“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.