It was Gert, an ancient, grandmotherly witch whose sweet face belied her tremendous power, who’d found her collapsed on the floor of the cavern, and Gert who’d helped her to her feet and guided her to a tunnel at the back of the cave that led to the vast warren of tunnels and caverns where the Order’s headquarters were housed. Lanadel had no idea how far the caves extended, or how many troops the Order had. In two weeks, she’d seen a handful of other people, but they were always moving quickly back and forth along the corridors of the Order’s caverns and no one ever stopped to talk to her. She slept alone, in a small cave with a thin mattress on the floor, and Nox brought her her meals. She had risked her life to find the Order, but since she’d gotten here, she had lived in a weird limbo.
Gert had shown her to the cave where she slept the afternoon she arrived, and brought her a bowl of warm, nourishing broth that sparkled with an eerie green light. “Drink up,” she urged. The soup fizzed in her throat as she swallowed it, and almost immediately she could feel her whole body tingling as the strength returned to her arms and legs.
She’d slept like a dead person until Gert woke her up again—she assumed the next morning, although in the windowless cavern, she had no way to tell. Gert had introduced her to gruff old Mombi and sweet, pretty Glamora, and then she’d brought Lanadel to the training cave where Nox awaited her. That first day had been brutal—and so had the day after that. But as the days passed, her muscles gradually adjusted to the constant, punishing routine of her training. She knew there were other trainees, but she hadn’t met them. She hadn’t met anyone at all, other than the witches.
It was as if Nox was waiting for her to do something special—demonstrate some impressive skill or undiscovered talent—before she would be allowed to do anything other than eat her meals in silence and train obsessively with him. After a few weeks, she was so lonely that she was halfway tempted to run back down the side of Mount Gillikin and seek out somewhere else to go. Except that there was nowhere else. The Order was all she had now, for better or for worse.
Melindra was the first person other than Nox, Mombi, Glamora, or Gert that she’d talked to since she arrived. And it was hard to use the word “conversation” to describe the terse interactions she had with Nox. More like he barked orders, and she followed. And Melindra was funny, friendly . . . and gorgeous.
Melindra yawned widely and dunked her head in the warm water. “What I want to know is when we get to fight,” she said when she came back up, breaking into Lanadel’s thoughts.
“You haven’t been sent on any missions yet?” Lanadel didn’t know what she was expecting. Everything about her life now was so new. So confusing. And so filled with pain. Every day felt like being torn in a thousand different directions—as if there were dozens of different Lanadels inside her, trying to get out.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIELLE PAIGE is a graduate of Columbia University and the author of the New York Times bestselling Dorothy Must Die series. Before turning to young adult literature, she worked in the television industry, where she received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She currently lives in New York City.
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BOOKS BY DANIELLE PAIGE
Novels
Dorothy Must Die
The Wicked Will Rise
Yellow Brick War
The End of Oz
Prequel Novellas
No Place Like Oz
The Witch Must Burn
The Wizard Returns
Heart of Tin
The Straw King
Ruler of Beasts
Order of the Wicked
Dark Side of the Rainbow
The Queen of Oz
Collections
Dorothy Must Die: The Other Side of the Rainbow Collection
Novella Collections
Dorothy Must Die Stories
Dorothy Must Die Stories Volume 2
CREDITS
COVER ART AND DESIGN © 2017 BY RAY SHAPPELL
HAND LETTERING BY ERIN FITZSIMMONS
COPYRIGHT
THE END OF OZ. Copyright © 2017 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. www.epicreads.com
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016961853
ISBN 978-0-06-242377-1
ISBN 978-0-06-266335-1 (special edition)
ISBN 978-0-06-266634-5 (special edition)
ISBN 978-0-06-266023-7 (int. ed.)
EPub Edition © February 2017 ISBN 9780062423795
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Hand lettering by Erin Fitzsimmons
17 18 19 20 21 PC/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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Danielle Paige, The End of Oz
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