“I’m going to look for some tea or something,” I said. I was exhausted, but too jittery to sleep. I had suddenly realized that I was alone with Nox for the first time in a very long while and I was nervous. Despite all the drama with witches trying to separate us and pit us against each other, and then dying and not-dying, Nox and I were getting closer.
The truth was, I didn’t have much—okay, any—experience with guys, aside from fending off my mom’s creepy ex-boyfriends and their super-inappropriate interest in her teenage daughter. When it came to someone like Nox, I still had no idea what I was doing.
“Tea sounds good,” he said.
I poked through Lang’s pantry until I found something that looked vaguely tealike—a jar of small, dried gray-brown twigs that smelled like the green tea my mom drank by the bucketful when she got clean—and hoped I wasn’t accidentally brewing up a potion that would turn us into frogs, or beetles, or something even worse.
While I heated water on the stove, Nox threw together some odd-looking green batter and poured it into a pan.
“Who are you and what did you do with Nox?” I joked.
He smiled. “Mombi never stopped being a witch, even when I was a little kid. She kept odd hours and was sometimes gone all night—but whenever she came home, she would make these.” He plated two green pancakes and handed one to me.
“Her Mombi way of taking care of you?” I quipped as I took the tea to the table. Nox sat next to me on the wooden bench, so close our thighs touched, and my heart skipped a beat.
“I should tell you about Melindra,” he said quietly, and my thoughts screeched to a halt.
“Okay,” I said neutrally.
He licked his lips and pressed them together, staring off into space as though he couldn’t figure out how to start. I took a deep breath.
“You’re in love with her?” I offered.
He looked startled. “What? No! Is that what you—no, Amy, that’s not it at all. Lang was in love with her.”
I stared at him. “Wait, what?”
“When Lang came to train with the Order, she had no one. Her family had been killed in one of Dorothy’s early raids. This was a long time before you came, before we understood just how bad Dorothy was going to be. All we had were rumors at that point—we just knew we had to be prepared to fight if it came to that.” He laughed softly, bitterly. “Which, as you know, it did. Anyway, Lanadel journeyed through the mountains alone, on foot, starving. For weeks after her family was murdered. Trying to find the Order based on stories she’d heard that we existed. She almost died, but Gert found her. She started training with us. She was good. Very good, actually. One of the better fighters I’d ever worked with, even though she had no training, no experience. She was driven. All she had left to keep her going was the idea of avenging her family. And then she got close to Melindra.”
He took a deep, ragged breath. I didn’t say anything. The pain in his face was awful. Without thinking, I put one hand on his knee and he took it, lacing his cool, dry fingers through my own. “You never met Melindra before she went through . . .” He cleared his throat and continued more strongly. “Before she went through the Scarecrow’s . . . workshop. She was the most gifted fighter I’d ever seen. But it was something more than that. She had this warmth, this kindness, this generosity. Other people with her strength could’ve turned into a bully, but not her.”
Melindra? Warm and kind? That didn’t sound anything like the bitter, scarred warrior I knew, the half-tin, half-human girl the Scarecrow had turned into the Order’s resident mean girl. But I might not have much kindness left in me either, if I’d been through his torture.
“Lang—Lanadel—hadn’t had much friendship in her life, I don’t think, even before her family was killed. And Melindra took her under her wing. For Melindra, it was just the way she was. But for Lanadel—I couldn’t see it then, but I think it was much, much more. And then Melindra—” He stopped. His fingers were squeezing mine so tightly that my hand was losing sensation. I held my breath, not wanting him to stop. “This is the hard part,” he said. “The part where I—where I made a mistake.”
I’d never heard him admit anything like this. That he could be wrong. That something he’d done for the Order was a bad decision. My heart ached for him. But at the same time, I couldn’t help feeling an admittedly selfish sense of relief. He wasn’t in love with Melindra—or Lang. I knew that should have been the least of my concerns, but my feelings about Nox didn’t obey rational rules.
“Melindra didn’t feel the same way about Lang, but she did feel that way about me,” he said uncomfortably. “I . . . I cared about her, of course. I think if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in the Order, in trying to take care of all the trainees while keeping the witches happy, I might have been able to love her, too. But it wasn’t the right time. She wasn’t the right person. I didn’t have anything to give someone else then. I could have handled it better. She—we—had an awful fight about it, and Lanadel overheard. The next day, I sent Melindra to spy on the Scarecrow. She went because I’d told her I could never return her feelings. Lanadel thought I’d sent her away because I couldn’t stand what she’d said to me, that I didn’t know how to think for myself, that I was just Gert and Mombi’s puppet.”
“But you didn’t,” I said.
“I don’t know, Amy,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “That’s what I’m telling you. I sent one of our best fighters into a situation she couldn’t possibly survive. She knew it. I knew it. Lanadel certainly knew it. And I didn’t know why. I told myself it was because we needed the information. But for all I know, Lang was right. And she’s right to hate me for what I did. Gert and Mombi sent Lanadel to Ev to spy on the Nome King right after Melindra left for the Emerald City. They worked up some kind of spell to get her across the Deadly Desert. She was supposed to send back reports but we never heard from her again. I thought—we all thought—she was dead. When we started hearing rumors about Princess Langwidere, some crazy tyrant who worked for the Nome King and who cut off her subjects’ heads and wore them as her own . . . well, none of us even thought of connecting her to Lanadel.”
“Can we trust her?”
“Lanadel?” He sighed, running his hands through his blue-black hair. “I don’t know. Probably not. Although now that she knows Melindra is alive, she doesn’t have the same reasons for revenge. But the road brought us here for a reason, and the road always does what it does for the good of Oz. It comes from Lurline; its magic is older than anything else in Oz except for the Great Clock. I think there’s something much, much bigger going on here than just Dorothy and the Nome King. And maybe that’s ultimately what we have to find out if we want to end all of this.”
“I wonder why the Nome King rescued Dorothy,” I said thoughtfully. “He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who needed much help in the magic department.”
“The Nome King has always wanted to rule Oz,” Nox said.
I groaned and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. “Three worlds, two pairs of shoes, sixteen villains . . . It’s too much. But I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about that right now. We’re stuck here with that crazy mobster, or whatever she is. In all these years, she’s never taken him down and she seems awfully comfortable here.”
“She’s not crazy,” Nox said gently. “She’s in pain. More pain than you can imagine.” I nodded. Lurline had said the same thing. “She has nothing,” he continued. “She’s lost everyone she loves, everything she cares about. For better or for worse, our paths are tied to hers now. And I think she’s right, about taking care of Dorothy for good. I know how hard it was for you back in the Emerald City to be faced with that choice. And I don’t want you to be the one to have to do it. But as long as Dorothy’s alive, we’re in danger. There’s no other way.”
“But I still don’t understand why Lang—Lanadel—hates you so much. You were just following orders.”
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t. I was
the one who decided to send Melindra to the Scarecrow. That’s the thing Lanadel will never forgive me for. Gert and Mombi sent her to Ev, and she came here thinking that Melindra was dead, and that I’d good as killed her. And if Melindra had died, it would’ve been my fault. What happened to her was my fault. She would still—”
“You can’t blame yourself for what the Scarecrow did, Nox,” I said urgently. “You can’t carry this thing around for the rest of your life, letting it eat you up inside. You told me every time I had to do something awful that we were at war. We’re fighting so that other people don’t have to make the kinds of decisions we do. I understand that you think everything the Order does is your responsibility—but you can’t blame yourself forever. You just can’t. Melindra wouldn’t have gone if she didn’t think she could survive.”
“Melindra wouldn’t have gone if she thought I loved her,” he said.
My heart hurt so badly, thinking of what Nox was putting himself through, all for something that was so much larger than anything he could control.
For so long, we’d all been Gert and Mombi and Glamora’s pawns. He might’ve made a decision he regretted, but they were just as responsible. They had been calling the shots all along until now. They’d literally controlled him until the road had taken us out of Oz. They’d told him he and I could never be together. They’d controlled his entire life.
And now he had to carry this burden, feeling like he deserved Lang’s hatred, all because of what he’d done trying to save the world.
“Nox, do you believe that I make my own choices?”
“Of course.”
“I chose to join the Order. I chose to take the mission. I choose you. Melindra and Lang, they chose, too. It’s not on you.”
He opened his mouth to protest but he closed it again.
“And I choose to do this now.” I kissed him with all the love and compassion I had in me, with everything inside me that told him I understood that there was nothing to forgive.
I didn’t need magic to tell him everything I wanted to know with that kiss: that I was hopelessly, helplessly, unconditionally in love with him, that I’d stick it out with him until the end, whatever that end looked like.
And he kissed me back—hesitantly at first, and then with a hunger I could feel through his mouth, his hands buried in my hair. It was a long time before we came up for air.
“Amy—” he said hoarsely, but I put a finger across his lips.
“No talking,” I said. I took his hand and pulled him up from the table and practically dragged him into one of Lang’s open bedrooms. He kicked the door shut behind us and I shoved him backward onto the bed. Finally, he smiled, grabbing my hands and pulling me down on top of him.
We had made out before. But this felt different. When Nox’s lips brushed my neck, I felt the kiss wash over me.
I sat up, and my hands hesitated at the hem of my dress. And then I pulled it upward. I had taken off my dress a hundred times without falling over, but this time I began to. Nox caught me and helped me off with the dress. When I emerged from underneath it, he threw it on the floor. We were both laughing until I placed my hand on his chest.
He paused for a moment, running one callused palm down the bare skin of my back. “Are you okay?”
I rolled over to face him, covering my chest with one arm. “I’m, um, really nervous,” I said. I felt myself blushing. And then I blushed some more because I knew he could see me blushing.
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice gentle. “We don’t have to do . . . this. We don’t have to do anything at all. I can go. Do you want me to go?”
“No!” My voice came out as an urgent squeak. “It’s just that I, um, I’ve never . . . I’ve never done this before. The thing that, um, it seems like we’re maybe about to do.”
“Oh,” he said. He blushed too. “I, well.” He sat up, and I thought I’d ruined everything. My heart sank. “I’ve never done this—um, that—before either.”
“But . . . Melindra?”
“No!” he exclaimed, and then backpedaled. “I mean not that, no. We were just . . . we just, um . . .”
“Got it,” I said quickly. I definitely did not need the gory details. Or the comparison.
“When I first met you and I saw you fight, I told you you had to change. That you had to learn to be the knife. But I was the one who needed to learn. I never thought about myself. I thought of the Order. But I was the knife. I was the fight. You taught me how to love. You taught me how to choose. And I choose you. Always.”
My heart clenched in my chest. “Nox . . .”
Nox and I had fought back to back on the battlefield. We had kissed and touched before, but there was always a stopping point. A holding back. This was letting go. I felt almost more a part of my own skin and at the same time more in the moment than I had ever been. Every touch and kiss was a call and response of skin and feeling. But it wasn’t like the movies. We still giggled a lot and it was awkward and funny and a little weird but also completely, totally perfect. It was nothing like I thought it would be and everything that I ever thought it would be all at once. Afterward I pillowed my head on his lean, muscular chest and his sandalwood smell enveloped me like a cloud as the pounding of his heart slowed to a regular beat. He put an arm around me and I burrowed into his side.
“I love you,” he said softly into my hair.
“I know,” I said, yawning, and then I fell into the deepest, most contented sleep of my life.
TWELVE
A repeated thumping on the bedroom door pulled me out of the depths of sleep and out of Nox’s arms. I sat bolt upright. For a long second, I had no idea where I was. The crystal veins in the cavern had dimmed while we slept, and I could barely make out the stone walls in the dim light.
I wasn’t wearing any clothes, someone was pounding on the door, and I wasn’t alone in the bed—and then I remembered. Nox was the person next to me. Nox. I’d slept with Nox. For another second I sat there, with a grin that did not need the aid of PermaSmile. If I was honest with myself, the Amy I was before my trailer landed in Oz hadn’t even allowed herself to really imagine having a boyfriend. Being close to Nox was a whole new kind of magic.
Next to me, Nox stirred and groaned, flinging an arm over his eyes in protest before he sat up.
“Hi,” I said. I was blushing again, but at least this time it was dark.
“Hi,” he said. His smile looked the way I felt. “Come here.” He pulled me to him into a long, passionate kiss. And then there was an even more forceful thump at the door.
“All I want,” Nox said in low voice, tracing my collarbone with one finger in a way that definitely should not have made me feel the way it did—it was just a collarbone!—“is to spend the rest of my life in bed with you. But I guess we have to save the world, or something.”
“Or something,” I agreed reluctantly. I stretched and stood up with a sigh, locating my clothes at various points around the room, and flushing yet again as I remembered how they’d ended up there.
“Don’t put those on,” Nox protested.
“Shut up,” I said. I couldn’t stop the idiotic grin that refused to leave my face. Then again, I didn’t want to.
“I mean it.”
I threw his shirt at him. “We have to go kill Dorothy. You said so. Also the Nome King is coming to kill us.”
He flopped backward dramatically. “Who cares anymore? I can think of way better things to do.” I joined him on the bed, our shoulders touching. I always wanted some part of him touching some part of me.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“We get married, obviously. Oz custom,” Nox said.
“Shut up!” I cried, elbowing him. “What happens for real, after we finally beat Dorothy and the Nome King?”
“Amy Gumm, always thinking about the future,” Nox said, rolling over and toying with my hair. “I wish I knew.”
Madison kicked the door again. “Hurry up!” she bellowed.
“We’re coming!” I yelled.
Madison muttered something and stomped away.
“You can’t hate her forever,” I said as her steps died down.
“You can’t not still hate her a little. Or a lot.” He searched my eyes. “She hurt you.”
“When I came back, she . . . it didn’t seem important anymore, hating her. It was so small compared to all the things we faced here. We need to be on the same page, Nox. All of us. There’s no room for hate. We’re fighting Dorothy and her super-scary fiancé.
“If it were up to me no one would hurt you.” While he said this his finger was tracing tiny circles on my arm. The action was unconscious on his part, and it affected me all the same.
“I love you for that. I mean . . .” I had said the words without thinking about it, but I meant the words. We had said it last night. But it was different in the light of day.
Nox pushed back my hair and looked into my eyes. “I love you, Amy.”
“I love you, Nox.”
“When you asked before about our after . . . I don’t care where we end up. As long as we’re together.”
“Together isn’t a place, Nox.”
“It is to me.”
Nox kissed me long and deep, and I knew then that we were going to be very late for breakfast.
A half hour later, I headed down first.
Lang and Madison were hunched over the table, talking in low voices. They looked up when I came into the room, but they didn’t move apart. They looked like they’d been there for a long time.
“Where’s Nox?” Lang asked.
“He’s, uh, he’s . . . I don’t know,” I said. I could feel how hot my cheeks were. Madison started to laugh.
“Sure you don’t, Ames.”
“I do not! I have no idea where he slept last ni—”
Nox chose that exact moment to emerge from the same bedroom I’d just come out of, and Madison rolled her eyes.