Jellia paused, looking down at the mouse’s little face. “But Dorothy. Your Majesty—”

“Do it.”

“How?”

Even the Tin Woodman seemed a little confused as he looked on. He cocked his head curiously and swung his ax over his shoulder, waiting to hear what the princess had in mind.

Dorothy giggled girlishly. “Oh, Jellia,” she said. “I knew you were stupid but I didn’t know you were that stupid. I mean, all you have to do is squeeze.”

“But . . . ,” Jellia said.

“Jellia, it’s you or the mouse,” Dorothy said, the sweet, girly tone gone from her voice and replaced by an icy coldness.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Dorothy’s favorite maid took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and made a fist around the little animal. She clenched it tight and, as she did, I heard a single squeal. Her eyebrows scrunched together in distress.

“Make sure he’s dead,” Dorothy instructed.

Jellia clenched tighter. A trickle of blood spilled out from between her fingers, but she placed her other hand underneath in time to catch it before it hit the carpet.

“Good girl,” Dorothy cooed. “See? Was that so bad?”

Jellia opened her fist, where the mouse lay inert, now just a little ball of fur and blood. “Where should I . . . what should I do with it?” she asked in a strangled voice.

“You have pockets in that frock of yours, don’t you?” Dorothy asked. “I want you to hold on to it. To remind you of what happens when you disappoint me the way you did today. As well as to make sure I never see one of those disgusting creatures in my palace again.”

Without a word, Jellia took the mouse’s little corpse and placed it in the front of her apron. Dorothy applauded in delight.

“Wonderful. All is well. Now go wash those hands. I can’t have any mouse guts on my nails, now can I?”

Jellia stood and left the room, and Dorothy let out a little giggle.

“She’s lucky I didn’t make her eat it,” she said, and looked directly at me for the first time. “Isn’t that right, Alison?”

I nodded mutely, literally biting my tongue. The Tin Woodman chuckled adoringly.

Five hundred sixty, I counted off in my head, trying to keep my temper in check. I should’ve stabbed her.

The next morning, I held Star extra close before depositing her safely in one of my bureau drawers. My mother’s rat wasn’t happy about being confined, but now that I knew how Dorothy reacted to rodents, I wasn’t taking any chances. I couldn’t let her run around free.

A night’s fitful sleep hadn’t helped me shake the events of yesterday. Could I have actually done it—could I really have sliced Dorothy’s throat? I had been ready—or so I thought. Why did I hesitate? Was I that weak?

I told myself that I didn’t want to ruin the Order’s plans—they’d told me to wait—but I knew that wasn’t entirely it. I’d chickened out.

I slammed out of my room, frustrated with myself, and headed off to meet Jellia. We had an appointment to go through my new duties as Dorothy’s second handmaid.

When I found her in the empty banquet hall, Jellia was more distracted than I’d ever seen her. Unruly strands stuck up on her normally perfectly coiffed hair; her smile flickered every now and then into something almost like a frown.

Also, she smelled. Like, really smelled. She was still carrying around the poor little mouse’s body in her apron and apparently it was starting to decompose in there, giving her a foul, rotten stench that turned my stomach.

Worse yet, the first thing she told me was that there had been a change of plans. I’d already been demoted.

Her tone was impossible to read when she said it. “After yesterday’s debacle, Astrid, the princess has decided that you are not the best girl for the job.”

My heart sank. That was the last time I would brush Dorothy’s hair, the last time I would find myself in her royal chambers with a clear shot. Had I wasted my best opportunity to kill her? Had she realized that’s what I’d been about to do, after all? I was back to square one. No path to Dorothy, no contact from the Order, and no sign of Pete.

Would I be stuck here forever, abandoned by the Order, and fully transformed into Astrid? Gradually, I’d stop being afraid of being found out and transition into the other maids’ perpetual state of Dorothy-induced anxiety. Amy would be gone and I’d just be another blank-slate maid, stuck in a place somehow more monotonous and horrific than Kansas.

I returned to my mind-numbing chores. Scrubbing floors, sweeping, hand washing an endless supply of gingham skirts that I could swear hadn’t even been worn. And then, as if my day wasn’t already gloomy enough, the sun went down a little after midday.

“It’s the party,” one of the other maids told me during our break. “Her Highness needs all the beauty rest she can get before the big day. We should just be thankful she turned the Great Clock at all.”

So now sunlight was dictated by the condition of Dorothy’s skin. Perfect.

The day—or night, I suppose—wore on. As I went about my work, I found my anger growing. Yesterday, it’d been Dorothy and her psycho actions that had set off my temper. Today, it was the people who’d convinced me this was a good idea in the first place—Glamora, Gert, especially Nox—and left me stranded in this horrible place where the sun didn’t even shine anymore. Weren’t they worried about me? How much of this did they expect me to endure?