“Look,” I said. “Things aren’t all they’re cracked up to be in my world either. You think wandering around Kansas camping on the prairie for a couple of days was good? Yeah, so it’s beautiful out there, but our planet is freaking out. The oceans are rising, people are fighting more and more wars every day, plants and animals are dying out, every other week some kid takes one of his parents’ guns to school and starts shooting. . . .” I stopped short at the look on Nox’s face. “The world I grew up in is gone, too,” I said quietly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on it. Because if you give up—then what is there left to live for?”
We were both silent for a long time, looking deep into each other’s eyes. He was so close to me. I could smell his faint rich sandalwood smell. I could have reached up to brush the hair out of his eyes. I could have leaned in the barest amount and our mouths would have met. And I wanted it so badly my heart was thundering in my chest.
“How about this?” Nox asked, not looking away from me. The purple-pink light from the setting sun reflected in his gray eyes, making them look practically neon. “How about you and I just leave. Let them have their war. We’ll just find a place to hide, just the two of us, and then, when it’s all over, we’ll climb out from the wreckage, and start the whole thing all over again. We’ll rebuild it all. Together.”
He reached forward and took my hand, and my heart nearly skipped a beat. It sounded so beautiful. Just him and me. On our own. No more war, no more suffering. No more running. It was like a beautiful dream—except that it was impossible, no matter how much some part of me wished it could come true. I couldn’t sacrifice the people I loved just to be with the boy I wanted. And I knew Nox well enough by now to know he’d never be able to do it either. It would tear him apart. And then we’d just be two bitter, brokenhearted people in a dead and ruined world. I knew it. And so did he.
“You don’t believe that,” I said.
“What if I do?”
“You don’t. That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard you say. It’s not you.”
“Maybe I’m an asshole.”
“You might be an asshole, but you’re not a selfish asshole.”
“How do you know that, Amy?”
“Because I couldn’t possibly love a selfish person,” I said.
His eyes widened in shock. “Amy,” he said hoarsely, “I . . .” But he didn’t finish. He was staring over my shoulder, at the view below the Tin Woodman’s balcony.
“You what?” I said softly, not sure if I had said too much.
That was when I realized it wasn’t what I had said that had surprised him. It wasn’t even me he was looking at anymore. He was staring over my shoulder out onto the horizon.
“I think we’re in trouble,” he said. I whirled around.
In the plain below the palace, an army was waiting for us. But not just any army. They were clones. A sea of creepy clones with cornflower-blue eyes and clear, ageless skin. Tendrils of golden hair spilled from their helmets. They were all virtually identical, and behind those flat blue eyes there was a terrifying blankness. And there was no mistaking the glittering pink figure who floated at its head.
Or the girl and the boy in chains at her side.
TWENTY
“Go get the Wicked,” Nox hissed, tugging me down so that Glinda couldn’t see us over the railing of the balcony. “Now.” He didn’t have to tell me twice. I pelted down the stairs until I crashed directly into—
“Melindra!” I gasped. She looked the same as she had when I’d last seen her, tall, fierce, and ready for battle. The blond hair on the human half of her head was shorn close to the skull, and the tin half of her body was dented and battered. Behind her stood Annabel, the red-haired unicorn girl with the purple scar on her forehead who’d trained with me, too. There were more people in the room I didn’t recognize, all of them with the same tough, wary warrior’s stance. Glamora was rubbing Gert’s back, and Gert looked exhausted. She must have used her power to summon the Wicked one at a time.
“Amy, what is it?” Gert asked when I crashed into the room.
“It’s happening!” I gasped. “Upstairs, now!” I turned around and ran back to Nox, not waiting to see if they were following me.
Glinda had come prepared for battle: instead of her usual ruffled dresses, she was dressed in a tight pink catsuit that looked like leather studded with little scales. Her golden hair was drawn back in a severe bun, and she carried a huge pink staff in one slender hand.
“Oh dear,” Gert said as she gazed down at Glinda and her legions. They wore matching silver armor, polished to a blinding glow that made me think uncomfortably of the Tin Woodman, and their silver-tipped spears glittered like diamonds.
“When did she get an army?” I asked.
“She’s always had an army,” Mombi said. “She just doesn’t use it very often.”
“What do you mean, very often?”
“General Jinjur invaded the Emerald City and deposed the Scarecrow before Dorothy returned to Oz,” Melindra said. “Didn’t they teach you this?”
“I skipped the history lesson on the way to the battle.”
Melindra rolled her eyes. Whatever problem she had with me, she hadn’t gotten over it. Great.
“Glinda summoned her army then and drove Jinjur out of the palace,” Mombi filled in. “Together, Glinda and the Scarecrow put Ozma on the throne.”