I needed to make sure everyone was okay. Then, I intended to stuff my face with Munchkin food.
Chapter 22
Oprix
W
e’d done it. Kind of. The Fisher King wasn’t dead, but he was hogtied in Pridius’ barn without his head. That was close, right? Pridius put music on because we could hear him shouting all the way in the house. He could yell pretty loudly for a man with a smashed face and no lungs. Illyna was staying in the barn with him. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
On the one hand, now was a time for celebration and she was upsetting to several people at our table. They could hear her out later. On the other, I’d rather have her where we could see her. She might say she was on our side and she had helped us, but she loved the Fisher King once and she had been on his side before. Even if her children changed everything for her, she killed Adora and she was responsible for making Dorothy kill Azami. If Dorothy meant so much to her, why did she send her up against Azami? I had questions too, and I wasn’t even related to Illyna.
We had this little celebration going, but not everyone was enjoying it. The Flying Monkeys were drunk and rowdy. They were cutting up with the Quadlings, who always seemed to like a good party. The Winkies and Munchkins had about a million questions for Frankie and Saffron.
As much as they terrorized her after Adora died and what they did to her at Emerald City Academy, the Munchkins were really kissing Saffron’s ass now. Even Todus was groveling, and I didn’t think that was possible.
“Did you really get him right in the eye with your arrow?” Todus asked.
Saffron wasn’t buying all the ass-kissing. What she really wanted was her mother’s name cleared and probably an apology. She hadn’t forgotten what Todus did to her at Emerald City Academy either. A thank you for saving his life would help too.
“I shot him in the eye, but it’s not like it killed him. It only slowed him down.”
“Can I say something?” Todus said. “I’m sorry for how I acted at school. I didn’t know Frankie was related to me, and all I knew about Saffron was stories about her mother. The Munchkins thought we were being lied to about your mothers at the academy. Locasta had us thinking we could only trust other Munchkins and the North. When we got to Emerald City Academy, there was only one professor from the North and the only Munchkins there were us. We were certain something was going on and that Sentinel story was a huge lie to placate us while all of you plotted against Oz.”
I got what Todus was saying. The Fisher King wanted them to do that. He wanted all of Oz mistrusting each other while he took over. But what did Todus think after Frankie and Saffron straight-up saved his life after everything? If Frankie and Saffron were part of this massive plot against the Munchkins, no one would have said anything if Todus fell to his death. Everyone would have just blamed Dorothy for shooting that arrow at him.
Frankie and Saffron would make Todus answer before they accepted his apology.
“Even after the roof?” Saffron demanded.
“The roof incident was so confusing!” Todus said, laughing like hadn’t been awful and he could have gotten himself killed with that stunt. “We were so sure Dorothy could do the same thing Saffron did. I wasn’t even scared when I stood there with the apple in my mouth because I was so sure. It wasn’t until Dorothy fired the arrow and I realized it was coming straight for me that I realized I’d made an egregious error. I know I didn’t say it then, but thank you for saving me.”
“It’s what we do, even if I didn’t know you’re my brother,” Frankie said, tipping her glass to him.
Pridius finally spoke. He had been letting Todus talk everything out with Frankie and Saffron.
“Saffron, your mother’s castle is still unoccupied. The Munchkins thought it unlucky to live there. There are a lot of Munchkins that want to go North and hear Locasta’s side of things, but there are plenty that want life to go back to normal. All the Munchkins are ashamed of what they did to you, Saffron. There are several staying behind that want to clean the dust out of the castle and make it a proper home for you again. Are you okay with us going in there and doing some cleaning?”
Saffron just smiled shyly. “Yes, but please throw nothing away. It might seem trivial, but it may be important to my family. Did they break anything after my mother died?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I believe it was her potions lab. They didn’t want to risk you sneaking back in and brewing up a big curse, so there’s a lot of broken jars and glass in that room. Anything that looked like a talisman was smashed. No one wanted to stay in that castle long, so it wasn’t searched very thoroughly. Once they found the potions room, they just smashed it and focused on finding you. We’ll clean up the glass and help you replace anything that was broken.”
“Thanks. It’ll be nice to be back home.”
“Why are we putting Locasta on trial, anyway?” Todus said. “We all saw her with the young face and the green hair with the talking head. That other green-haired lady can tell us what she got up to and there are three other green-haired people here too. Why are we going through the farce of letting Locasta speak? She’s just going to lie.”
Esiro looked up from her wine. “We’re giving her a chance to speak because the North needs to hear it. The North is fiercely loyal to Locasta, and they aren’t stupid. If you put her on trial without letting her tell them herself, the North will rise up against the rest of Oz. The best thing you can do is put her on trial with her real face. It will put doubts in the heads of the people of the North that she lied to them about that. They’ll want to know what else she lied to them about. They’ll recognize me when I change my appearance back to the face they know. They’ll want to know why my hair is green too. Dorothy is still a hero, even in the North. When they see she also had green hair like Locasta and that Locasta was the one that sent her to the Wizard, I think you’ll find the North turning against her.”
Pridius eyed Esiro up and down. “Since we know there are four Sentinels and Locasta was supposed to be one, who will take her place?”
“Me, if they’ll have me,” Esiro said, raising her chin.
“Excellent choice,” Pridius said. “You seem to know the Gillikin well.”
Frankie bolted to her feet. “If Illyna hasn’t done it yet, we need to bind Locasta so she can’t change back and lie. Everyone stay and enjoy your meal. I’ll be right back.”
We were so close. We had to go through a trial, and Frankie and Saffron needed to complete their training, and then we could just go back to being us.
We could be happy.
Chapter 23
Galen
I
couldn’t stand it anymore. I snuck out of bed and out to Pridius’ barn. I needed to talk to my mother. I was starting to think this was some massive trick. There was no way she fooled me for that long that she hated me. She was sitting in the soft hay with her back against the barn. The Fisher King’s body was roped up on one side of the barn, and his head was on the other. I realized I had stopped hearing him screaming sometime around the second course. I realized why. She shoved hay in his mouth.
“Galen,” she said, standing up and smiling. “I was hoping you’d come.”
“If this is a trick, I’ll kill you myself.”
She took a step forward, then stopped like she changed her mind. “The only trick I played on you was making you think I didn’t love you. If the Fisher King thought you were precious to me, he would have killed you. He wouldn’t have cared about his precious number three. He didn’t want me to love anyone or anything more than I loved him.”
“Don’t lie to me. You worshipped him. I saw it. You could have said something to me at any time.”
My mother’s eyes watered. “I couldn’t risk it, Galen. If he found out, he would have killed you. I had to pretend like I had no interest in you to keep you safe. It had to be convincing so that the Fisher King would believe it too. It killed me to send your sisters away. If
I thought I could find a safe place from him, I would have run away with the three of you. I couldn’t because he had Locasta on his side and she would just help him carry out his plan. This was the only way I could think of to beat him. I helped you the night you ran.”
“No, you didn’t,” I snapped.
“The Fisher King didn’t wake that night. I put a small bit of valerian in his wine. Not enough that he would notice, just enough to keep him asleep. I just hoped you got out and found someone to help you. And you did. I’m so proud of you.”
“What about my sisters? You let Dorothy think she murdered a woman, and you were fine with sending her to kill Azami.”
“I didn’t think Dorothy would succeed. She was a child, and Azami was a Sentinel. I knew Azami to be a good woman, and I knew she wouldn’t hurt Dorothy. That was actually my idea to send her to Azami. I thought Azami would find a way to send her back to Kansas, where she was safe.”
“Why did you kill Adora?”
“Because your father threatened to kill Esiro and me if I didn’t. He said he would wipe my entire line off of Oz. I disagreed with him and he didn’t like it. I didn’t want to kill Adora, but I knew you were out there somewhere, Locasta had Esiro, and Dorothy was hurtling towards Oz in a tornado. I’m sorry, Galen. I know all of you hate me and Saffron will never forgive me, but it was either Adora or all my children. He would have killed me and I would have had no way to keep any of you safe. I had to stay alive because I would be close to him when he finally made his move. His guard would be down and I could get his sword away to cut off his head. With his ring and the dead he would raise, none of you would have gotten as close as I was.”
Fuck. I knew she was right. Saffron and the others might not realize it, and I still wished there had been another way, but I grew up with the Fisher King. He’d used that ring on me as punishment. Never enough to kill me, just enough to bring me right to the point of death to prove a point. If she really loved me this entire time, why didn’t she just make her move while he was distracted hurting me?
“Galen, I don’t expect you to understand what I let him do to you. I knew he would never kill you because you were part of his plan, but if I ever thought that had changed, I would have died protecting you.”
“What about Esiro and Dorothy? You sent them away. How did you intend to keep them safe? Locasta wasn’t exactly kind to Esiro.”
“Locasta is a bitter, angry woman. It was Locasta’s mother who came to the cave. She was upset about the other Sentinels not sending someone for me. Locasta is totally mad, but her mother wasn’t all there either.
“My twin and I were identical in looks, but not in magic or strength. My twin sister struggled with fighting and with magic, she was strong with glamours, but her innate magic couldn’t do what mine could. Locasta and her mother are descended from my twin and my twin always had a complex about not being as strong as I was.
“I know that’s how the Sentinel line in the North got so corrupted. They were willing to do anything to be as strong as the other Sentinels, including incest and inbreeding. I think Locasta’s father is also her uncle. Her mother came to see me when Locasta was only five. The Fisher King wanted me to turn Locasta’s mother, but Locasta was always with her, silently listening.
“I didn’t know this at the time, but while I was trying to do a poor job turning Locasta’s mother, little Locasta was hanging on to every lie. Everything her mother should have seen through and alerted the other Sentinels, Locasta believed as utter truth. I wasn’t trying to bring the North to the Fisher King’s side. I was trying to talk to Locasta’s mother in a way that the Fisher King thought I was, but I should have been more careful talking around Locasta.
“Locasta came alone when she was seventeen and murdered her own mother. She hatched her own plot to impress the Fisher King. She had this elaborate story about how a minor witch named Mombi murdered her mother and cursed her to look like an old lady. She showed us the glamour she showed everyone after that. She claimed Mombi was an ally, and she could get the North on his side better than her mother could. The Fisher King was impressed with her and her ideas. He told her he would make her his queen if she succeeded. We both know he would have killed her eventually, but even Locasta knew there were limits to what she could do to Esiro before the Fisher King would just kill her.”
I had known none of that about Locasta. I knew she was evil, and I knew she was at the cave a lot. I knew she abused my sister now, and that she tortured a pregnant woman. I’d known since I was a child Locasta was just as bad as my father. I was so conflicted about my mother right now.
I wasn’t totally irrational. I could see she tried to atone for her mistakes giving him his ring back. He beat her just as much as he beat me. He used that ring on her too. I knew she’d been put in a hard place once she realized the horrible mistake she made letting him out. I could tell she was telling the truth about everything. I had the same abilities the Sentinels did about being able to tell when someone was lying. My mother was telling us the truth about everything.
At the same time, her truth didn’t erase my past. Her telling me she really loved me didn’t make me forget over twenty years of just ignoring me. She could tell me she helped me run away that night, and I could feel she was telling me the truth. It didn’t take away the memory of every beating, whether it was with words or fists. Nothing would make me forget that. Could our family ever be whole after what she did to her children?
Illyna just smiled sadly. “I know what I did, Galen. I was the one who let him out of his prison and gave him his ring back. None of this would be happening if it weren’t for me. I fully expect to go on trial with Locasta, and I’ll accept whatever punishment Oz intends to give me, even if it’s death. I don’t expect any of you to forgive me. I just hope eventually, you’ll understand I made a huge mistake and everything I did after I realized that was because I loved you and I was trying to kill him for good.”
“I know this, and I understand this. But killing him for good hurt all your children in more ways than one. Was there no other way?”
“I know you are asking yourself why I didn’t run as soon as you were born and tried to keep you safe. I ran through various scenarios where that was a possibility, but there was no way it could have worked. There were three of you and one of me. Strapping one of you to my back, one to my chest, and trying to carry the other would have been impossible. One of you would have made a noise. I asked her, and my scythe couldn’t carry all four of us. I would have to have left on foot carrying three children. He would have caught us. He would have killed all three of you in front of me to hurt me, and then he would have killed me.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. Ever since Illyna stole my father’s sword, cut his head off, and kept saying she loved us, I kept thinking about how if she really loved us, she would have just run away and got us as far away from him as possible. I thought she could have trained us and we could have come up with a way to beat him together instead of having to deal with what we did.
That would have been impossible. There were three of us and one of her. Even if she had managed to get away with us, where in Oz could she have raised three green-haired triplets? Locasta had kept the glamour up so long and she had been Sentinel in the North for so long, no one remembered they all had green hair before.
Three green-haired children and a green-haired mother would have gotten out to the other Sentinels. She could have glamoured us like she did Esiro and Dorothy, but she would have had to have found a safe place to cast that spell first. The kind of magic that was done to Esiro, Dorothy, and Ozma was powerful magic and it took time to weave those threads carefully. She couldn’t have done it in the woods running from the Fisher King.
She’d been isolated in her cave so long, and it wasn’t like she had any friends she could stay with or any family who would remember her. If twins were unheard of when my mother was born, the other Sentinels would have been suspicious if she showed up with tr
iplets. That was even if they allowed her to speak after seeing all our hair.
“I’m trying to understand. I just need time.”
“I know, Galen. I might be dead when you finally do, and I’m okay with that. I just want you at peace. The Fisher King can’t hurt anyone anymore. After we show his body as proof in the North, I’m hoping they take my advice and burn his body. Scatter his ashes in the Deadly Desert and the Fisher King will plague Oz no more. It will finally be over. It’s late, Galen. I appreciate you coming out here to talk to me, but you should get your rest.”
“Do you need help to guard him?”
My mother just smiled at me. “Now that I’ve crammed all that hay down his mouth and don’t have to listen to him, the rest of the night should be pretty peaceful. It looked like you formed a close-knit bond of friends from what I could see, and it looks like the Sentinel in the West is quite fond of you. Why don’t you go back to your friends?”
Well, that was fucking awkward. I started to make my way back to Pridius’ house. Talking about the Fisher King and the horrible things he put us all through with my mother was fine. I wasn’t ready to talk about girls with her.
Chapter 24
Frankie
G
linda and Zusim had already teleported back to Emerald City. I knew why he had to leave, but Daxar had teleported back to the South. I offered to teleport to the West and handle things there, but Nick Chopper was still Emperor. He knew the truth now, but thought I should wait until the trial, and he informed me I shouldn’t come home until I completed my training, anyway. Nick Chopper said he would get the word out about the trial and worry about getting people to the North.
The Munchkins were all well aware of the trial by now. The Fisher King brought his plot to their backyard, and they wanted Locasta’s blood. Honestly, the trial was just this big show for the North. Everyone who came East saw her with the glamour dropped. I think the only reason the Northern soldiers doubted their eyes was because of Illyna, Galen, Esiro, and Dorothy. There were just too many green-haired people in the cemetery.
Oz Has Spoken: A Reverse Harem Academy Romance (Emerald City Academy Book 3) Page 11
