Esiro wanted to, and so did Dorothy, but as much as I wanted to shield him from it, Galen would have to get up there and testify. After Illyna and Locasta cast that spell, my hair color was no longer something that was celebrated. It was something to fear. Glinda could get away with it because even though it was an unnatural shade of red, the Quadlings all had red hair too. I was doubly fucked because of my green skin with the citizens of Oz. Maybe that would change now.
Galen had disappeared last night. I was pretty sure he had gone to talk to his mother. I didn’t fault him for that, but I wanted to get him alone to make sure he was okay. I was being pulled in about fifty different directions. I needed to make teleportation potion for almost all the Munchkins who wanted to go North.
Kazax left forty Flying Monkeys to guard the barn and had flown home to the Flying Monkey court to talk to Idris’ mother. They were supposed to meet back with us in the morning, when we all were to teleport to the North. If everything was going as planned, the Northern soldiers were spreading the word about the trial.
Saffron and I were trying to gather ingredients for that much teleportation powder. Frabess was helping and teaching Saffron at the same time. Oprix and Idris knew what most of the ingredients were by now and were trying to help too.
Ozma was trying to comfort Dorothy and be a queen to her people. She’d let her pink hair show, and everyone knew who she was now. I hoped that was enough for the North, but there was a part of me that knew they would blame Mombi for that. Galen was trying to help Esiro, so I couldn’t get either of them alone. It wasn’t for naught. Galen was teaching Esiro how to make teleportation powder so she could help us.
The Munchkins got Saffron’s castle cleaned up pretty quickly. They must have worked through the night because they showed up at breakfast to tell us she could go home. She just smiled shyly and thanked them. I think both our eyes got some wet stuff in them when we got there and realized they replaced everything they broke in the potions lab. None of the ingredients or anything, just the glass and jars, but it meant a lot to both of us.
Todus was nice when he wasn't a total shit. He was falling over himself to wait on Saffron and he was totally kissing her ass. If she even mentioned needing something for her castle, he was off trying to fetch it. Saffron and I were so distantly related, but I still called her my cousin. Was Todus into Saffron? That would be so weird if he was.
He had just gone off to fetch something else when purple smoke appeared outside Saffron’s castle. I went running outside and called my sword. I ended up pointing it at Emarus and Emari.
“Holy shit!” I said, sending my sword away and hugging Emari. “What are you doing here?”
“Is Saffron here?” Emarus said, looking over my shoulder. “Glinda sent us.”
“Go up the big staircase, down the main hall, and take the last door on the left. She’s in the potions lab. Don’t make her wait, lover boy,” I said, waving my hand.
Emarus went bounding into the castle. I just turned to Emari and grinned.
“It’s so good to have you here. Did Glinda send you for the trial?”
Emari rolled her eyes. “My silly brother was making a right pest of himself until Glinda agreed to send him to Saffron. She kept telling him she was perfectly fine and that the Munchkins had accepted her, but he insisted.”
“I’m glad he did. He means a lot to Saffron.”
“She means a lot to him too. I’ve never seen him like this around a girl before.”
“Let’s get inside. We have huge amounts of teleportation powder to brew up.”
“Think I’ve learned enough at Emerald City Academy to help?”
“It’s a tricky powder, but I think you can do it. You’re pretty good at potions and powders, and so is Emarus. Once we get all the ingredients, Idris and Oprix will be helping.”
Just then, Todus came up the steps holding powdered agate.
“Oh, hi, Emari. Is the rest of the school here?”
“Hello, Todus. What in the world are you doing here?”
“Helping my sister. Locasta hurt the East, and I’m helping get everything in order for the trial.”
“You’re helping?” Emari scoffed.
“You can bring that upstairs to Saffron,” I said, sending him on his way. “I’ve made my peace with my brother. The Munchkins thought there was a plot at the school because there were no other Munchkins there. I’m not excusing his behavior, but I can understand why he was suspicious. There are no Munchkin professors, and their dorm monitor wasn’t Munchkin either. They thought they were being lied to. We’d better get upstairs. I can’t tell if Todus is into Saffron or he’s just groveling.”
“Gross. Isn’t she your cousin?”
“Very, very distantly. Our mothers weren’t sisters. Come on. If Todus and Emarus get into a fight in the potions lab, all that work the Munchkins did cleaning up will be gone.”
I was totally shocked. When I got to the potions lab, my arrogant brother, who had been such an asshole to everyone at Emerald City Academy, was kissing Emarus’ ass too. He was waiting on them and fetching things like he wasn’t a spoiled rich boy who acted like we should all kiss his ass at the Academy.
I finally pulled him aside while Saffron was cataloging ingredients and figuring out what all we needed for the massive amounts of teleportation powder we would need to make.
“Todus, what are you doing? Are you into Saffron? Why are you kissing both of their asses?”
Todus looked shocked. “Into her? No, I have a girlfriend. Is that how we are supposed to treat the Sentinels? Aren’t you royalty like Ozma?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed and hugged my brother. “No, we aren’t. Locasta may have wanted to be treated like that, but Saffron and I don’t. Fuck, I don’t even think Ozma wants to have her ass kissed. Ozma grew up thinking she was a poor Gillikin boy. You try that with Ozma, and she may punch you in the face.”
Todus screwed up his face. “I don’t understand. If you’re important, aren’t we supposed to treat you that way?”
I smiled at Todus. “Important people are just like regular people. They eat, shit, sleep, and have the same fears. You shouldn’t put them on a pedestal or expect people to treat you any better because you are important in the East. Saffron and I do need help with this potion, and you’d be helping a lot of Munchkins get to this trial, but dial it down a little or Emarus will think you’re in love with his girlfriend and beat your ass.”
All the color drained from Todus’ face. “Do you think my girlfriend noticed, and she’s mad at me? I asked her to fetch one ingredient when I was out.”
“Talk it out with her and just explain it to her as you did to me. And when she gets here, be acting like your normal self.”
“Everyone treats our family differently because our father is important. It doesn’t make me feel weird.”
“Remember when I broke your nose, Todus? That’s how regular people feel when important people just expect them to kiss their ass. They can’t deck you in the face because of power dynamics.”
Todus looked shocked. “You mean other people want to punch me in the face like that? It really hurt.”
“Todus, it doesn’t matter how much money you have or what your status is. You still have to treat everyone with the respect you want to be treated with. I don’t normally go around breaking people’s noses, but you really deserved it. You have to remember that when you take over for our father. Everyone loves Pridius, but if you walk around expecting to be treated a certain way, you will end up hated.”
My brother’s shoulders slumped. “Our dad tells me that all the time. I guess if you’re telling me that too and you were raised in the West away from him, it must be true.”
“It definitely is, but you’re still young, Todus. You’ve got a girlfriend and a life ahead of you. Nothing is stopping you from being as successful and loved as our father.”
“Can I do anything with these potions to help? I was told I had magic, and th
at was how I was asked to Emerald City Academy. Despite everything going on and what I thought about the purpose of the school, I was paying attention during lessons. None of my potions exploded, remember?”
No, they didn’t. I spent so much time at Emerald City Academy actively ignoring Todus and his friends I had forgotten he successfully brewed every single potion thrown at him. I also had a great idea about how to get to know my brother better and for my brother to get to know Oprix and Galen.
“Todus, we can use all the help we can get. I’ll show you how to make the potion, but you left before we learned flying. You could fly on an enchanted object like Saffron, and I do. Oprix needs practice and Galen could help you too.”
Todus just shuddered. “No thanks. Maybe I’m a coward, but I still have nightmares about falling off the roof, and you and Saffron flying me back up on your brooms. I think if I need to travel for business, teleportation travel will work better or I’ll do it on foot like my father does.”
I got it. I totally did. I had my own nightmares to deal with, though they had been nearly gone since getting to know Dorothy.
I slung my arm over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go check in with Saffron to see what else is needed to get that teleportation powder mixed.”
Chapter 25
Frankie
E
ven with teaching Oprix, Idris, Emari, Emarus, Todus, and all his Munchkin friends who had been with him at school how to make teleportation powder, we still didn’t have enough hands. Galen and Frabess already knew how and they were trying to teach Esiro, Dorothy, and Ozma, who hardly had time to learn any potions at all.
Esiro was getting frustrated with the complicated ingredients and all the grinding associated with this powder. She finally just growled and dropped the pestle.
“If no one else will say it, I will. I don’t want her in here anymore than anyone else, but we’ve got an ancient sorceress back in Pridius’ barn guarding a severed head that could either give us a hand or might have some tips about brewing mass amounts of this.”
At least Esiro said it and not me. Most people in the East didn’t practice magic. That’s why it was so easy to frame Adora. We couldn’t exactly grab a Munchkin who was well versed in teleportation powder because none of them knew. Anyone from the West and South who showed up to fight the Fisher King who might have known was already either making their way home or to the North.
Having Illyna help us meant more hands and someone we didn’t have to teach, but that was also opening up a huge can of worms for everyone in the room. Esiro seemed okay with it now, but what was she going to say when Illyna was in the room with us? Would Illyna even leave the barn? Should Illyna leave the barn with the Fisher King technically still alive? I mean, his head was severed from his body, but it was still talking, which was just so fucked up.
Galen looked up from his mortar. I still wished I had time to talk to him in private.
“I talked to her last night. She’s not lying about loving us and making a mistake. It doesn’t erase our past, and I’m not quite ready to forgive her just yet, but if everyone is okay with it, we could really use her help.”
Dorothy was still sitting with Ozma and Frabess, going over the ingredients. She was holding Ozma’s hand. She looked up from their huddle.
“I wasn’t sent to a bad family like Esiro, and I didn’t grow up with the Fisher King like Galen. Auntie Em and Uncle Henry were wonderful and supportive. The only reason my life in Kansas got hard was that Oz pulled me back, and I talked about it. People didn’t believe me and they bullied me. I’m not angry with her about my past. I hate her because she used me to kill Saffron and Frankie’s mothers. That’s not how mothers treat their children.”
“I asked her that last night,” Galen said. “I wanted to know why she hurt you and Saffron by killing Adora. She said she tried to talk the Fisher King out of it, but it was control the tornado or the Fisher King would have killed all four of us. That doesn’t make it any better, but that was the choice she had. As for Azami, Illyna thought Dorothy couldn’t kill her. She thought Azami would see she was a child, think she was from another realm, and send her back home.”
I’d already accepted my mother’s death had been an accident. In a perfect Oz, Dorothy wouldn’t have started that fire, and that bucket of acid wouldn’t have been in the kitchen. My mother would have put her to work until she figured out how to send her home. Oz was nowhere near perfect when Dorothy crash-landed here in a house, no matter how hard my mother tried to protect me from the ugliness.
I didn’t blame Illyna for what happened to my mother, but I blamed her for Adora. I hadn’t even asked myself what position she might have been in when she did it. I had to remind myself she wouldn’t have had to make any of those decisions if she hadn’t let the Fisher King out and given him his ring back. Oh, but if that hadn’t happened, I never would have met Galen and Ozma wouldn’t have Dorothy. It was so fucked up. I was mad at her for letting him out, but I was grateful for the children she brought into my life.
I realized everyone was looking at me for an answer. Frabess was older than me, but I was the most senior Sentinel in the room. I wasn’t making this decision for them. I wasn’t putting Illyna in a room full of people who would eat her alive and I wasn’t putting her in a room full of people she was just going to upset.
“We’re putting this to a vote. Illyna’s decisions hurt nearly everyone in this room in some way. Teleportation powder takes a lot of focus. Yes, we need extra hands, but not if those extra hands will distract everyone in the room. All of you have things you need to say and hear with Illyna, but you need to look deep down and figure out if you have the fortitude to either do that and brew this powder or you can be in the same room with her and wait.”
“What happens if she distracts me while I’m brewing this? Locasta may have been a lot of things, but she never messed up a potion in front of me while I was watching and learning,” Esiro said. “I know it’s supposed to be bad, but what exactly happens?”
Saffron started giggling, and I knew why.
“It varies by the potion. It can explode in your face, catch fire, melt through the cauldron or floor, or just straight up stink. When teleportation powder wants to stink, it stinks badly. We’d have to evacuate the entire castle and let it air out a few days before we could come back.”
I started giggling too. “There’s nothing quite like the stench of a teleportation powder that’s not right. Do you remember that time we were visiting you, and our moms were trying to tweak the potion to see if it would allow them to see what was on the other side of the Deadly Desert so they could throw it at the Wizard and send him home? It was unreal.”
Idris and Oprix were both there with us that day. My mother let them tag along because even though the East had become hostile to us, the Munchkins hadn’t really become aggressive yet. It was meant to be a mini-vacation at Adora’s castle where we played with Saffron while they tried to see if they could get this potion right.
Idris and Oprix were now laughing too. I don’t think any of us would ever forget that smell. It was like Sulphur and acid had eaten through a rotten carcass that had been left in the sun all day.
“It’s so fucking bad,” Idris snorted. “We had to go home. All of us. We were supposed to stay in the East for a week and play in Adora’s castle while they tweaked a teleportation powder. The smell was so bad, and we had to go back West for the rest of the week.”
Esiro didn’t look like she found it nearly as funny as we did.
“What happens when a potion explodes?”
I just shrugged. I didn’t want to put her off magic for good. It was in her blood, and she would need it if she took up Sentinel of the North.
“You hope your hair doesn’t catch fire. Esiro, potions exploding or stinking like that only happen when you are careless or doing something you aren’t totally sure about. That day in the East with my mother, she and Adora were trying to do something that had never b
een done before. They were trying to create a teleportation powder to another realm. It had never been done before for a reason. I don’t think it’s possible. Ozma and her magic carpet have been the only people to figure out how to successfully cross it without dying. It was a desperate move to oust the Wizard, but it was worth a try.”
“Frankie is right,” Saffron said, coming to my rescue. “Potions only act up when you are first learning if you aren’t paying attention, or you haven’t properly thought something out when you are trying something new. We’ve all been doing this for a long time. We can show you how to do it. You just need to focus on what you’re doing, and everything will be just fine.”
“Not if you bring Illyna in here with us. I regret ever bringing that up now.”
Galen cleared his throat. “I have a solution. Your idea was a good one. There might be a trick about making the potion in mass quantities she knows, and we don’t. We don’t have to ask her here to find that out. I don’t think she wants to leave the Fisher King until he’s ash. I’ll run to the barn and ask her if she has a trick to brewing more than a few vials at once.”
I pressed some teleportation powder I already had on me into his hand. “Take this. It’ll be faster.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Esiro grunted. “Can she give you the answer without talking about her feelings?”
I got that Esiro was pissed and wasn’t allowed to talk about that sort of thing growing up, but she would have to get used to getting feelings all over her because Galen, Dorothy, and Illyna would have to talk things out. Even if they never forgave Illyna, Esiro wasn’t on her own anymore. Even if she went off to be Sentinel of the North, Esiro had a family now. Fuck, she had me, Idris, and Oprix too and I would not let her turn into a bitter, alone bitch.
Oz Has Spoken: A Reverse Harem Academy Romance (Emerald City Academy Book 3) Page 12