These stars were different from any stars back home. For one thing, they were brighter. For another thing, where the constellations I was used to never seemed to match the images they were supposed to resemble, these formed themselves into clear pictures the longer you gazed at them. There was a horseshoe and a bear and a tiger and a dragon, all as clear as pictures in a book.

“Gert thought home was stopping you from doing magic. We had to push. We had to know.” He pointed into the distance. “Look. That one’s always been my favorite.” As he pointed, a group of bright-white pinpricks rearranged themselves into the image of a bicycle. As I looked at it, a memory came back to me: my mother teaching me to ride a bike when I was five, before we’d moved to Dusty Acres.

It was the first time I’d ever tried it without the training wheels, and Mom had promised to hold on so I didn’t fall. But at some point, as I’d raced down the hill, the wind in my hair, I’d let out a whoop of triumph. I was doing it. It was only at that moment that I’d realized Mom had let go. I was on my own.

That was when I went crashing to the curb. When I crawled back to my feet, my knee scraped and bloody, my bike in a tangled heap on the ground, I’d looked up the hill to see my mom standing at the top, clapping for me.

I had been pushing back thoughts of Mom on a regular basis now. All Gert’s talk of forgiveness had planted a seed that I did not want to let grow. I’d told myself that all I’d been thinking about was where my fist was going next. About trying to light a candle just by thinking about it and remembering all the stuff in all the books Glamora had given me.

But it wasn’t true. She was still there no matter how much I didn’t want her to be. And now, standing on the top of the mountain with Nox, all I could think about was my mother.

I was an idiot. For a few minutes I had been thinking about prom and dancing with Nox and how he maybe didn’t hate it—and he was just following witchy orders.

And somehow that almost made me more angry.

“It matters how you do this,” I said through clenched teeth, staring him down. “What you do to get there. You can’t just kill someone. The ends do not make it okay.”

His eyes shifted away from mine and then back again. I saw something pass over his face. Guilt. Regret. No, it was maybe something else—like curiosity or realization—like he was happening upon completely new information.

Like it had never occurred to him that I would be hurt or mad or anything like that. Like being able to do magic trumped everything.

“We’re the only ones willing to take her down. The only ones capable. It’s us or nothing. We’re doing one bad thing for the good of Oz.”

“Do you ever not speak the witch party line—do you ever make a decision that is all your own?”

His eyes flicked away from mine.

“Do you always ask so many questions?”

“Do you ever ask any? You know absolutely everything there is to know about me and I don’t know anything about any of you. Not really.”

The cockiness from the dance floor was gone. He slipped out of it so easily it was a surprise.

“Do you really want to know who I am?” he asked.

I should have said no and backed away from him. But even though I was mad at him, I still wanted to crack him open and see what was inside. I nodded.

“I’m not Nox.”

“What?”

“Nox is just the name Mombi gave me. I don’t remember my real name. I remember my parents. Their faces. The way they smelled and sounded. I remember the day that they were taken from me. But my name washed away with them. And there’s no one alive who remembers it.”

“Nox . . .”

“It was in the beginning. When Glinda and Dorothy were just starting to mine everything and everywhere. Glinda hadn’t figured it out yet. She wasn’t using the Munchkins. She was just using her own magic to mine magic. She blasted a hole in the center of the town and boom. She hit the water table. Everything flooded. We climbed up to the roof. There was this old weather vane up there that was so rusty it didn’t even move when the wind blew. I remember my mother told me to hold on to it no matter what. And I did. But my mom didn’t. Or couldn’t. I wanted to let go, too, but I held on like she told me to. When the water went down, no one in the village was left except me.”

I inhaled sharply.

“Did Mombi find you then?”

“Later, much later I think. I went from town to town. I stole when I had to eat. I slept where I could. Sometimes people were good to me. And sometimes they were horrible. Mombi saved me during one of those horrible times. I stumbled upon the wrong town. The Lion was there. But so was Mombi.”

He glanced up at me, then looked away sharply. He didn’t want my pity.

“What I said back there when we were dancing—I’m sorry I had to do that. I needed to get a reaction from you. You’ve been fighting all along. You raised yourself. I had an army and three witches.”

Something hit me all at once. “What Gert said about magic—how can you use it if you don’t know who you are?”

“I know exactly who I am.”

“But you said . . .”

“I am a fighter. I am a member of the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.”

It occurred to me—maybe Mombi hadn’t rescued him out of the kindess of her heart. Maybe she had done it to make a perfect soldier. If all Nox had was a faded memory of some woman who may have been his mom, all Nox had ever really had was the Order. And all his magic came from there—from the person they made him. He was as pure as the magic that ran through the spring. He was all magic. Hardly a boy at all. He was the knife that he told me he could train me to be.