The shock wave rocked the cavern and sent Nox and me crashing to the floor. The window to Kansas shut with the sound of a thousand doors slamming. Dorothy fell to the ground with a sick thud and lay there unmoving.

“Now!” Nox gasped, doubled over in pain. “Do it now!” Without thinking, I reached for my knife and immediately felt its reassuring solidity in my hand. I sprinted past the pool to where Dorothy had fallen. Her body looked as though she’d been burned alive. Her flesh was charred and smoking. Her hair had been seared away on one side of her head and her eye had melted in its socket, running down the bubbling, raw meat of her cheek. I almost gagged.

And then she stirred. Incredibly, horribly, she was still alive. She groaned, her fingers twitching.

It was time for Dorothy to die. I raised the knife over my head.

THIRTY-FOUR

Take care that you do not walk down the same road that she has chosen. Lurline’s words flashed across my vision like a subtitle from a foreign movie. Suddenly, I remembered my first friend in Oz—Indigo, the goth Munchkin who the Tin Woodman had tortured to death in front of me. That had been my introduction to Oz: loss and murder. And I’d taken those lessons to heart. I’d learned to kill without remorse to protect myself and the people I loved.

But where had it gotten me? What had it done for me? I remembered what it had felt like to kill the Lion, to find myself covered in his blood. The way the monkeys looked at me in fear. Glinda’s dead-eyed girl soldiers. All the life I’d taken wasn’t saving Oz, or even myself. Killing the vulnerable was Dorothy’s way.

But it didn’t have to be mine. I was done with murder. I wouldn’t turn into Dorothy. I wouldn’t let the power of Oz make me into a monster. I was stronger than that.

I threw my knife to the cavern floor and it vanished in a puff of oily smoke.

“Amy?” Nox said, coming up behind me. He was looking at Dorothy in horror.

“She used to be just like me,” I said, walking away from her. Nox followed me to the other side of the cavern. I thought of her aunt Em and uncle Henry. Dead now, like so many other people. “Someone’s niece, someone’s friend. She was just a farm girl from Kansas before Glinda got hold of her.” I looked him in the eye. “I don’t want to become her, Nox. I can’t kill her.”

Saying it out loud almost took my breath away, but suddenly, I felt a huge, incredible sense of relief. I’d admitted it. I didn’t want to kill her. I didn’t want to kill anyone anymore. I was done. Nox’s eyes widened, and then his face softened and he reached forward and took my hand.

“Look at her,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to kill her. Oz’s magic took care of it for you. She’s defenseless and she can’t hurt anyone anymore. It’s over.”

We’d done it. We’d defeated her. I sank to the ground in exhaustion. And then with a deep, terrible groan, the walls of the cavern began to ripple and crack.

Nox reacted instantly. “The palace is coming down!” he shouted, pulling me to my feet. I looked at Dorothy’s motionless, rag doll body. Now that I’d decided not to actually kill her, I didn’t know what to do with her.

“What about her? We can’t just leave her here!” I cried. A section of the roof collapsed with a roar directly in front of us, sending a shower of dust billowing in our faces. Coughing and choking, I looked across the cavern to where Dorothy had fallen—but the floor was covered with towering piles of broken rock.

“We can’t save her!” Nox said, grabbing my arm. “She can’t have survived that, there’s nothing we can do.”

I let Nox pull me out of the room just as a giant piece of ceiling fell right where we’d been standing. In the hallway, I stumbled, almost bringing both of us to the ground.

“You have to keep going!” Nox urged, dragging me along. “We stop, we die.”

“I can’t,” I gasped, tripping again.

“You have to,” Nox said grimly, refusing to let me go. The walls were crumbling around us as we ran down corridor after corridor. Beams crashed to the floor. The Emerald Palace was even bigger than I remembered. But Nox wouldn’t let me stop. He wasn’t going to leave me behind, no matter what—and I wasn’t going to be responsible for his death, too.

Finally, we turned one last corner and I saw daylight. We’d come out into the front hallway of the palace, where big windows let in a view of the crazy sky. It was like all of Oz had gone insane.

A huge storm was raging, like nothing I’d ever seen before. Bolts of red lightning struck the earth with earsplitting cracks. Thunder boomed and orange sparks rained down from the violent yellow-green sky. With one last, desperate push, Nox and I ran for the front door and tumbled out to safety as the ceiling of the main hall fell in with a crash of stone and timber. But Nox didn’t stop. <