“Amy?” It was Nox. I could barely make out his silhouette where he perched on a crumbling cement foundation. Somehow, he was the person I most and least wanted to see at the same time. What comfort was he going to be to me now? He’d made his choice. We could never be together. “Amy, I’m really sorry,” he said. I hesitated, and then sat down next to him. He put an arm around me, and I flinched. Hastily, he pulled away.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I asked. “Why did you even let me hope we could—” I broke off, grateful he couldn’t see my cheeks flush in the dark. I was sixteen and I’d only known him for—well, for a month, apparently. It’s not like we were engaged, I thought bitterly. Except it had felt like so much more than that. I guess Oz did that. Made everything feel larger than life.
The edges of the sky were turning purple, suggesting that sunrise wasn’t far off. I couldn’t help myself—in spite of all my hurt and anger, I looked up. Kansas didn’t have much to offer, but the night sky was something else. The clouds had cleared, and the entire length of the Milky Way spilled across the heavens, blazing with stars. When my dad was around, he’d take me out at night sometimes with a pair of binoculars and point out all the constellations. I could still remember some of them—a lot better than I remembered my dad.
Nox and I were sitting literally on top of where my old trailer had been before the fateful tornado that picked me up and dragged me out of the only world I’d ever known. Being back here was unthinkable. But the Milky Way made me feel for the first time that maybe I had a home here, too. I hadn’t missed anything about my world, but seeing the constellations overhead made me reconsider. And if I couldn’t be with Nox in Oz, the list of reasons to return had just gotten a lot shorter.
“I’m so sorry,” Nox said again. “It’s not how I wanted this—” He took a deep breath and started again. “Look, it’s normal to have feelings for someone in the heat of battle. Emotions are intense. It’s happened before.”
Right—how could I forget. Melindra, the half-tin girl I’d trained with when I first came to Oz. She had wasted no time in telling me that she and Nox had been an item. When he took me to the top of Mount Gillikin to see the sprawling, beautiful landscape of Oz and told me I was special, it was the same routine he’d used on her. Now his words stung like crazy. How many girls had he shown that view? How many girls had fallen for his sad orphan shtick? Nox was straight out of Central Casting: Tortured Revolutionary Dreamboat—Are You the Girl Who’ll Finally Capture His Wounded Heart?
“Oh, great,” I snapped. “So I don’t mean anything to you.”
“Will you let me finish, Amy?” Now he sounded exasperated. “I knew you were different—that’s what I’m trying to tell you. From the very beginning. I haven’t had a lot of family in my life,” he added quietly. “Gert, Mombi, Glamora—as bad as they can be, they were all I had. Until you came along. I didn’t tell you because I knew they could call me in at any minute and I’d have to leave yet another thing I cared about. I guess I was dumb enough to think that ignoring the possibility would make it go away. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Can’t I help you? Can’t I become part of the circle somehow, too?”
“Amy, I don’t think you can handle Oz’s magic much longer,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked angrily. “You think I can’t handle myself? Why do you just do everything they tell you?” A sudden thought hit me. “You’re jealous,” I said. “You’re jealous of my power, and the fact that I could be strong enough to take down Dorothy. You know you need me and you don’t want to admit it—because that would be telling the Order that brave, perfect Nox can’t do it all on his own.”
“Listen to yourself, Amy,” he said quietly. “You accused me of doing the same thing when we first met. Remember?”
I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. The night when I was still training with the Wicked. When Gert had first provoked me into using magic, and I’d gotten so angry I couldn’t even think. Nox had whisked me away to show me the stars and calm me down. I’d yelled at him for always doing what the Order told him without thinking, and he’d told me how Dorothy and Glinda had killed his family and destroyed his village. He’d opened up to me for the first time, and I’d seen the depths of what haunted him. Of what Dorothy had taken from him. Compared to Nox, I’d lost hardly anything at all. And now here we were again, under a different set of stars, having the same fight.
“I remember,” I said. “But everything was different then.” Everything was simpler, I wanted to add.
“Do you really think I’m jealous of you?” Nox said. “How could I be? I’ve seen what Oz’s magic is doing to you. It’s tearing you apart. I can’t let that happen to you. I won’t. You know you can’t kill Dorothy. You’re bound to her somehow. And we know Dorothy has been hopelessly corrupted by Oz’s magic—and probably the Wizard, too. When he first came to Oz, he wasn’t evil—just bumbling. Every time you try to use your power you turn into a monster. If Oz’s magic doesn’t twist you into something unrecognizable, it’ll—” He stopped short.
“You think it’ll kill me.”
“I think there’s a strong possibility,” he said. “You can’t use Oz’s magic, Amy. Not now, not ever again.”
“It hasn’t killed Dorothy. Anyway, I can’t use magic at all here,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “So it’s kind of a moot point for the time being. But if my magic returns somehow, or if we get back to Oz—using magic is my choice to make. Not Gert’s. Not Mombi’s or Glamora’s. Not yours.”
“It isn’t just your choice, Amy,” he said, looking deep into my eyes. “I can’t just think about you. I have to think about all of Oz. If you turn into something like Dorothy . . .” He trailed off, tugging helplessly at the Quadrant cloak. “This is so much bigger than just us.” I knew what he meant; he didn’t have to say it out loud. If Oz’s magic made me into another Dorothy, he’d have to kill me, too. But being told what to do still stuck in my throat. Especially after Nox had refused to tell me the whole truth for all this time.
“You care about Oz more than you care about me,” I snapped, hurt and angry. I wanted to take the words back as soon as they were out of my mouth. Of course Nox cared more about Oz than he did about me. Oz was his country, his home, the only world he’d ever known. Oz was his entire life. I was a bitchy, needy teenager who’d crashed the party at the eleventh hour and learned how to be an assassin. If Oz’s magic corrupted me, it would be my own fault. Dorothy’d had no idea what the shoes would do to her. But me? I knew all too well the dangers of using magic in Oz.
“You know that’s not true,” he said. The reproach in his voice was gentle but unmistakable. I wondered how much damage I’d just done acting like a spoiled little kid. I could feel a new distance, like someone had hung a curtain between us.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. My throat hurt like I’d swallowed a pincushion, but I was sick of crying. For some crazy reason, in that moment I thought of Dustin. Good old Dustin of Dusty Acres, my old high school enemy Madison Pendleton’s trusty sidekick. Like me, Dustin had wanted out of this dump. I wondered if he’d gotten it. I wondered if Madison had had the baby that had been threatening to pop out when the tornado hit. I wondered if going back to high school meant I’d have to see her—see both of them—again.