38. Chapter 38
thirty-eight
I found Sebastian waiting for me in a room on the second floor. He sat alone on a circular couch that encased a stone pillar. A bed occupied one corner. Bare stone walls lacked adornments, though a clothing trunk dwelled alone near a small unlit fireplace. Close to the door, a table surrounded by empty chairs and laden with food pined for attention, its platters untouched.
Clothed once more, Sebastian wore black trousers and a white, loose-fitting shirt open at the collar.
He stood when I entered the open doorway of his newly appointed chambers, the collar of his shirt threatening to fall off one bronzed shoulder.
“Tip,” he said, his expression wrenched. The ghost of tears glossed his eyes.
Tears sprang to my own. “Sebastian.”
We broke forward at the same time. And then we collided.
Sebastian’s strong arms wrapped me and pulled me tight against him. My hands pressed his chest, elbows tucked in so that he enveloped me.
A whimper escaped my lips as I squeezed my eyes shut, the action allowing one of my tears to slip free. I inhaled deeply, taking into my lungs the scent of cedar and sawdust, that familiar essence that belonged only to him.
“I didn’t know,” I murmured. “I didn’t know you were still there.”
I’d told him this in the dream already, but I needed him to hear it again. Maybe I needed to hear it again, too. Still, the guilt remained.
Sebastian said nothing. He just squeezed me harder, crushing me against him like he thought I would evaporate, or slip away into smoke.
He placed a warm kiss on the crown of my head.
That gesture—it spread warmth through me but also dread.
“I didn’t want to leave you,” I told him, my words muffled against his chest. “I would never have left you.”
“I know, Tip,” he said, his voice breaking.
Once more, he fell into silence. I clenched my eyes shut harder, wishing he would say something other than words linked with my name. Because the fact that he wasn’t saying anything else meant that, when he did finally speak his mind, he would utter words I wouldn’t like. Things I wouldn’t want to hear. Things about Ginger, Andre… Things that had happened to him in the Emerald City.
“You should have listened to me,” he said at last, his voice still thin.
And now at last, here those words I’d feared would come.
“I couldn’t have left you.” I pushed back from him and, reluctantly, he eased his grip on me.
Clinging to the lapels of that open shirt, I peered up at him, into those dark and sorrow-filled eyes.
“What happened?” I asked him. “What did she do to you?”
“Nothing, Tip,” he said. “I told you, Langwidere thinks she and I are friends.”
I opened my mouth to refute that, to speak reason to him, try to convince him he had to be mistaken. But I stopped myself. That would have to be a conversation for another time. A conversation for later, after some distance had been gained—both from his captivity and the rescue itself. He didn’t yet have perspective on what he was saying. He didn’t understand he’d been dancing with the devil. Not when he’d gotten so comfortable with her.
“I…saw Ginger,” I said instead. “Right before…we brought you back.”
“Ginger is…” He trailed off and didn’t elaborate.
“She’s what?” I pressed. “Ginger is what, Sebastian? Why was she dressed as a guard? And why were there other guards following her? She had a badge on.”
“I need you to listen to me,” said Sebastian.
I drew a breath and held it. My heart clenched tight and every beat that followed thudded too hard, bringing pain.
“You have to let me go back,” he said.
I tightened my grip on his shirt. Scowling, I glowered at his collar. Then, I started shaking.
“We’ll get Ginger out, too,” I said. “If we got you out, we can get Ginger out. I didn’t know she was in the palace. Jack didn’t know, either.”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“You’re right,” I snapped, taking a step back from him. “I don’t.”
“Ginger needs me.”
“Where’s Andre?” I demanded. “How did Ginger end up back in the castle anyway?”
“Andre’s been turned to stone,” said Sebastian.
I sucked in a sharp breath, my knees threatening to give. Blood rushed in my ears, and the room tilted. Sebastian caught me by the arms. Gently, he steered me backward, toward the couch he’d occupied when I’d entered.
My legs finally gave, and I sat.
“He’s dead?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “It’s hard to say. I…I was trying to…”
He trailed off, lifting a hand to clear my tears. That rough and calloused palm cupped my cheek, and I couldn’t keep from placing my own hand over his. The warmth of him, the familiarity of his presence, that scent, his words, his voice—it all battled with the nightmare his words painted.
“You were trying to find out if there was a way to free him,” I guessed, blinking, more tears slipping free. “Some way to reverse the magic.”
“Langwidere knows Ginger is my friend. She made Ginger a general. Actually, she made her…my general.”
I lifted my eyes to his, blinking wide, uncomprehending. “What…what are you saying?”
“I told you,” he said. “I found you in the dream so that I could tell you I had a plan. You wouldn’t listen.”
“Before,” I said, “after you came to Oz to get me, when you came to the Emerald City and broke into the palace, you said that if you had the power, you would drag me back to our world.”
“And I meant that,” he said, his words frustrating me. Still, I knew why he’d said what he had.
“Then you understand why I had to come get you.”
“Why did you come to get me?” he asked, that dark and soulful gaze searching mine.
I opened my mouth to tell him the truth, that I had every intention of sending him home—far away from Oz. But with his eyes searching mine the way they were, I held off. Because if I told him I was going to send him home, I would also have to tell him about Rye. But something told me we weren’t there yet. Also, I needed to venture into that topic carefully.
I couldn’t avoid breaking his heart at this point and, for the moment, hadn’t he already been through enough?
“This plan of yours,” I argued. “How was it supposed to work? You had to realize Rye was going to organize a counterattack.”
“So, he is alive.”
My mouth fell open. For a moment, I couldn’t form words. Sebastian’s semi-question gave too much to digest. Apparently, word of Rye’s poisoning had traveled far—all the way back to the Emerald City. When I’d first met Pae, the demon had illuminated some of the gossip, too.
“Rye is well,” I told Sebastian. “He’s preparing to take back the city.”
Sebastian had to figure that the forces of Oz would rally. That the city could not be kept by Langwidere. He had to have guessed we would come.
“Tell him to hold off,” said Sebastian.
I scowled, shaking my head. “How can you expect me to do that?”
“I told you. I know how to get to Glinda. And that’s why I have to go back. Glinda can undo the spell over Andre. And if we get Glinda back. Well, that cuts off Langwidere’s magic. Then you could invade the city.”
“Tell me where Glinda is,” I said. “I will go get her.”
And maybe I could also undo the spell put on Andre. On all the figures of Oz who had been cast to stone. If I could undo Rye’s curse—even temporarily—surely, I’d be able to reverse another type of transformation. That was, if becoming stone wasn’t, in fact, lethal.
Would Rye know if it was? Did I want to ask him…
Poor Andre. Poor Ginger.
“Glinda is in Ev,” said Sebastian. “Langwidere keeps her there.”
“How is she channeling Glinda’s powers?”
“That, I don’t know. Yet.”
Yet. He kept talking like this idea of his to return wasn’t completely irrational. Like he thought it was viable. Or that I would allow it.
“If she’s going back and forth between Ev,” I said, “that means there are still mirrors in the Emerald City Palace. Or is it just the one in Langwidere’s current chambers...? Dorothy and I went there searching for a book.”
“There are no books in Langwidere’s rooms,” he said. “And did you say…? That girl who was in here. You’re saying that’s Dorothy? As in Dorothy Gale?”
I frowned, fingers curling into the skirts of my dress. “Langwidere has taken up residence in Rye’s old rooms,” I said.
“No,” Sebastian replied. “Those rooms are where I’ve been staying.”
This explanation had me scowling, though it provided a reason for why I’d found Sebastian’s knives on the nightstand. That crumpled shirt next to the bed must have been his. What this didn’t explain…
“She keeps her heads in there,” I said.
“Some of them,” he agreed bleakly.
“She has…more?”
“Tip, do you trust me?” Sebastian asked.
“Of course, but—”
“You need to let me leave. You need to let me go back.”
“She’ll kill you.”
“She won’t.”
“Why would you say that?” I challenged. “She knows you were my guard. She knows you came from my world.”
“She’s in love with me, Tip.”
I stood, galvanized by shock. Sebastian stood too. But now his eyes met mine with reluctance. Secrets swam behind them. Dark secrets.
“And…I’ve been letting her think that I love her too.”
I blinked at him, uncomprehending.
“When she was Lance,” Sebastian said, “I had no idea the person I was talking to was our enemy. I confided in her about being in love with a girl back home. I couldn’t, after all, say that I loved you. She believed in the marriage scheme by the way. Believes it still—though she was sure The Scarecrow was dead. Word got back to the Emerald City that he’d succumbed to poisoning. Some people speculated you’d killed him to take over.”
That rumor. Thankfully, it would be quashed soon. Rye, after all, had said he would march tomorrow. The people would see him alive and back in power. And there were other rumors about me out there, too. True ones attesting to my powers.
The people of Oz, they of course would need to be shown I was not another wicked witch.
But all of that was my problem, and not Sebastian’s.
“Langwidere,” I began gently, “is pretending to be in love with you. She’s manipulating you. And maybe she believes you’re on her side, but this game, it’s too dangerous for you to keep playing.”
“I can go back now,” he said, ignoring me. “I can say that I escaped from here. Nothing could prove my fidelity to her more.”
“F-fidelity,” I murmured. An odd choice of words.
“Think about it,” he said. “I can tell her Rye is dead. I’ll tell her you’ve returned home—that you abandoned Oz to escape the war. She’ll let her guard down. They’ll open the city.”
“Wh-where were you?” I asked. “When Pae found you. Wh-what were you doing?”
“Pae is your friend with the tail,” Sebastian murmured.
My heart started thundering in my chest. I had a flash of Sebastian lying by the bath back in my old rooms of the palace where Pae had dropped him, his unconscious form naked and swathed in that sheet.
I stood and spun away from him, unable—unwilling—to link that image to what he was currently telling me. Trying to tell me. But he stood too, and catching me by the arm, he pulled me back to him.
“I want to end this war,” he said. “And I’ll do it by any means necessary. I’m doing this for us.”
“This,” I said. Again, echoing his word choice. The ability for any other speech seemed to have left me.
“You said you thought I was dead,” he said—an abrupt shift of topics. Probably a purposeful shift, too. “Tell me that doesn’t mean you’ve moved on.”
Suddenly, we were talking about me?
“Rye,” he pressed. “How did he survive?”
I pushed back from Sebastian, and he let me go. We stared each other down. Until I found the strength to speak.
“My powers are unsealed now,” I said. “I can send you home. And…I’m going to.”
“Unsealed,” he repeated. “Langwidere has been wondering why you haven’t flexed your powers yet. You’re saying your powers were sealed?”
That was right. Sebastian hadn’t known about that part.
“When I started the clock on the clock tower that day,” I told him, “I accidentally unleashed a shard of Morella’s soul. A wraith.”
“Morella.” He frowned, though his eyes lit with recognition. “The Wicked Witch of the West you mean. She’s supposed to be dead, but Langwidere said she was with you. She hasn’t been able to figure out that part, either—or reconcile why Morella has since failed to reappear. Honestly, I’d begun to suspect the wound you’d given her had made her delirious and that she must have hallucinated, but now I realize she really did see West.”
I blinked, shocked that Langwidere would disclose this information to Sebastian. When I’d been battling the princess in the passageways, when Jack’s attempts to protect me had ended in his getting smashed, Morella had appeared to distract Langwidere. The plan had worked, allowing me to stab Langwidere with the throwing knife Sebastian had gifted me—an action that had enabled my escape.
“It’s over now,” I assured him. “Rye sealed my powers with those bracers you saw me wearing—the ones you asked about. He did that to keep Morella from takingover—me, I mean. But West is gone now. Sealed away in her statue. I broke out of the bracers, and I have my powers back. Point is, I can send you home. I can open a portal to any place I’ve been before. I just need a mirror. I can even send you to Florida where the carnival is going for the winter—where they may already be.”
“I already told you.” He set his jaw. “I’m not leaving Oz. I have a stake in this fight too now. Besides that, I’ve got to go back for Ginger—”
“Let me worry about Ginger,” I said.
“She’s pregnant, Tip.”
I sucked in a gasp and held my breath.
“And without Andre,” Sebastian continued, “she doesn’t trust anyone right now. No one except me. Let me go back and finish what I started.”
“You’re fighting for the wrong reasons,” I told him, lifting my chin, tears again burning my eyes.
“Since when did you and I become the wrong reason?”
“I can’t go back to the carnival,” I told him. “I can’t go back to the life we had before.”
“You did change your mind about me,” he murmured. “Was it before you thought I was dead…or after?”
“You said Langwidere thinks you’re in love with her,” I said. “Are… Does that mean you…?”
“I’m fighting my way,” Sebastian said. “And I wouldn’t have been able to tell you half of what I already have if I wasn’t making it convincing to Langwidere that I’m on her side.”
He didn’t answer the question I’d been unable to utter aloud but, at the same time, he also had. Rocked by the implications, needing to process, I turned once more to leave. Again, Sebastian caught me. But, this time, with his words.
“The parts you and I are playing. Are they really so dissimilar?”
“You’re literally sleeping with the enemy,” I said, speaking this over my shoulder, half shocked I’d been able to utter these words aloud. And to Sebastian of all people.
“And you’re playing house with the king,” he said. “Unless…you’re not playing.”
“I need…some time,” I said. “To think.”
The truth was that I needed time away. From him.
Sebastian’s actions had left a wound in my core. One I couldn’t assess or make sense of. Not while I remained in his presence.
“I’m not sorry for what I did,” he called after me as I made a beeline to the door, my head light, swimming, my stomach churning.
This last statement from him made everything all the more unbearable, too.
Because, of course, he sounded just like me.