It’s next to impossible to resist my charms—I’m the prettiest girl in Oz, even battered by a ceiling and covered in dust. So I wasn’t surprised to recognize his attraction.
But I was intrigued.
The Nome King clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. I watched curiously as he opened his hands and was delighted to see that he’d turned the small pile of rubies into a delicate bracelet of tiny ruby flowers winding around one another. I inhaled deeply as he slipped it on my wrist.
As his servants carried us forward, the Nome King opened a satchel beautifully crafted out of leather and steel filigree. He offered me a bunch of sunberries and I graciously accepted them, delicately placing each berry inside my ruby-red lips and allowing the bright, flavorful juice to wash the dryness out of my mouth. He watched me eat but took nothing himself. When I was refreshed, he spoke again.
“It goes without saying that you’re the true ruler of Oz, Dorothy. Not Ozma,” he said. “The people of Oz know it in their hearts.”
“I’m so glad you think so,” I purred.
I didn’t let my anger show, but I was furious with that stupid, awful fairy Ozma. Her and her stupid fairy magic. Always spoiling my fun! Thinking she knew best. Thinking she was the queen of all things magical. If she hadn’t meddled and tried to stop me from learning magic, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry would still be . . .
I pushed the thought aside and blinked hard to will the image away. The tornado that carried the house was mine, but I had been aiming for Ozma. She provoked me. She cost me my only family. And Amy Gumm had cost me my makeshift one.
The Nome King cleared his throat, reminding me that I needed to answer him.
“I’m sure Ozma will do just fine,” I said coolly.
“Oh, I’m sure,” he agreed with a smile. “But you did better, and you know it. Oz needs you, Dorothy. You have a duty to fulfill. You have a destiny.”
I liked the sound of that. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but he certainly knew the way to my heart.
“You really think so?”
“I know it.” He took my hand, looking deep into my eyes with his silver gaze, and my heart began to race. He was so handsome, so powerful. I’d heard stories of his magic. His strength.
I felt something. Something almost as warm and glowy as when my magic coursed through me. It wasn’t his looks. It wasn’t even the gorgeous bracelet that now rested on my wrist (although that didn’t hurt). It was that there was no fear in his eyes when he looked at me. And he was also Wicked. Perhaps more Wicked than all the Wicked Witches combined. And don’t tell anyone, that was a little hot, too.
“I’ve seen it, Dorothy,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “It’s why I came to rescue you. You must return to the throne in order for your country to be whole. It would be my honor to help you.”
Well, I wasn’t expecting that. I tried not to let my surprise show. “And in return?” I asked sharply, although I already knew the answer.
“Perhaps a modest exchange between our kingdoms,” he suggested.
I looked down at my hands—one of which was still in his.
My manicure had been absolutely ruined by the collapse of the Emerald Palace. My knuckles were bruised and scraped raw. I was exhausted. But I wasn’t stupid.
I knew he meant much more than a modest exchange. He meant that if he helped me take control of Oz again, I’d be in debt to Ev—more specifically, to him—forever. But I’d been around the block a few times by that point. Handsome and magical he might be, but the Nome King should have known better than to underestimate me.
“Do you really think Oz needs me so badly?” I asked coyly, as if dazzled by his praise. (See into the future? Please. Even Glinda can’t do that.)
“I’ve foreseen it,” he intoned solemnly. His voice did send a tiny thrill through me. Even if it wasn’t true, it sounded divine.
“I never wanted power,” I said, dropping my eyes modestly and looking up at him through my lashes. “I only wanted to do what was right for Oz.”
“And that’s why you were born to be its leader,” he said, bringing my hand to his chest and holding it there.
He didn’t seem to have a heartbeat, but we all have our little quirks.
I pretended to think about it. “Glinda will be a problem,” I said, as if this had just occurred to me.
“Glinda will come around,” he said lightly. “She knows what’s best for Oz, just as you do.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Glinda had been an absolute pain in my ass lately—and attacking the Order without me? As if she was the one in charge?
But I reassured myself with the thought that Glinda could hardly rule Oz herself—she was a witch, not a queen—and once I was returned to the throne, I’d see that she was punished for her disobedience. For the good of Oz. The Nome King and I would go over that later.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To Ev, where you can be safe,” he said.
I thought about this.
I might be a bitch, but I’m not an idiot. There was something else going on here, something big. The Nome King was not rescuing me out of some altruistic desire to see me sitting once more on the throne of Oz. And Oz might be rich where Ev was poor, but that wasn’t the only reason he’d rescued me.
No, he was up to something. And I was willing to bet it was something that was going to benefit him, not me.
However, I was alive. And more or less in one piece.
And surrounded by his henchmen, being carried—if not by force, certainly potentially by force—to a country I didn’t stand a chance of escaping without help or magic. In short, I wasn’t in much of a position to argue with him.
“I’ve always wanted to see Ev,” I lied politely. “You certainly went to an awful lot of trouble to rescue me, and I haven’t properly thanked you at all.” I ate another handful of sunberries, too hungry to remember to chomp on them seductively. Oops.
“It’s really nothing at all,” the Nome King said. There was a glint of menace in his eye. But there was something else. He was attracted to me, too. I smiled back at him radiantly.
Until I knew exactly what his game was, I’d play. I needed to know what the stakes were before I made any bets. And I needed to gather my energy.
The Nome King was either a very dangerous friend—or a very interesting enemy.
“I can’t wait until we’ve arrived,” I said. “But now, you must forgive me . . . I have to rest.”
“Of course,” he said. The glint in his eye was gone and he was every bit the solicitous host again. If he’d wanted to harm me—right then, anyway—I doubted he’d go to all the trouble of rescuing me just to murder me in his magic sleigh on the way back to Ev, so I let my eyelids drift closed.
The last thing I heard before I sank into a merciful, much-needed sleep was the Nome King humming some strange, old tune under his breath, and the soft hiss of the runners as we flew forward over the stone.
FOUR
We heard the creatures before we saw them, but we still didn’t have time to prepare. From beyond a rocky hillside came a rattly, squeaking din that sounded like a hundred rusty bicycles being ridden through a gravel pit. “What’s that noi—” I began, and then they came over the hill. Madison’s face went suddenly white.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “I hated this movie.”
“Which movie?” I had my back to her and was in a fighting stance, ready to defend us with our fists if I had to, but I knew we didn’t stand a chance if they attacked. We were too outnumbered, and we didn’t have magic.
“Return to Oz? It’s like showing a little kid Clockwork Orange,” she said. “Fucked me up for life. Anyway, those are the Wheelers.” Her voice was even but I knew she must be terrified. Madison was tough, though. I knew from experience that she didn’t flinch when it came to a fight.
“What’s a movie?” Nox asked. In all the time we’d spent together talking about Oz’s magic, I’d never gotten mu
ch of a chance to tell him about the magic in my world. The tiny television back in my trailer in Kansas had been a window to other places, including Oz.
“Forget it,” Madison said.
“Well, whatever those things are, get ready to fight,” Nox said as the creatures descended on us.
There were at least a dozen of the Wheelers—they moved so fast I lost count—and they were terrifying. They moved on all fours, their limbs stretched out impossibly long and thin. Each of their arms and legs ended in a huge, spiky, and rust-coated wheel that squealed horribly as they circled us. They were dressed in a crazy patchwork of filthy, bloodstained rags and richly embroidered velvet, scraps of metal, beads, and pieces of old-fashioned armor. Their clothes were crusted with old food and bits of meat and other things I didn’t want to think about. They smelled like death.
But worst of all, their faces were human—almost. Their skin was leathery and wrinkled, and most of them had terrible scars or open wounds crisscrossing their faces like an insane road map of pain. Their hair was matted. They held dirty, rusty knives in their teeth and jabbed forward with their jaws, thrusting the weapons at us and herding us into a tight bunch. They formed a whirling circle around us—but they didn’t touch us. Madison covered her nose and mouth against the stench.
“Stop!” One of the Wheelers called out to the others in a deep, scratchy voice that made me think of an old man who’d spent his entire life chain-smoking and chugging hard liquor. Immediately the Wheelers screeched to a halt.
The Wheeler who had spoken creaked closer and stared at me. Even though he wasn’t carrying a weapon in his teeth like the others, he managed to be even scarier. His face was deeply tanned and covered with a network of old scars. One eye was missing, the socket a mess of bulging scar tissue. His hair hung in lank strands braided with beads and pieces of metal and chunks of bone. He stared at me with his good eye, which was a crazy, piercing blue, and then he smiled, and I saw why he didn’t need a knife: his teeth were filed into razor-sharp points.
I heard Madison breathe in hard next to me, but she didn’t make a noise. I felt weirdly proud of her.
“Welcome to Ev, honored guests,” the Wheeler sneered. His voice sounded like tin cans being dragged behind an old car. “Princess Langwidere requests your most esteem presence at her palace.”
At the word esteem the other Wheelers began to snicker. “Esteem! Esteem! Princess call guests esteem!” one of them squealed, and the others burst into awful, screeching giggles that sent chills running down my spine.
Langwidere? What kind of name was that—and who on earth was she? Next to me, Nox looked a shade paler. “That’s not good,” he said in my ear.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know anything about these Wheelers, but I definitely have heard of Langwidere. And everything I’ve heard is . . . bad.”
He’d spoken quietly, but the Wheelers overheard him anyway. At his words, they hooted and shrieked with laughter. “Little flesh-foot denies his honor!” one of them howled, sending the others into hysterical giggles again.
“Look, knock it off. “Madison stepped forward. Her voice was clear and loud and somehow, even though I knew she must be terrified, she seemed confident. Most of the Wheelers kept laughing but a few stopped and looked at her.
“Are you going to kill us? Because if you aren’t, we have business to take care of, so maybe you can leave us alone and get out of here. Right?” She looked at Nox, whose mouth was open in astonishment. “Right?” she said again.
“Uh, right.” Nox closed his mouth and looked serious. “Exactly. Yes, what she said.”
The Wheelers’ laughter died down into the occasional giggle. The leader peered at us again, his beady good eye squinting. A smile played over his cracked lips and he chuckled to himself. “A spicy little flesh-foot!” he cackled, staring at Madison. He creaked forward until his face was inches away from hers but she didn’t flinch. He opened his mouth and screamed with laughter.
Even from where I was standing I nearly gagged at the rank, foul stench of his breath. Bits of rotting meat were caught in his jagged teeth. But Madison didn’t back down.
“Cool, so you’re not going to kill us, am I right?” she said. “Since we’re not dead yet, and you guys are just dicking around. How about you let us go then?”
“Princess says to bring you to her unharmed,” the Wheeler admitted reluctantly. He was clearly unhappy about those instructions.
“Princess didn’t say unharmed! Princess said ‘in one piece’! Could be harmed but still one piece!” one of the other Wheelers broke in excitedly, squeaking back and forth on his wheels. The leader cocked his head, considering, and then shook his head no, sending his dirty braids flying.
“You want to argue with Princess, your problem,” he said. The other Wheeler abruptly stopped moving and looked alarmed.
“Not arguing with Princess,” he said quickly. “Wouldn’t, wouldn’t.”
“We take you to her now,” the lead Wheeler said to us.
“We don’t want to go with you,” Madison said. At that, the Wheelers screeched with laughter again.
“Wants to argue with Princess!” they yelled. “Wants to argue! Little flesh-foot says no to Princess!”
“You don’t choose,” the Wheelers’ leader said to Madison. He lunged forward so fast that she didn’t even have time to scream, fastening his serrated teeth in her arm and dragging her toward the nearest Wheeler, who bent down on his elbows. The leader half dragged, half threw Madison on his back and he reared up again with Madison clutching frantically to his embroidered jacket. Blood seamed her shirtsleeve and her face was white and terrified.
“Now you,” the leader said to me, his teeth red with Madison’s blood. I swallowed hard as another of the Wheelers bent in front of me. The leader bared his teeth and snapped at me as I clambered awkwardly onto the Wheeler’s back. Next to me, Nox was doing the same. Up close, the Wheeler smelled even worse. And when I looked down, I saw fleas crawling in his dirty, ragged clothes. I closed my eyes, willing myself not to throw up.
“Now we go,” the leader said, and the Wheelers lurched forward across the barren earth.
I’d had a lot of bad journeys in Oz, but riding a Wheeler across the desert definitely took the prize for Most Awful Form of Transportation of All Time. The hot, merciless sun beat down on my back, sucking all the moisture out of my body. The Wheeler’s jagged wheels made his gait jolting and uneven, and although I was exhausted, I had to struggle every minute of the ride to cling to his filthy, bony back. I managed to tear off a strip of fabric from the bottom of my dress and toss it to Madison for her wound. She probably needed some kind of shot to ensure it wouldn’t get infected but this was the best I could do for now.
As the sun rose higher, the smell got worse. Every time I glanced over at Madison, she looked more and more as though she was about to pass out. Even Nox was turning a distinct shade of sickly green.
The landscape around us wasn’t much better. Mostly it was deserted, but here and there we passed tiny villages that looked even worse than I felt: houses with collapsing roofs and crumbling walls, farm animals with ribs that poked horribly out of their fly-dotted hides, poking dispiritedly along the sun-bleached, rocky ground in vain search of food. As we creaked and rumbled by, terrified faces appeared briefly in broken-paned windows and then disappeared again as everyone we passed hid from the Wheelers.
Once, one of the Wheelers broke off from our group, speeding toward a village with a howl of glee, but the leader sharply called him back and he returned reluctantly, still brandishing his knife in his teeth. The leader bit him hard on the ear and he yelped with pain.
“We follow Princess orders!” the leader snarled. “No play today. Serious business.” The other Wheeler shot him a murderous look but obeyed. I didn’t want to think about what the Wheelers considered “play.” The horror in the faces of the people we passed gave me a pretty good idea.
Nox looked at
Madison, who was inspecting the bloody cloth around her arm.
“If you expect to make it here, you can’t bully your way through it. You need to take our lead.”
Madison looked up sharply. “Excuse me, you don’t even know me.”
“You’re the Madison who used to call her ‘Salvation Amy.’ That Madison? I do know you.”
I had forgotten that Nox had not been there for everything that went down in Flat Hill when I’d gone back with the witches. How do I explain how I had made up with Madison? Nox had been in my head during my initiation into the Order, he had felt every humiliation that Madison had dealt me, and judging from his face, he could not reconcile me forgiving her. I could hardly reconcile it myself.
“You weren’t there, Nox. A lot happened in Kansas. She risked her life for me,” I said.
Nox scowled, unimpressed. “One good thing doesn’t erase all the bad,” he said.
I loved that he was protective of me. But this was more than that.
“Hey, I know this isn’t about her. This is about Mombi, isn’t it?”
He looked up at me, surprised. “What are you talking about? She died doing what she loved. Protecting the Order. Protecting Oz.”
I took a deep breath. Nox had been raised to protect Oz at any cost. Duty coursed through him and the other witches. But there was more to him, and there was more to Mombi.
“She died protecting what she loved. You.”
Nox blinked hard and looked away. I wanted to put my arms around him. To make him give in to what he was feeling. But I couldn’t because I was stuck on the back of a disgusting creature.
“Shhh . . .” screeched the Wheeler beneath me, then it raced ahead to stall our talk.
The sun dragged slowly across the sky. I wondered if someone here controlled the time, the way Dorothy had once used the Great Clock. It certainly felt like some sadistic force was making the time pass as slowly as possible, but I suspected it was just the awfulness of the journey that made it seem endless.
I tried to remember everything I knew about Ev. Mombi had told me about the Nome King back when I’d found Dorothy’s journal in Kansas. Something about how he’d tried to invade Oz a long time ago, but Ozma defeated him when she was queen the first time around. When he showed up in Kansas, Mombi immediately assumed the worst and thought he might be trying to use me—and he’d basically told me as much when he’d crashed Ozma’s coronation party, dragged Madison into Oz, and murdered Mombi with Glinda’s help.