Francesca, The Great and Terrible: A Reverse Harem Academy Romance Read online

  “Stand back!” Frabess yelled.

  The Quadlings all parted as Frabess, and I raised our vials of teleportation powder over our head. This was it. We were getting into Glinda’s rooms. I’d find out if the cup was in there. I could help Idris and hopefully find Daxar.

  I threw the powder at my feet and felt a little yank as I was teleported to Glinda’s bathroom. The purple smoke settled just as I heard the door crash as Idris burst through. Frabess had already cleared the traps in the bedroom. By the time I got to the sitting room, Saffron had cleared the traps in there too.

  Glinda’s rooms weren’t like mine. There wasn’t a single reflective surface in the room and none of the jewels embedded in the walls like our rooms. She had tapestries on the walls and lush art like my mother’s castle back in the West. We had the exact same tapestry hanging over her bed, but it was hung over the fireplace in our living room. I felt a lump in my throat as an image came to me of Oprix, Idris, and I as children crowded around the fire while my mother told us stories.

  I needed to focus. I needed to find something, some hint as to what Glinda’s big plot was or where she was hiding. She wasn’t using the front door, so she had to be using her bathroom to teleport in and out. I couldn’t see any parchment lying around that would tell us what her plans were. I didn’t think there would be. It went against all her Sentinel training to leave anything in writing. Too sloppy.

  Did she cover her tracks in the bathroom too? I called out to everyone in her chambers. “Tear this place apart. Look for the cup or any clues to where Glinda and Daxar are. I’m going to scan the bathroom to see if there’s a trail where Glinda has been teleporting to.”

  Glinda was careful when she had her bathroom made. All the fixtures had ceramic coating so they couldn’t catch a reflection. Glinda spent way too much time on her appearance to not have at least one full length mirror in her rooms. That was in the bathroom, and it was also spelled for scrying so people couldn’t watch her through it unless she allowed it.

  I knew it was pointless, but I tried anyway. Scrying mirrors were keyed to their sorcerer. I placed my hand on the mirror and tried to will it to show me what she had been watching, but it was only just a mirror for me because I wasn’t the one that placed the spell on it.

  I stepped away from the mirror and let my magic crackle at my fingertips. I sent it out to every corner of the room and let it seep into the cracks. Yeah, Glinda prepared for us breaking into her room. She prepared for us picking her magical lock and figuring out there were no traps in the bathroom. I couldn’t see it with my naked eye, but there was a totem somewhere in this room that cleansed all traces of her magic when she came and went. I could find it and remove it, but the magic was already gone. I wasn’t going to find Glinda using magic.

  I tried not to let my shoulders slump as I walked out of the bathroom. I was running out of options for finding Daxar and figuring out what Glinda was really up to. I thought we had made progress when we found Ozma. I thought Glinda was honest with us about why she didn’t get involved earlier and why she thought she avoided the Wicked Witch moniker.

  Then the very next day, Daxar disappeared, and Glinda started avoiding all my questions about where he was. She kept telling me to focus on my studies. Ozma demanded to know where he was, and Glinda just up and disappeared. I knew Ozma was off helping where she was needed, and she’d be helping me with Daxar if we knew where he was, and he was in danger. She promised to help as soon as she freed that royal family from the Nome King.

  When I left the bathroom, it was a long shot, but I decided to scan the other rooms for magic too. Now, either Glinda was super paranoid, or we were in deeper shit than we knew about because there were even more protective spells on her rooms than there were on mine. I sighed. I was going to have to add all of these to our room and teach them to Ozma. I’d add them to Dorothy’s room too.

  “Did anyone find anything?”

  “The cup isn’t here,” Idris said. “But there’s something you need to see.”

  I walked over to where Idris was standing, and there was a chessboard on the table. There were exact replicas of all of us as chess pieces. Why was I the queen on Glinda’s side and Glinda a knight? The other side of the board had to be the Fisher King’s side. All of the faces were blank except Locasta, who was a pawn.

  Galen was on the board on the Fisher King’s side as a rook. His face was blank, but I would recognize that long green hair anywhere. Why was Galen on the wrong side of the board? Had my gut been wrong this entire time that I could trust him? Why had he given me all the information Glinda was hiding from me if Glinda had him on the wrong side of the board?

  I studied the pieces. It looked like Glinda had moved them in a variety of ways, but still hadn’t won the game yet. There were too many unknowns on the Fisher King’s side. The only faces that were carved on his pieces were Locasta’s.

  Why was I the queen on Glinda’s board? Why not Glinda or Ozma? Ozma was the king on the board. All of us in the room were surrounding Ozma in a protective formation like Glinda had started a game, then up and left it.

  Frabess peer over my shoulder. “What the fuck is Glinda up to? Daxar is missing, and she’s playing board games with an incomplete board? We don’t even know who all is our enemy yet. What we need to be doing is getting down to that jail and getting into Mombi’s memories. Mombi has all the answers about the Fisher King.”

  “Let’s just go. We didn’t find what we needed here. We’ll have to try something else.”

  I already knew what I was trying next. If Galen was waiting on the roof, he was going to have to face me about why his hair was green and how he knew the things he did.

  Chapter 6

  Daxar

  W

  hatever Glinda said to get to me agree to her geas, I must have been totally insane to believe it. Glinda had gone mad. I thought after we found the heir, we’d be taking on some great evil that made me agree to the geas for everyone’s protection. I’d managed to find out the great evil was an ancient tyrant, and Locasta was involved, but I thought the entire point of finding Ozma was to train her to help defeat the Fisher King and Locasta.

  I didn’t know what Glinda’s agenda was anymore. She’d kidnapped me against my will. Emerald City Academy was supposed to have a purpose. None of the students were learning history, and the school didn’t have a headmaster right now. If I knew Frankie, she was searching for both of us. I hope she knew I hadn’t and would never just abandon her like that.

  Glinda told me she wanted to have a meeting in my office about Francesca. I had a feeling it was about my relationship with her. It had to be pretty obvious after what happened when we went to the North, but Francesca was an adult who could make her own decisions, and we were both being discreet. I had planned to tell Glinda that.

  Glinda teleported right behind my desk, and before the purple smoke had even cleared, she grabbed my shoulder and threw two more teleportation vials down and took us both out of my office without even asking me. She never intended to talk to me about Francesca. She knew if she told me what she wanted me to do, I would have told her no. Instead, she teleported me without my permission.

  Francesca was right. The alarms in the North against teleportation were only in the areas where Locasta wanted to protect her friends. Glinda teleported me to the forest about four miles outside of Locasta’s castle. She stayed long enough to tell me to gather intel, then teleported herself out.

  She left me in the North with no mirrors, no weapons, and no way home. I had no way to contact Francesca, and I had no way to contact Glinda if I did find something. I could fend for myself in the South, but the North was wild and mostly unexplored. There were dragons that lived underground here that came out to eat every hundred years. I hoped Glinda hadn’t dropped me in dragon territory at the end of their hundred-year hibernation.

  I tried to remember my history and what I knew about the North. Everything in the North was purple. When I was tryin
g to find something to eat, I tried to remember that. Chances were, if it wasn’t purple and it grew in the North, it was going to be poisonous. I couldn’t live on berries and fruit. I wondered if Glinda even considered me dying of hunger because she didn’t leave me a weapon to hunt with when she just dropped me here.

  The first thing I did was fashion myself a spear from a rock. At least I always kept a dagger strapped to my boot. It would be worthless against a bow or a sword, but I was able to use it to make a spear and skin my kills, so I didn’t starve to death.

  There was no way I was going anywhere near Locasta’s castle with the knowledge transference spell that had been done to me. Glinda didn’t just choose me for her school because my family had been close to her. Magic ran in our blood, and we never knew it or used it. Glinda had always known, and she awoke that in me when she did the transference spell.

  Locasta would sniff that out about me in seconds. She would feel the hum coming off me. A former Quadling governor reeking of magic in the North right after the teleportation alarms at Mombi’s shack went off, and she disappeared would be sure to have me thrown in a cell and tortured for information about Glinda. Glinda had to know that.

  Were there any Flying Monkeys left in the North? Their forest used to be in the North. Princess Gayelette was a Northern princess, and their court was in a forest here for the longest time, no matter who had the cup. Had they all moved to the West when Francesca’s mother took control of the cup to try to break the curse?

  I was trying to remember all my conversations with Idris and Francesca about the Flying Monkeys. I was trying to remember everything I knew about Flying Monkey lore. Everyone always talked about the Flying Monkey king, Ibus, but I’d just learned recently he wasn’t in charge. The Flying Monkeys were a matriarchal society and were ruled by a queen.

  As far as I knew, no one had ever met the queen this entire time, not even Francesca and her mother. Was this because the queen was still in the North? I had to try. The Flying Monkeys were my best shot at getting back home. Did Idris’ mother even know he had enrolled in Emerald City Academy and what he was getting himself involved in?

  I didn’t want to rat him out, and I didn’t want to drive a wedge between him and Francesca, but Idris was a prince. If Glinda roped Idris into this and something happened to him, we’d have a war with the Flying Monkeys on our hands too. I didn’t know what I would say to the Flying Money queen if I did find her, but I knew that was my goal—trying to find the Flying Money court.

  The problem was, the Flying Monkeys distrusted everyone since that curse, and as far as I knew, their court no longer existed on any map of Oz. There was a mountain range in my view. The mountain was covered in trees, and it was so tall, the top was obscured by clouds.

  If I was Flying Monkey royalty and I wanted to hide from people, I’d do it up there. Glinda hadn’t transferred the knowledge to enchant something to fly me up there. It was going to be a long hike.

  Hopefully, when I made it to the top, I actually found the Flying Monkey court, and they let me get out I was a friend to Idris before they killed me.

  Chapter 7

  Frankie

  I

  wasn’t even trying to be polite when I went up to the roof that night to train. I had no intention of training, and if Galen thought he could pull his little not talking to me until I’d finished tonight, he was in for a rude awakening. I slammed the door to the roof behind me and marched to the center of the garden. I could feel Galen nearby. He was probably hovering on his staff doused in invisibility potion.

  “Galen! I yelled. “If you expect me to trust you, get down here and face me. If you don’t get down here and tell me the truth right now, I’m going to consider you my enemy, and you only know what you know because you’re in on everything, and you’re playing some game.”

  My hair blew back as Galen must have swooped down on his staff in a hurry. I watched him materialize. His hood was up, covering his hair and face like he was trying to hide from me.

  “Look me in the eyes, Galen. I trust you, but you’ve been telling me in information in spurts. I want the full story. I’ve kept your secret. It’s about time you started trusting me.”

  Galen knocked his hood back and was on me in seconds. He gripped my arms and was chewing on his lower lip as his eyes bored into mine.

  “What if the truth is awful, Frankie? What if I tell you, and you hate me just because of who my parents are?”

  “Galen, there’s something about you that tells me I can trust you. You’ve given me information where no one else can. Right now, I trust you more than I trust two of the other Sentinels.”

  “You won’t when you find out who my parents are and why my hair is green.”

  “You said you hated them, and you ran away as soon as you could. You weren’t lying when you told me that. I may not be able to control my reaction when you tell me if it’s bad, but I promise to hear you out, okay?”

  Galen sighed. “Can we sit? This is a long story, and I’ve never told it to another living soul.”

  We sat on a bench in front of a beautiful fountain shaped like a fairy with a wand that spouted water. I grabbed his hand and held it. What was so bad about his parents that he thought I would hate him because they were abusive?

  “How much have you learned about the original Sentinels that I haven’t told you?”

  “Three sisters took the South, East, and West. There was a set of twins. One twin stayed behind to guard the cave to the Fisher King, and the weaker twin was given the North. The North has always been vocal about someone replacing the twin that stayed behind, but the other Sentinels wouldn’t do it because it had already been decided.”

  “What if I told you nothing that has happened would be happening right now if the other Sentinels had listened to the North about replacing the woman who stayed behind?”

  “What does that have to do with you, and how you know all this?”

  “I’m getting to that. The Fisher King didn’t just take Oz by force when he got here. Women would find him attractive, and he knows how to smooth talk people into giving him what he wants. How do you think Percival guessed the riddle to heal his wound when he was chained to the cup when he wasn’t in Oz? The Fisher King practically spoon-fed it to him in a way that wasn’t breaking the rules.

  “The Fisher King managed to get himself elected as ruler of Oz fair and square. He did horrible things, but he did them in such a way people didn’t think what he was doing was bad because of how he marketed his deeds. The more he got away with it, the less he cared about what people thought about what he did. He got careless and stopped trying to smooth things over. Where people loved him, they soon began to fear him. It was their fear he wanted. It got to the point that the sorceresses got involved in fighting him.”

  “You’re avoiding telling me about your family, Galen. You’re just giving me more information about the Fisher King. I do need that, but I asked you about your family.”

  “I am talking about my family, Frankie. The Fisher King is my father.”

  Well, fuck.

  Chapter 8

  Galen

  I

  t was out now—my big secret. I was waiting for her to punch me or throw me off the roof. Instead, she just sat there, frowning at me. She was still holding my hand like I didn’t fill her with revulsion. Maybe this wouldn’t totally be a disaster. Maybe it would. She wasn’t talking. She hadn’t drawn her sword and held it at my neck again like when we first met. It was like my father had turned her to stone. She just sat there, unmoving and unspeaking. It was almost like she wasn’t blinking.

  “Frankie?” I asked.

  “You have ten minutes to explain before you find out if you’re better at the staff than I am with the sword. Did you spell me so I’d trust you?”

  “Everything I said was true. I’m here to fight with you against my father. I just didn’t know how to tell you the truth without this happening. My father is sheer evil, Frankie.
He’s never loved me. He only had me because he wanted to use me. My father never does anything unless he can gain something from it, including having children.”

  “If he’s underneath the earth, where the fuck did you come from?”

  “The North wasn’t wrong about relieving the woman who stayed behind, but they were also wrong for never visiting her. She had no one to talk to until Locasta came to visit her. By then, she was so desperate for conversation, she started talking to the Fisher King. It started with her trying to figure out why he ended up the way he was. He’s charming. I told you that. She was strong in magic and fighting, but she was eventually unable to resist the Fisher King. My mother became his lover, and she’s on his side now. He wanted me, and she didn’t. His grand idea was a child in his image to help him steal all the magic from Oz for good. He hated it that I looked nothing like him. I look exactly like my mother. My hair is green because her hair is green.”

  Oh, how much he hated that I looked like her. He claimed to love her, but he hated looking at my face. I learned to keep my head down and my hair in my face because if I looked him directly in the eye, he would usually blacken my eyes or break my nose. He’d broken my fingers more times than I cared to count. My mother was always put out when she had to heal them. She didn’t want me at all, and she made that clear.

  I felt Frankie’s thumb stroke the palm of my hand. Was she really coming around?

  “What can you tell me of his plans?”

  “He wants the Sentinels for his wives. He wants you and Saffron. You’ve always been his target. He wanted your mothers out of the way because he thought it would make you easy targets. He hoped to get you to kill Glinda and join Locasta and my mother as his wives. Glinda is not your enemy. She’s been trying to fight him this entire time.”