“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.

I didn’t want to think about the last time I’d seen her or the way she’d looked—almost resigned, as if she knew this might be her last fight. She had not given up—she was a fighter. And she had thrown herself into the fray to give me and Nox a chance to escape. But if the Nome King could take out Mombi, the witch with the most Wickedness, that didn’t say much for my chances of defeating Ev’s most sinister senior citizen on his own turf.

I was pretty sure she’d never said anything about any Princess Langwidere, though. I wished I could ask Nox more about who she was, but I didn’t want the Wheelers to overhear our conversation. Instead, I closed my eyes, concentrating on finding the magic within myself. Magic was the only weapon I had left. We had no idea what we were going to be up against with this Langwidere person. I had to be able to use my powers in case I needed them to help save us.

But trying to find my magic felt the same way it had on the road: I could almost feel it, but it was as if I was trying to reach through a wall. My boots throbbed again, but this time it felt like a warning. As if they were telling me to be careful. As if they were letting me know they might not be able to protect me.

“Look,” Madison said in a low voice, jerking me out of my thoughts. On the horizon I saw a black smudge that I thought at first was a heat-induced mirage over the shimmering desert. But as we slowly wheeled closer the smudge got bigger and bigger, looming over the landscape like a bad dream.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Princess! Princess!” screamed one of the Wheelers in delight. “Princess soon! Princess treat guests so well!”

They exploded into their awful laughter again and some of them broke off from the group to speed around us in circles, taunting us. “Flesh-feet think they’re too good for Wheelers! Wait until Princess cuts off your heads! Then you won’t be so smarty-smart! Little witches get Wheeler stitches!”

The Wheeler carrying me grunted and kicked out with one leg at the others. I grabbed his back, afraid of sliding off. I had no doubt that whatever the princess’s orders the others wouldn’t hesitate to run me over with their spiked wheels if I fell to the ground.

“They’re joking, right?” Madison said.

Nox cleared his throat. “That’s, um, sort of what she’s known for,” he said. “Her head collection.” Madison’s eyes got wide. I wasn’t sure I looked any better myself.

Princess Langwidere’s palace was close enough that I could make out its details. I liked it a lot better when it was far enough away that I couldn’t see the specifics.

It was big, for one thing. Really, really big. But that part wasn’t scary at all. What was scary was how it looked: as if the vampire Lestat had barfed up a gaudy cathedral. A forest of spiky turrets and towers bristled out of a massive, hulking body of black stone dotted with thousands of tiny black windows that seemed to suck up the sunlight rather than reflect it. The towers were carved with hundreds of heads and faces, misshapen and deformed. Some of them looked like they were screaming in pain or fear. Others were grinning evilly. One tower flowed into the next like a massive pile of candle drippings.

But the palace wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was definitely the road.

As if in twisted mockery of the Road of Yellow Brick, the road to Princess Langwidere’s palace was made of crumbling black stone that split into fissures so wide the Wheelers had to creak around them. The road was lined with dozens of spikes. And on every single one was impaled a rotting head.

Madison looked like she was going to throw up. I couldn’t decide whether I was more scared or more grossed out. The heads were in varying stages of decomposition. Some of them looked fresh, and others were just skulls with a few dried scraps of flesh and hair still clinging to them.

But as we passed them I sensed something strange. The faint, unmistakable, electric buzz of magic. Maybe I couldn’t use it here, but I could sense it. Where was it coming from?

And then I realized: the heads weren’t real. They were a glamour—a powerful one, if they were there all the time, but an illusion all the same. Why would someone go to so much gory trouble to line a road nobody seemed to use? Why would she send her scary minions to collect us if they weren’t going to hurt us? None of this made any sense. Who was this chick?

I glanced over at Nox, and he met my eyes. He’d noticed it, too. And from the look on his face, he was wondering the same thing.

I didn’t have any more time to think about it—we were approaching the castle gate. Like the rest of the palace, it was jagged and misshapen and carved with howling, grimacing faces. Whatever Princess Langwidere’s deal, she had a real thing for heads. I hoped that didn’t mean ours were on the line.

The gates swung open with a horrible screech as the Wheelers approached. In front of us was a courtyard paved with the same cracked black stone as the road to Langwidere’s palace. Walls surrounded us on all sides, pockmarked with windows that stared down at us like lidless eyes. The skin on the back of my neck prickled. It felt like the castle itself was watching us.