And yet, I found my gaze pulled across the glittering panorama of the Emerald City, the place I’d read about in books my whole life. I was higher up than I’d ever thought it was even possible to go. I wondered what my mom would think if she could see me now, at the top of the tallest tower in the palace of a magical fairyland a million miles from the Dusty Acres trailer park.
About to stab the former heroine of the story.
For some reason, Dorothy didn’t look afraid of me anymore. She just smiled sweetly at me, her eyes wide and glittering.
“Amy, right?” she asked calmly. “The one that got away.”
I didn’t reply. I knew she was buying time, a classic desperation maneuver. I inched closer.
“I suppose I’ll never know what happened to the real Astrid,” Dorothy said, sighing. “My sweet little maid.”
“Like you care,” I replied, not able to help myself.
Dorothy smiled sadly and half turned to gaze out over the skyline.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” she said. “I come up here when I want to think. Sometimes it’s almost like I can see clear on back to Kansas. You know?”
There was a resigned, nostalgic tone in her voice.
This time, I didn’t let her bait me. I wondered if this sudden change in her personality was all a big act, or if maybe, somehow cutting off the flow of magic from her shoes was bringing Dorothy back to her senses.
I took another step forward.
She didn’t flinch. “I think my aunt Em would have liked you,” she said, still smiling, talking casually like I was an old friend. “She’d think you’re awful pretty. She’d want me to give you a second chance. She’d say, ‘Dorothy, there’s no such thing as a bad apple.’ She’d know you’re no killer. That they tricked you. She’d say, ‘You know, Dorothy, maybe you and that Amy have more in common than you realize.’”
I wasn’t stupid—I knew I couldn’t listen to her. But—what if she was right? What if we were alike? Dorothy hadn’t been like this when she’d first gotten here. It wasn’t until she killed the witches that she started to change.
If I killed her, did that bring me one step closer to becoming her?
No. I wasn’t like her. I was stronger—strong enough to absorb all those years at Dusty Acres, all those years of being a nothing, of being a punching bag, and never letting them transform me into anything close to the cruel and twisted monster Dorothy had become. Killing Dorothy was the only thing that would make Oz great again. It would avenge everyone she had hurt. It was what I was here for. I didn’t take it lightly—I knew I’d have to live with her blood on my hands for the rest of my life—but I wouldn’t let it corrupt me.
They made us strong in Kansas. I could carry this.
So I raised my blade. As I did, Dorothy’s unassuming, folksy smile widened, spreading into a twisted grin, her red lips grotesquely stretched with hate.
“Too late,” she said, just as I heard a dull, clanking noise behind me. I spun around to see him burst through the door, his boutonniere long gone, his tuxedo ripped to shreds.
The Tin Woodman.
He moved quicker than a man his size had any right to, his ax a silvery arc as it sliced through the air. I ducked just in time to save my head from being chopped clean off, then dove to the side. The Tin Woodman put himself between me and Dorothy.
“My hero,” I heard her say, and the Tin Woodman, so recently rejected, puffed out his chest. He sized me up, swinging his ax back and forth, and I saw in his eyes a homicidal devotion.
Could I win this fight? One-on-one with the Tin Woodman, with only my unenchanted knife?
He charged, swinging his ax overhead like he was chopping firewood. I danced aside, his blade drawing sparks from the stone rooftop. As he hefted his ax, I shot forward and stabbed for his eye, but he brought his hand up defensively and my dagger glanced off his gauntlet.
“Why do you fight for her?” I asked him, leaping backward from another brutal ax swing. “She doesn’t give a shit about you!”
“Shut up,” the Tin Woodman replied, all business.
I wasn’t quick enough on that last swing and had a shallow slash across my abdomen to show for it. I backpedaled, trying to put more distance between us.
Then I heard footsteps thundering from the spiral staircase. Palace guards or Tin Soldiers or both. Dorothy’s entire army. It sounded like all of them. All coming for me.
I caught my breath. There was no way I could take them all on like this: without magic, with just an ordinary dagger, and a psychotic, ax-wielding metal man already bearing down on me.
The Tin Woodman swung again. This time, I moved toward the blade. At the last moment, I dipped into a somersault and slid underneath him, between his legs.
A few strands of hair—the pink that I’d missed so badly when I looked in the mirror—floated down around me. He’d almost scalped me.
But he’d also made a mistake. Behind him now, I had a clear path to Dorothy.
This time I didn’t hesitate. There was only one way to accomplish my mission.
“Kill her!” Dorothy screamed, so loudly I thought my eardrums would shatter. “Kill the bitch!”
“There must be some mistake,” I said as I rushed toward her, my shoulder lowered. “You’re the bitch. I’m the witch.”
I barreled right into Dorothy, hugging her, our foreheads knocking together as we stumbled backward. She realized what was happening too late, slapping at my face when she should’ve been planting her feet. I shoved forward in a tackle, heard Dorothy cry out as her back struck the parapet, and then together we flipped over the edge.
We were suddenly weightless, tangled together, the blinking lights of the Emerald City stretched out beneath us. I heard the Tin Woodman bellow miserably and, just as we began to fall, I caught the briefest glimpse of Nox as he appeared on the balcony, a sword in his hand.
“Amy!” he shouted after me, his voice cracking in desperation.
It wasn’t Dorothy’s guards sprinting up the spiral staircase. It was the Order.
Too late. They couldn’t help me now.
Chapter Forty-Three
It’s funny how much time you have to think when you’re plunging to your certain death from the top of a tower. You’d think it would be over in an instant, but it’s actually just the opposite. It’s like everything slows down.
At least, that’s how it felt for me. I still had Dorothy in my grip, and she was clicking her heels together wildly as we fell. I knew it was a lost cause. Their magic was gone.
Unfortunately, so was mine.
Locked together in a crazy death spiral, my eyes met hers, and for a second—just for a second—it was like I understood her. It was like I forgot that she was her and that I was me. We were both from the same place, and we had both ended up here. We were both going to die together.
I think she felt it, too.
And then something happened. I felt something warm and tingly running through her body. I felt a burning sensation in my legs, coming from the vicinity of Dorothy’s shoes. Her eyes lit up.
I wasn’t sure whether it was because the spell the witches cast had been broken or because we had passed beyond its bounds, but Dorothy’s magic was back. She was more alive than ever.
She knocked her heels together and was gone in a burst of swirling pink smoke.
And I was hurtling toward the ground.
But if Dorothy’s magic worked now, that meant mine might, too. I could try to travel, but the way I was flipping and twisting, I was too disoriented—I would have just sent myself crashing headfirst into the ground even faster than I already was.