“This will keep you safe,” Gert said.

“You have to do something,” I croaked at Nox, tears streaming down my cheeks. He had finally given up and sat back, and had silently watched Gert bestow her kiss upon me. “Please. Save her. Use your magic. You have to.”

Nox shook his head sadly. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said, looking away.

Gert looked up at me. “It has to be you, child. You have to do it,” she said weakly.

“Do what?” I asked, somehow believing that as long as I held on to her gaze then she would hold on to me.

“You have to kill Dorothy, Amy.”

I woke up the next morning feeling spent and disoriented, my mind a jumble of hazy images that appeared one by one in my head like pages in a horrible picture book.

The burning village. The eerie scene in the forest. Nox’s determined face as he fought back an onslaught of beasts.

I felt like I was being plunged naked into a frigid pool as the rest of it came back to me. The Lion’s gaping, bloody maw; Gert’s tender kiss and the strange way I’d felt the life slip out of her as I’d held her in my arms. Her body dead on the ground.

In the enchanted softness of my bed, I tried to tell myself that it hadn’t really happened—that it had all been a dream. It was only when I felt a tingling on my forehead, in the exact spot where Gert had kissed me, that I knew it had all been real.

At that stinging realization, I jolted instantly out of bed and took a shaky step forward, followed by another and another then another until I was in the center of the room, where I stopped in a state of paralyzed panic. I had no idea what to do with myself.

I couldn’t go back to bed. I couldn’t leave. So I just stood there, trying to will the memories out of my head. I didn’t want to think either. But thinking was the only thing I could do.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that. It could have been a minute and it could have been an hour, but I was still standing in that same position when a ghostly, luminous butterfly came floating through the wall and hovered in front of me. I accepted its entrance without surprise or curiosity. It was like I had been expecting it.

“Find me,” the butterfly said, speaking somehow in Glamora’s voice, and I nodded and began to get dressed.

I made my way through the Order’s tunnels with a numb and heavy feeling. With every step I took, I felt the weight of what had happened yesterday bearing down on me.

The door to Glamora’s room was ajar, and I pushed it open without thinking about it, only to freeze abruptly when I saw the witch’s reflection in the ornate, gilt-framed mirror of her vanity.

She was crying.

Not just crying. Her entire body was shaking with grief as she hunched over the table in a contortion of pain. She looked so small and powerless—so unlike herself—that half of me wanted to turn and leave her while the other half wanted to rush over and comfort her. I did neither. Instead, I just watched, unable to move, unable to say anything, knowing that she would never want me to see her like this.

Her fiery hair, always so perfectly coiffed, was frizzy and disheveled; a single strap of her elegant silk nightgown drooped across her shoulder. Her face was tired and worn, etched now in a map of sags and wrinkles and that scar on her cheek that she usually kept hidden. She looked like she had aged twenty years in one day. It was hard to believe it was her at all.

But even in this bedraggled and unfamiliar state, Glamora was still Glamora. The liquid pooling in the corners of her eyes was glittering and crystalline, and each tear that rolled down her cheeks and tumbled from her chin made a small plinking noise as it landed on the vanity. Looking closely, I saw that the surface was strewn with a messy scattering of them—tiny, teardrop jewels that just kept on coming.

Glamora was crying diamonds.

Suddenly she seemed to sense me watching her and she looked up. I felt embarrassed to be caught, and embarrassed for her, but I didn’t look away. In that moment, I owed her the dignity of an unwavering gaze. It was the least I could do.

“Amy,” she said, sitting up straight and tugging the strap of her gown up to a more decorous position. “Come in.”

As Glamora spoke, her hair rearranged itself into a sleek chignon. The lines on her face melted away, leaving her as youthful and refreshed-looking as I’d ever seen her. Every trace of vulnerability was gone now. Now she was cool and unreadable.

The jewels on the table caught the light, and I couldn’t help but glance over at them. There was something about seeing them lying there in their scattered little pile that chilled me. What kind of person is so hard on the inside that she cries diamonds?

Glamora noticed me staring. Somehow she knew what I was thinking, and she shook her head ruefully. “Magic loves change,” she said with a sigh. “Do enough of it and it will warp you in strange ways. It’s the first law of enchantment. Use it to change the outside and after a while the inside changes, too. So I traded my tears for beauty. Well, it could be worse, couldn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “It could.” But I wasn’t so sure.

“If you think I’m bad, you should see what comes out when my sister cries,” she said. I couldn’t tell if she was joking. But then she clapped her hands, signaling that it was time to change the subject and get down to business.

“Now then,” she said. “We suffered a great loss yesterday. An unimaginable loss. As you know.”

I waited for her to go on. “What you may not know,” she continued, “is that Gert was by far the most accomplished magic user in the resistance. More powerful than me or Mombi; more powerful than any of the witches in the Order’s other cells. Perhaps the only person in Oz whose power could rival my sister’s. They didn’t make her the Good Witch of the North for nothing, you know.” She rolled her eyes and sighed, momentarily recalling some old rivalry before moving along.