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“I don’t know. Maybe never.”

“Why do you want your poor mother powerless?”

I snort into my glass and down the rest of the mead. The honeyed taste lingers on my lips. Somehow, I am thinking of Kansas again.

Has she bewitched me? If so, this is a magic I am unfamiliar with. I can’t get her out of my head.

I’m not sure leaving her with Silas was my best decision.

The things he will tell her …

“God—” Glinda cuts herself off and starts over. “Rook. Darling. I can’t help you if I’m powerless. I tried very hard—”

A knock sounds on the door.

Glinda grumbles. “What is it?”

One of my leftenants, Kogan, enters the room. He’s breathing heavily as if he searched high and low to find me. “The West’s flock was just spotted heading this way.”

Glinda’s excitement is palpable when she looks at me. “You took control of the flock.”

She’s never told me this outright, but I know from experience that the more powerful the animal she burns for magic, the more magic she gets. And flying monkeys are high on the animal kingdom hierarchy, just below dragons, gargoyles, and kalidahs.

To Kogan I say, “Light a ring of fire in the field beyond the palace. I’ll meet the flock there.”

He nods and hurries away.

“She really is dead, isn’t she? The West?”

“Yes.”

Glinda exhales with relief. “She was a means to an end, but she was never going to be loyal to us.”

I agree with her, but I won’t agree with her out loud.

“How did the girl manage it? How did she kill the West?” she asks easily, as if we are conversing about a recipe perfected beneath Kansas’s capable hands and not the murder of a Cardinal Witch.

I set the glass on a nearby table and make my way for the door. “I don’t know. I came too late.”

Glinda trails after me. “Should we be worried about her?”

“Should we? No.” Should I? Yes.

“What are you going to do with her?”

“I’m not going to do anything with her. I have more important things to worry about.”

“She killed two Cardinal Witches.”

And how impressive that is.

I could pop myself out of the palace and to the field beyond, but it’s been a while since I’ve let my presence be known. I probably have ten, maybe fifteen minutes before the flock arrives. And I could use the walk.

“Darling,” Glinda says as we follow the curve of the staircase. “Perhaps I could intervene with this girl on your behalf and—”

I come to a complete stop in the middle of the stairs. Glinda slams into me and bounces back, scrambling for the railing. She catches herself, but the stumble has her shaken.

There was a time when I was happy to be my mother’s sidekick. Silas and Gabriel did not have magic, at least none that could be forged into a weapon. I was the only one Glinda could plot with. She had ambitions, grand plans, and who better to help her achieve them than her wizard of a son?