He nodded, bringing my hand to his mouth. “You’re tougher than you give yourself credit for, Amy.”
“Thanks, but I still would’ve died without what you taught me about fighting and magic. ‘Tough’ doesn’t do much against Dorothy, or her armies, or the Lion. Remember? I’m alive because of you, Nox. Not because you saved me, even though you have. We’ve saved each other. I’m alive because you’re the one who taught me the skills I needed to survive. So is Lang. So is Melindra. So maybe you’re doing better than you give yourself credit for, too. Okay?”
He snorted softly. “Amy—”
“Nox, I mean it. I’m not gonna hear any more of this shit about how everyone who died in Oz is your fault. It’s the fault of the person who killed them, Nox. It’s Dorothy’s fault. Deal?”
He opened his mouth and shut it again, then shook his head. “I’m not there yet. I can’t see it that way.”
“I can.”
“I know,” he said. “And that’s one of the things that I love about you. You make me feel like . . . like there’s a reason for me not to give in to death.”
That left me breathless. I didn’t know what to say. What he was telling me now, I understood, was the most important thing another person had ever trusted me with. I felt like if I so much as breathed I’d shatter what was blossoming between us, like the night-blooming tirium he’d showed me what felt like a century ago.
“That’s the thing I want you to know,” he said in a low voice. “At first, when you came to the Order, I wanted to push you out. I wanted to make you leave. Because I could see it in you then, this goodness that you have, and I didn’t want you anywhere near us. I was terrified I’d have to send you to your death before you were ready, too, and one more untrained warrior on my conscience would’ve been too much. But it was more than that. You were different. You saw the world differently. When you looked at Oz, you saw what Dorothy had done—but you saw the beauty in it, too. You knew what it was like to feel wonder. And I hadn’t been around someone like that since I was just a child. Gert and Mombi knew it, too. They thought they could use what I felt for you to control me.” He took a deep, ragged breath. “And now here we are.”
I was so still I realized I’d forgotten to breathe. Silence spread over us like a blanket, sealing us into our own private world in the middle of Lang’s hideout. For this moment, this instant, it was just the two of us and the way we felt about each other, this huge, beautiful thing that I could finally say out loud.
“I love you,” I whispered. No matter how many times I said it, I knew I’d never get used to the feeling of the words in my mouth. The knowledge that it was true. That I’d never feel this way about anyone else again as long as I lived.
And neither would he.
EIGHTEEN
Lang swept back into the room, and she looked unbelievable. Her costume consisted of a closely fitted bodice of glossy black feathers studded with faceted obsidian that caught and held the lantern light. A long, spectacular train of more feathers left most of her black-stockinged legs bare. The final touch: a glorious black-plumed mask that fitted closely over her face and erupted into a headdress of towering feathers that arced behind her back like wings.
“Wow,” I said, and meant it.
“I do enjoy a particularly good disguise,” Lang said modestly. “Are you ready?”
I grabbed Madison from her room and the four of us strapped knives to our thighs and ankles.
“Let’s go,” Lang said. I squared my shoulders, took Nox’s hand, and followed her out of her hideaway and back to the eerie underground lake where the dragon boat was waiting for us.
“We want to be as unrecognizable as possible,” Lang said when we had settled into the boat and it was paddling away from the shore. “The more time we have before the Nome King sees me, the better.” She lifted her hands and closed her eyes. For a moment, nothing happened. And then Madison gasped.
The dragon boat’s wings were unfurling, their surface glistening with an iridescent sheen like oil on water. White feathers sprouted from the dark, leathery skin, and its scaly, stubby neck elongated into an elegant, sinuous curve like a swan’s. Lang’s fingers were moving and I could smell something electric and spicy, like the sky before a thunderstorm.
Magic.
In front of our eyes, the dragon boat was turning into something unrecognizable: a swan.
In Ev, Lang used her magic to become a chameleon. Someone whose very face changed constantly. Her whole life was a disguise.
I wondered what would happen to her if we won. If she didn’t need to hide anymore. Would she be able to ever go back to being normal? Someone who moved through the world as herself and not someone else.
I wondered if she even knew who she was anymore underneath all the masks. My journey down the Road of Yellow Brick had been a clarifying one—I knew myself better now. And I was stronger. Lang was strong, and crafty—and I just hoped she’d been rewarded with the same sense of self.
As the beetle captain navigated us along Ev’s underground waterways, more and more boats packed with people decked out in spectacular finery began to crowd the river. Some boats were living creatures, like ours: huge swans in thread-thin gold bridles; car-size fish that swam half out of the water; even a giant, decidedly evil-looking crocodile. Others were made of wood and metal, some of them so delicate it looked like a single wave might swamp them, others as massive and solid as tanks.
Like us, the other guests were in disguise. I saw exotic birds and reptiles, wild animals I recognized—and plenty I didn’t. One woman was costumed as an owl, in snow-white feathers scattered with diamonds. Another wore the inky-black pelt of some kind of jungle cat like a second skin, cut so low in the bodice that her overabundant assets threatened to spill out of her ensemble altogether. Their escorts were dressed as the Tin Woodman—that was in poor taste, I thought—and the Wizard of Oz, complete with a three-piece suit and a top hat. Unlike the actual Wizard, he was young, handsome, and possessed of a full head of thick, dark hair. Also unlike the actual Wizard, he was alive. My gaze flicked back to the center of the fake Tin Woodman’s chest, and I thought back to when I held his glowing, throbbing heart in my hand. I shuddered.
I wonder how the people of Ev even knew about birds since they spent so much of their lives underground. Maybe they dreamed of faraway places just the way I had back in Kansas.