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“Are we playing a game?”

For fuck’s sake.

I’m confident that Silas will protect Dorothy, if only to gloat that he has her. And I know she is not so easily killed. But I need this assurance. I need a backup.

I can’t have Dorothy dying, even if I told all of Oz that I wanted her gone. I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know why she haunts my every thought and worries me at every turn. Am I going mad? It fucking feels like it.

“I beg your help, Faos. I know you know she’s the West’s daughter.”

“I hold no more allegiance to the West.”

But even as he says it, I see the quick flick of his eyes suggesting that maybe he does.

I don’t know if they would call themselves friends, but I think in some ways they were.

“Please.”

He stares at me for several long seconds and anxiety wells up in my gut. Is he currently plotting all the ways he will kill me with his bare hands?

“Very well.” He turns away from me. “I’ll take three soldiers out and we’ll scout for the girl, but we’ll only intervene in the event of imminent danger.”

“Thank you.”

“Keep your thanks,” he says over his shoulder. “I don’t want it.”

After leaving the roost, I make my way inside the palace. I’ve always been attuned to the whereabouts of my family. It’s a buzzing on an energetic level that feels like a divining rod.

I focus on Gabriel and realize he is not above me, in his rooms, but below me.

I hate that I am not surprised by this.

The guards at the entrance to the dungeon bow when I pass. The second set of guards do the same when I enter the first level of the prison.

I find Gabriel sleeping on the stone floor outside Toto’s cell.

He’s curled on his side, almost in a ball, his arm thrown over his eyes to block out the light.

“Gabriel,” I say.

He lifts his head suddenly, as if he was only half asleep.

Blinking up from the floor, he finally focuses on me. “Oh. It’s you.”

“It’s me.”

I slide down the wall, sitting on the stone.

Toto is resting on his pillow, curled up not unlike Gabriel. Every now and then, his eyes will pop open and he’ll look right at me.

The intensity of Toto’s attention is almost heavy enough to hurt.

“What are you doing in the dungeon?” I ask. “Is your room not to your liking? You prefer the discomfort of stone?”

Gabriel sits up beside me. “I’m all messed up.”

I drape my arm over his shoulder and he curls into me. When he was a boy, before I left for the palace, he would ask me to read him a bedtime story every night. He said I was the best storyteller. I always did enjoy a performance.

He would curl into me like this, him beneath the quilt, me balancing on the edge of his small bed, propped against the headboard.