Oz Has Spoken: A Reverse Harem Academy Romance (Emerald City Academy Book 3)

by JB Trepagnier

  Frankie practically tackled Galen.

  “All the more reason to keep our secret weapons safe until we leave.”

  Chapter 16

  Frankie

  W

  e had prepared as best we could. We transferred as much knowledge as we could and anything we thought would be needed. The Flying Monkeys were a little offended, but we asked them to teleport to the East instead of flying. We wanted to get there as soon as possible. We had to beat the Fisher King, and we didn’t want to risk him stepping up his plans because of our speech.

  Flying Monkeys could definitely bitch and moan, especially if they thought you were asking them to do something beneath them. They took pride in their wings and their wingspan. I swear, Idris may have bragged equally about the size of his wings as he did about the size of his cock. I knew what I was doing asking them to teleport instead of fly and I knew they would be insulted.

  I calmed them down by buttering them up and telling them what fierce fighters they were and we all needed to teleport in at the same time just in case the Fisher King was already there. I didn’t think he was. My father hadn’t contacted me by a mirror or parchment to say the East was under attack. We were all supposed to teleport to his house, and that was not how I wanted to meet the family I didn’t know I had.

  The Flying Monkeys were grumbling under their breath as Saffron and I all handed out teleportation powder. Idris snatched it out of my hand and pulled me in for a quick kiss.

  “You’re lucky I love you.”

  “You teleported to the North when we captured Mombi,” I reminded him.

  “It was degrading then too.”

  “Would you rather take the time to fly and get there just in time for the corpses to be popping out of the ground?”

  “We get it. We do. It’s just Flying Monkeys don’t teleport.”

  “Well, you are today, so stop complaining. You could help save Oz.”

  We had caught the spies, but we didn’t want to risk anyone seeing us teleport. We all filed into the throne room where we had been having all our meetings. The long table was now gone, so we had room to stand close and teleport.

  I looked out at all my friends. I could call them all friends now, even Esiro and the Flying Monkeys who had just joined us. We might die in the East, but we had to try beating the Fisher King. Galen and his sisters were our best shot at neutralizing him. I still had no idea how to kill him, but Ozma’s idea of beheading him and burning the two parts was a good one. Galen said all of his magic was in his ring. That was the plan I was working on. Cut off his hand, cut off his head, then build a big fire.

  This was it. I threw my teleportation power down at the same time as everyone else. A thick cloud of purple smoke surrounded me and I felt the familiar yank that I was being teleported. When the smoke cleared, I was standing in the gardens of a Munchkin palace. My father was waiting with his wife, Todus, and six children. What the fuck? I was shorter than every single one of them and I was only half Munchkin.

  Pridius pulled me into a huge hug and Todus was staring at his feet. I was introduced to my step mother, Volyn. I was worried she would treat me like shit or say something to me since my father did technically cheat on her with my mother. But she smiled at me warmly and hugged me like I was her own child.

  “I hear you are here to save the day?” Volyn said. “Pridius has men watching all the cemeteries, and it’s been quiet.”

  “Honestly, Francesca, it’s been too quiet,” Pridius said. “The other regions have only just started arriving and you don’t have huge numbers. If you have a big plan, now is the time to do it.”

  “How many cemeteries are there in the East?” I asked.

  “There’s the main one off the center of town, but a lot of Munchkins have family plots. We do here on this estate. Generations of my family are buried here.”

  Winkies didn’t bury people on their land. We had cemeteries in the West. All available land was used for farming. In the rare cases someone died in the West, Winkies thought it would taint the land they grew their food in to use it to bury someone in.

  I wasn’t thinking about how the Munchkins buried their dead and how it differed from the West. Was there really a right or wrong thing to do when your loved one passed? It was just going to complicate things in the East. It would be easier if there were a few cemeteries Galen and his sisters could do their thing and prevent the Fisher King from raising the dead. How were we supposed to do this if Munchkins had family members buried on their land?

  Galen didn’t even hesitate. “We need access to your family plot. The Fisher King can raise the dead and control them. He can force your family members to claw their way out the ground and murder you. They can try to fight him, but they will be helpless to his command.”

  “How do you fight someone who is already dead?” Volyn said, clutching Pridius’ arm.

  “If I get this right, you won’t have to. I must look at your plot and see if I can do this.”

  My father’s gaze had been darting around. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to look at Idris, Oprix, Galen, or Daxar standing too close to me in a protective circle or Ozma with her own protective circle. He looked like he didn’t know what to make of either of our groups. I had a feeling I would have some awkward talk about it.

  “Right this way. What exactly do you need to do in our plot?”

  “Did you do anything special to the first stone used to make the plot? It’s called the cornerstone, and it’s important to the ritual that consecrates the ground so the Fisher King can’t call the dead.”

  “That’s all you need? The first stone is always cerulean blue. It’s considered a lucky shade of blue to the Munchkins. It’s a hard stone to mine for and it’s always used as the first stone when we build.”

  “Would the other families have this stone in their family plots?” I asked. “What about the families that don’t have a lot?”

  “They don’t bury on their land. They use the public cemeteries. They don’t have enough land to farm and bury their dead.”

  “How many are we talking about?” Esiro asked. “Maybe we should split up.”

  I knew that made sense. We could hit up more cemeteries that way if there were a lot. The problem was, the Fisher King could have gotten word all of Oz was moving towards the East and stepped up his plans. Dorothy or Esiro could go to a cemetery with a few Flying Monkeys and end up meeting the Fisher King, their mother, and Locasta. We transferred a lot of knowledge, but that would end up being a numbers issue and the Fisher King could have already raised the dead before they got there. Locasta could have brought her soldiers. My goal was to lose as few people as possible.

  “There’s the main cemetery and about twenty Munchkin families have plots at their estate. I know that’s a good bit and I have no idea how long what you need to do takes, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to split up.”

  Kazax didn’t speak much. He listened and observed, but he only spoke if he had something important to say.

  “It would be foolish to split up,” Kazax said. “I understand your strategy is doing so, but our numbers are already low as it is. We shouldn’t thin them further.”

  Esiro just crossed her arms and glared at Kazax. “I know our numbers are low. They are just going to get even smaller if the Fisher King gets to one of those cemeteries before we do.”

  “It’s a no-win situation, to be sure, but we shouldn’t take any risks. I think the answers to beating the Fisher King lie with his children and the three Sentinels we have. All of you should stick together.”

  Esiro looked like she would argue and if we sat here arguing instead of fixing those cemeteries, then we really would be fucked.

  I clapped my hands. “We should get started. Kazax is right. We stick together. I haven’t figured out how to kill your father just yet, but the answers probably lie with all of us.”

  “Shall we?” my father said, indicating a gate.

  I was about to see what it look
ed like when rich Munchkins buried their loved ones where they lived.

  Chapter 17

  Frankie

  M

  unchkin cemeteries were kind of beautiful. In the West, we buried our dead and stacked painted rocked in a certain formation to mark the grave. In the East, or at least in my father’s plot, a small stone carving that looked to be an replica of the person buried there marked each grave. A stone wall with a manicured garden surrounded the plot.

  This place was way too pretty to have the dead come crawling out of the earth. Pridius was already leading Galen towards the cornerstone. I could see the cerulean stone from here. I was useless here. I would be useless until the fight came to the East. But I could support Galen, Esiro, and Dorothy while they did this.

  Esiro and Dorothy knew how to do this, since Galen transferred that knowledge, but they wanted to watch him do this before they tried it. Galen did some strange things with olive oil from the kitchens. It shocked me an oil needed for a ritual of this nature smelled so good. Galen spoke in a strange language over the oil and waved his hands over it, then declared it consecrated.

  I watched as Galen rubbed the oil on the cornerstone and started whispering in that language I didn’t know again. There was almost this reverence about it, like he wasn’t doing a spell, he was talking to someone.

  I leaned over to Dorothy. “Do you know that language now?” I whispered.

  “I knew that language before I got to Oz. It’s Latin. They speak it during Mass at church and I learned it in school,” she whispered back.

  “What’s Mass and what’s a church?”

  “That’s a conversation best had when we aren’t on a time limit. It would be hard to explain to someone in Oz, but I would have known what Galen meant if he said he meant to consecrate the cemetery with chrism even before the knowledge transference spell. It’s a thing that is done in the church back home.”

  “And you came here not believing in magic?”

  “Before I got here and met Galen, I wouldn’t have told you it was magic, but I guess a lot of the things I believed were wrong. I didn’t think I’d ever be using chrism to bless something. This is all so strange. Weirder than the first time I ended up here.”

  Galen stood and touched the cerulean stone like it was breakable.

  “This plot is now safe from our father. I think we should teleport to the public cemetery first, unless Pridius thinks the family plots are bigger.”

  “The public plot is definitely bigger,” Saffron said. “We should fly there now.”

  All the Flying Monkeys started showing off and flexing their wings. No one had given Esiro the knowledge to fly because she hadn’t been picked by an object yet. Most of us either already knew how to fly or had the knowledge transferred to them except Esiro. She just glared at Kazax.

  “I’ll rip your balls off if you drop me,” she snapped.

  Maybe Kazax had a little of the playfulness of the Flying Monkeys in him. He’d been so serious this entire time. His mouth spread into a wry grin and he winked at Esiro.

  “I wouldn’t dream of dropping a future Sentinel. But try to make my job easy and stay still so you don’t slip, love.”

  Esiro looked like she was about to vomit and Kazax got the reaction he wanted. My father wanted to come with us and I couldn’t risk him. I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him.

  “Woah, Francesca. Not so hard. I’m not as strong as you are.”

  “Stay and keep our family safe.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Then find a place where the Munchkins who can’t fight can gather for safety. There needs to be a meeting point for the West and the South.”

  Daxar stepped forward and cleared his throat. “According to my father, the South will arrive today. They should arrive any minute now. He reports it’s the same with the West. You should get anyone who can’t fight to safety and send a team who can to the Yellow Brick road to meet the West and the South.”

  My father’s eyes were darting between me and Daxar. Did he know? We hadn’t even looked at each other fondly since we landed in Pridius’ yard. How the hell did he know?

  My father held out his hand and Daxar clasped his wrist. “Take care of my daughter. Saffron knows where the cemetery is. Do what you need to do. I’ll handle things here.”

  Just as they let go of each other’s hands and stepped back, there was a loud clap of thunder and lightning lit up the sky. Galen was in a panic.

  “My mother excels at weather spells. It was how she killed Adora. That could just be a storm or it could mean that my parents are here. We need to get to the cemetery now.”

  I called my broom. It was time to meet Galen’s parents.

  Chapter 18

  Galen

  M

  y heart was pounding in my ears as we flew to the cemetery. It could have been a simple storm causing the wind and lightning, but I knew better. This kind of weather just had my mother written all over it. Sometimes, she used to like to make it storm when my father sent me out to hunt just to make it harder for me so he would beat me when I took too long. Coming back without meat wasn’t an option with my parents. I would recognize this lightning anywhere.

  Were we too late? Had he already raised everyone in that cemetery? We landed just behind the gate and peered through the bars. My father was standing there with my mother. Locasta was at his left arm, but her army wasn’t with her. Maybe she couldn’t give out a good enough story why they were attacking the East and still save face. Maybe word had gotten back to her this would not be as easy as they all thought it was. I just had an awful thought. Maybe her army was somewhere else killing the people who couldn’t fight and stayed behind.

  My father had brought out his old attire. He had strange metal clothing from when he was a knight back where he came from. He’d gained weight since the last time I saw him. When I ran, he was lanky and thin. He had filled out. It looked like he had beefed up and been sparring with my mother to train for this moment.

  He used to like to put on his armor and rant about how neither my mother, nor myself knew what it was like to be a knight. He would talk about how no one in Oz had the honor to be one—all while beating his wife and child. His armor used to hang on him and make this clinking noise every time he moved like it would fall off. That wasn’t happening now. It fit him properly.

  He was still shaving his body. The sun shone off his bald head and his cruel blue eyes were glaring at Locasta. He hadn’t started raising the dead yet.

  “You said he was alive, and he’d be here. Once again, you are wrong,” he snapped, back handing her to the ground.

  Frankie growled and moved forward. Daxar grabbed her and pulled her back.

  “He wants Galen. Right now, she knows Galen is alive, and that’s how we are getting our information and his ego is telling him that can’t be right. Galen, can you get to the cornerstone from out here?”

  I looked along the wall. It wasn’t in the same place as the cornerstone in Pridius’ cemetery. Right then, my father turned on Illyna and struck her too.

  “Galen is dead, and he knows better than to betray me if he isn’t. We all know where they are getting their information. This stupid wench from the North can’t keep track of one girl and talked too much.”

  Esiro was the one moving to charge into the gates now. Kazax grabbed her and hauled her back. He kept her crushed to his massive chest while she tried to fight him off.

  “Stop it,” Kazax fussed. “Right now, you and Dorothy are our secret weapons. None of the people in that cemetery know all three of you are together and know the truth about yourself. Brute force is not the answer here. Be smart.”

  “Then what’s the plan?” Esiro snapped.

  What was the plan, anyway? The Fisher King was standing in the middle of a cemetery, able to call an army that outnumbered us. My mother was willing to defend him while he completed the spell and even though we had all this speculation about Locasta being we
ak at magic, it was obvious she was cunning.

  Ozma stepped forward. “Dorothy and I will find the cornerstone from outside the wall. All of you keep eyes on the Fisher King. Galen, if he raises the dead, can you get control of them from him?”

  If only it worked like that. I shook my head.

  “They will only answer to the Necromancer who woke them. I can’t say if any of the Munchkins in this cemetery will have lived when the Fisher King was in power. The Munchkins he raises will be disoriented and confused about being back in decaying bodies. The Fisher King won’t explain what’s going on. He’ll immediately start trying to control them. They’ll feel it and fight him. It will take all his concentration to force them to fight. We can use that against him, but someone will have to take out my mother and Locasta because they will defend him.”

  “What are their weaknesses?” Kazax asked. “I see your mother fights with a scythe. Locasta doesn’t have a weapon on her.”

  “Locasta is mine,” Esiro growled.

  We still didn’t have a plan, but our attention was drawn back to the cemetery because my father was back on one of his famous rants. My mother and Locasta were still on the grass from where he knocked them. If he knocked you down, you’d best not try to stand back up unless he gave you permission or the beating would be a thousand times worse.

  “The two of you are totally worthless. I don’t know why I entertain your silly little theories. No son of mine would betray me. When Galen ran away, he was doing his duty and bringing me those witches. Either that, or he was always too sensitive for a boy of mine. He got his feelings hurt and ran away to lick his wounds. Someone saw his hair and killed him. One of you undermined me and raised a fop for a son and the other lets my other child slip through her fingers to spill all my plans.

  “This was supposed to be easy! Taking the East was supposed to strike fear in the rest of Oz while I made my move. It would have delivered the Sentinels right to my hands. Take off that disguise and let me see your real face! I hate aging and I hate looking at you like that!”