Angry muttering began to spread through the room. They were actually buying this crap.

I could practically feel her eyes boring right through the crowd and into my skull. I knew that, at any second, she would be dispatching the Tin Soldiers to push through the audience and drag me up to the throne to be punished in front of everyone. My fists clenched. I was scared, yes, but also felt my anger starting to rise. I must be prepared to draw my dagger and make sure Oz’s benevolent ruler died first.

“We will have our justice!” Dorothy shouted. “The truth always reveals itself.”

Cheering again. They couldn’t make up their minds—were they angry or happy? Were they really clapping for the downfall of a traitor? Or because it wasn’t them being punished today?

“Bravest Lion,” Dorothy said through clenched teeth, “bring me the traitor.”

The Lion loped out from the door behind the throne. A murmur went through the crowd. The Lion’s ferocious figure was always intimidating but the nervousness sweeping the room was also partly owed to the prisoner he dragged behind him.

Jellia Jamb, the head maid and Dorothy’s most trusted lady-in-waiting, her hands bound behind her back.

I lurched forward in surprise, bumping shoulders with one of the guards. He glared at me, but I hardly noticed. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Jellia. This wasn’t right. Not at all.

The Lion held her with one paw digging into her arm through the puffy sleeves of her uniform. Her hair was disheveled, her face ashen and quivering. The PermaSmile had been wiped from her face. Her uniform was all torn up.

My mind raced. Was this a trap? Was Jellia going to inform against me? Or was she going to take the fall?

Her keys. Oh no. I’d stolen her keys, they’d figured it out, and now she was to blame.

My fault. This was my fault.

“Come forward,” Dorothy demanded, curling a finger at Jellia.

The Lion released her and Jellia stepped forward, righting herself quickly when she stumbled for a moment.

Dorothy looked her up and down, clucking her tongue. Then she stood up and straightened the crooked flaps of Jellia’s collar.

“There,” Dorothy said, almost intimately, almost like she was just speaking to Jellia. If I didn’t know better, I’d think there was something tender about it.

I held my breath. What was she going to do to her? And, more importantly, what was I going to do about it? I couldn’t just stand here while someone else got blamed for my crimes against Dorothy.

“Jellia,” Dorothy said, sitting back onto her throne and crossing her legs casually. “You stand accused of freeing the monkey, Maude, from the Scarecrow’s private medical facility where she was being kept for her own good. How do you plead?”

Jellia’s chin trembled as she opened her mouth to speak. “Guilty, Your Highness,” she said.

The room gasped, no one louder than me. Jellia hadn’t done it—so why was she confessing to the crime?

“Additionally,” Dorothy continued, “we discovered several pieces of evidence in your room suggesting that you have been in regular contact with a ragtag band of magic-using malcontents and usurpers operating out of Gillikin Country.”

The Order. She meant the Order.

Jellia was my handler. How could I not have seen it? Getting me close to Dorothy. Letting me check my room this morning. Hell, she’d probably allowed me to pickpocket her keys. Tears welled up in my eyes—tears of belated gratitude, frustration, futility. I fought them back.

Jellia didn’t reply to Dorothy’s accusation.

The Lion twitched and pawed impatiently at the ground. He growled, baring his teeth, and Jellia flinched away from him. Dorothy stroked his back, calming him.

“Well?” she asked Jellia. “What do you say to that?”

Jellia looked around the room. I tried to catch her eyes, but it was almost as if she refused to look at me. She raised her chin high.

“That accusation is true,” she said, her eyes blazing. “I am a member of the Revolutionary Order of the Wi—”

Dorothy lunged forward and slapped her before Jellia could finish. To my ears at least, the slap echoed like a thunderclap. The room, which had started to buzz during Jellia’s second confession, went completely quiet.

To even Dorothy’s surprise, Jellia didn’t look at all cowed. Instead, she raised her head even higher, looking out on the crowd once again. It was like she was shaking off the meek, PermaSmiling, and servile creature we’d all known. Her spine stiffened and her shoulders rose up, like her false persona was an actual weight she’d been carrying. Gone was the woman who’d chastised me for not starching my pleats, the woman who’d carried around a dead mouse for days on Dorothy’s orders. Suddenly she looked like a warrior.

I should’ve known. Should’ve thanked her for wiping what must’ve been blood off me. For protecting me.

Dorothy recoiled from Jellia, as if scalded by the brazen impertinence. She gathered herself and shouted, struggling to be heard over the increasingly buzzing crowd.

“Treason! Sass! Unsanctioned magic!” Dorothy shrieked out the charges. “I sentence you to—!”

The ropes binding Jellia’s hands burned away with a puff of smoke. The crowd gasped as Jellia cut off the princess, her voice rising louder.

“People of Oz!” she yelled. “Dorothy’s tyranny has lasted long enough! It is time for us to rise up! It is time for us to reclaim the magic that is rightfully ours! My fellow Ozians—in times like these, the Wicked will rise!”