Page 70 of A City of Emeralds and Envy
“You can’t always protect others from being mistreated. I’ve tried.” Sadness suffuses his blue eyes, as if my own emotions are reflected there.
“You tried to help the other sacrifices, the misfits in your village, didn’t you?”
He nods. “I wasn’t able to save any of them. But I made a difference, even if no one else could see it. Even if nothing changes, you make a difference bytrying. By beingbetter. By choosing to do the right thing, even if the result isn’t what you want. You made your family better by being in it, Alice. Maybe it’s someone else’s turn to bebetternow.”
He smiles at me as we walk, and I look into those azure eyes, so full of sincerity and love…
Love. That’s what makes him special. Love without measure, without end, so deep that the Village of Crows couldn’t dry it up, so vast their cruelty never reached the end of it, so true that the East Witch was never able to hold him in thrall, because that love always conquered. There is strength in his softness, beauty in his gentleness. And that kind of generous, boundless love is exactly what our little family needs to balance Caer’s selfishness and cowardice, Riordan’s obsessiveness and occasional cruelty, and my own recklessness.
And Jasper needs us, too. He has suffered deeply, endured imprisonment and abuse for years. This journey is too brief for us to untangle everything he has been through, but inwardly I vow to hold his hand and his heart in the future, as he frees himself from that pain and discovers who he was meant to be.
“I love you,” I tell him impulsively.
He smiles, and I could swear the gray sky brightens. “I love you, too.”
24
We wait for Dorothy under shimmering purple trees, by a pool where fiery insects skate through the dappled shadows of its surface, stirring up tiny puffs of steam. I could watch them forever, and Riordan is fascinated too—but his fascination involves plucking one of them off the pond, detaching its wings, and delicately prying its body open, so he can figure out how it burns without incinerating itself.
Caer leans against the rock I’m sitting on, so I play with his silky black hair. He tilts his head into the touch, humming softly in his throat as I massage the base of his cat ears.
Eventually Riordan abandons his study of the insects and stalks over to the wall of green cloud, inspecting it. He stands there for a long time. The only movement is the swivel of his long ears to catch the sounds of Jasper playing with Fiero.
Darkness falls, the fiery insects burn brighter, and Riordan begins to pace, chafing as more of our precious time passes. Caer and I end up curled together on the grass with Jasper, petting each other quietly, not daring to fuck outright lest Riordan rebuke us. But Caer grows bolder, and leans over me, tugging Jasper’s head back by his golden hair and bending to kiss his throat. Then the Cat kisses my mouth and nuzzles against my cheek, while his fingers slide over my breast.
I’m fairly sure things are about to get interesting… but then Riordan’s ears stiffen and he turns around. “She’s coming.”
Dorothy arrives at a run, bursting out of the darkness. She has lost her green silk shirt somewhere, and she’s clad only in her leather pants and bustier. Under one arm are two books, and under the other is something in a cloth bag.
“I’m sorry I took so long.” She flings herself down into the grass and accepts a storm of enthusiastic welcome from Fiero. “This book tells about the shoes, and the history of Oz’s royal family. And this one—this is a diary kept by the North Witch, when the Green Wizard first arrived. Which do you want to hear about first?”
“The god-star, and make it quick,” Riordan says, seating himself on the grass. He’s nearest to Jasper, and after a moment, the Scarecrow crawls closer to him, laying his golden head on Riordan’s thigh. Caer and I exchange apprehensive glances, but after a second, Riordan’s scarred hand settles on the golden curls.
Dorothy sets aside the thicker of the two volumes and opens the slender one. “I read some of it in the library of Caislin Brea. The author of this journal is the North Witch, as I said. She’s the one who became the god-star’s lover and then was cursed as the Eater of Hearts. She ruled the north quarter of the Isle, but she had come to Caislin Brea for an annual meeting of the four siblings. During her stay, the god-star crashed onto the city, causing a giant crater. His form was unstable for weeks, until he managed to take Fae shape. He began to seduce her. She mentions knowing that he was a god-star. She thought it was fate that he should be her lover, because the royals of this Isle all have a unique gift from the god-stars—the compulsion ability that makes them witches. And this part is interesting.” She looks up, her blue and brown eyes shining. “The scrying stones the witches use to keep visual track of their thralls? Those are rumored to be the fossilized tears of the god-stars, from when they walked this realm in their titanic forms, back when the worlds were first made. Later on in the journal, she mentions that the Green Wizard smashed every scrying stone he could find, including hers.”
“Smashed them?” I exclaim. “Then why does he want the West Witch’s scrying stone? Unless—” I meet Riordan’s crimson eyes, knowing we have the same thought— “unless the scrying stones can do more than just observe people. There’s some other use for them, one that frightens the Green Wizard.”
Riordan’s eyes gleam with approval. With the gashes in his cheeks and the fiery light from the pond playing over his face, his smile is absolutely terrifying. But I smile back anyway, because I love him—every dark, twisted, brutalized, aching piece of his soul.
“The stone could be a weapon,” Riordan says.
“And your shoes?” Caer is lying on his belly, his chin propped in his hands. “What can they do?”
Dorothy smirks. “They enhance gracefulness and speed, like I suspected. And they help me read faster as well as run faster. I suppose that’s a handy ability for a Witch to have—the power to skim through magical texts as quickly as possible to find the right spell. It takes a while for them to fully synchronize with a new owner. But that’s not the best part. These shoes can transport me to any place I’ve seen, in just three steps. And I can take someone along with me if I’m touching them.”
“Fuck.” Caer sits up, envy glinting in his violet eyes. “You’ve tried it?”
“Not the ‘taking someone along’ part, but yes.” Dorothy nods. “I transported myself from the library to the crossroads by the three red hills. I had to run the rest of the way to meet up with you, but it shortened the journey.”
Riordan leaps up, pushing Jasper’s head off his thigh. “I must study those shoes.”
“Later,” Dorothy says. “Once we get through this. I found other things in the palace vault, but I can’t speak of them yet.” She lowers her voice. “Not while he’s listening, and watching. Not until—well, here.”
She slides a nondescript wooden box out of the bag she’s carrying and opens it. Inside lie several milky-looking marbles.
“Take one, and swallow it,” she orders.
Riordan’s eyes widen. “These were in the vault?”
