There was, however, a window in the room. It was no bigger than a foot wide, and it neatly framed a little swatch of the starry night sky. So Dorothy must have finally decided to let the sun set after all. When I stood on my tiptoes, the glittering green vista of the Emerald City was barely visible, poking up into the blackness.

To get to this dungeon, I’d been escorted down what had felt like hundreds of stairs. It seemed impossible that there could be a window all the way down here, deep in the bowels of the palace. But there it was.

It had to be magic. Was it the stairs that were just an illusion, or the window? And why was there a window in here anyway? It seemed unlikely that my captors would care whether or not I was comfortable.

Well, it was clean. And there was a view. That comprised the entirety of my prison’s luxuries. When I sat down on the bed in the corner, I found it hard as stone. That’s because there was no mattress to speak of: the bed felt like stone because it was stone.

I sat there trying to think of what I was going to do next while at the same time trying to suppress my mounting sense of panic. Meanwhile, Star was investigating, sniffing the walls, clawing at the floor, probably searching for an exit or maybe just something to eat. She wasn’t having any luck on either count. When she saw that I was awake, she abandoned her quest and jumped up onto the bed next to me.

I tried to keep my eyes open. I could sleep when I was dead, and if I didn’t want that particular sleep to come very soon, I had to find a way out.

But I was too exhausted. I didn’t even really know how long I’d been awake for. Before I knew it, I was out.

When I woke up, the sky outside my window was still dark. For how long? I wondered. Dorothy controlled the sun in the sky. According to Indigo, she basically controlled time itself around here. How was I ever going to escape power like that?

“Star,” I said, “we are completely and totally screwed.” On top of everything else, I was becoming one of those people who talked to their pets.

I’d barely been here a day, and I was already starting to feel insane.

In desperation, knowing it would do me no good, I stood and banged my fist against the wall until it was throbbing with pain. I tried to move the bed to the window, but it was rooted in place. When that didn’t work, I jumped up and tried to grip the edge of the window to hoist myself onto the ledge.

I just hung there limply. I had never been an athlete and, unfortunately, I was never going to become one. Even under pressure of death.

I screamed. I screamed until my throat hurt. I didn’t get so much as an echo in response. It was like the walls absorbed everything I could throw at them.

My whole body felt like one big bruise, but none of this was doing any good. I was just wasting energy.

I lay down on the bed to think and soon I was asleep again.

When I woke up and saw that the moon was still shining through the window, I finally realized why they had put the window in here in the first place. It was there to make me go crazy. To keep me guessing about how long I had been here, to give me hope that there was some way out.

I turned around with a start at the sound of a key in the door. Wait—what door? But then it was there again: a thin black line began to appear out of nowhere, a black rectangle that drew itself along the blank white wall. Even after all this I still felt a little thrill at seeing magic in action.

But then the door began to swing open and that thrill was instantly gone. I wasn’t sure who wanted in, but, whoever it was, I knew it wouldn’t be anyone good.

I was on my feet, my fists clenched. If I was going down, I was going down fighting.

The face I saw a moment later as the door disappeared into the wall was so unexpected that it took me a beat to put it into context. I shuffled his features around in my head like a puzzle, trying to place them.

He stepped into the room, and instantly I recognized his shaggy hair and glowing green eyes.

It was the boy who’d never told me his name. The one who’d saved my life back at the pit.

“You!” I exclaimed, my balled fists unballing and my spine relaxing. For the first time in—literally—I didn’t know how long, I let myself entertain the thought of hope. He had saved me once. Was he here to save me again?

The boy just put a finger to his lips and waved toward the window. That’s when I noticed the crows for the first time. There were several of them, all perched on the window ledge on the other side of the glass, peering in.

One of the birds cocked its head. The thing had ears—human ears, grafted awkwardly to either side of its head. A second passed, and the crow next to the first one cawed loudly, staring at me. It blinked, once, twice, with big human eyelids.

I cried out in frightened surprise, but the boy rapped against the glass a few times and they disappeared into the night.

“You have to watch out for them,” he explained. “They’re called Overhears. The Scarecrow makes them in his lab. They’re spies, but the good part is that they’re pretty stupid. It’s ironic, really—the one thing he hasn’t figured out is how to give them brains. They can see you and hear you, but they’re too dumb to understand anything, so they’re not so good at reporting any of it back. If you’re careful around them, they’re mostly harmless. Another one of his failed experiments.”

“Who are you?” I asked. Here he was, acting like just waltzing in here was no big deal. And he wasn’t making any moves to save me. Maybe I shouldn’t trust him.

“Sorry. I guess I never introduced myself. I’m Pete,” he said. “You don’t have to whisper now that they’re gone, though.”