, there was the fact that I didn’t care how angry Rye got, or how angry he stayed for that matter. I loved him, yes, but I loved Sebastian too. Differently than I loved Rye. And differently than I thought I had before when I’d never known Oz existed. Now, looking back, I had to wonder if I’d set romantic sights on Sebastian because he had been my entire world. A world that had been small but, in so many ways, beautiful as well. At the same time, it had been a world that had encapsulated me, and kept me hidden and small, too.
The carnival traveled all over; it was true. But, in a way, that microcosm had never allowed me much more than the merest of glimpses outside of that realm of bright tents, painted faces, feathers, and crowds.
I hadn’t meant to break out of that small world. To grow into the woman—the witch—I was now.
But I had.
“You could have died,” Rye pressed.
“I didn’t.”
“You could have,” he stressed. “And that would have destroyed everything.”
“And leaving Sebastian there would have destroyed me.”
“Queens don’t get the luxury of thinking of themselves. Neither, I’ll have you know, do kings.”
“You think I was thinking of myself?” I wheeled on him. For the first time since he’d entered, his eyes cut my way.
“We had a plan,” he said.
“You had a plan,” I snapped. “You always have a plan.”
I stalked toward him, the fireplace throwing our shadows long across the floor.
“I told you no more secrets,” he said, glowering down on me. “I suppose it was erroneous of me to expect you to return the favor.”
“I can agree to being wrong,” I told him, chin lifted, expression resolute, “but I can’t make myself regret my actions if that’s what you want.”
“What I want,” he growled between clenched teeth. “I am a king. And so, what I want is the last thing on my mind.”
And there was the lecture—encapsulated in a single thrashing sentence. His implication hit home hard, blasting me through just like he must have hoped it would. But then, his words, they weren’t entirely true. Rye had his impulses, too.
“Sebastian is my responsibility,” I said.
“You forget I have friends in the city, too,” he seethed. “You forget yourself.”
“I had the power to save him.”
“Power doesn’t permit.”
“I can’t take what I did back,” I said. “Nor would I even if I could.”
“Are you in love with him?” he demanded, blinking in a way that didn’t suit him, slow and uncertain, like he both wanted to know the answer and didn’t. But then, he did know the answer.
“I’ve already told you who I’m in love with,” I said.
“You care for Nick,” he said, glowering at the fire again. “What happened between you two while I was unconscious? There are secrets in the air you share. A language I can’t understand.”
“Secrets,” I scoffed. “Rye, you’ve been engaged to Dorothy this entire time.”
“Have I?”
Again, he blinked, his jaw jutting.
“She knows we’re not really married,” I said in a whisper. “But then, she suspected already. Because she knows you. A hundred times better than I do.”
He snapped that cold gaze back onto me.
“I’m not the boy she met in that field,” he said, a growl entering his tone again. Like it was somehow her fault he wasn’t the same person she’d left behind. Or like he blamed her for his transformation into what he’d since become. And perhaps he did blame her. Four years was a long time to spend in crowded solitude. Away from your friends. Burdened by so much. Alone. Waiting for someone who never came back.
Not until it was too late. Not until the boy she’d known had died to the man who stood before me now.
I lifted my hand to Rye’s bicep, a gesture of reassurance. But the connection lit something within him, prompting him to grit his teeth, grab me, and pull me against that narrow frame.
“I can’t stand it when you touch me,” he rasped. “Not even when I’m like this.”
A scarecrow he meant.
“Then…I won’t anymore,” I promised even as he held me against him, to him, his grip firm and unyielding.
“Don’t you understand I can’t stand that either?” He shut his eyes, blocking me out all while making me stay, running away while holding me prisoner.
I lifted my hand to his cheek, palm pressed to the coarse fabric, thumb tracing one line of stitching. Rye’s scowl deepened at the caress, but he did not pull away. Neither, though, did he open his eyes.
“Those things you said to me in your rooms,” I whispered. “Before the bracers. Did you mean any of it?”
A gloved hand found mine and wrapped it.
“If you are the Queen of Oz,” he said, “then I am just a regent. And so, it matters little—”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
He lowered his forehead to mine, his coarse dark hair curtaining us in.
“You ask me questions you already know the answer to,” he said, head tilting, cloth lips drawing near to mine.
“I wouldn’t ask if I knew for sure,” I said.
Instead of answering with words, he kissed me, those coarse lips capturing mine.
He’d kissed me this way before, as a scarecrow. And I would take a limitless number more of kisses from him in this form. I would marry him as he was if he’d have me. And I would not wait four years to make sure he was mine.
Still, I counted it as no crime that I could make him human. Which I didn’t think I could have kept myself from doing in that moment.
A muffled grunt escaped him when I pushed my magic into him. Whether caused by pleasure or pain, I couldn’t tell because as Rye transformed from cloth and bone to supple skin and warm flesh, he ignited with passion, inhaling me even as he deepened the kiss.
I pressed my hand to his chest, my palm marking the thundering of his rejuvenated heart.
Rye’s hands captured my face. His lips sought to consume mine the way fire seeks to devour bramble. But then, just as suddenly as the flames had once again ignited between us, he broke our connection.
“The door,” he said, his breath playing on my lips. “There’s someone there.”
A knock sounded, confirming the presence he’d sensed.
Neither of us made a move. We simply stared into each other’s souls, each of us daring the other to make the next move.
“Tip?” came a soft and muffled voice. “Tip, it’s Dorothy. Can I come in?”
I gripped Rye’s coat, willing myself to let him go.
“It’s Sebastian,” Dorothy said. “He’s awake. And he’s asking for you.”
Rye’s hold on me remained just as rigid and vicelike as mine. Those eyes scorched me, searing me with their cold the way this winter world burned. Then he released me and stepped back.
“Enter,” he said with enough volume to be heard through the barrier, though his eyes never strayed from mine.
The door creaked as someone slipped inside.Dorothy, no doubt.
“He’s worked up something fierce,” said Dorothy as her steps brought her into the study. But then, with a sharp gasp, she halted. At last, I broke my stare-off with Rye. Turning, I found Dorothy standing stock still halfway to us, her eyes wide with shock, her frame trembling.
“R-Rye?” she asked.
Of course. This was the first instance Dorothy had, in the entire time she’d known him, encountered Rye in his human form.
“Thank you for staying with Sebastian,” I said to Dorothy as I passed her. Though, with the way she stood gaping at Rye, I couldn’t be sure she even heard me.
I clenched my hands into fists on my way to the door. Just before I crossed the threshold, I almost swept my magic away. Almost removed my influence so that Rye would change back into his scarecrow form. So that Dorothy would not be able to put her skin to his, as I was sure she wouldn’t be able to resist doing the moment I was gone.
But then, Rye was not a possession to control.
Incinerating kiss or not…he was not mine at all.
So I would let the magic be. I would let them be.
For there was no better way I could think of to either unite or unravel their hearts.
One of those two outcomes was bound to happen now that they had been brought back together anyway.
Whichever way their story unfolded from here, though, I was determined to do nothing to sway it my way.
I would not be that kind of woman.
I would not be that kind of witch.
I would not be my rival’s enemy.
Not when she had only just become my friend.