Page 60 of A City of Emeralds and Envy
“Saving your asses,” says Dorothly sharply. “You’ve been in here for two days.”
My stomach drops, plummeting into a bottomless well of horror. “What?”
Dorothy nods. “A spell, a charm—something is keeping you in this room, making you lose track of time. I nearly succumbed to it as well, but—never mind that now. Get dressed. We’re leaving this wretched place.”
22
Riordan, Alice, Caer, and Jasper are silent as we leave the gates of the Emerald City and cross the bridge. I may not always be good at identifying emotions, but in this case, I can guess that they are stunned, embarrassed, wretched to think they’ve been fucking each other’s brains out, wasting half the time we’ve been given to accomplish the Wizard’s task.
The Wizard’s people don’t try to stop us from leaving. One even offers us a map, which I’m not sure we can trust—but Alice accepts it anyway.
We travel west, along a plain dirt road instead of a yellow one. Only when we’re a good distance away from the Emerald City does Alice speak.
“I’m sorry, Dorothy,” she says. “Thank you for pulling us out of there. You could have left us behind.”
“You’re my friend, and he’s probably my brother,” I say shortly, with a glance at Riordan. “Besides, I can’t defeat the West Witch alone. He might not be able to kill me yet, but that doesn’t mean he’ll yield easily.”
“It seems the enchantment on our rooms hampered our ability to discern the passage of time,” Riordan says. “How did you break free?”
“After a bath and a meal, I felt unbearably tired, so I went right to sleep. I only woke up because Fiero began barking. There was someone in my room, sliding their hand under my pillow where I put the Tama Olc. When I woke up, they hurried out of the room. If it hadn’t been for Fiero, they would have taken it, and I wouldn’t have roused enough to realize that there was no clock in my room, and no window—no way to tell the time. My door had locked behind the intruder, but I broke it down and questioned one of the servants until they gave me a straight answer about how long we’d been in our rooms. I could sense Riordan, so I made my way to your room, Alice. Again, the door was locked—”
“It seems the locks on those doors operate by the will of the Wizard,” Riordan says grimly.
“Perhaps. Anyway, no one in your chamber would answer my knocks or my shouts, so I had to demolish that door as well.”
Through the gashes in Riordan’s cheeks I can see the tight set of his teeth. “I should have realized what was happening. I should not have let my guard down. It won’t happen again,” he vows darkly.
Alice glances up at him apprehensively, then glares at the mint-green gloves covering his hands. I have no idea why she doesn’t like the gloves. We’re all dressed in green—Riordan in a crisp shirt and sleek pants, with a brocade vest; Jasper in embroidered green silk, highly unsuitable for traveling; and the former Beast, Caer, in loose green pants and an open, blousy shirt that cinches into a ruffle around each wrist.
Caer stalks ahead of Riordan, Alice, and me, swinging up into a tree now and then and prowling through the branches before leaping back down. He doesn’t speak.
Jasper walks in front of us all, tossing sticks for Fiero, who races ahead to fetch the twigs and then carries them back.
Halfway through the morning we pass through a strange village entirely populated by life-size statues. They seem to be made of bone-white porcelain, with painted clothes and faces. Some of them are intact, while others are missing limbs or larger chunks of their fragile bodies. The road is littered with shards of porcelain that crunch and crack beneath the heels of my silver shoes.
As we pass through, I think I see one or two of the figures move slightly. But every time I whirl and look, they are so still I’m convinced I imagined it.
“A wish gone wrong, no doubt,” says Riordan. No one answers him, but I spend the next hour wondering what kind of wish could have wrought such a nightmare.
Around noon, the dirt road we’re traveling cuts through another town—a more normal-looking one this time—where Caer barters a jeweled ring he stole from the Wizard’s palace, in exchange for a basket of provisions. He inquires about horses, or some kind of mount, but he’s told there are none for hire.
Alice asks one of the shop owners if we’re on the right path to the West Witch’s domain, but he won’t give us a straight answer, only mutters, “If you know where you’re going, you’ll get there when you’re supposed to.”
“We need to stop by Caislean Brea first,” I remind Alice as we leave the town behind. “That’s where I can find out more about my shoes and their powers.”
“Unless that was another trick of the Wizard’s,” Alice counters. “A detour so we would waste more time.”
“It didn’t seem to be.” But I hate that she could be right.
After another hour, I experiment with using my magic to help Alice’s legs move faster, while the rest of us race along the road at Fae speed. But as Riordan explains, every Fae has different abilities, and although Caer and I feel as if we could keep running indefinitely, Riordan can only do short bursts of speed, and Jasper has even less stamina. Besides which, I don’t care to use up all my magic to propel Alice along. She doesn’t seem to like it, and nearly falls on her face several times. So we continue at the usual pace, which for me feels maddeningly slow.
“What if I run ahead to find Caislean Brea, and learn what I can about my shoes?” I suggest. “Then I could meet you on the road, or at the border of the West Witch’s domain. I’ll be able to sense Riordan—it’s not as if I’ll lose you entirely.”
“Will she really be able to sense you from that far away?” Alice asks Riordan.
He surveys me with a kind of curious pride. “Once the book connected us, she could sense me across realms.”
Automatically my hand travels to the back pocket of my leather pants, where I wedged the Tama Olc. “I’ll find you again, I swear.”
