Galen just pulled her into a hug. “I don’t think Illyna is like that, and she understands the importance of this trial. She intends to go on trial right next to Locasta and she’s pretty sure they will put her to death. She’s accepted it and won’t fight it.”
Dorothy surprised me. “Is it bad I don’t think she should die? Yes, she made a huge mistake, but I don’t think we would have beaten him if it weren’t for her. I’m not ready to forgive her yet, and a part of me hates her, but I’d like to think one day, I will want to hear her out and I want her to be alive to tell me in her own words why she did what she did.”
Galen walked over and hugged Dorothy too. “Our lives have been unfair because of our father. We might not get that time. Oz might not forgive her, even though she saw the error of her ways and tried to make it right. You might not be ready to hear her out, but you might not get the chance later. It’s shitty, but it’s how things are.”
Galen threw the vial at his feet and disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke. Ozma had her arms wrapped around Dorothy, and Esiro was sitting there scowling.
“Galen is right,” Saffron said. “I didn’t always get along with my mother. She didn’t do anywhere near to me what Illyna did to you, but sometimes, I didn’t think it was fair I couldn’t just be a regular kid and had to do all this training instead of playing. Sometimes, I was a brat about it, and we fought. I was so mad at her the day she died and now I have no way of telling her I understand why I had to be trained and apologize for not acting like a Sentinel. Time is short. You never know when someone you love will be taken from you. You have a trial and you’ll know when and if it will happen. I suggest making your peace with her before then because she may be gone when you finally decide you want to.”
“Am I weak for not thinking she deserves to die?” Dorothy asked. “I saw the same battle you did. Idris would have died. More of us would have died trying to get close to him if she hadn’t done what she did. None of us died because she turned on him. That has to count for something.”
Esiro let out a small huff. “It was kind of nice watching her beat the shit out of Locasta. Do you think part of that was because of how Locasta treated me? She had to be pretty stupid, giving me to her if she thought Locasta would treat me well.”
I hadn’t talked to Illyna aside from what she said in the cemetery, but I thought I understood her a little better than Esiro did. Illyna made a terrible choice, and all her options after that involved choosing between the lesser of two evils. No choices she made after she let the Fisher King out and agreed to be his queen would be happy or produce some sort of good results.
The triplets would realize that eventually and want to hear Illyna out. Whether or not it healed their wounds, I had no idea, but they would need an explanation for everything their parents put them through. I just hoped they made that decision before Illyna was possibly put to death.
As ruler of Oz, Ozma could overrule a sentence put forth by a panel made up of judges from all the corners of Oz. If it came down to it, would she save Illyna for Dorothy?
Chapter 26
Idris
G
alen was taking forever to get back. I felt a shiver run through me. My mother was trying to contact me. Flying Monkeys could talk telepathically with their queen, but she hadn’t tried to contact me in a very long time. I hoped I wasn’t in trouble. I’d technically failed in battle getting caught in the Fisher King’s ring. Did Kazax report back to her I almost died?
“Idris, my son.”
“Hello, mother. Am I in trouble?”
“Why? Should you be in trouble? I was letting you know I intend to attend the trial in the North.”
“Really? I thought you always wanted to stay hidden.”
“The time for hiding is over. Our enemies have fallen, and I want to see them punished. I want to meet your mate and I want to meet Glinda and Zusim’s children.”
“They are so cute! I love them. Their monkeys are gorgeous.”
“So Zusim tells me. Zusim promises me a private audience to meet them. It will be nice to meet your Francesca after everything I’ve heard about her.”
“Are you going to embarrass me?”
“Probably, my love. Francesca is mating to the son of a queen. I have to make sure she’s good enough for my son.”
“Mother,” I moaned.
“Relax. Idris. She takes mates like a Flying Monkey queen, and I’ve heard she’s not afraid to speak her mind. I already like what I know. Zusim needs to present his mate too and I can’t wait to meet his children. Will you be blessing me with grandbabies soon?”
“We want to. Francesca loves Glinda’s children, but she also has to finish her Sentinel training, and we don’t know if Ozma will repeal the law about multiple mates. We think she will.”
“I intend to talk to Ozma as well—queen to queen. Now that the Fisher King will soon be dead and two Sentinels are working to free us from the cap, it’s time the Flying Monkeys became a part of society again.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, Idris. I used to think Azami giving us the ability to shift into people was a curse. I thought there was no merit to it, and it made us weaker. It’s not. It gives the Flying Monkeys more options at finding love and it will strengthen our people based on what Zusim has told me about his children. Zusim’s children shouldn’t have to hide themselves. Their parents are proud of them. I’m proud of them even though I’ve never met them. After this trial, I intend to make it safe for them to come out and play.”
“Thank you, mother.”
“What is the delay with you arriving in the North? Kazax reported the Fisher King hit you with a spell. Has it affected your ability to fly?”
“I’m fully recovered, but the Munchkins who want to attend the trial can’t fly, and there’s not enough Flying Monkeys here to carry that many people. I learned some human magic when I was at Emerald City Academy with Francesca. I’m helping them brew teleportation powder for the Munchkins.”
“Interesting. Are you able to brew potions successfully? I might have you come home and teach the Flying Monkeys.”
“Francesca would be better at that, and I think she would be honored if you asked.”
“Yes. But if she comes, I will steal her away from you for some female bonding. I won’t leave a mark on her, I promise.”
“Mother, as far as I know, Francesca isn’t into other women and might not be okay with that.”
That kind of thing was common among my people. Men just expected their women to play with other women. I think my mother just kept forgetting my mate wasn’t a Flying Monkey, even if she took mates like us. Francesca had never shown the slightest interest in other women like Ozma did. Maybe she’d be into it, I didn’t know, but I already knew she’d be totally weirded out if my mother got her alone and tried to get kinky with her.
“Idris, I didn’t mean those kind of Flying Monkey games. I understand humans don’t share that custom, and they have that pesky jealousy thing they like to do. She’s a Sentinel. I was going to teach her to fight like us. I thought it would help her. I don’t think you’ve done that already, though I can’t imagine why not?”
“We still need to get through this trial, and Francesca needs to complete her training.”
“Yes, and you have a potion to brew. I won’t keep you. Go help your mate, Idris.”
I shook my head to clear it. Galen still wasn’t back, and everyone was still working on their potions. I cleared my throat and Francesca looked up.
“My mother and the Flying Monkey court will attend the trial. My mother thinks it’s safe to leave the court now that the Fisher King is mostly dead, and Locasta is on trial. She wants to meet you.”
Francesca just grinned and winked at me. “I’ve wanted to meet your mother since I found out she runs the show with the Flying Monkeys.”
“My mother is a lot to take in the first time you meet her. She just says whatever she’s thinking.”
Francesca just laughed. “Well, so do I.”
Right then, purple smoke filled the room as Galen teleported back in. As soon as I could see him again, he ran his fingers through his green hair and looked stressed.
“Illyna said they figured out a way to cut the teleportation powder to make enough to teleport the Fisher King’s entire academy to safety, but it’s tricky.”
“How tricky?” Saffron asked.
“Well, it wouldn’t be powder in a vial anymore. It would be an actual liquid potion, but it works the same. They have to throw it at their feet and it’s the same purple smoke.”
“How exactly does that work?” Saffron asked. “All the teleportation spells we’ve come across so far have been powder. How did they change it to liquid and get it to work the same?”
“Illyna said you have to cut it with equal parts goat milk and well water, and then you have to add ground Hollyhock seeds to stabilize it. It’s the Hollyhock seed part that’s tricky from what she tells me. If you add too little, when you throw the potion, it’ll catch fire. If you add too much, you have purple liquid essentially.”
Well, that was fucked up. We could either set people on fire or get their hopes up they were going to the North and just get their shoes wet. I hoped Illyna gave Galen better instructions than that. We just got the Munchkins on our side. We didn’t need to be setting their trousers on fire and having them put us on trial right alongside Locasta.
“Please tell me she told you how to get the Hollyhock seed right?” Francesca said.
“It’s two things that will tell us we’ve added enough and that we need to stop. A light purple haze will form over the potion, and it will smell like petal tea. If you add any more seeds after you see the haze and smell petal tea, the potion is ruined. She said as soon as the haze forms cut the heat. If you miss it, you’ve ruined the entire batch.”
“Do we want to take this shortcut?” Oprix asked. “The only way we can test if it works is to use it, and someone will catch fire when we do.”
I was with Oprix on this one. It would take longer, but we had a tried-and-true teleportation recipe that we knew we could make that didn’t set anyone on fire. I already knew where this was heading. Oprix and I would be outvoted. Maybe Esiro and Galen would be on our side, but I doubted it. They wanted to get this trial out of the way.
Esiro just shrugged. “I’m not into fires or explosions, but I don’t think anyone in Oz will feel safe with the Fisher King still alive, even the way he is now. We should at least try.”
“I agree,” Ozma said. “I’ve got parchment to contact Emerald City, the West, and the South on. If this works, I’ll send it over to them so we can get as many people to the North as possible who want to hear the truth.”
“Okay, we’re doing this. Saffron, doesn’t your mother have one of those massive cauldrons?” Francesca asked.
“Yeah, in the storage closet, but we will still have to grind up the base ingredients, and we don’t know how much.”
Exactly my point! I already knew who would volunteer to test the potion, and I didn’t want to see the love of my life on fire. We didn’t even know if it was a small fire or her entire body would go up. There were too many unknowns with this trick and I didn’t like it. And the shitty thing was, I could tell her I didn’t like it and she was just going to do it anyway because if it worked, it would help the Munchkins. She was willing to take that risk at her own safety. I wasn’t.
Galen cleared his throat. “She gave me the ratios. A standard teleportation powder for twenty people can be turned into two hundred this way.”
Francesca came over and kissed me. She always knew when I was unhappy.
“We have to at least try it. Since it’s flammable if done wrong, we’ll test it on something in this room that’s not valuable, okay?”
I wanted to punch Todus way less since the cemetery. Even less since Francesca must have said something to him about blatantly kissing everyone’s asses. He was acting like a normal person who just wanted to help right now. I’d almost forgotten what an asshole he was at Emerald City Academy. Almost. He was still Francesca’s half-brother, and I would have to get used to him. A man talk was in order.
“I can get goat milk and well water with a few extra Munchkin hands. There’s a farm nearby, and I know the Munchkins who live there. The father just wants things to go back to normal, but all three of his sons are intending to come to the trial. If I tell the family this milk and water from their well will help Munchkins get to the trial faster, they will help us. I’ll need something to barter with since I have nothing on me. They’ll give it to me for free when they find out what it’s for, but it doesn’t feel right.”
Maybe Todus wasn’t a total shit after all. The Todus I knew at school would have just waltzed in and demanded the goat’s milk and water.
“What do they need?” Frabess asked.
“The farmer’s wife has had a bad cough for as long as I’ve known her. None of the healers here have been able to treat it. Sometimes, she coughs up blood.”
Frabess jumped to her feet. “My family knows healing potions. I’ll try to treat her for the goat’s milk and water. I’ll go with you.”
“How much should I ask for, Galen?” Todus asked.
“We’ve got four hundred Munchkins who want to travel to the North. Illyna said the ingredients for twenty powders would need to be cut with one pail of goat’s milk and one pail of water to make enough for two hundred people. Best get three pails of each in case we mess up the first batch.”
I guess we were doing this, and we were doing it in a way I didn’t have to watch the love of my life get burned. I might as well make myself useful.
“Where is the massive cauldron? I might as well go haul it in here.”
Chapter 27
Frankie
H
onestly, I thought I knew everything about teleportation powder. My mother spent ages on that lesson and taught me everything she knew. She taught me all the little tweaks that had been passed down from generation to generation in my family. I was now learning the Forest of Gugu had their own version of teleportation, and this was magic I didn’t even know.
Illyna had been alive longer than anyone I knew. She had been alive since they formed the first Sentinels. What else could she teach the new generations of Sentinels? Even Glinda didn’t know this about the teleportation powder, or she would have said something to me by now. Glinda wasn’t trying to teach me anything new about magic. She had someone teaching me control, which was the last thing I needed to learn as a Sentinel.
Illyna made some pretty fucked up decisions. She let a madman out of his prison and gave him a deadly weapon back. But she was trying to help when she was asked. Several of us would have died trying to get close to him, but we defeated him with just Idris getting slightly injured because of her. We’d be in the East for weeks, grinding enough ingredients for four hundred people to teleport to the North. That would still take less time than walking.
We were all hard at work with our mortar and pestle grinding ingredients. Esiro seemed to have gotten over her fear of anything exploding or stinking. She was huddled over grinding with this intense concentration that I was trying hard not to laugh at. She was staring at her mortar so hard, like she was willing herself not to get distracted and have it stink up the entire room.
I guess Dorothy and Ozma took what we said about potions going wrong to heart because the room was mostly silent. Idris and Oprix weren’t doing their usual joking, and I knew why. They didn’t want me to do this. I could see where they were coming from. If the first Sentinels had done this before, why hadn’t it been passed down like everything else? They didn’t trust Illyna just yet.
I could be making a huge mistake agreeing to try this, but I could tell she wasn’t lying when she told us her story in the cemetery, and whatever she said to Galen when he visited her, he said she wasn’t lying then too. I was following my gut that said this was the answer if we could get
the potion just right.
Saffron was sitting right next to me, grinding her own ingredients. She leaned into me.
“Are we allowed to talk? Since when is potion making a silent activity?” she whispered.
Even Emari and Emarus were being silent, and we all normally chatted during potions class at Emerald City Academy. Everyone was on edge and I thought they would continue to be on edge until the Fisher King was ash and the trial was over. I didn’t think it could happen, and none of us had said it out loud, but there was the possibility of the council finding Locasta innocent. She made damned sure she had a track record that looked good on paper if she ever got caught. She could still be found guilty by the council and the North still revolt. There was still so much that could go wrong and we needed to go to the North.
“Things are just shitty right now, Saffron. Everyone is nervous.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if we talked about it?”
“Everyone else isn’t just nervous about the trial and the Fisher King. They’ve never done this before, and they are worried about fucking it up.”
“Should we give them a pep talk?”
“What do you think Ozma and Esiro would do if we tried to get feelings on them? If they knew how, they’d hex us.”
Saffron started giggling. “Is it bad I want to be there when they get some feelings on them and like it?”
“You’ll probably still get punched in the face with those two.”
“How long does it take to fetch goat’s milk?” Esiro snapped, breaking her silence.
I realized Esiro probably never milked a goat or had been on a farm before. She probably fetched things for Locasta that had already been milked, harvested, and kept in the palace kitchens. She probably had no idea the work that went into milking a cow or goat. I couldn’t see Locasta bringing her to a farm in the North while work was being done.
Oz Has Spoken: A Reverse Harem Academy Romance (Emerald City Academy Book 3) Page 13