A World Without Princes
A World Without Princes
Soman Chainani
It’s all happy ever after in the School for Good and Evil… or is it? The second title in the NYT bestselling fantasy adventure series – perfect for girls who prefer their fairy tales with a twist.After saving themselves and their fellow students from a life pitched against one another, Sophie and Agatha are back home again, living happily ever after. But life isn't exactly a fairy tale…When Agatha secretly wishes she’d chosen a different happy ending with Prince Tedros, the gates to the School for Good and Evil open once again. But everything has changed and a happy ending seems further away than ever…
Table of Contents
Cover (#u4a1eb78e-7274-5a4f-a75f-25ae90a8e854)
Title Page (#u6f20818e-0a69-5a77-a9c6-02cb176d1a66)
Part I
1. Sophie Makes a Wish
2. Agatha Makes a Wish Too
3. Breadcrumbs
4. Red Hoods Ride
5. The Other School
6. Her Name Is Yara
7. The Witches Brew a Plan
8. Unforgiven
9. Symptoms Returned
10. Doubt
11. Double Crossings
12. The Uninvited Guest
Part II
13. The Supper Hall Book Club
14. Merlin’s Lost Spell
15. The Five Rules
16. A Boy by Any Other Name
17. Two Schools, Two Missions
18. Sader’s Secret History
19. Two Days Left
20. One Step Ahead
21. Red Light
22. Last One In
23. Death in the Forest
24. Villains Unmasked
About the Author
Also by Soman Chainani
Copyright
About the Publisher
IN THE FOREST PRIMEVAL
A SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL
TWO TOWERS LIKE TWIN HEADS
ONE FOR THE PURE
ONE FOR THE WICKED
TRY TO ESCAPE YOU’LL ALWAYS FAIL
THE ONLY WAY OUT IS
THROUGH A FAIRY TALE
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There is an uneasiness that remains after your best friend tries to kill you.
But as Agatha gazed out at her and Sophie’s golden statues, towering over the sun-speckled square, she swallowed it away.
“I don’t know why it has to be a musical,” she said, sneezing from the carnations on her pink dress.
“No sweating in your costumes!” Sophie barked at a boy struggling in a ferocious plaster dog head, while the girl roped to him stumbled around in her own cuddly dog head. Sophie caught two boys labeled Chaddick and Ravan trying to swap outfits. “No switching schools either!”
“But I want to be an Ever!” Ravan groused, and pulled at his dumpy black tunic.
“My wig itches,” mewled Beatrix, clawing her blond hairpiece.
“Mummy won’t know it’s me,” whined a boy in the School Master’s shiny silver mask.
“AND NO SULKING ABOUT PARTS!” Sophie boomed, branding Dot on the blacksmith’s daughter before stuffing two chocolate ice pops in her hands. “You need to gain twenty pounds by next week.”
“You said it’d be small,” Agatha said, eyeing a boy teetering on a ladder as he painted two familiar green eyes on the massive theater marquee. “Something tasteful for the anniversary.”
“Is every boy in this town a tenor?” Sophie squawked, inspecting the males with these very same eyes. “Surely someone’s voice has changed? Surely someone can play Tedros, the most handsome, charming prince in the—”
She turned to find red-haired, bucktoothed Radley in tight breeches, puffing his chest. Sophie gagged and stamped him Hort.
“This doesn’t seem small,” Agatha said, louder, watching two girls pull the canvas off a ticket booth with twenty neon Sophie faces silk-screened across it. “And it doesn’t seem tastef—”
“Lights!” Sophie called to two boys suspended from ropes—
Agatha spun from the blinding detonation. Through fingers, she peeked up at the velvet curtain behind them, embedded with a thousand white-hot bulbs spelling out:
CURSES! The Musical
Starring, Written, Directed, and Produced by Sophie
“Is this too dull for the finale?” Sophie said, whirling to Agatha in a midnight-blue ballgown with delicate gold leaves, a ruby pendant around her neck, and a tiara of blue orchids. “That reminds me. Can you sing harmony?”
Agatha swelled like a tick. “Have you lost your mind! You said it’d be a tribute to the kidnapped children, not some fairground burlesque! I can’t act, I can’t sing, and here we are having a dress rehearsal for a vanity show that doesn’t even have a scrip— What is THAT?”
She pointed at the sash of red crystals across Sophie’s dress.
Sophie stared at her. “You don’t expect me to tell our story as it happened, do you?”
Agatha scowled.
“Oh, Agatha, if we don’t celebrate ourselves, who else will?” Sophie moaned, looking out at the giant amphitheater. “We’re the Gavaldon Curse Breakers! The School Master Slayers! Larger than life! Greater than legend! So where’s our palace? Where’s our slaves? On the anniversary of our kidnapping from this odious town, they should adore us! They should worship us! They should bow down instead of trolling around with fat, badly dressed widows!”
Her voice thundered across empty wooden seats. She turned to find her friend studying her.
“The Elders gave him permission, didn’t they,” said Agatha.
Sophie’s face darkened. She spun quickly and started handing sheet music to the cast.
“When is it?” Agatha asked.
Sophie didn’t answer.
“Sophie, when is it?”
“The day after the show,” Sophie said, sprucing the garlands on a giant altar set piece. “But that might change once they see the encore.”
“Why? What’s in the encore?”
“I’m fine about it, Aggie. I’ve made my peace.”
“Sophie. What’s in the encore.”
“He’s a grown man. Free to make his own decisions.”
“And this show has nothing to do with trying to stop your father’s wedding.”
Sophie twirled. “Why would you ever think that?”
Agatha glared at the fat, homeless hag, slouched in a veil under the altar, stamped Honora.
Sophie shoved Agatha music. “If I were you, I’d be learning how to sing.”
When they returned from the Woods nine months before, the hubbub had been frightening. For two hundred years, the School Master had kidnapped children from Gavaldon to his School for Good and Evil. But after so many children lost forever, so many families torn apart, two girls had found their way back. People wanted to kiss them, touch them, build statues for them, as if they were gods fallen to earth. To satisfy demand, the Council of Elders suggested they hold supervised autograph signings in the church after Sunday services. The questions never changed: “Did they torture you?” “Are you sure the curse is broken?” “Did you see my son?”
Sophie offered to endure these on her own, but to her surprise, Agatha always showed. Indeed, in those first months, Agatha did daily interviews for the town scroll, let Sophie dress her up and slather her with makeup, and politely endured the young children her friend loathed.
“Totems of disease,” Sophie grumbled, dabbing her nostrils with eucalyptus before signing another storybook. She noticed Agatha smile at a boy as she autographed his copy of King Arthur.
“Since when do you like children?” Sophie growled.
“Since they beg to see Mother when they’re sick now,” said Agatha, flashing lipstick stains on her teeth. “Never had so many patients in her life.”
But by summer, the crowd had thinned. It was Sophie’s idea to do posters.
Agatha gaped at the sign on the church door. “Free kiss?”
“On their storybooks,” Sophie said, puckering garishly red lips into a pocket mirror.
“That’s not what it sounds like,” said Agatha, pulling at the clingy green dress Sophie had loaned her. Pink had noticeably disappeared from her friend’s closet after they returned, presumably because it reminded her of her time as a bald, toothless witch.
“Look, we’re old news,” Agatha said, yanking at the dress’s straps again. “Time to go back to normal like everyone else.”
“Maybe it should just be me this week.” Sophie’s eyes flicked up from the mirror. “Perhaps they sense your lack of enthusiasm.”
But no one except smelly Radley showed that Sunday or the next week, when Sophie’s posters hawked an “intimate gift” with every autograph, or the next, when she promised a “private dinner” too. By the fall, the Missing signs in the square had come down, the children had shoved their storybooks in closets, and Mr. Deauville put a Last Days sign in his shop window, for no new fairy tales had come from the Woods for him to sell. Now the girls were just two more fossils of the curse. Even Sophie’s father had stopped treading gently. On Halloween, he told his daughter he had received the Elders’ permission to marry Honora. He never asked for Sophie’s.
As she hurried from rehearsal through a hard, ugly rain, Sophie glowered at her once-shining statue, spotted and runny with bird droppings. She had worked so hard for it. A week of snail-egg facials and cucumber-juice fasts so the sculptor would get her just right. And now here it was, a toilet for pigeons.
She glanced back at her painted face beaming from the distant theater marquee and gritted her teeth. The show would remind her father who came first. The show would remind them all.
As she splashed out of the square toward soddy cottage lanes, trails of smoke wafted from chimneys, and Sophie knew what each family was having for dinner: breaded pork with mushroom gravy in Wilhelm’s house, beef and potato cream soup in Belle’s, bacon lentils and pickled yams in Sabrina’s … The food her father loved and never could have.
Good. Let him starve, for all she cared. As she walked up the lane to her own house, Sophie inhaled for the smell of a cold, empty kitchen, a smell that reminded her father of what he’d lost.
Only now the kitchen didn’t smell empty at all. Sophie inhaled again, a smell of meat and milk, and felt herself running to the door. She threw it open—
Honora hacked into raw pork ribs. “Sophie,” she panted, wiping plump hands. “I had to close at Bartleby’s—I could use some help—”
Sophie stared through her. “Where’s my father?”
Honora tried to fix her bushy, flour-crusted hair. “Um, putting up the tent with the boys. He thought it might be nice if we all have dinner toget—”
“Tent?” Sophie charged for the back door. “Now?”
She barreled into the garden. In gusty rain, the widow’s two boys each manned a roped-down stake while Stefan tried to loop the billowing white tent around a third. But just as Stefan succeeded, the tent ripped away, burying him and the two boys beneath it. Sophie could hear them giggling before her father poked his head from under the canvas. “Just what we need. A fourth!”
“Why are you putting up the tent?” Sophie said, ice-cold. “The wedding is next week.”
Stefan stood tall and cleared his throat. “It’s tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Sophie went white. “This tomorrow? The one after today?”
“Honora said we should do it before your show,” Stefan said, running a hand through a newly grown beard. “We don’t want to distract from it.”
Sophie felt sick. “But … how can—”
“Don’t worry about us. We announced the date change at church, and Jacob and Adam here will have the tent up in no time. How was rehearsal?” He hugged the six-year-old to his brawny flank. “Jacob said he could see the lights from our porch.”
“Me too!” said eight-year-old Adam, hugging his other side.
Stefan kissed their heads. “Who’d have thought I’d have two little princes?” he whispered.
Sophie watched her father, heart in her throat.
“So come on, tell us what’s in your show,” Stefan said, smiling up at her.
But Sophie suddenly didn’t care about her show at all.
Dinner was a handsome roast, with perfectly cooked broccoli, cucumber salad, and a flourless blueberry tart, but she didn’t touch any of it. She sat rigid, glaring at Honora across the cramped table as forks speared and clinked.
“Eat,” Stefan prodded her.
Next to him, Honora rubbed her neck wattle, avoiding Sophie’s stare. “If she doesn’t like it—”
“You made what she likes,” Stefan said, eyes on Sophie. “Eat.”
Sophie didn’t. Clinks petered to silence.
“Can I have her pork?” Adam said.
“You and my mother were friends, weren’t you?” Sophie said to Honora.
The widow choked on her meat. Stefan scowled at Sophie and opened his mouth to retort, but Honora grabbed his wrist. She dabbed at dry lips with a dirty napkin.
“Best friends,” she rasped with a smile, and swallowed again. “For a very long time.”
Sophie froze over. “I wonder what came between you.”
Honora’s smile vanished and she peered down at her plate. Sophie’s eyes stayed locked on her.
Stefan’s fork clanked against the table. “Why don’t you help Honora in the shop after school?”
Sophie waited for Adam to answer him—then saw her father still looking at her.
“Me?” Sophie blanched. “Help … her?”
“Bartleby said my wife could use an extra hand,” Stefan pushed.
Wife. That’s all Sophie heard. Not thief. Not tramp. Wife.
“After the wedding and the show is over,” he added. “Get you settled into normal life.”
Sophie spun to Honora, expecting her to be as shocked, but she was just anxiously slurping cucumbers through dry lips.
“Father, you want me to—to—” Sophie couldn’t get words out. “Churn b-b-butter?”
“Build some strength in those stick arms,” her father said between bites, as Jacob and Adam compared biceps.
“But I’m famous!” Sophie shrieked. “I have fans—I have a statue! I can’t work! Not with her!”
“Then perhaps you should find somewhere else to live.” Stefan picked a bone clean. “As long as you’re in this family, you’ll contribute. Or the boys would be happy to have your room.”
Sophie gasped.
“Now eat,” he spat, so sharply she had to obey.
As he watched Agatha slip on her old, saggy black dress, Reaper growled suspiciously, sucking on a few trout bones across the leaky room.
“See? Same old Agatha.” She slammed the trunk on Sophie’s borrowed clothes, slid it near the door, and kneeled to pet her bald, wrinkled cat. “So now you can be nice again.”
Reaper hissed.
“It’s me,” Agatha said, trying to pet him. “I haven’t changed a bit.”
Reaper scratched her and trundled away.
Agatha rubbed the fresh mark on her hand between others barely healed. She flopped onto her bed while Reaper curled up in a moldy green corner, as far away from her as he could.
She rolled over and hugged her pillow.
I’m happy.
She listened to rain slosh against the straw roof and spurt through a hole into her mother’s black cauldron.
Home sweet home.
Clink, clink, clink went the rain.
Sophie and me.
She stared at the blank, cracked wall. Clink, clink, clink … Like a sword in a sheath, rubbing against a belt buckle. Clink, clink, clink. Her chest started pounding, her blood burning like lava, and she knew it was happening again. Clink, clink, clink. The black of the cauldron became the black of his boots. The straw of the ceiling, the gold of his hair. The sky through the window, the blue in his eyes. In her arms, the pillow became tanned muscles and flesh—
“Some help, dear!” a voice trilled.
Agatha jolted awake, gripping her sweat-stained pillow. She lurched off the bed and opened the door to see her mother lugging two baskets, one teeming with stinky roots and leaves, the other with dead tadpoles, cockroaches, and lizards.
“What in the world—”
“So you can finally teach me some potions from school!” Callis chimed, eyes bulging, and plunked a basket in Agatha’s hands. “Not as many patients today. We have time to brew!”
“I told you I can’t do magic anymore,” Agatha snapped, closing the door behind them. “Our fingers don’t glow here.”
“Why won’t you tell me anything that happened?” her mother asked, picking her oily dome of black hair. “The least you could do is show me a wart potion.”
“Look, I put it all behind me.”
“Lizards are better fresh, dear. What can we make with those?”
“I forgot all that stuff—”
“They’ll go bad—”
“Stop!”
Her mother stiffened.
“Please,” Agatha begged. “I don’t want to talk about school.”
Gently Callis took the basket from her. “When you came home, I’d never been so happy.” She looked into her daughter’s eyes. “But part of me worries what you gave up.”
Agatha stared down at her black clump shoes as her mother towed the baskets into the kitchen. “You know how I feel about waste,” Callis sighed. “Let’s hope our bowels can handle a lizard stew.”
As Agatha chopped onions by torchlight, she listened to her mother hum off-key, like she did every night. Once upon a time, she had loved their graveyard haven, their lonely routines.
She put down the knife. “Mother, how do you know if you’ve found Ever After?”
“Hmmm?” said Callis, bony hands scraping a few roaches into the cauldron.
“The people in a fairy tale, I mean.”
“It should say so, dear.” Her mother nodded at an open storybook peeking from under Agatha’s bed.
Agatha looked down at its last page, a blond prince and raven-haired princess kissing at their wedding, framed by an enchanted castle …
THE END.
“But what if two people can’t see their storybook?” She gazed at the princess in her prince’s arms. “How do they know if they’re happy?”
“If they have to ask, they probably aren’t,” said her mother, jabbing a roach that wouldn’t drown.
Agatha’s eyes stayed on the prince a moment longer. She snapped the storybook shut and tossed it in the fire under the cauldron. “About time we got rid of these like everyone else.”
She resumed chopping in the corner, faster than before.
“Are you all right, dear?” Callis said, hearing sniffles.
Agatha dabbed at her eyes. “Onions.”
The rain had gone, but a harsh autumn wind raked across the cemetery, lit by two torches over the gates that clung to skipping flames. As she approached the grave, her calves locked and her heart banged in her ears, begging her to stay away. Sweat seeped down her back as she kneeled in the weeds and mud, her eyes closed. She had never looked. Never.
With a deep breath, Sophie opened her eyes. She could barely make out an eroded butterfly in the headstone above the words.
Two smaller gravestones, both unmarked, flanked her mother’s like wings. Fingers covered by white mittens, she picked moss out of the cracks in one, overgrown from the years of neglect. As she tore away the mold, her soiled mittens found deeper grooves in the rock, smooth and deliberate. There was something carved in the slab. She peered closer—
“Sophie?”
She turned to see Agatha approach in a tattered black coat, balancing a drippy candle on a saucer.
“My mother saw you from the window.”
Agatha crouched next to her and laid the flame in front of the graves. Sophie didn’t say anything for a long while.
“He thought it was her fault,” she said at last, gazing at the two unmarked headstones. “Two boys, both born dead. How else could he explain it?” She watched a blue butterfly flutter out of the darkness and nestle into the carving on her mother’s decayed gravestone.
“All the doctors said she couldn’t have more children. Even your mother.” Sophie paused and smiled faintly at the blue butterfly. “One day it happened. She was so sick no one thought it could last, but her belly still grew. The Miracle Child, the Elders called it. Father said he’d name him Filip.”
Sophie turned to Agatha. “Only you can’t call a girl Filip.”
Sophie paused, cheekbones hardening. “She loved me, no matter how weak I had left her. No matter how many times she watched him walk to her friend’s house and disappear inside.” Sophie fought the tears as long as she could. “Her friend, Agatha. Her best friend. How could he?” She cried bitterly into her dirty mittens.
Agatha looked down and didn’t say a word.
“I watched her die, Aggie. Broken and betrayed.” Sophie turned from the grave, red faced. “Now he’ll have everything he wanted.”
“You can’t stop him,” Agatha said, touching her.
Sophie recoiled. “And let him get away with it?”
“What choice do you have?”
“You think that wedding will happen?” Sophie spat. “Watch.”
“Sophie …”
“He should be the one dead!” Sophie flushed with blood. “Him and his little princes! Then I’d be happy in this prison!”
Her face was so horrible that Agatha froze. For the first time since they returned, she glimpsed the deadly witch inside her friend, yearning to unleash.
Sophie saw the fear in Agatha’s eyes. “I’m s-s-s-sorry—” she stammered, turning away. “I—I don’t know what happened—” Her face melted to shame. The witch was gone.
“I miss her, Aggie,” Sophie whispered, trembling. “I know we have our happy ending. But I still miss my mother.”
Agatha hesitated, then touched her friend’s shoulder. Sophie gave in to her, and Agatha held her as she sobbed. “I wish I could see her again,” Sophie wept. “I’d do anything. Anything.”
The crooked tower clock tolled ten times down the hill, but loud, doleful creaks thickened between each one. In each other’s arms, the two girls watched the hunched silhouette of old Mr. Deauville as he wheeled a cart past the clock with the last of his closed-down shop. Every few paces he stopped, laboring under the weight of his forgotten storybooks, until his shadow disappeared around the corner and the creaks faded away.
“I just don’t want to end like her, alone and … forgotten,” Sophie breathed.
She turned to Agatha, trying to smile. “But my mother didn’t have a friend like you, did she? You gave up a prince, just for us to be together. To think I could make someone happy like that …” Her eyes misted. “I don’t deserve you, Agatha. I really don’t. After all I’ve done.”
Agatha was still quiet.
“Someone Good would let this marriage happen, wouldn’t they?” Sophie pressed her softly. “Someone as Good as you.”
“It’s late,” Agatha said, standing up. She held out her hand.
Sophie took it limply. “And I still have to find a dress for the wedding.”
Agatha managed a smile. “See? Good after all.”
“Least I can do is look better than the bride,” Sophie said, swishing ahead.
Agatha snorted and grabbed the torch off the gate. “Wait. I’ll walk you home.”
“How lovely,” Sophie said, not stopping. “I can smell more of that onion soup you had for dinner.”
“Lizard and onion soup, actually.”
“I really don’t know how we’re friends.”
Through the groaning gate, the two slipped side by side, torches lighting up their long shadows across overgrown weeds. As they waded down the emerald hill and out of sight, a gust flew back through the cemetery, igniting a flame on a candle dripping onto its mud-stained saucer. The flame grew over a blue butterfly settled curiously on a grave, then stoked brighter, long enough to illuminate the carvings on the two unmarked graves beside it. A swan on each. One white.
The other black.
With a roar, the wind lashed between them and blew the candle out.
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Blood. It smelled blood.
Eat.
Smashing through trees, the Beast hunted their scent, grunting and slobbering on all fours. Claws and feet pounded the dirt, faster, faster, shredding vines and branches, bounding over rocks, until at last it could hear their breaths and see the trail of red. One of them was hurt.
Eat.
Through a long, dark, hollow trunk it slunk, licking up the blood, smelling their terror. The Beast took its time, for they had nowhere to go, and soon it heard their whimpers. Bit by bit they came into view, silhouetted in moonlight, trapped between the end of the log and a thick patch of briars. The older boy, wounded and pale, clutched the younger to his chest.
The Beast swept them both up and held the boys as they cried. Snuggled in briars, the Beast rocked them gently until the boys stopped weeping and knew the Beast was Good. Soon the boys breathed heavier against the Beast’s black breast, nestling deeper into its arms, hugging them tighter … harder … bonier … until the boys gasped awake …
And saw Sophie’s bloody smile.
Sophie flung up from bed and knocked into her bedside candle, splattering lavender wax all over the wall. She whirled to the mirror and saw herself bald, toothless, pockmarked with warts—
“Help—” she choked, closing her eyes—
She opened them and the witch was no longer there. Her beautiful face stared back at her.
Panicked, Sophie checked her shivering white skin for warts, wiping away the cold film of sweat.
I’m Good, she calmed herself when she found none.
But her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, her mind racing, unable to shake that Beast, the Beast she’d killed in a world far away, the Beast that still haunted her dreams. She thought of her rage in the graveyard … Agatha’s petrified face …
You’ll never be Good, the School Master had warned.
Sophie’s mouth went dry. She’d smile at the wedding. She’d work at Bartleby’s. She’d eat the widow’s meat and buy toys for her sons. She’d be happy here. Just like Agatha.
Anything to not be a witch again.
“I’m Good,” she repeated into silence.
The School Master had to be wrong. She’d saved Agatha’s life, and Agatha had saved hers.
They were home together. The riddle solved. The School Master dead.
The storybook closed.
Definitely Good, Sophie assured herself, snuggling back into her pillow.
But she could still taste blood.
The fog and winds of the night cleared to a blinding sun, so strong for November that the day seemed blessed for love. Every wedding in Gavaldon was a public occasion, but on this Friday, the shops were all closed and the square deserted, for Stefan was a popular man. Under a white garden tent behind his house, the entire town mingled over cherry punch and plum wine, as three fiddlers strummed in the corner, exhausted from playing a funeral the night before.
Agatha wasn’t sure if her dumpy black smock was appropriate attire for a wedding, but it suited her mood. She’d woken up miserable and couldn’t put a finger on why. Sophie needs me to be happy, she told herself as she tromped down the hill, but by the time she joined the crowd in the garden, her frown was a scowl. She needed to snap out of it or she’d make Sophie even more depressed …
A flash of pink surged through the crowd and bear hugged her into a poofy, ruffled gown.
“Thank you for being here on our special day,” Sophie cooed.
Agatha coughed.
“I’m so happy for them, aren’t you?” Sophie mooned, dabbing nonexistent tears. “It’ll be such a thrill. Having a new mother, two brothers, and going to the shop each morning to churn”—she gulped—“butter.”
Agatha gaped at Sophie, back in her favorite dress. “You’re pink … again.”
“Like my loving, Good heart,” her friend breathed, stroking pink-ribboned braids.
Agatha blinked. “Did they put toadstools in the punch?”
“Sophie!”
Both girls turned and saw Jacob, Adam, and Stefan trying to fix crooked blue tulip garlands over the altar at the front of the tent. Standing on pumpkins to reach, the boys beckoned her with waves.
“Sweet little munchkins, aren’t they?” Sophie smiled. “I could just eat them both u—”
Agatha saw her friend’s green eyes chill with fear. Then it was gone, and the only traces left were the bruised circles beneath them. Nightmare scars. She’d seen them on Sophie before.
“Sophie, it’s me,” Agatha said quietly. “You don’t have to pretend.”
Sophie shook her head. “You and me, Aggie. That’s all I need to be Good,” she said, voice shaky. She clasped Agatha’s arm and looked deep into her friend’s dark eyes. “As long as we keep the witch inside me dead. Everything else I can bear if I try.” She gripped Agatha tighter and turned to the altar. “I’m coming, boys!” she shouted, and with a strained smile, swept off to help her new family.
Instead of feeling touched, Agatha felt even more miserable. What’s wrong with me?
Her mother came up beside her and handed her a glass of punch, which she downed in one gulp.
“Added a few glowworms,” Callis said. “Brighten that sour face.”
Agatha spat a spray of red.
“Really, dear. I know weddings are putrid things, but try not to look hostile.” Her mother nodded ahead. “The Elders already despise us. Don’t give them more reason.”
Agatha glanced at three wizened, bearded men in black top hats and knee-length gray cloaks, milling between seats and shaking hands. The length of their beards appeared to indicate their relative ages, with the Eldest’s funneling down past his chest.
“Why do they have to approve every marriage?” Agatha asked.
“Because when the kidnappings kept happening, the Elders blamed women like me,” her mother said, picking dandruff from her hair. “Back then, if you weren’t married by the time you finished school, people thought you were a witch. So the Elders forced marriages for all those unwed.” She managed a wry smile. “But even force couldn’t make a man wed me.”
Agatha remembered when no boy at school wanted her for the Ball either. Until …
Suddenly she felt even grimmer.
“When the kidnappings continued, the Elders softened their stance and ‘approved’ marriages instead. But I still remember their terrible arrangements,” said her mother, digging nails into her scalp. “Stefan suffered worst of all.”
“Why? What happened to him?”
Callis’ hand dropped, as if she’d forgotten her daughter was listening. “Nothing, dear. Nothing that matters anymore.”
“But you said—” Agatha heard her name called and spun to see Sophie waving her into a front-row seat.
“Aggie, we’re starting!”
Side by side in the first pew, a few feet from the altar, Agatha kept waiting for Sophie to crack. But her friend clung to her smile, even as her father joined the priest at the altar, the fiddlers began the procession, and Jacob and Adam strewed roses down the aisle in matching white suits. After months of fighting her father, fighting for attention, fighting real life … Sophie had changed.
You and me, Aggie.
All Agatha had ever wanted was to be enough for Sophie. For Sophie to need her as much as she needed Sophie. And now, at last, she’d won her happy ending.
But in her seat, Agatha didn’t feel happy at all. Something was bothering her about this wedding. Something worming through her heart. Before she could pinpoint it, the fiddlers slowed their tune, everyone under the tent stood, and Honora waddled down the aisle. Agatha watched Sophie carefully, expecting her friend to finally betray herself, but Sophie didn’t flinch, even as she took in her new stepmother’s bulbous hairdo, pudgy behind, and dress smudged with what looked like cake frosting.
“Dearest friends and family,” the priest began, “we are gathered here to witness the union of these two souls …”
Stefan took Honora’s hand, and Agatha felt even more dismal. Her back hunched, her lips pouted—
Across the aisle, her mother was glaring at her. Agatha sat up and faked a smile.
“In love, happiness comes from honesty, from committing to the one that we need,” the priest continued.
Agatha felt Sophie gently take her hand, as if they both had everything they needed right here.
“May you grow a love that fulfills you, a love that lasts Ever After …”
Agatha’s palm started to sweat.
“Because you chose this love. You chose this ending to your story.”
Her hand was dripping now, but Sophie didn’t let go.
“And now this ending is yours eternally.”
Agatha’s heart jackhammered. Her skin burned up.
“And if no one has any objections, then this union is sealed forever—”
Agatha pitched forward, sick to her stomach—
“I now pronounce you—”
Then she saw it.
“Man and—”
Her finger was glowing brilliant gold.
She let out a cry of shock. Sophie turned in surprise—
Something flew between them, throwing them both to the ground. Agatha wheeled to feel another arrow graze her throat before she lunged away. She could hear children crying, chairs falling, feet stumbling as the mob stampeded for cover, dozens of golden arrows whizzing past, gouging holes in the tent. Agatha spun for Sophie, but the tent tore off its stakes, toppled over the shrieking crowd, and swallowed her, until she couldn’t see anything but muffled shadows flailing behind the canvas. Breathless, Agatha crawled on all fours over a shattered altar, hands clawing through mud and trampled garlands as arrows landed ahead with shearing rips. Who was doing this? Who would destroy a weddin—
Agatha froze. Now her finger was shining even brighter than before.
It can’t be.
She heard a girl’s screams ahead. Screams she knew. Sweating, shivering, Agatha skimmed under overturned chairs, shoving the last fringe of tent off her, until she felt a blast of sunlight and scraped into the front garden, expecting carnage—
But people were just standing there, silent, still, watching the skyfall of arrows from every direction.
Arrows from the Woods.
Agatha shielded herself in horror, then realized the arrows weren’t aimed at her. They weren’t aimed at any of the villagers. No matter where they came from out of the Woods, their shafts curved at the last second, tearing toward one and only one target.
“Eeeeeyiiiiii!”
Sophie ran around her house, ducking and batting arrows away with her glass heels.
“Agatha! Agatha, help!”
But there was no time, for a shaft almost sliced off her head, and Sophie ran down a hill, fast as she could, arrows following her all the way.
“Who would want me dead?” Sophie wailed to stained glass martyrs and statues of saints.
Agatha sat beside her in the empty pews. It had been two weeks since Sophie started hiding in the church, the only place where the arrows didn’t pursue her. Again and again she tried to break out, but the arrows returned with vengeance, slashing from the Woods, followed by spears, axes, daggers, and darts. By the third day, it was clear there would be no escape. Whoever wanted to kill her would wait as long as it took.
At first Sophie saw no reason to panic. The townspeople brought her food (taking heed of her “fatal allergies” to wheat, sugar, dairy, and red meat), Agatha brought her the herbs and roots she needed to make her creams, and Stefan brought assurances he wouldn’t rewed until his daughter was brought home safe. With the townsmen uselessly combing the forest for the assassins, the town scroll branded Sophie “the Brave Little Princess” for taking the burden of yet another curse, while the Elders ordered her statue be given a fresh coat of paint. Soon children clamored once more for autographs, the village anthem was amended to “Blessed Is Our Sophie,” and townsmen took turns keeping watch over the church. There was even talk of a permanent one-woman show in the theater once she was out of danger.
“La Reine Sophie, an epic three-hour celebration of my achievements,” Sophie raptured, smelling the sympathy bouquets that filled the aisle. “A bit of cabaret to stir the blood, a circus intermezzo with wild lions and trapeze, and a rousing rendition of ‘I Am but a Simple Woman’ to close. Oh, Agatha, how I’ve longed to find my place in this stagnant, monotonous town! All I needed was a part big enough to hold me!” Suddenly she looked worried. “You don’t think they’ll stop trying to kill me, do you? This is the best thing that’s ever happened!”
But then the attacks got worse.
The first night, firebombs launched from the Woods and annihilated Belle’s house, leaving her whole family homeless. On the second night, boiling oil flooded from the trees, immolating an entire cottage lane. In smoldering ruins, the assassins left the same message, burnt into the ground.
By the next morning, when the Elders took to the square to calm rioting villagers, Stefan had already made it to the church.
“It’s the only way the Elders and I can protect you,” he told his daughter, bearing a hammer and padlocks.
Agatha wouldn’t leave, so he locked her in too.
“I thought our story was over!” Sophie cried, listening to a mob of villagers outside chanting, “Send her back! Send her back!” She slumped in her seat. “Why don’t they want you? Why am I always the villain? And why am I always locked in?”
Next to her, Agatha gazed at a marble saint in a frieze above the altar, lunging for an angel. He stretched his strong arm, torqued his chest, as if he’d follow the angel wherever it went …
“Aggie?”
Agatha broke from her trance and turned. “You do have a way of making enemies.”
“I tried to be Good!” Sophie said. “I tried to be just like you!”
Agatha felt that sick feeling again. The one she’d been trying to keep down.
“Aggie, do something!” Sophie grabbed her arm. “You always fix things!”
“Maybe I’m not as Good as you think,” Agatha murmured, and pulled away, pretending to polish her clump. In the silence, she could feel Sophie watching her.
“Aggie.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did your finger glow?”
Agatha’s muscles clenched. “What?”
“I saw it,” said Sophie softly. “At the wedding.”
Agatha threw her a glance. “Probably a trick of light. Magic doesn’t work here.”
“Right.”
Agatha held her breath. She could feel Sophie thinking.
“But the teachers never relocked our fingers, did they?” her friend said. “And magic follows emotion. That’s what they told us.”
Agatha shifted. “So?”
“You didn’t look happy at the wedding,” Sophie said. “Are you sure something didn’t make you upset? Upset enough to do magic?”
Agatha met her eyes. Sophie searched her face, seeing right through her.
“I know you, Agatha.”
Agatha gripped the pew.
“I know why you were sad.”
“Sophie, I didn’t mean it!” Agatha blurted—
“You were upset with my father,” said Sophie. “For all he put me through.”
Agatha goggled at her. She recovered and nodded. “Right. Uh-huh. You got me.”
“At first I thought you’d done the spell to stop his wedding. But that doesn’t make any sense now, does it?” Sophie said with a snort. “That would mean you sent the arrows for me.”
Agatha croaked a laugh, trying not to look at her.
“Just a trick of light,” Sophie sighed. “Like you said.”
They sat in silence and listened to the chants.
“Don’t worry about my father. He and I’ll be fine,” Sophie said. “The witch won’t come back, Aggie. Not as long as we’re friends.”
Her voice was more naked than Agatha had ever heard it. Agatha looked up, surprised.
“You make me happy, Agatha,” said Sophie. “It just took me too long to see it.”
Agatha tried to hold her gaze, but all she could see was the saint above the altar, hand lunging towards her, like a prince reaching for his princess.
“You’ll see. We’ll come up with a plan, like always,” Sophie said, reapplying pink lipstick between yawns. “But maybe a little beauty nap first …”
As she curled up on the pew like a cat, pillow to her stomach, Agatha saw it was her friend’s favorite, stitched with a blond princess and her prince, embraced beneath the words “Ever After.” But Sophie had revised the prince with her sewing kit. Now he had boxy dark hair, goonish bug eyes … and a black dress.
Agatha watched her best friend fall into sleep a few breaths later, free from nightmares for the first time in weeks.
As the chants outside the church grew louder—“Send her back! Send her back!”—Agatha stared at Sophie’s pillow, and her stomach wrenched with that sick feeling.
The same feeling she felt looking at the storybook prince in her kitchen. The same feeling she felt watching a man and wife exchange vows. The same feeling she felt as she held Sophie’s hand, growing stronger, stronger, until her finger had glowed with a secret. A secret so terrible, so unforgivable, that she’d ruined a fairy tale.
For in that single moment, watching the wedding she’d never have, Agatha had wished for something she never thought possible.
She wished for a different ending to her story.
An ending with someone else.
That’s when the arrows came for Sophie.
The arrows that wouldn’t stop, no matter how much she tried to take her wish back.
(#u5f6a2e56-a64a-55a5-8a69-b1badc632dc8)
That night they flattened Radley’s house first, with a boulder lobbed over the trees, then the crooked clock tower, which tolled broken moans as screaming villagers fled through the square. Soon whole lanes went up in splinters as parents clung to their children in wells and ditches, watching rocks fly across the moon like meteors. When the blitz ended at four in the morning, only half the town remained. The trembling villagers looked out at the theater, illuminated in the distance, the lights on its red curtain rearranged:
SOPHIE OR DIE.
While Sophie slept calmly through all this, Agatha sat trapped in the church, listening to the screams and thumps. Give them Sophie, and her best friend would die. Don’t give them Sophie, and her whole town would die. Shame burnt her throat. Somehow she’d reopened the gates between the worlds. But to who? Who wanted Sophie dead?
There had to be a way to fix this. If she’d reopened the gates, surely she could close them!
First she tried to make her finger glow again, focusing on her anger until her cheeks puffed—anger at the assassins, anger at herself, anger at her stupid, unlit finger that looked even paler than before. Then she tried doing spells anyway to repel the raiders, which went about as well as expected. She tried praying to stained glass saints, wishing on a star, rubbing every lamp in the church for a genie, and when it all failed miserably, she pried Sophie’s pink lipstick from her fist and scratched “TAKE ME INSTEAD” on the dawn-lit window. To her surprise, she got an answer.
“NO,” flames spelled across the forest fringe.
For a moment, through trees, Agatha saw a glint of red. Then it was gone.
“WHO ARE YOU?” she wrote.
“GIVE US SOPHIE,” the flames answered.
“SHOW YOURSELF,” she demanded.
“GIVE US SOPHIE.”
“YOU CAN’T HAVE HER,” Agatha scrawled.
A cannonball smashed through Sophie’s statue in reply.
Sophie stirred behind her, mumbling about the connection between poor sleep and pimples. Banging around in the dark, she lit a candle that streaked the hemlock rafters with bronze glow. Then she did a few bumbling yoga moves, nibbled on an almond, rubbed her face with grapefruit seeds, trout scales, and cacao cream, and twirled to Agatha with a sleepy smile. “Morning, darling, what’s our plan?”
But hunched in the windowsill, Agatha just stared out the broken glass, and then Sophie did too, at the leveled town, the homeless masses picking through rubble, and her severed statue head gaping at her from the church steps. Sophie’s smile slowly vanished.
“There’s no plan, is there?”
CRACK!
The oak doors shivered as a hammer bashed away a padlock.
CRACK! CRACK!
“Assassins!” Sophie cried.
Agatha leapt up in horror. “The church is hallowed ground!”
Boards snapped; screws loosened and clinked to the floor.
The girls backed against the altar. “Hide!” Agatha gasped, and Sophie ran around the lectern like a headless chicken—
Something metal slipped into the door.
“A key!” Agatha squeaked. “They have a key!”
She heard the lock catch. Behind her, Sophie fluttered uselessly between curtains.
“Hide now!” cried Agatha—
The door crashed open, and she spun to the dark threshold. Through weak candlelight, a hunched black shadow slunk into the church.
Agatha’s heart stopped.
No …
The crooked shadow glided down the aisle, flickering in flamelight. Agatha dropped to her knees against the altar. Her heart was rattling so hard she couldn’t breathe.
He’s dead! Ripped to pieces by a white swan and thrown to the wind! His black swan feathers rained over a school far, far away! But now the School Master was creeping towards her, very much alive, and Agatha cowered against the lectern with a shriek—
“The situation has become untenable,” said a voice.
Not the School Master’s.
Agatha peeked through fingers at the Elder with the longest beard, standing over her.
“Sophie must be moved to safety,” said the younger Elder behind him, doffing his black top hat.
“And she must be moved tonight,” said the youngest at the rear, stroking his meager beard.
“Where?” a voice breathed.
The Elders looked up to see Sophie in the marble frieze over the altar, pressed against a naked saint.
“THAT’S where you hid?” barked Agatha.
“Where will you take me?” Sophie asked the Eldest, trying in vain to extricate herself from the nude statue.
“It’s been arranged,” he said, replacing his hat as he walked towards the door. “We’ll return this evening.”
“But the attacks!” Agatha cried. “How will you stop them?”
“Arranged,” said the middle, following the Eldest out.
“Eight o’clock,” said the youngest, trailing behind him. “Only Sophie.”
“How do you know she’ll be safe!” Agatha panicked—
“All arranged,” the Eldest called, and locked the door behind him.
The two girls stood in dumb silence before Sophie let out a squeal.
“See? I told you!” She slid down the frieze and smushed Agatha in a hug. “Nothing can ruin our happy ending.” Humming with relief, she packed her creams and cucumbers in her pretty pink suitcase, for who knew how long it’d be before they’d let her friend visit with more. She glanced back at Agatha’s big dark eyes fixed out the window.
“Don’t fret, Aggie. It’s all arranged.”
But as Agatha watched the villagers sift through ruins, glowering bloodshot at the church, she remembered the last time her mother said the Elders “arranged” things … and hoped this time they’d have better results.
Before sunset, the Elders allowed Stefan to come, who Sophie hadn’t seen since he locked her in. He didn’t look the same. His beard was overgrown, his clothes filthy, his body sallow and malnourished. Two of his teeth were missing, and his left eye socket was bruised blue. With his daughter protected by the Elders, the villagers had clearly expelled their frustrations on him.
Sophie forced a sympathetic look, but her heart twinged with glee. No matter how Good she tried to be, the witch inside still wanted her father to suffer. She looked over at Agatha, chewing on her nails in a corner, pretending not to listen.
“Elders said it won’t be long,” Stefan said. “Once those cowards in the forest realize you’ve been hidden, sooner or later they’ll come looking. And I’ll be ready.” He scratched at his blackened pores and noticed his daughter wincing. “I know I’m a sight.”
“What you need is a good honeycream scrub,” Sophie said, digging through her bag of beauty products until she found its snakeskin pouch. But her father was just staring out at the demolished town, eyes wet.
“Father?”
“The village wants to give you up. But the Elders will do anything to protect you, even with Christmas coming. They’re better men than any of us,” he said softly. “No one in town will sell to me now. How we’re going to survive …” He wiped his eyes.
Sophie had never seen her father cry. “Well it’s not my fault,” she blurted.
Stefan exhaled. “Sophie, all that matters is you get home safe.”
Sophie fiddled with her pouch of honeycream. “Where are you staying?”
“Another reason I’m unpopular,” her father said, rubbing his black eye. “Whoever’s after you blasted the other houses in our lane, but left ours alone. Our food store’s all gone, but Honora still finds a way to feed us every night.”
Sophie gripped the pouch tighter. “Us?”
“Boys moved to your room until all’s safe and we can finish the wedding.”
Sophie spurted him with white gobs. Stefan smelled the honeycream and instantly started scrounging through her bag—“Anything here the boys can eat?”
Agatha could see Sophie about to faint and stepped in. “Stefan, do you know where the Elders will hide her?”
He shook his head. “But they assure me the villagers won’t find her either,” he said, watching Sophie whisk her bag as far across the church from him as she could. Stefan waited until she was out of earshot. “It’s not just the assassins we have to keep her safe from,” he whispered.
“But she can’t last long alone,” Agatha pressed him.
Stefan looked through the window at the woods shutting Gavaldon in, dark and endless in the fading light. “What happened when you were out there, Agatha? Who wants my daughter dead?”
Agatha still had no answer. “Suppose the plan doesn’t work?” she asked.
“We have to trust the Elders,” Stefan said, averting his eyes. “They know what’s best.”
Agatha saw pain cloud his face. “Stefan suffered worst of all.” That’s what her mother had said.
“I’ll fix this somehow,” Agatha said, guilt squeezing her voice. “I’ll keep her safe. I promise.”
Stefan leaned in and took her face into his hands. “And it’s a promise I need you to keep.”
Agatha looked into his scared eyes.
“Oh good grief.”
They turned to see Sophie at the altar, bag clenched to her chest.
“I’ll be home by the weekend,” she frowned. “And my bed better have clean sheets.”
As eight o’clock approached, Sophie sat on the altar table, surrounded by dripping candles, listening to her stomach rumble. She’d let her father take the last of her butterless bran oat crackers for the boys, because Agatha had practically forced her. The boys would gag on them, surely. That made her feel better.
Sophie sighed. The School Master was right. I am Evil.
Yet for all his powers and sorcery, he hadn’t known there was a cure. A friend who made her Good. As long as she had Agatha, she’d never be that ugly, horrible witch again.
When the church darkened, Agatha had resisted leaving her alone, but Stefan forced her. The Elders had been clear—“Only Sophie”—and now was not the time to disobey their orders. Not when they were about to save her life.
Without Agatha there now, Sophie suddenly felt anxious. Was this how Agatha used to feel about her? Sophie had treated her so callously back then, lost in her princess fantasies. Now she couldn’t imagine a future without her. No matter how hard it was, she’d endure the days ahead in hiding—but only because she knew she’d have her friend at the end of it. Her friend who had become her real family.
But then why had Agatha been acting so strange lately?
The past month, Sophie had noticed a growing distance. Agatha didn’t laugh as much on their walks, was often cold to the touch, and seemed preoccupied with her thoughts. For the first time since they met, Sophie had started to feel she had more invested in this friendship.
Then came the wedding. She had pretended not to notice Agatha’s hand, dripping, trembling in hers as if wanting to slip out. As if gripping a terrible secret.
“Maybe I’m not as Good as you think.”
Sophie’s pulse hammered in her ears. Agatha’s finger couldn’t have glowed that day.
Could it?
She thought of her mother, who too had beauty, wit, and charm … who too had a friend she had long trusted … only to be betrayed by her and die broken and alone.
Sophie shook off the thought. Agatha had given up a prince for her. Almost given her life for her. Agatha had found them a happy ending against all odds.
In the cold, dark church, Sophie’s heart skittered out of beat.
So why would she ruin our fairy tale?
Behind her, the church doors creaked open. Sophie turned with relief and saw the shadows waiting in their gray cloaks, black hats in hand.
Only the Eldest was holding something else.
Something sharper.
The problem with living in a graveyard is the dead have no need for light. Besides the flittering torches over the gates, the cemetery was pitch-black at midnight, and anything beyond just an inky shadow. Peering through her window’s broken shutters, Agatha caught the sheen of white tents down the hill, pitched to house those left homeless by the attacks. Somewhere out there, the Elders were about to move Sophie to safety. All she could do was wait.
“I should have hidden near the church,” she said, and licked a fresh scratch from Reaper, who still acted like she was a stranger.
“You can’t disobey the Elders,” said her mother, sitting stiffly on her bed, eyes on a mantel clock with hands made of bones. “They’ve been civil since you stopped the kidnappings. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Oh please,” Agatha scoffed. “What could three old men possibly do to me?”
“What all men do in times of fear.” Callis’ eyes stayed on the clock. “Blame the witch.”
“Mmhmm. Burn us at the stake too,” Agatha snorted, flopping onto her bed.
Tension thickened the silence. She sat up and saw her mother’s strained face, still staring ahead.
“You’re not serious, Mother.”
Sweat beaded on Callis’ lip. “They needed a scapegoat when the kidnappings wouldn’t stop.”
“They burnt women?” Agatha uttered in shock.
“Unless we married. That’s what the storybooks taught them to do.”
“But you never married—” Agatha countered. “How did you survive—”
“Because I had someone stand up for me,” her mother said, watching the bones strike eight. “And he paid the price.”
“My father? You said he was a rotten two-timer who died in a mill accident.”
Callis didn’t answer, gazing ahead.
A chill prickled up Agatha’s spine. She looked at her mother. “What did you mean when you said Stefan suffered worst of all? When the Elders arranged his marriage?”
Callis’ eyes stayed on the clock. “The problem with Stefan is he trusts those he shouldn’t. He always believes people are Good.” The long bone ticked past eight. Her shoulders slumped with relief. “But no one is as Good as they seem, dear,” Callis said softly, turning to her daughter. “Surely you know that.”
For the first time, Agatha saw her mother’s eyes. There were tears in them.
“No—” Agatha gasped, a red rash searing her neck.
“They’ll say it was her choice,” Callis rasped.
“You knew,” Agatha choked, lurching for the door. “You knew they weren’t moving her—”
Her mother intercepted her. “They knew you’d bring her back! They promised to spare you if I kept you here until—”
Agatha shoved her into the wall—her mother lunged for her and missed. “They’ll kill you!” Callis screamed out the window, but darkness had swallowed her daughter up.
Without a torch, Agatha stumbled and tripped down the hill, rolling through cold, wet grass until she barreled into a tent at the bottom. Mumbling frantic apology to a family who thought her a cannonball, she dashed for the church between homeless dozens stewing beetles and lizards over fires, wrapping their children in mangy blankets, bracing for the next attack that would never come. Tomorrow the Elders would mourn Sophie’s valiant “sacrifice,” her statue would be rebuilt, and the villagers would go on to a new Christmas, relieved of another curse …
With a cry, Agatha threw the oak doors open.
The church was empty. Long, deep scratches ripped down the aisle.
Sophie had dragged her glass slippers all the way.
Agatha sank to her knees in mud.
Stefan.
She had promised him. She had promised to keep his daughter safe.
Agatha hunched over, face in her hands. This was her fault. This would always be her fault. She had everything she wanted. She had a friend, she had love, she had Sophie. And she had traded her for a wish. She was Evil. Worse than Evil. She was the one who deserved to die.
“Please … I’ll bring her home …,” she heaved. “Please … I promise … I’ll do anything …”
But there was nothing to do. Sophie was gone. Delivered to invisible killers as a ransom for peace.
“I’m sorry … I didn’t mean it …” Agatha wept, spit dripping. How could she tell a father his daughter was dead? How could either of them live with her broken promise? Her sobs slowly receded, curdling to terror. She didn’t move for a long time.
At last Agatha slumped up in a nauseous daze and staggered east towards Stefan’s house. Every step away from the church made her feel sicker. Limping down the dirt lane, she vaguely felt something sticky and wet on her legs. Without thinking, she wiped a gob off a knee with her finger and smelled it.
Honeycream.
Agatha froze, heart pounding. There was more cream on the ground ahead, spurted in a desperate trail towards the lake. Adrenaline blasted through her blood.
Nibbling his toenails in his tent, Radley heard crackles behind him and turned just in time to see a shadow swipe his dagger and torch.
“Assassin!” he squeaked—
Agatha swung her head back to see men explode out of tents and chase her as she tracked the honeycream like breadcrumbs towards the lake. She ran faster, following the trail, but soon the globs turned smaller and smaller and then sprayed to specks in every direction. As Agatha hesitated, searching for another sign to guide her, the men reached the lake, racing east around the shore towards her. But there were three figures across the lake, hunting her from the west. In their torchlight, she saw the shadows of three long cloaks and beards—
Elders.
They’d kill her.
Agatha spun, waving her torch in front of her, as both sides converged. Sophie,where are you—
“Kill him!” she heard a man’s voice cry from the mob.
Agatha swiveled in shock. She knew his voice.
“Kill the assassin!” the man screamed again as his mob ran towards her.
Panicked, Agatha stuttered forward, swinging the torch at the trees. Something heavy whizzed past her ear, another past her ribs—
Then a sparkle flared ahead and she froze her flame on it.
The empty honeycream pouch lay at the forest edge, snakeskin scales glinting.
A hard, cold blow smashed into her back. Agatha buckled to her knees and saw a jagged rock on the ground beside her. She turned to see more men aiming stones at her head, less than fifty feet away from the east. Rushing in from the west, the Elders held up their torches, about to glimpse her face—
Agatha hurled her torch in the lake, plunging her into pitch darkness.
With confused cries, the men whisked torches wildly to find the assassin. They saw a shadow sprint past them for the trees. Like lions to a kill, they charged in a grunting, vengeful mob, chasing faster, faster, one breaking from the pack, and just as the man who screamed for blood caught the assassin by the neck, the shadow whirled to face him—
Stefan gasped in shock, long enough for Agatha to press her lips to his ear.
“I promise.”
Then she was gone into the labyrinth, like a white rose into a grave.
(#u5f6a2e56-a64a-55a5-8a69-b1badc632dc8)
Agatha heard the men’s shouts recede with the light of their torches. Kneeling against a wet, crumbly tree trunk in darkness, she folded her shivering arms into her black dress.
A few distant hoots and skitters muffled to silence. Agatha didn’t move, her spine throbbing where the rock hit her. All this time she had focused on rescuing her best friend and going back. Back to what? Murderous Elders? More assassin attacks? A village that wanted Sophie gone?
She thought of innocent women burnt publicly in a square, not so long ago, and her stomach turned over. How can we ever go home? Their future in Gavaldon was just as dark as the Woods around her now. To go home, she couldn’t just rescue Sophie. She had to defeat these assassins—whoever they were—and stop their attacks once and for all.
But she had no idea how to even begin looking for her friend. For hundreds of years, the villagers had stormed into the forest, seeking its lost children—only to come out the other side, right where they started. Like all the missing children, she and Sophie had seen what lay beyond the forest: a dangerous world of Good and Evil that had no end. They had been the lucky ones to return, sealing the gates between reality and fantasy forever … or so she’d thought. One wish, and the gates had reopened.
Wherever Sophie was, she was in terrible danger.
Rising from a crouch, Agatha stepped into the Endless Woods, clumps crunching on dead leaves. Inching forward, she probed blindly with her hands, feeling splintered bark, cobwebbed branches … Her head smacked into a tree and a shadow flung out, spewed something wet at her face, and vanished with a hiss. In response came a chorus of grunts and groans, all through the woods, like a sleeping enemy called to arms. Dazed, Agatha scraped the goo off her face and pulled Radley’s dagger from her pocket. Scuffling sounds came from beneath her feet.
Through dead leaves, she saw pupils open and shut in the undergrowth, yellow and green, glinting in one place, reappearing in another. Agatha shrank against the tree, trying not to blink. Little by little, her eyes adjusted, just in time to see eight slinky shadows unfurl from the ground in a circle around her, like coiling trails of smoke.
Snakes.
Only they were thicker than snakes, black as ash, with flattened heads and needle-sharp barbs through every scale. They rose higher, higher around Agatha, angling towards her with long, overlapping hisses, opening their full-fanged jaws wide—
All at once, they spat.
Gobs of mucus pinned Agatha to the tree, and she dropped the dagger. She tried to wrench free, but sour film smacked into her mouth and eyes so all she could see was a ring of blurry, spiny silhouettes. They all aimed at different parts of her body, then curled their trunks around her, barbs piercing into her skin. Flailing silently, Agatha saw a last one, bigger than the rest, lower from a branch and loop its cold, black tail around her neck. As its barbs pricked her throat, she gasped for more breath, but the monster’s head was slithering up her face now. It pressed its fat nose against the film over her cheeks, glaring at her through thin, acid-green pupils … and started to squeeze. Agatha choked and closed her eyes.
She felt no hurt, only her soul searching for a memory … She was sitting on a lakeshore, head on someone’s shoulder. Arm in arm, they held each other, sun drenching their skin, breaths quietly matched. Agatha listened to the silence of happiness, Ever After in a single moment … Then sharp, stabbing pain flooded her body and she knew the end had come. Gripping the arm beside her, Agatha gazed into their lake’s reflection, needing to see her happy ending’s face, one last time—
It wasn’t Sophie’s.
Light speared the darkness. The snakes recoiled with screams and scudded back under dead leaves.
Agatha opened her eyes. Dazed, she looked around for the source of light. Through the veil of goo, she saw it was her fingertip, burning gold for the first time since the wedding. She was at once relieved and sickened. Both times it had happened thinking of him.
Magic follows emotion, Yuba had warned. She’d lost control of both.
This time, however, her finger didn’t dim. Agatha held it up, confused. She focused on her need to get off this tree, and suddenly the glow pulsed brighter, as if waiting for instructions. Agatha’s heart pumped faster. She’d crossed into the fairy-tale world. Her magic was back.
Bursting with pain and stuck to a tree, Agatha was hardly in shape to remember spells from school. But when her breaths settled, she managed a basic melt jinx, and the mucus rinsed away with the blood, leaving her black dress sticky and soaked. Still, she was alive somehow, and with a wretched groan, Agatha picked up Radley’s dagger and pried off the soggy bark.
Finger aglow, she swept it like a torch through knotted trees, searching for a path, like Yuba had taught them. Like all the group leaders at the School for Good and Evil, the old gnome had used the Blue Forest, a lush, tranquil training ground meant to mimic the Endless Woods and prepare students for what they’d face. Agatha squeezed between two rotted tree trunks, trying to ignore the burning cuts all over her body. Now the Blue Forest seemed like the School Master’s cruel joke.
Agatha wrenched between more webbed trees towards a gap in the thicket, hoping it’d be the path. She didn’t dare call Sophie’s name and signal the assassins she was on their trail.
With each step, Agatha felt a growing sense of doom. She’d been in the Endless Woods twice before, but this time it was different. There was no school to save her. There was no Tedros.
Her fingerglow pulsed brighter.
Tedros of Camelot.
Finally she said his name to herself, here, alone in the Woods. The last time she’d seen her prince was in the twilight of her and Sophie’s kiss, a kiss he thought would be his. As he watched her disappear into thin air, he reached for her, choking a scream—“Wait!”
She’d had the choice to take his hand. She’d had the choice to stay as his princess. She felt it as her body glowed to light, trapped between worlds.
But she chose Sophie, and then Agatha was gone.
She was so sure she’d made the right choice. It was the only ending she ever wanted. But the more she tried to forget him, the more her prince came. In dreams, day and night … his pained blue eyes … his body lunging … his big, strong hand, reaching for hers …
Until one day she reached back.
Just find Sophie, she gritted, remembering her promise to Stefan. All she wanted was Sophie home alive—charming, maniacal, ludicrous Sophie. She’d never doubt her happy ending again.
As she waded through a mess of fallen branches towards the gap in the trees, Agatha held up her lit finger and saw it wasn’t a path at all. It was a vast cesspool of mud, rusted red, stretching east and west as far as she could see. She picked up a rock and lobbed it into the pool. The splash wasn’t shallow.
Suddenly Agatha noticed two shadows down the bank, probing at the red mud with dark hooves: a horned stag with his female deer. After a few more testing prods, the stag seemed satisfied, and both slid into the mud side by side, swimming towards the distant bank. Relieved, Agatha rolled up her dress to follow them—
Something snatched the female deer and Agatha stumbled back in shock. Three long, spiny white crocodile snouts rose from the mud, thin and rectangular, with enormous round nostrils and black shark teeth, tearing into the thrashing female. They pulled her under, ignoring the bigger male completely as he flailed whimpering to the far shore.
Agatha didn’t try to cross.
Tears in her eyes, she staggered back the way she came, sweeping her fingerglow across the maze of trees. Where was her friend? What had they done with her? Trying to stifle her sobs, she limped towards the forest edge, seeing nothing but the shadows of skeletal branches … slivers of dark clouds … a hot glow of pink …
She stopped her finger on it, pulsing like a beacon to bad behavior. Anyone else would have mistaken it for an animal’s eye. But Agatha knew.
Only one animal on earth made a pink like that.
She tore through trees, fighting her pain, following the pink glow fading weaker in the distance. As she neared, she began to see smears of blood on trees, like the trail of a wounded beast. She plowed through broken branches and ripped away vines, hair snaring on nettles, until she caught wisps of lavender perfume. Agatha jumped over a log, heart bursting from her chest, and charged into the small glade—
“Sophie!”
Sophie didn’t respond. Facing away, she was slumped on her knees behind a far tree, arms over her head. The second finger on her right hand pulsed her signature pink glow a few last times and dulled to pale.
“Sophie?” Agatha said. Her own gold fingerglow went cold.
Sophie still didn’t move.
Agatha approached the tree, dread rising. She could hear her friend’s shallow breaths. Slowly Agatha reached out and touched bare shoulder through Sophie’s torn dress.
There was blood on it.
Agatha spun her around. Sophie’s hands were lashed to a branch with braided horse reins. There were shallow knife pricks in each of her palms, from which the Elders had taken blood and smeared a scarlet message on Sophie’s chest.
Frantic, Agatha cut Sophie down with her knife, trying in vain to think of a spell to wash away the blood. She scrubbed at her friend’s skin with shaking palms. “I’m sorry—” she choked, severing the last rein. “I’ll get us home—I promise—”
The instant she was free, Sophie covered Agatha’s mouth with ice-cold hands. Agatha followed her wide, bloodshot eyes …
There was something on all the trees ahead, flapping milky white in the darkness. Agatha held up her glowing finger.
Parchment scrolls crackled in the wind like dead leaves, tacked to the trunks. Each one was the same.
The face on the posters was Sophie’s.
“That’s impossible!” Agatha cried. “He’s dea—”
She froze.
Between trees she caught glints of red. Something was coming.
Agatha grabbed Sophie’s wrist and dragged her behind a trunk. Muffling Sophie’s moans with her hand, Agatha slowly peeked out.
Through tangled branches, she saw men in red leather hoods, eyeholes cut away. They carried fire-tipped arrows, which lit up their sleeveless black leather uniforms and bare, muscular arms. She tried to count how many there were—10, 15, 20, 25 … until she counted one whose violet eyes glared right at her. Grinning, he raised his bow.
“Down!” Agatha yelped—
The first arrow singed Sophie’s neck as both girls dove into dirt. Neither spoke as they floundered through snarls of black briars, dozens of flaming arrows barely missing them and igniting trees left and right. Hand in hand, the girls fled deeper into the Woods, looking for somewhere to hide, red hoods gaining, until they came to a break in the trees and finally glimpsed the forest path, serene in moonlight. Wheezing with relief, they ran for it and stopped short.
The path forked into two. Both trails were thin and sooty, crooking away in opposite directions. Neither looked more hopeful than the other, but from reading storybooks, the girls knew.
Only one was correct.
“Which way?” Sophie rasped.
Agatha could see just how weak and shaken her friend was. She had to get her to safety. Hearing the skimming of arrows again, Agatha swung her head between the paths, burning trees growing nearer … nearer …
“Aggie, which way?” Sophie pressed.
Agatha’s eyes darted uselessly back and forth, waiting for a sign—
Sophie gasped. “Look!”
Agatha swiveled to the east path. A glowing blue butterfly flapped in darkness, high above the trail. It beat its wings faster and nosed forward, as if urging them to follow.
“Come on,” Sophie said, suddenly strong again, and surged forward.
“We’re following a butterfly?” Agatha retorted as she chased Sophie past WANTED signs on trees ahead.
“Don’t worry. It’s leading us out of here!”
“How do you know?”
“Hurry! We’ll lose it!”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through—” Agatha heaved, puffing behind.
“Let’s not play who’s had it worse, shall we!”
The butterfly sped up as if nearing its destination and veered around a bend, wings brightening to blinding blue. Sophie grabbed Agatha by the wrist, dragged her faster around the curve—
Into a dead end of fallen trees.
The butterfly was gone.
“No!” Sophie squeaked. “But I thought—I thought—”
“It was a special butterfly?”
Sophie shook her head, eyes welling, as if her friend couldn’t understand. Then, over Agatha’s shoulder, she saw a torch-lit shadow inch across the trees, then two more …
The hoods had found their path.
“We had our happy ending—” Sophie backed against a trunk. “This is all my fault—”
“No …,” Agatha said, looking down. “It’s mine.”
Sophie’s heart clamped. It was the same feeling she had alone in the church, thinking about how her friend had changed. A feeling that told her none of the last month was an accident.
“Agatha … why is this all happening?”
Agatha watched the shadows grow closer around the bend. Her eyes stung with tears. “Sophie … I—I—I—made a—mistake—”
“Aggie, slow down.”
Agatha couldn’t look at her. “I opened it—I opened our fairy tale—”
“I don’t understand—”
“A w-w-wish!” Agatha stammered, reddening. “I made a wish—”
Sophie shook her head. “A wish?”
“I didn’t mean it—it happened so fast—”
“A wish for what?”
Agatha took a deep breath. She looked into her friend’s scared eyes.
“Sophie, I wished I was with—”
“Tickets,” a voice said.
Both girls turned to see an alarmingly thin caterpillar with a top hat, curled mustache, and purple tuxedo poking out of a tree hollow.
“Thank you for calling the Flowerground. No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the flowertrains. Violations will result in the removal of your clothes. Tickets?”
Sophie and Agatha gaped at each other. Neither had the faintest idea how to call the Flowerground.
“Look, mister,” Agatha pressured, glancing back at shadows nearing the dead-end turn, “we need to ride right now and we don’t have—”
“Leave it to me,” Sophie whispered, and twirled. “Such a pleasure to see you again, conductor! Remember me? We met when you graciously escorted our class to the Garden of Good and Evil. And look at that lovely mustache! I just love a good mustache—”
“No ticket, no ride,” the caterpillar crabbed, and withdrew.
“But they’ll kill us!” Agatha cried, seeing red hoods turn into view—
“Special circumstances can be presented in writing on Form Code 77 at the Flowerground Registry Office, open on alternate Mondays from 3:00 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.—”
Agatha grabbed him from the tree. “Let us in or I eat you.”
The caterpillar bleached in her grip. “NEVERS!” he called. Vines shot out and sucked Agatha and Sophie into the hollow as arrows set the tree aflame.
The two girls fell through a pit of swirling pastel colors until vines flung them over a snapping Venus flytrap into a tunnel of blinding-hot mist. Shielding their eyes, the girls felt their vines cinch around their chests like straitjackets and hook on to something above them. Both peeked through their hands to see that they were dangling in midair from a luminescent green tree trunk stenciled:
“The butterfly called the train somehow!” Sophie yelled from her tight harness as the track propelled them ahead. “See! The butterfly was trying to help us!”
Coming out of the mist, Agatha gaped at the Flowerground for the first time, speechless. Before her was a spectacular underground transport system, big as half of Gavaldon, made entirely of plants. Color-coded tree trunks crisscrossed like rail tracks in a bottomless cavern, whisking passengers dangling from vine straps to their respective destinations in the Endless Woods. The conductor, perched in a glass-windowed compartment inside ARBOREA’s green trunk, grumpily called stops into a willow microphone as flowertrains flitted by: “Maidenvale!” “Avalon Towers!” “Runyon Lane!” “Ginnymill!”
Whenever passengers heard their stop, they pulled hard on their vine strap; the strap fastened around their wrist, unfurled off their track, and ferried them high to one of many windwheel exits that churned them out of the Flowerground and up onto land.
Agatha noticed their green line’s trunk was jam-packed with women in twittering conversation, some well dressed and cheerful, others oddly haglike and unattractive for Evers, while the red ROSALINDA LINE running perpendicular had only a few glum, scraggly-looking men. Under those two tree tracks, the yellow DAHLIA LINE buzzed with groups of beautiful and homely women, while its crisscrossing pink PEONY LINE had only three rumpled, dirty male dwarfs. Agatha didn’t remember the caterpillar saying anything about women and men sitting apart, but then again she couldn’t remember half his stupid rules.
She was distracted by two parakeets, feathers the color of a rain forest, who fluttered up with glasses of celery-cucumber juice and pistachio muffins. On the illuminated tree trunk above her head, an orchestra of well-dressed lizards struck up a baroque waltz on violins and flutes, accompanied by a chorus of caroling green frogs. For the first time in weeks, Agatha managed a smile. She inhaled the sweet, nutty muffin in one bite and washed it down with the tart green juice.
In the harness next to her, Sophie sniffed and poked at her muffin.
“You going to eat that?” Agatha said.
Sophie shoved it at her, mumbling something about butter and the devil’s work. “It’s easy to get home,” she said, watching Agatha scarf it. “All we have to do is ride this line in the opposite direct—”
Agatha had stopped chewing. Slowly Sophie followed her friend’s eyes to her own punctured palms … to the raw marks around her wrists left by the Elders’ reins … to the scarlet letters faint on her chest …
“We can’t go home, can we?” Sophie breathed.
“Even if we prove the Elders lied, the School Master will still hunt you,” said Agatha miserably.
“He can’t be alive. We saw him die, Aggie.” Sophie looked up at her friend. “Didn’t we?”
Agatha didn’t have an answer.
“How did we lose it, Aggie?” Sophie said, looking so confused. “How did we lose our happy ending?”
Agatha knew this was the time to finish what she’d started at the hollow. But gazing into Sophie’s big doe eyes, she couldn’t bear to break her heart. Somehow there had to be a way to fix this without her friend ever knowing what she’d wished for. Her wish was just a mistake. A mistake she’d never ever have to face.
“There has to be a way to get our ending back,” Agatha said, determined. “We just need to seal the gates—”
But Sophie was staring past her, head cocked. Agatha turned around.
The Flowerground was empty behind them. All its passengers had disappeared.
“Aggie …,” Sophie wheezed, squinting into the distant mist—
Agatha saw them now too. Red hoods swinging across the tracks, straight for their train.
Both girls tore at their harnesses, but the vines yoked them tighter. Agatha tried to make her finger glow, but it wouldn’t light—
“Aggie, they’re coming!” Sophie yelled, seeing the hoods leap onto the red line two tracks above.
“Pull on your vine!” Agatha shouted, for that’s how she’d seen the others get off the ride. But no matter how hard she or Sophie tugged, the track just whisked them along.
Agatha fumbled for Radley’s dagger and cut herself free, eyeing the red hoods getting closer. “Stay there!” she screamed at Sophie, measuring the distance to her friend’s vine. Dangling from her strap, Agatha winced at the giant flytraps snapping out of the bottomless pastel pit below. With a cry, she kicked and swung herself into the tunnel wind for her friend—
Agatha’s hands missed the strap and she crashed into Sophie, grappling her like a tree.
The green tree trunk turned bright orange and started flashing. “VIOLATION,” a crabby voice boomed over a speaker. “NO SWINGING. VIOLATION. NO SWINGING. VIOLATION—”
A flock of green parakeets flew in and started pecking at Agatha’s dress, trying to pull it off. She dropped her knife. “What the—”
“Get off her!” Sophie shrieked, slapping the birds away.
“VIOLATION,” the crabby voice blared. “NO SLAPPING. VIOLATION. NO SLAPPING.”
The lizards and frogs atop their track skittered down the green-flowered vines and started tugging at Sophie’s clothes. Aghast, Sophie smacked at them, sending lizards and flowers flying. Agatha inhaled the pollen and sneezed.
“VIOLATION. NO SNEEZING. VIOLATION.” Birds, lizards, and frogs from other lines descended to denude both girls as punishment—
“We need to get off!” Agatha cried.
“I know! I only have two buttons left!” Sophie squealed, slapping the frog away.
“No! We need to get off now!”
Agatha pointed at the red hoods swinging onto their track—
“Follow me!” she cried to Sophie, shaking off a rainbow of lizards, and swung to the next strap. She glanced back to see Sophie still grappling a canary on her collar. “Shoo! This is handmade!”
“NOW!” Agatha roared—
Sophie gasped and swung for the next vine. She missed and plunged screaming towards a gnashing flytrap. Agatha blanched in horror—
Sophie belly flopped onto the blue HIBISCUS LINE below, running parallel at high speed. Hands and legs wrapped around the glowing trunk, she looked up at Agatha, who heaved with relief.
“Aggie, watch out!” Sophie yelled—
Agatha wheeled to a hood on her vine. He grabbed her throat.
Hearing Agatha’s choked gurgles above her, Sophie tried to stand on her trunk, then saw a thorn tunnel ahead about to decapitate her and plastered down just as her train whooshed through. Suddenly she heard a twinkly sound and swerved her head down the tunnel to see the glowing blue butterfly, hovering in place above the track.
“Help us!” Sophie begged—
The butterfly beat its wings and whizzed forward. As her train came out of the tunnel, Sophie scooted down the tree trunk to follow it, shadows of the hood strangling Agatha darkening the track ahead. Frantic, Sophie tried to keep up with the butterfly, but two red hoods landed in front of her, bows and arrows in hand. Just as they aimed, she looked back with terror and saw the hood about to snap Agatha’s neck—
The butterfly dove and yanked the vine under Sophie’s hand. In an instant, the vine snared Sophie’s wrist, ripped her off the track, and lassoed Agatha’s hand on the way up. The hoods whirled in shock, spewing their knives and arrows at them, but the vine coiled like a whip and launched both girls upwards into a blue windwheel of light. The rush of air sucked them towards the light portal in a storm of loose petals, pulling up, up, up—
And into a lush field.
Kneeling in a bed of tall red and yellow lilies, Agatha and Sophie heaved for breath, faces scratched, petals in hair, and dresses barely still on. Both looked down at the dirt-plugged hole they’d just spouted from, broiled with arrows from below.
“Where are we?” Sophie said, searching for the blue butterfly.
Agatha shook her head. “I don’t—”
Then she saw a red lily and a yellow lily whispering to each other, giving her strange looks.
She’d seen flowers talking about her once before, she thought. In a field just like this, until they’d tugged her by the wrist and yanked her up to …
Agatha lurched to her feet.
The School for Good soared above them, shimmering in red-orange sunrise over the crystal-clear side of Halfway Bay. Its four glass towers, once divided between pink and blue, were now only blue, with flags bearing butterflies of the same color billowing from sharp minarets.
“We’re back,” Sophie gasped.
Agatha went white as snow.
Back to the one place she’d tried to forget. Back to the one place that could ruin everything.
Ahead, the closed doors to the Good castle lay atop a hill. Golden spiked gates barred the path up the Great Lawn, mirrored words arching over them:
THE SCHOOL FOR GIRL EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT
Agatha closed and reopened her bleary eyes, for she had seen wrong.
It still said “GIRL.”
“Huh?”
Sophie stood up beside her. “That’s strange.”
“Well, ‘Good’ and ‘Girl’ aren’t so far apart,” Agatha said. “Maybe one of the nymphs got confused.”
But then she saw what Sophie was looking at. At the halfway point across the bay, Good’s lake slimed into Evil’s moat. Only the moat wasn’t black, like it used to be. It was rusted red, the color of the cesspool in the Woods and guarded by the spiny white crocodiles she had seen eat the female deer—at least twenty of them, lurking in the sludge, black shark teeth glinting.
Slowly Agatha looked up at the School for Evil looming above the moat. Three bloodred towers, jagged with spikes, flanked a smooth silver tower, twice as tall as the others. Atop the four towers, black flags crackled in the fog, emblazoned with scarlet snakes.
“There used to be three Evil towers,” Sophie said, squinting. “Not four …”
Voices rose across the bay and the two girls ducked into the lilies.
Out of the Woods stormed men in black through Evil’s castle gates.
They were wearing red leather hoods.
“The School Master’s men!” Sophie cried as they faded into the fog.
Agatha whitened. “But that means—”
She whirled back to the bay.
“It’s … gone,” breathed Agatha, for the School Master’s sky-high silver tower, once guarding the halfway point between moat and lake, had simply … disappeared.
“No, it’s not,” Sophie said, still eyeing the School for Evil.
Now Agatha saw why there were four towers there instead of three.
The School Master’s tower had moved to Evil.
“He’s alive!” Agatha cried, gaping at his silver spire. “But how—”
Sophie pointed. “Look!”
In the tower’s single window, veiled by fog, a shadow stared down at them. All they could see of its face was a gleaming silver mask.
“It’s him!” Sophie hissed. “He’s leading Evil!”
“Agatha! Sophie!”
The girls swiveled from the lilies to see Professor Dovey running from Good castle in her green high-necked gown.
“Come quickly!”
As the two girls hurried behind her through Good’s golden gates, Agatha glanced back at the School Master’s tower and the masked shadow in the window. All they had to do was kill him again, and her mistake would be hidden forever. They’d go home safe, her promise to Stefan kept, and Sophie would never know what she’d wished for. Looking up at that shadow lording over Evil, Agatha waited for her heart to rage with purpose, to propel her into battle … but instead her heart did something else.
It fluttered.
The way a princess’s did in storybooks.
When she saw her prince.
(#ulink_1e1f07c3-0e51-515a-8a21-c89a4eff5846)
As she and Sophie sprinted behind Professor Dovey into the mirrored corridor, Agatha tried to find her breath. Professor Dovey was a famous fairy godmother, who’d always looked out for her. She had to give them answers.
“Who are those red hoods?” Agatha asked.
“How did the School Master survive?” said Sophie.
“Why are the Nevers on his side?” said Agatha.
“Quiet!” Professor Dovey snapped, erasing their footsteps with her magic wand. “We don’t have much time!”
“You don’t seem surprised to see us,” Agatha whispered, but her fairy godmother didn’t respond as she rushed them into Good’s deserted foyer, magically bolting doors behind them.
Only months ago, Sophie had eviscerated the hall in her witch’s revenge on Agatha and Tedros, blasting its stained glass windows, spiral staircases, and marble floors to shards. But now the two friends drew breaths at its redone facade. Where there used to be two pink staircases and two blue, all four stairwells were now the same royal blue as the castle. Lit by high stained glass windows, the staircases spiraled up to the dormitory towers, names tattooed on richly decorated balusters: HONOR, VALOR, PURITY, and CHARITY. Agatha had loathed the prissy princess pink of the Purity and Charity towers, but seeing them turned the same color as the prince towers gave her an unsettled feeling.
Sophie nudged her, and Agatha turned to see her peering curiously at the Legends Obelisk in the center of the foyer, a soaring crystal column blanketed with portrait frames. Inside each of the frames was a painting of a past student, next to a storybook illustration of what the child became upon graduation. But looking up at the gold-framed Evers on top who became princesses and queens, the silver-framed ones in the middle who became helpers and sidekicks, and the bottom-rung lot who became cinder sweeps and servants, the two girls noticed something peculiar …
“Where are the boys?” Sophie said, for all their portraits had been removed.
Agatha swung her head to the Honor staircase: the frieze of knights and kings had been replaced with a frieze of sword-brandishing, chain-mailed princesses. Sophie swiveled to the Valor staircase, once decorated with burly hunters and their trusty hounds—now huntresses in houndskins and decidedly female dogs. Both girls twirled to the lettered murals across the walls that once spelled E-V-E-R … and now spelled G-I-R-L.
“It is a School for Girls!” said Agatha, thunderstruck. “What happened to Good?”
“We can’t fight the School Master without boys!” cried Sophie.
“Shhhh!” Professor Dovey hissed, rushing them up the Valor staircase. “No one must know you’re here!”
As the girls chased her elegant silver-haired bun through Valor’s princely blue arches and murals, they gawked at the once virile visions of princes destroying demons and saving helpless princesses, now flaunting different endings: Snow White smashing out of her glass coffin with her fists, Red Riding Hood slitting the wolf’s throat, Sleeping Beauty setting her spindle on fire … The red-blooded princes, hunters, men who rescued them, who saved their lives … gone.
“It’s like Everboys never existed!” whispered Agatha.
“Maybe the School Master killed them all!” whispered Sophie.
She suddenly heard soft tinkling and twirled to see three glowing blue butterflies peeking from behind a wall. They caught her looking and with a high-pitched meep! ducked and disappeared.
“What is it?” Agatha said, glancing back.
“Hurry!” Professor Dovey scolded, and the two girls scampered to follow, stooping past the Laundry, where two seven-foot, floating nymphs scrubbed sudsy blue bodices, through the Supper Hall, where enchanted pots stewed saffron rice and lentil soup, and past the Valor Common Room to the rear stairwell. Exhausted and aching from their torments in the Woods, Sophie and Agatha tried to keep up, but Professor Dovey was sprier than she looked.
“Where are we going?” Agatha panted.
“To the only other person who can keep you alive,” her fairy godmother shot back, bustling up the stairs.
Sophie and Agatha instantly ran faster, up five long flights to the lone white door on the sixth floor—
“Professor Sader’s office?” Agatha puffed. “But he’s dead!”
Professor Dovey ran her fingers over the raised blue dots on the former History teacher’s door. It swung open without a sound, and Sophie and Agatha scrambled in behind her.
A thin woman stood at the window, long black braid dangling over the back of her pointy-shouldered purple gown. “Did anyone see you?”
“No,” said Professor Dovey.
Lady Lesso spun to Sophie and Agatha, violet eyes flashing.
“Then it’s time they learned what they’ve done.”
“We did this?” Agatha blurted.
“But we weren’t even here!” said Sophie, turning between the Dean of Evil at the window and the Dean of Good at Professor Sader’s old desk, overflowing with open books.
Lady Lesso glowered at their dirt-smudged faces. “In this world, actions have consequences. Endings have consequences.”
“But our fairy tale ended happily!” Sophie said.
Professor Dovey let out a groan.
“Why don’t you tell us how it ended?” Lady Lesso sneered, blue veins throbbing.
“We killed the School Master and solved his riddle!” Sophie said.
“That’s how Sophie and I went home!” said Agatha.
“Clarissa, show them how it really ends,” Lady Lesso growled.
Professor Dovey flung a book across the desk. It was heavy and thick, bound with brown sheepskin and spattered with mud. Agatha opened to the first soggy page. Black calligraphy, slightly smeared, spilled across fresh parchment.
Sophie turned the page to a richly colored painting of her and Agatha, standing before the School Master.
Once upon a time, the script below read, there were two girls.
Agatha remembered the line. The Storian had written it to start their fairy tale when they broke into the School Master’s tower. Flipping the book’s pages, Agatha saw her and Sophie’s story unfold in a brilliant sweep of paintings: Sophie trying to win Tedros’ kiss … Agatha saving Tedros’ life in a brutal attack … Agatha and Tedros falling in love … Sophie transforming into a vengeful witch … the School Master stabbing Sophie … Agatha reviving her with love’s kiss … and then the very last page … a dazzling vision of Tedros desperately reaching for Agatha as she and Sophie disappeared, three words beneath to close their story …
They were gone.
Agatha felt tears rise, soaking in all the pain and love she and Sophie had shared to get home.
“It’s the perfect fairy tale,” Sophie said, meeting Agatha’s eyes with a choked-up smile.
They turned to the teachers, who looked deathly grim. “It’s not over,” said Lady Lesso.
The girls peered down at the book, confused. Their grimy hands lifted the last page, and they saw there was something on the other side.
A painting of Tedros, back turned, walking into dark fog, all alone.
And Sophie and Agatha lived happy ever after, for girls don’t need princes for love to call …
No, they don’t need princes in their fairy tales at all.
“This one’s from Maidenvale. But you can find it anywhere, really. They’re even telling it in Netherwood.”
Sophie and Agatha raised their heads to Professor Dovey, frowning over the messy desk.
“It’s the only story anyone wants to hear.”
Now the girls saw that all the open books weren’t there by accident. Each book on the desk was spread to its last page. Some were in oil paints, some in watercolor, some in charcoal and ink; some were in a language the girls knew, others in scripts they didn’t. But all ended their version of The Tale of Sophie and Agatha the same way: Tedros alone and unneeded, slumping into darkness.
“Goodness, all this gloom because we’re popular?” Sophie said. “You can’t be surprised. Snow White and Cinderella are sweet and all. But who wants them when they can have me?”
She turned to Agatha for support, but her friend was staring out the window. “Aggie?”
Agatha didn’t answer. Slowly she approached the window, and Lady Lesso stepped aside without a word. At Sader’s desk, Professor Dovey held her breath.
From the steep window, Agatha looked down at the Blue Forest, the enchanted training ground for Good and Evil, sprawled in an array of hues behind the school. It was as it always was, quiet and thriving despite the autumn chill, neatly fenced in by spiked golden gates.
The sounds were coming from beyond the gates.
At first she thought they were dead leaves, swathing the Endless Forest in tawny brown and orange beneath stripped, crooked trees. Then she looked closer and saw they were men.
Thousands of them were crammed against the Blue Forest gates in a filthy homeless camp, hunched around fires like miserable peasants. She couldn’t see faces, but she glimpsed scraggly beards and blackened cheeks, mottled breeches and bony legs, ripped coats and sashes with gleaming …
Crests.
These weren’t peasants. They were—
“Princes,” Sophie gasped, looking out beside her.
“It’s her!” a voice screamed from the crowd. Heads swung to the tower window.
“It’s the witch!”
All at once, a savage mob rushed the Forest gates—
“Death to Sophie!”
“Kill her!”
“Kill the witch!”
The men fired arrows and catapulted stones at the tower, but the weapons instantly vanished into an enchanted shield, bubbly and violet tinged, that appeared over the school gates. As the crowd roared and swung pickets, mounted with the same WANTED signs the girls had seen in the woods, an intrepid prince leapt onto the spiked gates. The gold metal magically sizzled and he let go in shock, impaling on spikes below. Sophie spun in horror—
“How can those be princes?” she cried.
“How can those be princes?” Lady Lesso mimicked. “Those princes are there because of you.”
Agatha and Sophie gaped at each other. “We don’t understand—” Agatha spluttered.
Professor Dovey ground her teeth. The only time Agatha had seen her fairy godmother this furious was when she had disobeyed a teacher her first year and almost burned down the castle.
“Think, Agatha. Once upon a time, you believed yourself an ugly witch. But instead, your destiny was to become a princess. To find Ever After with the most coveted prince in our land. It would have been Good’s greatest victory! A restoration of all the values we’d lost! Kill the School Master, send your Evil friend home safe—and stay here with Tedros forever, as his future queen. All you had to do was take his hand before you disappeared. That would have been the correct fairy tale. But instead …”
She looked daggers at Sophie. “You chose her.”
“And rightly so,” Sophie riposted. “If you knew Agatha at all, you’d know she could never give me up for a boy.” She whirled to her friend, knowing this time Agatha would defend her. But again, Agatha didn’t. She just gulped hard and stared at her muddy clumps.
“What happened after we left?” Agatha said.
“The Eviction.”
The girls turned to Lady Lesso, who shuddered at the memory.
“After your kiss, students tried to return to their schools, but the Evil towers ejected the Nevergirls. Sixty girls flung through windows into the bay—from stairs, classrooms, beds, toilets, common rooms … They tried to go back, but the Evil gates barred their entry. All the Nevergirls fled to Good for sanctuary, and the Evergirls welcomed them, inspired by your happy ending.”
“As soon as they arrived, the Good towers evicted the Everboys just as rudely,” Professor Dovey went on. “The moment the boys were all gone, the castle magically changed to what it is now—their portraits removed, murals repainted, friezes recarved, as if mirroring your tale. The School for Good had become the School for Girls.”
And indeed, the glittering crests over her and Lady Lesso’s hearts, once silver swans, were now sparkling blue butterflies. Agatha shook her head, confused.
“But those aren’t Everboys from school!” She pointed out the window. “Those are real princes!”
“What happened here happened everywhere in the Endless Woods,” Professor Dovey said gravely. “As your story spread like a plague and princesses imagined a world without princes, the men were magically ejected from their castles and left homeless. They appealed to witches to break the curse, but they too had heard The Tale of Sophie and Agatha. Stirred by the power of your bond, witches joined forces with princesses and took control of the kingdoms.”
“Witches and princesses are friends?” Sophie said in disbelief.
“No one thought it possible until your fairy tale,” said Professor Dovey. “And now it is men and women who are enemies.”
Agatha thought back to the Flowerground—the twittering women in groups, some pretty and cheerful, some homely and queer … the few scraggly, lonely males …
“But we don’t want the princes homeless!” Agatha cried. “We don’t want them to be enemies!”
“We certainly don’t want them to smell,” murmured Sophie.
“You made princes irrelevant,” Lady Lesso retorted. “You made them impotent. You made them obsolete. And now you’ve made them turn to a new leader for revenge.”
The girls followed her eyes to the sea of WANTED signs hoisted outside the gates, demanding Sophie’s head at the orders of this leader.
“The School Master!” Sophie broke in. “We saw him—”
“Did you now?” Lady Lesso sneered.
“He’s in the Evil castle! We have to kill him!” Sophie swiveled to Agatha. “Tell her!”
Agatha ignored the fluttering in her stomach. “But he couldn’t have lived,” she said, almost to herself. She looked up. “You were there too, professors. All of us saw him die.”
“Indeed,” said Professor Dovey. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t replaced.”
“Replaced?” the girls blurted.
“Naturally Lady Lesso and I believed ourselves the best candidates,” Professor Dovey said, smoothing her gown’s beetle wings. “Homeless and hated, the princes needed leaders they could trust. We assured them The Tale of Sophie and Agatha was closed forever. Under our protection, the Storian would restore boys and girls to balance, as it does Good and Evil. But just as we tried to bridge this peace between boys and girls …” Her face dimmed. “Something odd happened.”
She thrust out the last page of their fairy tale and waited for the girls to say something.
“They drew Tedros taller than he is,” Sophie suggested.
“Isn’t something missing?” the Dean moaned.
Agatha remembered the storybook under her bed … the wedded princess and prince …
“‘The End,’” she said. “Why doesn’t it say ‘The End’?”
Professor Dovey glared at her and slowly lifted the book to the light. Beneath the last line of their fairy tale, the two girls could see faded ink spelling those very two words …
Before they had been erased.
“What happened?” Sophie breathed.
“It seems your book has reopened,” Professor Dovey said, guiding their eyes to all the other versions of their story splayed across the desk. ‘The End’ had disappeared off each of them too.
Sophie rifled through the pile. “But how can we lose a happy ending!”
“Because one of you wished for a different one,” Lady Lesso lashed, not looking at her. “One of you wanted a new Ever After. And now, one of you has put our school on the brink of war.”
“That’s ludicrous,” Sophie huffed. “I know I wanted to be a princess—but I can’t, can I? I saw what this place did to me and have no desire to spend more time in it, even if Gavaldon smells like horse bottom and has no endurable men. So if I didn’t make the wish, then surely it’s a mista—”
But now she saw who Lady Lesso was staring at, and her cheeks lost all blood.
Sophie slowly turned to her friend, shadowed in the corner. “Aggie, at the hollow, you said … you said you made a … That’s not what you meant, right?”
Agatha couldn’t look at her.
Sophie’s hands were trembling. “Aggie, tell me it’s not what you meant.”
Agatha tried to find words—something to redeem herself—
“All of this …,” Sophie gasped. “Everything that happened … is because of you?”
Agatha burned scarlet. She spun to Lady Lesso. “How do I fix it? How do I get Sophie home safe?”
The Evil teacher let the question dangle while she inspected her sharp red nails.
“It’s simple,” she said finally, lifting her eyes. “You must wish to end with each other, at the same time. Wish for each other and only each other, and the Storian will write ‘The End’ once more.”
“And we’ll leave the Woods?” Agatha pressed.
“Never to be hunted again—as long as your wish is true.”
Agatha let out a rush of air. “We can fix it.” She turned to Sophie. “We can get our ending back! The village won’t hurt us!”
Sophie backed away. “What ending did you want?”
“Don’t do this,” Agatha said.
“What else could you possibly want?” Sophie demanded.
“It was a mistake, Sophie—”
“Answer me.”
“Sophie, please—”
Sophie locked her gaze. “What did you wish for?”
“We can fix this now,” Agatha begged.
“I’m afraid you can’t.”
Both girls turned.
“The Storian must write ‘The End’ to seal your wish,” said Professor Dovey. “And at the moment, it is unable.”
“What do you mean?” Agatha flushed angrily. “Where is it?”
“Where it always is,” said Lady Lesso, scowling back. “With the School Master.”
“Huh?” Agatha said. “But you said he was replace—”
The flutter in her heart.
The face she couldn’t see.
Agatha slowly looked up.
“Who doesn’t want your ending sealed?” Lady Lesso purred. “Who wants a new ending to your fairy tale?”
She held up their story’s last page … a boy walking into fog all alone …
“Who heard his princess’s wish?”
Agatha whirled to the window. Lightning exploded over the School Master’s tower across the bay with a whip crack of thunder, and she saw the silver-masked shadow in its flash—
Golden hair, a body of muscle, a glinting sword sheathed …
The sky went dark, and he was gone.
Agatha felt faint. All the attacks … all the destruction …
“Him,” Sophie whispered, crumpling against the wall. “You wished for … him.”
Agatha searched for something to say, but one look at Sophie, curled up in a grubby pink heap, and she knew. There was nothing to say.
“How?” Agatha whispered. “How could he hear it?”
“Because you wanted him to,” Lady Lesso slashed, prowling towards Agatha. “From the day you left, Tedros believed one day you’d call for him. From the day you left, he and his boys hunted your village, trying to cross into Woods Beyond—until your wish finally opened the gates.”
Agatha paled, watching Lady Lesso circle her. “But your prince has to make sure his princess chooses him this time. He needs insurance you won’t repeat your mistakes. So Tedros stole the Storian from under our noses, knowing the School Master’s tower follows the pen wherever it goes. Now he’ll stop the Storian from writing ‘The End’ to your tale—until he has his new ending.”
Agatha’s stomach went cold. “What’s the new ending?” she rasped.
Lady Lesso stared through her. “Killing Sophie.”
Sophie slowly lifted her eyes, red and raw.
“Tedros believes killing Sophie will fix your fairy tale as it should have been,” said Professor Dovey. “The witch dies. The princess free to her prince. Your ending rewritten, just like Agatha wished.”
Agatha couldn’t breathe under Sophie’s scorching stare.
“Why don’t you save Tedros the trouble?” Sophie hissed. “Kill this witch yourself.”
“That would solve everything,” sighed Professor Dovey.
Both girls turned.
“Oh dear,” said their teacher. “Did I say that out loud?”
“She’ll die soon enough,” Lady Lesso snarled. “Tedros counted on Sophie coming here for protection. Now he and his army will come to kill her.”
“Army?” Agatha blanched. “He has an army?”
“You’ve forgotten about his school,” said Lady Lesso.
Agatha swung her head to the window. Through the sheets of rain, she could see the red hoods skulking around Evil’s towers, in black leather uniforms crested with scarlet snakes and shiny black boots. Slowly she lowered her eyes to the gate on the castle shores, rusted iron words arched over it:
THE SCHOOL FOR BOY VENGEANCE AND RESTITUTION
“One wish has so many consequences, doesn’t it?” Lady Lesso said, leering at Agatha. “Tedros has promised whoever kills Sophie half his father’s treasure as a reward. Needless to say, both the Ever- and Neverboys took up the challenge.”
“As did all those princes outside,” Professor Dovey said, watching the filthy masses swarming the gates. “Tedros knows he can’t attack us with just his school. Our teachers wouldn’t give up Sophie without a fight.”
“So he’s using the princes to force our hand,” Lady Lesso groused. “I cast a shield around the perimeter of both schools to keep them out. But if the princes get through, Tedros will have enough men to storm our castle and kill Sophie.”
Agatha stared out at the red fortress, still numb. “The Storian’s in a boys’school?”
“Either free it and get Sophie home alive … or kiss Tedros before he kills her.” Professor Dovey met Agatha’s shocked eyes. “Kiss your prince and mean it, and you’ll stay here with him Ever After. Sophie will be gone from your story forever … and vanish home alone.”
“Home alone?” Sophie gasped as if she’d been shot. “Gavaldon alone? While she gets … him?”
“These are the only two endings that can prevent war,” Professor Dovey said.
The only sound in the room was the echo of murderous princes.
Sophie gave Agatha a horrible look and curled back into her ball.
Tedros, Agatha gritted. How could she wish for a boy who’d take love this far? How could she wish for a boy who’d kill her best friend? Her old witchy self would never have let this happen.
“Third option,” she said, storming to the door. “Tell Tedros he’s a delusional ass.”
“No.”
Agatha turned.
“You wished for him,” Sophie spat, blotched with rage. “And you want me to trust you two alone?”
Agatha cowered. Sophie looked even more a witch than she did in the graveyard.
“I won’t intervene in your lovers’ quarrel, but I suggest Agatha make her choice soon,” Lady Lesso snapped. “Once Tedros breaks the princes through my shield, all our lives will be in danger.”
“We’ll hide you and Sophie in the Blue Forest until you have a plan,” Professor Dovey said to Agatha, pulling out a ring of keys. “None of the girls can know you’ve come.”
Agatha looked up, dazed. “Why not?”
“Because unlike your two teachers, they think this is the best thing that’s ever happened,” said a honey-smooth voice.
The two professors and two girls turned to see a tall, ravishing woman push through the door, milky smooth and full-bosomed in a teacher’s electric-blue dress decorated with a pattern of butterflies. She had a waterfall of chestnut hair to her midback, forest-green eyes under thick dark brows, a luscious pink mouth, and a gap between her two shiny front teeth.
“My brother’s office?” she said, biting her bee-stung lips. “I wasn’t aware it was where we held secret meetings.”
“It’s the only place we can’t be overheard,” Lady Lesso returned, her voice oddly tentative.
“Well I do believe I should have been alerted to our honored guests,” the woman said breathily, turning to Sophie and Agatha. “After all, they are the reason this magnificent school exists.”
The two girls gawped at her.
“We’ve been meticulously preparing for your arrival,” said the stranger, knitting her arched brows. “And we nearly may have missed it.” She flashed a glare at the two teachers.
Agatha shook her head. “But how did you know we were com—”
“Goodness, you two look frightful,” the woman said, magically restoring their faces and dresses with her finger. Only Sophie’s dress magically lost its pink color too and drained blank white.
Sophie grabbed her hem. “What happened to my—”
“Come, girls.” The woman sashayed for the door. “We’ve put your books and schedules in your room.”
“Schedules!” Professor Dovey launched to her feet. “You’re not thinking of them going to class, Evelyn!”
The woman twirled. “As long as they are at my school, they will attend class and abide by the rules. Which includes staying in their school at all times. Surely you don’t object to the rules?”
Sophie and Agatha waited for the professors to indeed object, but Dovey and Lesso were curiously quiet, eyes on a pair of blue butterflies that had settled on the tips of their noses.
“I see our former deans neglected to inform you about the most important change at your new school,” the stranger said, smiling at the two girls. “Evelyn Sader. Dean of the School for Girls. Sorry for the hurry. I don’t want to keep everyone waiting. Follow me, please.”
As she turned and swept through the door, Sophie saw the two butterflies land on her matching dress and vanish magically into its pattern. She let out a breath of surprise. “Keep who waiting?”
As more butterflies fell into her dress, the beautiful woman didn’t look back.
“Your army,” she said, as if she’d just listened to their entire conversation.
(#ulink_467db7eb-6dd8-56d2-9273-94379c20d678)
“An army dedicated to producing stories just like yours,” said Dean Sader, clacking through the sun-washed breezeway from Valor to Honor in her blue-glass heels. “Your tale was just a taste of what princesses and witches can do together. Here you will lead an entire school!”
“A school—” Agatha choked, chasing her down the Honor stairs. “We need to go home!”
“You see, the former deans and I have a difference of opinion,” said Dean Sader as butterflies flew in from every direction and vanished into her dress. “They think you must leave our world to find your happy ending together. And I think you must stay.”
“But the boys are going to kill me!” Sophie said, bumping Agatha hard as she passed.
“Mmmm, let’s say you do break into a castle full of bloodthirsty males,” the Dean said, sweeping her buxom behind through the foyer. “Let’s say you free the Storian against all odds.” She stopped outside the frosted doors of the Gallery of Good. “The wish won’t work unless you mean it.”
She gazed at Sophie. “How can you wish for Agatha if you know she wants her prince?”
The Dean turned to Agatha. “How can you wish for Sophie if you fear the witch inside?”
She leaned in so close the girls could smell her flawless honeycream skin.
“How can you wish for someone you do not trust?”
Sophie’s and Agatha’s eyes met dartingly, hoping the other would argue. Neither did.
“Your friendship must be fixed before you can go home. And here you will fix what is broken,” Dean Sader said, a last butterfly fluttering into her dress. “Fairy tales have trained us to believe a beautiful bond like yours cannot last. Why? Because a boy must come between you. A boy so threatened by your story that he’s willing to kill to destroy it. But at my school, we teach you the truth.” She opened the door to pitch darkness.
“That a girl without a boy is the greatest happy ending of all.”
Her finger magically lit a torch, and the flame roared red to a burst of drums. Agatha and Sophie leapt back—
Twenty rows of girls stood frozen, heads bowed, each wearing a white veil, royal-blue harem pants, and a light blue bodice stitched with a butterfly crest over the heart. There were more than 100 of them, stretching through the exhibits of the museum, past its open rear doors, and into the vast ballroom of Good Hall. Faces obscured, they stood eerily still, arms raised with hands to opposite elbows as if summoning genies. Hovering above them, just beneath the ceiling, two more veiled girls on magic carpets beat snare drums faster and faster.
At the front of this parade was a lone girl without anyone else in her row. Her veil was blue instead of white, her hair ginger red, and the pallid skin on her thin arms dotted with strawberry freckles. Slowly she raised her arms …
The drums stopped.
With an untamed screech, the girl blew a blast of fire that singed the magic carpets and sent Agatha and Sophie quailing from flames. As the drums beat once more, the girl whipped into a whirling belly dance, punctuating each move with a wild whistle or trill.
“One look at her, and Tedros will forget all about his wish maker,” said Sophie coldly.
“Sophie, I’m sorry.” Agatha shifted closer to her friend. “I really am.”
Sophie shifted away.
“I’d never lose you for a boy,” Agatha prodded. But eyeing the dancing girl, she suddenly felt a twinge of jealousy … Had Tedros seen her?
She crushed the thought. Tedros wanted to kill her best friend and she was still thinking of him? He’s the enemy, you idiot!
Stefan’s face haunted her, begging her to return Sophie home safe. Where was the Agatha who’d do anything to protect her best friend? The one who had control over her feelings? The one who was Good?
By now, the rows behind started to echo the leader’s dance, flowing with crisp hand movements. Then, with a sudden flourish, the girls all turned to each other and danced in pairs. Hands brushed and clasped as they touched backs before lifting arms and switching places, never losing the touch of their palms. In their glinting blue harem pants and white veils, they looked like swaying sea anemones. Despite the storm in her heart, Sophie managed a smile. She had never seen something so beautiful. Then again, she’d never seen girls dance without boys.
Agatha didn’t like Sophie’s expression. “Sophie, I need to talk to Tedros.”
“No.”
“I said I’m sorry. You have to let me fix it—”
“No.”
“The fool thinks I want you killed!” Agatha said, smacking away a blue butterfly on her shoulder. “I’m the only one who can make him see reason.”
“A prince who thinks he’s School Master, bet half his fortune on my head, and you think he’ll see reason,” Sophie said, letting the butterfly perch on her. “I’m surprised Good ever wins if it’s this naive.”
Agatha glanced at the Dean’s back to them. She couldn’t possibly eavesdrop with the drums pounding and the dancing girl hooting like a hyena, but Agatha had the strange feeling she could hear everything.
“Sophie, I lost myself for a moment,” she whispered. “It was a mistake.”
Sophie watched the lead girl spew another jet of fire. “Maybe the Dean is right,” she said, not whispering at all. “Maybe I should stay here.”
“What? We don’t even know where she came from, let alone how she’s Dean! You saw the look on Professor Dovey’s face. You can’t trust her—”
“Right now, I trust her more than I trust you.”
Agatha could have sworn she saw the Dean grin. “You’re not safe here, Sophie! Tedros will come for you!”
“Let him. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I want you home alive!” Agatha begged. “I want us to forget ever coming to the School for Good and Evil! I don’t want Tedros!”
Sophie whirled, snarling. “Then why did you wish for him?”
Agatha froze.
“Let the gifts begin!” the Dean decreed.
“Gifts!” Sophie spun from Agatha, beaming. “At last, some good news.” She sidled up to the Dean as the veiled girls fanned to the walls like a clamshell opening, leaving a wide aisle down the middle.
Agatha followed warily, remembering what this world had once done to her and her best friend. The longer they stayed here, the longer they were in danger. She had to get Sophie home now.
Moving into the sunlight of a small window, she noticed the museum exhibits had changed. Evidence of boys’ achievements had all been stripped and replaced with relics from her and Sophie’s fairy tale: Agatha’s Evergirl uniform, Sophie’s Lunchtime Lectures sign, Agatha’s note to Sophie during the Trial by Tale, the slashed lock of hair from Sophie’s Doom Room punishment, and dozens of others, each enshrined in a blue-tinted glass case. On the main wall, the Ever After mural, which once celebrated the marriage of prince and princess, was now covered with a navy canvas, embroidered with butterflies. Indeed, the only holdover was Professor Sader’s old nook of paintings off the far corner. As a seer who could glimpse the future, the former History teacher had once drawn paintings of every Reader who had come from Gavaldon to the School for Good and Evil. Whenever Agatha needed answers, she always drifted back to these paintings, finding new clues. All she wanted was to study them again now, but there were two veiled girls marching towards her down the aisle, carrying an enormous purple vase.
“From Maidenvale,” said Dean Sader, honeyed voice now deep and commanding. “An urn from Princess Riselda, who like hundreds of others heard your story and realized she’d be happier without her prince. She had his throne burned and offers the ashes to you.”
The girls held up the urn to Sophie and Agatha, who peered at its carving of a prince magically ejected out a castle window to crocodiles below.
“We don’t want it,” Agatha crabbed.
“Shall we put it in my room?” smiled Sophie, turning to the Dean.
“Room?” Agatha blurted. “Sophie, you’re not staying—”
But now two girls were marching down the aisle with oriental, bamboo drapes.
“From Pifflepaff Hills,” the Dean boomed. “A hand-painted tree curtain from Princess Sayuri, who read your tale and realized that without princes, princesses and witches are happier.”
Its exquisitely painted bamboo reeds depicted a princess and witch embracing in one panel, while in the other, a prince who looked a lot like Tedros was flogged to a pulp by a beast.
“This is horrible,” Agatha snapped.
“Hang them by my bed,” Sophie chimed to the two veiled girls. “What’s next?”
The Dean pointed a gold-lacquered nail down the aisle. “From Netherwood, a tapestry of homeless princes …”
“I wish Professor Dovey and Lady Lesso could appreciate someone as chic as you,” Sophie fawned to the Dean, as the procession of prince-abusing gifts continued, including prince voodoo dolls, looted prince swords, and a carpet made out of prince hair. “Do classes start today?”
The Dean grinned as she glided away. “Including mine.”
“You’re not serious,” Agatha hissed to Sophie. “Now you want to go to class?”
“Let’s hope they renovated those rooms made of candy.” Sophie hand combed her hair, readying for the day. “I’m allergic to the smell.”
“Sophie, there is a bounty on your head—”
“And lastly, a gift from me,” declared Dean Sader, standing in front of the covered Ever After mural. “Students, your old school taught you balance was about vanquishing Good or Evil. But how can there be balance between Evers and Nevers until there is balance between Boys and Girls? It is no mistake our Readers have returned to join our school, for their fairy tale remains unfinished.”
She looked right at the two girls. “And the battle for its ending just begun.”
She let the canvas fall. Agatha and Sophie drew breaths.
The words EVER AFTER, giant and glimmering, still peeked from painted clouds at the top of the mural in gold block letters. Everything else had been redone.
Now the scene depicted two sprawling blue-glass castles around a lake, as girls in azure uniforms gathered on tower balconies, basked on the lakeshores, and strolled the gated grounds. Some of these girls were beautiful, some were ugly, but they worked, lived, and idled together without division, as if witches and princesses were always meant to be friends.
There were boys in the painting too, if one could call them that. With black peasant rags and ogrishly distorted faces, they scooped manure, raked a blue forest behind the castle, and built up the towers in miserable chain gangs before retreating to filthy prison slums at the fringes of the gates. Female overseers drove them like chattel and the boys put up no fight, slaves resigned to eternal servitude. Agatha’s eyes rose to the top of the painting, where haloed in sun two women with crystal diadems surveyed their kingdom from the highest balcony …
“It’s us,” Sophie gasped.
“It’s … this school,” scowled Agatha.
“Your true Ever After,” the Dean said, stepping between them. “Captains of these hallowed halls, leading girls to a princeless future.”
Agatha grimaced at the vision of Everboys and Neverboys hated and enslaved. “This school isn’t our ending,” she said, turning to Sophie. “Tell her we have to leave!”
But Sophie was gazing at the painting, eyes wide. “How do we make it come true?”
Agatha stiffened.
“How all heroes win their happy ending, dear,” the Dean said, touching both their shoulders. “By facing the enemy.” She grinned out the window at Tedros’ tower. “And slaying him.”
Agatha and Sophie locked eyes in surprise.
“My cherished students!” The Dean swept her hand over the crowd. “Welcome our Readers back to school!”
With a roar, the mob tore off their veils and rushed the two girls.
“You’re home!” gushed Reena, embracing Agatha with freckly Millicent, while green-skinned Mona and one-eyed Arachne smooshed Sophie into a hug—
“Didn’t know we were friends—” Sophie croaked, suffocated—
“We’re on your side against Tedros,” Arachne cheered, Millicent on her arm as if Evers and Nevers were suddenly bosom buddies. “All of us!”
“You’re our heroes,” Reena said to Agatha, who noticed the Arabian princess looked a bit bigger in the bottom. “You and Sophie taught us the truth about boys!”
Agatha fumbled for words before a shrieking blur bear-hugged her and Sophie. “My roommates!” Beatrix yipped. “Aren’t you excited? The Dean put you both with me!”
Neither Sophie nor Agatha had time to process this cataclysm, because they were goggling at something more alarming— “Your hair!” Sophie cried.
“No boys means no need to look like stupid princesses,” Beatrix said, rubbing her shaved head proudly. “Think about how much time I wasted last year on Tedros and Balls and beautifying all day. And for what? Now I read, I study, I learned to speak Elf … I finally know what’s going on in our world!”
“But what about Beautification?” Sophie fretted.
“That’s long gone. There is no beauty or ugliness at the School for Girls!” said Reena, who, Sophie saw with horror, wasn’t wearing a shred of makeup. “We wear pants, we don’t do our nails … we even eat cheese!”
Sophie gagged and looked for the Dean, but butterflies were trailing her out of the gallery. “But surely some lipstick is allowed—”
“You can do whatever you want!” Arachne said, showing off a smatter of hideous blush on both cheeks. “Nevers can groom, Evers don’t have to. It’s all your choice!”
Millicent leaned in with a grin. “I haven’t washed my hair for a month.”
Sophie and Agatha both recoiled, only for the latter to be tackled by a yelping heap—
“Eeeeeeyiiiiiiii! You’re here! My best friend in the whole world!” Kiko gave Sophie a phony smile. “And you too.” Then Kiko hugged Agatha again, her brown, almond-shaped eyes tearing up. “You don’t know how much I prayed for you to come back! It’s like heaven here! Wait until you take History—the Dean teaches it and we go into the stories—and there’s dance lessons and a school newspaper and a book club and we put on a play instead of a Ball and we can sleep in each other’s rooms and—”
Kiko couldn’t finish because there were flocks of girls besieging Sophie and Agatha now, each girl acting as if she was their best friend too.
Agatha tried to fend off her horde and lunged to Sophie across the masses. “We have to get out of here right no—” She tripped and landed face-first. “Will you sign my storybook?” Giselle asked, black hair sheared into a blue mohawk. Agatha crawled back like a crab into more clamoring fans.
As girls thrust books, cards, body parts for Sophie to sign, Beatrix forced the girls into a receiving line and let them pay tribute one by one. Sophie could hardly tell who was from Good and who from Evil anymore, since more of the Evergirls had hacked their hair and let their figures go, while a large number of Nevergirls were experimenting with makeup and diets.
Meanwhile, Agatha finally extricated herself from her gaggle. But just as she grabbed Sophie’s arm to end this idiocy, she froze still.
The dancing girl shuffled towards them in her sky-blue veil. Gangly as an egret, she didn’t so much walk as tiptoe, the heels of her white slippers never touching the ground. She pattered down the aisle, past gaping girls, until she stopped sharply in front of the two Readers. The girl raised her head of flowing, red hair and lifted the veil from her face.
Sophie and Agatha were both very confused.
She didn’t look like any girl they’d ever seen, and yet she seemed almost familiar. She had a long, pointy nose, a strong jaw, and close-set blue eyes. Her neck was strangely long, and her cropped blouse revealed perfect stomach muscles that rippled beneath her pale, freckled skin. The girl smiled ethereally, looked into their eyes, and unleashed a low squawk that made Sophie and Agatha jump. Then she blew them a kiss, replaced her veil, and shuffled out of the hall.
All the girls watched her in dumb silence until the mob started pushing towards Sophie and Agatha again and Beatrix blew her whistle.
“What was that?” Agatha said to Kiko as she crankily signed an autograph.
“Her name is Yara,” Kiko whispered. “No one knows how she got in! Doesn’t speak, doesn’t eat, far as we can tell, and disappears all the time. Probably has nowhere to live, poor thing. But the Dean lets her stay out of the goodness of her heart. Some people think she’s half stymph.”
Agatha frowned, thinking of the bony, carnivorous birds that hated Nevers. “How can someone be half stym—”
She lost her train of thought, because Sophie had culled the girls all to herself, smiling imperiously, signing autographs, and kissing cheeks, as if she’d finally found her way home.
“Can I help you fight boys?” Arachne hollered.
“Can I be your Vice Captain?” yelled Giselle.
“Can I be your Vice-Vice Captain?” echoed Flavia.
“Sit with my group for lunch!” Millicent called.
“No, sit with us!” Mona countered—
“How glorious it is to have fans again,” Sophie said, ignoring Agatha’s horrified look and dotting an autograph with hearts. “Here I am trying to get home where no one wants me, and instead stumble upon paradise, where everyone does.”
“If you’re miserable with Beatrix, don’t worry,” Kiko said, noticing Agatha’s glum face. “You can always stay with me.”
Agatha turned to her, and Kiko suddenly understood. “You aren’t staying, are you?” Kiko rasped.
The crowd went silent around her.
“Now tell me about this school play,” Sophie said loudly to Reena. “Have you cast the lead par—”
She stopped, for all the students had followed Agatha’s gaze out the window. Across the bay, fog brewed thicker around the grisly red castle.
“If we stay, we’re starting war,” Agatha said to the girls. “All of you would be in danger.”
She turned to Sophie. “You heard the professors. We can fix what I’ve done without anyone dying. Not you. Not Tedros. Not anyone here. We wish for each other, and we can forget this school ever happened.” She touched her friend’s shoulder. “It’s Evil if we stay, Sophie. And you’re not Evil.”
Sophie slowly gazed up at a sea of blameless girls, who would no doubt die at the hands of Tedros and his red hoods. Only Agatha had forgotten the Dean’s warning. They could go home as long as both of them meant their wish. But Sophie knew Agatha couldn’t mean a wish for her friend. Agatha couldn’t forget this school.
Because a friend wasn’t enough for Agatha anymore.
Agatha wanted a prince.
“We’ll hide in the Blue Forest and come up with a plan,” Agatha said to her quietly, anxious to escape before the Dean returned. “Maybe we can mogrify into the Boys’ school.”
Crestfallen, Sophie said nothing—
Until she met her own eyes in the painting on the wall.
Atop the castle in her crystal crown, she looked just like someone she knew, with the same goldspun blond hair, emerald eyes, and ivory skin. Someone who too had lost her happy ending to a boy. Someone who had died all alone because of it.
“You are too beautiful for this world, Sophie.”
It was the last thing her mother had ever said.
She wanted me to find it, Sophie thought, this world where she wouldn’t end like her mother.
A world where she and Agatha would be happy forever.
A world where a boy could never come between them.
A world without princes.
And only one prince stood in her way, Sophie gritted, tears glistening.
A prince that Agatha would surely forget once he was dead.
“It isn’t Evil, Aggie,” Sophie vowed. “This school is our only hope.”
Agatha tightened. “Sophie, what are you—”
“He says he wants me?” Sophie bellowed to her waiting army. She bared teeth at Tedros’ castle.
“Then let him come for me.”
The girls let out a raucous cheer and mobbed their new leader.
“Death to Tedros!”
“Death to Boys!”
Agatha drained of color as Sophie met her eyes and vanished into the swarm.
One wish, and she’d set a war in motion. A war between two sides fighting for her heart. A war between two people she loved. A war between her best friend and a prince.
Agatha’s soul scorched with guilt, a promise to a father gone up in flames.
I need help, she prayed, watching Sophie blow kisses to her soldiers. Someone who could see through all this. Someone to tell her who was Good this time and who was Evil.
As she retreated from the horde, she noticed an odd glint from the corner, hovering near the floor in Sader’s dark nook of paintings. Slowly two tiny yellow eyes floated towards her, like suspended marbles. Two more suddenly glowed next to them, then two more, as hunched shadows pattered from behind a marble column.
The three black rats glowered at Agatha as if she’d said the magic words. Then they skittered through the back doors to lead her to their master.
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“So let me get this straight,” Hester glared, straddling a gilded sink next to Anadil, both in their saggy black Nevers’ tunics. “Tedros wants to kill Sophie. Sophie wants to kill Tedros. And unless you find an ending with one of them now, everyone in this school dies.”
Agatha nodded weakly, leaning against one of Honor Tower’s ivory bathroom stalls, fitted with a sapphire toilet and tub. She never thought she’d be so happy to see two witches in her life. Unlike the rest of the girls, neither of them had changed. Hester’s red-and-black-streaked hair was greasier than ever, and the buckhorned red demon tattoo around her neck back to full color after a failed spell had weakened it the year before. Anadil, meanwhile, looked even paler than she did before, if that was possible for an albino with ghostly white skin and hair. Straddling the sink next to Hester, she dangled a live lizard to her three black rats that looked just like the ones slain in last year’s Good-Evil war.
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Soman Chainani
It’s all happy ever after in the School for Good and Evil… or is it? The second title in the NYT bestselling fantasy adventure series – perfect for girls who prefer their fairy tales with a twist.After saving themselves and their fellow students from a life pitched against one another, Sophie and Agatha are back home again, living happily ever after. But life isn't exactly a fairy tale…When Agatha secretly wishes she’d chosen a different happy ending with Prince Tedros, the gates to the School for Good and Evil open once again. But everything has changed and a happy ending seems further away than ever…
Table of Contents
Cover (#u4a1eb78e-7274-5a4f-a75f-25ae90a8e854)
Title Page (#u6f20818e-0a69-5a77-a9c6-02cb176d1a66)
Part I
1. Sophie Makes a Wish
2. Agatha Makes a Wish Too
3. Breadcrumbs
4. Red Hoods Ride
5. The Other School
6. Her Name Is Yara
7. The Witches Brew a Plan
8. Unforgiven
9. Symptoms Returned
10. Doubt
11. Double Crossings
12. The Uninvited Guest
Part II
13. The Supper Hall Book Club
14. Merlin’s Lost Spell
15. The Five Rules
16. A Boy by Any Other Name
17. Two Schools, Two Missions
18. Sader’s Secret History
19. Two Days Left
20. One Step Ahead
21. Red Light
22. Last One In
23. Death in the Forest
24. Villains Unmasked
About the Author
Also by Soman Chainani
Copyright
About the Publisher
IN THE FOREST PRIMEVAL
A SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL
TWO TOWERS LIKE TWIN HEADS
ONE FOR THE PURE
ONE FOR THE WICKED
TRY TO ESCAPE YOU’LL ALWAYS FAIL
THE ONLY WAY OUT IS
THROUGH A FAIRY TALE
(#u5f6a2e56-a64a-55a5-8a69-b1badc632dc8)
(#u5f6a2e56-a64a-55a5-8a69-b1badc632dc8)
There is an uneasiness that remains after your best friend tries to kill you.
But as Agatha gazed out at her and Sophie’s golden statues, towering over the sun-speckled square, she swallowed it away.
“I don’t know why it has to be a musical,” she said, sneezing from the carnations on her pink dress.
“No sweating in your costumes!” Sophie barked at a boy struggling in a ferocious plaster dog head, while the girl roped to him stumbled around in her own cuddly dog head. Sophie caught two boys labeled Chaddick and Ravan trying to swap outfits. “No switching schools either!”
“But I want to be an Ever!” Ravan groused, and pulled at his dumpy black tunic.
“My wig itches,” mewled Beatrix, clawing her blond hairpiece.
“Mummy won’t know it’s me,” whined a boy in the School Master’s shiny silver mask.
“AND NO SULKING ABOUT PARTS!” Sophie boomed, branding Dot on the blacksmith’s daughter before stuffing two chocolate ice pops in her hands. “You need to gain twenty pounds by next week.”
“You said it’d be small,” Agatha said, eyeing a boy teetering on a ladder as he painted two familiar green eyes on the massive theater marquee. “Something tasteful for the anniversary.”
“Is every boy in this town a tenor?” Sophie squawked, inspecting the males with these very same eyes. “Surely someone’s voice has changed? Surely someone can play Tedros, the most handsome, charming prince in the—”
She turned to find red-haired, bucktoothed Radley in tight breeches, puffing his chest. Sophie gagged and stamped him Hort.
“This doesn’t seem small,” Agatha said, louder, watching two girls pull the canvas off a ticket booth with twenty neon Sophie faces silk-screened across it. “And it doesn’t seem tastef—”
“Lights!” Sophie called to two boys suspended from ropes—
Agatha spun from the blinding detonation. Through fingers, she peeked up at the velvet curtain behind them, embedded with a thousand white-hot bulbs spelling out:
CURSES! The Musical
Starring, Written, Directed, and Produced by Sophie
“Is this too dull for the finale?” Sophie said, whirling to Agatha in a midnight-blue ballgown with delicate gold leaves, a ruby pendant around her neck, and a tiara of blue orchids. “That reminds me. Can you sing harmony?”
Agatha swelled like a tick. “Have you lost your mind! You said it’d be a tribute to the kidnapped children, not some fairground burlesque! I can’t act, I can’t sing, and here we are having a dress rehearsal for a vanity show that doesn’t even have a scrip— What is THAT?”
She pointed at the sash of red crystals across Sophie’s dress.
Sophie stared at her. “You don’t expect me to tell our story as it happened, do you?”
Agatha scowled.
“Oh, Agatha, if we don’t celebrate ourselves, who else will?” Sophie moaned, looking out at the giant amphitheater. “We’re the Gavaldon Curse Breakers! The School Master Slayers! Larger than life! Greater than legend! So where’s our palace? Where’s our slaves? On the anniversary of our kidnapping from this odious town, they should adore us! They should worship us! They should bow down instead of trolling around with fat, badly dressed widows!”
Her voice thundered across empty wooden seats. She turned to find her friend studying her.
“The Elders gave him permission, didn’t they,” said Agatha.
Sophie’s face darkened. She spun quickly and started handing sheet music to the cast.
“When is it?” Agatha asked.
Sophie didn’t answer.
“Sophie, when is it?”
“The day after the show,” Sophie said, sprucing the garlands on a giant altar set piece. “But that might change once they see the encore.”
“Why? What’s in the encore?”
“I’m fine about it, Aggie. I’ve made my peace.”
“Sophie. What’s in the encore.”
“He’s a grown man. Free to make his own decisions.”
“And this show has nothing to do with trying to stop your father’s wedding.”
Sophie twirled. “Why would you ever think that?”
Agatha glared at the fat, homeless hag, slouched in a veil under the altar, stamped Honora.
Sophie shoved Agatha music. “If I were you, I’d be learning how to sing.”
When they returned from the Woods nine months before, the hubbub had been frightening. For two hundred years, the School Master had kidnapped children from Gavaldon to his School for Good and Evil. But after so many children lost forever, so many families torn apart, two girls had found their way back. People wanted to kiss them, touch them, build statues for them, as if they were gods fallen to earth. To satisfy demand, the Council of Elders suggested they hold supervised autograph signings in the church after Sunday services. The questions never changed: “Did they torture you?” “Are you sure the curse is broken?” “Did you see my son?”
Sophie offered to endure these on her own, but to her surprise, Agatha always showed. Indeed, in those first months, Agatha did daily interviews for the town scroll, let Sophie dress her up and slather her with makeup, and politely endured the young children her friend loathed.
“Totems of disease,” Sophie grumbled, dabbing her nostrils with eucalyptus before signing another storybook. She noticed Agatha smile at a boy as she autographed his copy of King Arthur.
“Since when do you like children?” Sophie growled.
“Since they beg to see Mother when they’re sick now,” said Agatha, flashing lipstick stains on her teeth. “Never had so many patients in her life.”
But by summer, the crowd had thinned. It was Sophie’s idea to do posters.
Agatha gaped at the sign on the church door. “Free kiss?”
“On their storybooks,” Sophie said, puckering garishly red lips into a pocket mirror.
“That’s not what it sounds like,” said Agatha, pulling at the clingy green dress Sophie had loaned her. Pink had noticeably disappeared from her friend’s closet after they returned, presumably because it reminded her of her time as a bald, toothless witch.
“Look, we’re old news,” Agatha said, yanking at the dress’s straps again. “Time to go back to normal like everyone else.”
“Maybe it should just be me this week.” Sophie’s eyes flicked up from the mirror. “Perhaps they sense your lack of enthusiasm.”
But no one except smelly Radley showed that Sunday or the next week, when Sophie’s posters hawked an “intimate gift” with every autograph, or the next, when she promised a “private dinner” too. By the fall, the Missing signs in the square had come down, the children had shoved their storybooks in closets, and Mr. Deauville put a Last Days sign in his shop window, for no new fairy tales had come from the Woods for him to sell. Now the girls were just two more fossils of the curse. Even Sophie’s father had stopped treading gently. On Halloween, he told his daughter he had received the Elders’ permission to marry Honora. He never asked for Sophie’s.
As she hurried from rehearsal through a hard, ugly rain, Sophie glowered at her once-shining statue, spotted and runny with bird droppings. She had worked so hard for it. A week of snail-egg facials and cucumber-juice fasts so the sculptor would get her just right. And now here it was, a toilet for pigeons.
She glanced back at her painted face beaming from the distant theater marquee and gritted her teeth. The show would remind her father who came first. The show would remind them all.
As she splashed out of the square toward soddy cottage lanes, trails of smoke wafted from chimneys, and Sophie knew what each family was having for dinner: breaded pork with mushroom gravy in Wilhelm’s house, beef and potato cream soup in Belle’s, bacon lentils and pickled yams in Sabrina’s … The food her father loved and never could have.
Good. Let him starve, for all she cared. As she walked up the lane to her own house, Sophie inhaled for the smell of a cold, empty kitchen, a smell that reminded her father of what he’d lost.
Only now the kitchen didn’t smell empty at all. Sophie inhaled again, a smell of meat and milk, and felt herself running to the door. She threw it open—
Honora hacked into raw pork ribs. “Sophie,” she panted, wiping plump hands. “I had to close at Bartleby’s—I could use some help—”
Sophie stared through her. “Where’s my father?”
Honora tried to fix her bushy, flour-crusted hair. “Um, putting up the tent with the boys. He thought it might be nice if we all have dinner toget—”
“Tent?” Sophie charged for the back door. “Now?”
She barreled into the garden. In gusty rain, the widow’s two boys each manned a roped-down stake while Stefan tried to loop the billowing white tent around a third. But just as Stefan succeeded, the tent ripped away, burying him and the two boys beneath it. Sophie could hear them giggling before her father poked his head from under the canvas. “Just what we need. A fourth!”
“Why are you putting up the tent?” Sophie said, ice-cold. “The wedding is next week.”
Stefan stood tall and cleared his throat. “It’s tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Sophie went white. “This tomorrow? The one after today?”
“Honora said we should do it before your show,” Stefan said, running a hand through a newly grown beard. “We don’t want to distract from it.”
Sophie felt sick. “But … how can—”
“Don’t worry about us. We announced the date change at church, and Jacob and Adam here will have the tent up in no time. How was rehearsal?” He hugged the six-year-old to his brawny flank. “Jacob said he could see the lights from our porch.”
“Me too!” said eight-year-old Adam, hugging his other side.
Stefan kissed their heads. “Who’d have thought I’d have two little princes?” he whispered.
Sophie watched her father, heart in her throat.
“So come on, tell us what’s in your show,” Stefan said, smiling up at her.
But Sophie suddenly didn’t care about her show at all.
Dinner was a handsome roast, with perfectly cooked broccoli, cucumber salad, and a flourless blueberry tart, but she didn’t touch any of it. She sat rigid, glaring at Honora across the cramped table as forks speared and clinked.
“Eat,” Stefan prodded her.
Next to him, Honora rubbed her neck wattle, avoiding Sophie’s stare. “If she doesn’t like it—”
“You made what she likes,” Stefan said, eyes on Sophie. “Eat.”
Sophie didn’t. Clinks petered to silence.
“Can I have her pork?” Adam said.
“You and my mother were friends, weren’t you?” Sophie said to Honora.
The widow choked on her meat. Stefan scowled at Sophie and opened his mouth to retort, but Honora grabbed his wrist. She dabbed at dry lips with a dirty napkin.
“Best friends,” she rasped with a smile, and swallowed again. “For a very long time.”
Sophie froze over. “I wonder what came between you.”
Honora’s smile vanished and she peered down at her plate. Sophie’s eyes stayed locked on her.
Stefan’s fork clanked against the table. “Why don’t you help Honora in the shop after school?”
Sophie waited for Adam to answer him—then saw her father still looking at her.
“Me?” Sophie blanched. “Help … her?”
“Bartleby said my wife could use an extra hand,” Stefan pushed.
Wife. That’s all Sophie heard. Not thief. Not tramp. Wife.
“After the wedding and the show is over,” he added. “Get you settled into normal life.”
Sophie spun to Honora, expecting her to be as shocked, but she was just anxiously slurping cucumbers through dry lips.
“Father, you want me to—to—” Sophie couldn’t get words out. “Churn b-b-butter?”
“Build some strength in those stick arms,” her father said between bites, as Jacob and Adam compared biceps.
“But I’m famous!” Sophie shrieked. “I have fans—I have a statue! I can’t work! Not with her!”
“Then perhaps you should find somewhere else to live.” Stefan picked a bone clean. “As long as you’re in this family, you’ll contribute. Or the boys would be happy to have your room.”
Sophie gasped.
“Now eat,” he spat, so sharply she had to obey.
As he watched Agatha slip on her old, saggy black dress, Reaper growled suspiciously, sucking on a few trout bones across the leaky room.
“See? Same old Agatha.” She slammed the trunk on Sophie’s borrowed clothes, slid it near the door, and kneeled to pet her bald, wrinkled cat. “So now you can be nice again.”
Reaper hissed.
“It’s me,” Agatha said, trying to pet him. “I haven’t changed a bit.”
Reaper scratched her and trundled away.
Agatha rubbed the fresh mark on her hand between others barely healed. She flopped onto her bed while Reaper curled up in a moldy green corner, as far away from her as he could.
She rolled over and hugged her pillow.
I’m happy.
She listened to rain slosh against the straw roof and spurt through a hole into her mother’s black cauldron.
Home sweet home.
Clink, clink, clink went the rain.
Sophie and me.
She stared at the blank, cracked wall. Clink, clink, clink … Like a sword in a sheath, rubbing against a belt buckle. Clink, clink, clink. Her chest started pounding, her blood burning like lava, and she knew it was happening again. Clink, clink, clink. The black of the cauldron became the black of his boots. The straw of the ceiling, the gold of his hair. The sky through the window, the blue in his eyes. In her arms, the pillow became tanned muscles and flesh—
“Some help, dear!” a voice trilled.
Agatha jolted awake, gripping her sweat-stained pillow. She lurched off the bed and opened the door to see her mother lugging two baskets, one teeming with stinky roots and leaves, the other with dead tadpoles, cockroaches, and lizards.
“What in the world—”
“So you can finally teach me some potions from school!” Callis chimed, eyes bulging, and plunked a basket in Agatha’s hands. “Not as many patients today. We have time to brew!”
“I told you I can’t do magic anymore,” Agatha snapped, closing the door behind them. “Our fingers don’t glow here.”
“Why won’t you tell me anything that happened?” her mother asked, picking her oily dome of black hair. “The least you could do is show me a wart potion.”
“Look, I put it all behind me.”
“Lizards are better fresh, dear. What can we make with those?”
“I forgot all that stuff—”
“They’ll go bad—”
“Stop!”
Her mother stiffened.
“Please,” Agatha begged. “I don’t want to talk about school.”
Gently Callis took the basket from her. “When you came home, I’d never been so happy.” She looked into her daughter’s eyes. “But part of me worries what you gave up.”
Agatha stared down at her black clump shoes as her mother towed the baskets into the kitchen. “You know how I feel about waste,” Callis sighed. “Let’s hope our bowels can handle a lizard stew.”
As Agatha chopped onions by torchlight, she listened to her mother hum off-key, like she did every night. Once upon a time, she had loved their graveyard haven, their lonely routines.
She put down the knife. “Mother, how do you know if you’ve found Ever After?”
“Hmmm?” said Callis, bony hands scraping a few roaches into the cauldron.
“The people in a fairy tale, I mean.”
“It should say so, dear.” Her mother nodded at an open storybook peeking from under Agatha’s bed.
Agatha looked down at its last page, a blond prince and raven-haired princess kissing at their wedding, framed by an enchanted castle …
THE END.
“But what if two people can’t see their storybook?” She gazed at the princess in her prince’s arms. “How do they know if they’re happy?”
“If they have to ask, they probably aren’t,” said her mother, jabbing a roach that wouldn’t drown.
Agatha’s eyes stayed on the prince a moment longer. She snapped the storybook shut and tossed it in the fire under the cauldron. “About time we got rid of these like everyone else.”
She resumed chopping in the corner, faster than before.
“Are you all right, dear?” Callis said, hearing sniffles.
Agatha dabbed at her eyes. “Onions.”
The rain had gone, but a harsh autumn wind raked across the cemetery, lit by two torches over the gates that clung to skipping flames. As she approached the grave, her calves locked and her heart banged in her ears, begging her to stay away. Sweat seeped down her back as she kneeled in the weeds and mud, her eyes closed. She had never looked. Never.
With a deep breath, Sophie opened her eyes. She could barely make out an eroded butterfly in the headstone above the words.
Two smaller gravestones, both unmarked, flanked her mother’s like wings. Fingers covered by white mittens, she picked moss out of the cracks in one, overgrown from the years of neglect. As she tore away the mold, her soiled mittens found deeper grooves in the rock, smooth and deliberate. There was something carved in the slab. She peered closer—
“Sophie?”
She turned to see Agatha approach in a tattered black coat, balancing a drippy candle on a saucer.
“My mother saw you from the window.”
Agatha crouched next to her and laid the flame in front of the graves. Sophie didn’t say anything for a long while.
“He thought it was her fault,” she said at last, gazing at the two unmarked headstones. “Two boys, both born dead. How else could he explain it?” She watched a blue butterfly flutter out of the darkness and nestle into the carving on her mother’s decayed gravestone.
“All the doctors said she couldn’t have more children. Even your mother.” Sophie paused and smiled faintly at the blue butterfly. “One day it happened. She was so sick no one thought it could last, but her belly still grew. The Miracle Child, the Elders called it. Father said he’d name him Filip.”
Sophie turned to Agatha. “Only you can’t call a girl Filip.”
Sophie paused, cheekbones hardening. “She loved me, no matter how weak I had left her. No matter how many times she watched him walk to her friend’s house and disappear inside.” Sophie fought the tears as long as she could. “Her friend, Agatha. Her best friend. How could he?” She cried bitterly into her dirty mittens.
Agatha looked down and didn’t say a word.
“I watched her die, Aggie. Broken and betrayed.” Sophie turned from the grave, red faced. “Now he’ll have everything he wanted.”
“You can’t stop him,” Agatha said, touching her.
Sophie recoiled. “And let him get away with it?”
“What choice do you have?”
“You think that wedding will happen?” Sophie spat. “Watch.”
“Sophie …”
“He should be the one dead!” Sophie flushed with blood. “Him and his little princes! Then I’d be happy in this prison!”
Her face was so horrible that Agatha froze. For the first time since they returned, she glimpsed the deadly witch inside her friend, yearning to unleash.
Sophie saw the fear in Agatha’s eyes. “I’m s-s-s-sorry—” she stammered, turning away. “I—I don’t know what happened—” Her face melted to shame. The witch was gone.
“I miss her, Aggie,” Sophie whispered, trembling. “I know we have our happy ending. But I still miss my mother.”
Agatha hesitated, then touched her friend’s shoulder. Sophie gave in to her, and Agatha held her as she sobbed. “I wish I could see her again,” Sophie wept. “I’d do anything. Anything.”
The crooked tower clock tolled ten times down the hill, but loud, doleful creaks thickened between each one. In each other’s arms, the two girls watched the hunched silhouette of old Mr. Deauville as he wheeled a cart past the clock with the last of his closed-down shop. Every few paces he stopped, laboring under the weight of his forgotten storybooks, until his shadow disappeared around the corner and the creaks faded away.
“I just don’t want to end like her, alone and … forgotten,” Sophie breathed.
She turned to Agatha, trying to smile. “But my mother didn’t have a friend like you, did she? You gave up a prince, just for us to be together. To think I could make someone happy like that …” Her eyes misted. “I don’t deserve you, Agatha. I really don’t. After all I’ve done.”
Agatha was still quiet.
“Someone Good would let this marriage happen, wouldn’t they?” Sophie pressed her softly. “Someone as Good as you.”
“It’s late,” Agatha said, standing up. She held out her hand.
Sophie took it limply. “And I still have to find a dress for the wedding.”
Agatha managed a smile. “See? Good after all.”
“Least I can do is look better than the bride,” Sophie said, swishing ahead.
Agatha snorted and grabbed the torch off the gate. “Wait. I’ll walk you home.”
“How lovely,” Sophie said, not stopping. “I can smell more of that onion soup you had for dinner.”
“Lizard and onion soup, actually.”
“I really don’t know how we’re friends.”
Through the groaning gate, the two slipped side by side, torches lighting up their long shadows across overgrown weeds. As they waded down the emerald hill and out of sight, a gust flew back through the cemetery, igniting a flame on a candle dripping onto its mud-stained saucer. The flame grew over a blue butterfly settled curiously on a grave, then stoked brighter, long enough to illuminate the carvings on the two unmarked graves beside it. A swan on each. One white.
The other black.
With a roar, the wind lashed between them and blew the candle out.
(#u5f6a2e56-a64a-55a5-8a69-b1badc632dc8)
Blood. It smelled blood.
Eat.
Smashing through trees, the Beast hunted their scent, grunting and slobbering on all fours. Claws and feet pounded the dirt, faster, faster, shredding vines and branches, bounding over rocks, until at last it could hear their breaths and see the trail of red. One of them was hurt.
Eat.
Through a long, dark, hollow trunk it slunk, licking up the blood, smelling their terror. The Beast took its time, for they had nowhere to go, and soon it heard their whimpers. Bit by bit they came into view, silhouetted in moonlight, trapped between the end of the log and a thick patch of briars. The older boy, wounded and pale, clutched the younger to his chest.
The Beast swept them both up and held the boys as they cried. Snuggled in briars, the Beast rocked them gently until the boys stopped weeping and knew the Beast was Good. Soon the boys breathed heavier against the Beast’s black breast, nestling deeper into its arms, hugging them tighter … harder … bonier … until the boys gasped awake …
And saw Sophie’s bloody smile.
Sophie flung up from bed and knocked into her bedside candle, splattering lavender wax all over the wall. She whirled to the mirror and saw herself bald, toothless, pockmarked with warts—
“Help—” she choked, closing her eyes—
She opened them and the witch was no longer there. Her beautiful face stared back at her.
Panicked, Sophie checked her shivering white skin for warts, wiping away the cold film of sweat.
I’m Good, she calmed herself when she found none.
But her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, her mind racing, unable to shake that Beast, the Beast she’d killed in a world far away, the Beast that still haunted her dreams. She thought of her rage in the graveyard … Agatha’s petrified face …
You’ll never be Good, the School Master had warned.
Sophie’s mouth went dry. She’d smile at the wedding. She’d work at Bartleby’s. She’d eat the widow’s meat and buy toys for her sons. She’d be happy here. Just like Agatha.
Anything to not be a witch again.
“I’m Good,” she repeated into silence.
The School Master had to be wrong. She’d saved Agatha’s life, and Agatha had saved hers.
They were home together. The riddle solved. The School Master dead.
The storybook closed.
Definitely Good, Sophie assured herself, snuggling back into her pillow.
But she could still taste blood.
The fog and winds of the night cleared to a blinding sun, so strong for November that the day seemed blessed for love. Every wedding in Gavaldon was a public occasion, but on this Friday, the shops were all closed and the square deserted, for Stefan was a popular man. Under a white garden tent behind his house, the entire town mingled over cherry punch and plum wine, as three fiddlers strummed in the corner, exhausted from playing a funeral the night before.
Agatha wasn’t sure if her dumpy black smock was appropriate attire for a wedding, but it suited her mood. She’d woken up miserable and couldn’t put a finger on why. Sophie needs me to be happy, she told herself as she tromped down the hill, but by the time she joined the crowd in the garden, her frown was a scowl. She needed to snap out of it or she’d make Sophie even more depressed …
A flash of pink surged through the crowd and bear hugged her into a poofy, ruffled gown.
“Thank you for being here on our special day,” Sophie cooed.
Agatha coughed.
“I’m so happy for them, aren’t you?” Sophie mooned, dabbing nonexistent tears. “It’ll be such a thrill. Having a new mother, two brothers, and going to the shop each morning to churn”—she gulped—“butter.”
Agatha gaped at Sophie, back in her favorite dress. “You’re pink … again.”
“Like my loving, Good heart,” her friend breathed, stroking pink-ribboned braids.
Agatha blinked. “Did they put toadstools in the punch?”
“Sophie!”
Both girls turned and saw Jacob, Adam, and Stefan trying to fix crooked blue tulip garlands over the altar at the front of the tent. Standing on pumpkins to reach, the boys beckoned her with waves.
“Sweet little munchkins, aren’t they?” Sophie smiled. “I could just eat them both u—”
Agatha saw her friend’s green eyes chill with fear. Then it was gone, and the only traces left were the bruised circles beneath them. Nightmare scars. She’d seen them on Sophie before.
“Sophie, it’s me,” Agatha said quietly. “You don’t have to pretend.”
Sophie shook her head. “You and me, Aggie. That’s all I need to be Good,” she said, voice shaky. She clasped Agatha’s arm and looked deep into her friend’s dark eyes. “As long as we keep the witch inside me dead. Everything else I can bear if I try.” She gripped Agatha tighter and turned to the altar. “I’m coming, boys!” she shouted, and with a strained smile, swept off to help her new family.
Instead of feeling touched, Agatha felt even more miserable. What’s wrong with me?
Her mother came up beside her and handed her a glass of punch, which she downed in one gulp.
“Added a few glowworms,” Callis said. “Brighten that sour face.”
Agatha spat a spray of red.
“Really, dear. I know weddings are putrid things, but try not to look hostile.” Her mother nodded ahead. “The Elders already despise us. Don’t give them more reason.”
Agatha glanced at three wizened, bearded men in black top hats and knee-length gray cloaks, milling between seats and shaking hands. The length of their beards appeared to indicate their relative ages, with the Eldest’s funneling down past his chest.
“Why do they have to approve every marriage?” Agatha asked.
“Because when the kidnappings kept happening, the Elders blamed women like me,” her mother said, picking dandruff from her hair. “Back then, if you weren’t married by the time you finished school, people thought you were a witch. So the Elders forced marriages for all those unwed.” She managed a wry smile. “But even force couldn’t make a man wed me.”
Agatha remembered when no boy at school wanted her for the Ball either. Until …
Suddenly she felt even grimmer.
“When the kidnappings continued, the Elders softened their stance and ‘approved’ marriages instead. But I still remember their terrible arrangements,” said her mother, digging nails into her scalp. “Stefan suffered worst of all.”
“Why? What happened to him?”
Callis’ hand dropped, as if she’d forgotten her daughter was listening. “Nothing, dear. Nothing that matters anymore.”
“But you said—” Agatha heard her name called and spun to see Sophie waving her into a front-row seat.
“Aggie, we’re starting!”
Side by side in the first pew, a few feet from the altar, Agatha kept waiting for Sophie to crack. But her friend clung to her smile, even as her father joined the priest at the altar, the fiddlers began the procession, and Jacob and Adam strewed roses down the aisle in matching white suits. After months of fighting her father, fighting for attention, fighting real life … Sophie had changed.
You and me, Aggie.
All Agatha had ever wanted was to be enough for Sophie. For Sophie to need her as much as she needed Sophie. And now, at last, she’d won her happy ending.
But in her seat, Agatha didn’t feel happy at all. Something was bothering her about this wedding. Something worming through her heart. Before she could pinpoint it, the fiddlers slowed their tune, everyone under the tent stood, and Honora waddled down the aisle. Agatha watched Sophie carefully, expecting her friend to finally betray herself, but Sophie didn’t flinch, even as she took in her new stepmother’s bulbous hairdo, pudgy behind, and dress smudged with what looked like cake frosting.
“Dearest friends and family,” the priest began, “we are gathered here to witness the union of these two souls …”
Stefan took Honora’s hand, and Agatha felt even more dismal. Her back hunched, her lips pouted—
Across the aisle, her mother was glaring at her. Agatha sat up and faked a smile.
“In love, happiness comes from honesty, from committing to the one that we need,” the priest continued.
Agatha felt Sophie gently take her hand, as if they both had everything they needed right here.
“May you grow a love that fulfills you, a love that lasts Ever After …”
Agatha’s palm started to sweat.
“Because you chose this love. You chose this ending to your story.”
Her hand was dripping now, but Sophie didn’t let go.
“And now this ending is yours eternally.”
Agatha’s heart jackhammered. Her skin burned up.
“And if no one has any objections, then this union is sealed forever—”
Agatha pitched forward, sick to her stomach—
“I now pronounce you—”
Then she saw it.
“Man and—”
Her finger was glowing brilliant gold.
She let out a cry of shock. Sophie turned in surprise—
Something flew between them, throwing them both to the ground. Agatha wheeled to feel another arrow graze her throat before she lunged away. She could hear children crying, chairs falling, feet stumbling as the mob stampeded for cover, dozens of golden arrows whizzing past, gouging holes in the tent. Agatha spun for Sophie, but the tent tore off its stakes, toppled over the shrieking crowd, and swallowed her, until she couldn’t see anything but muffled shadows flailing behind the canvas. Breathless, Agatha crawled on all fours over a shattered altar, hands clawing through mud and trampled garlands as arrows landed ahead with shearing rips. Who was doing this? Who would destroy a weddin—
Agatha froze. Now her finger was shining even brighter than before.
It can’t be.
She heard a girl’s screams ahead. Screams she knew. Sweating, shivering, Agatha skimmed under overturned chairs, shoving the last fringe of tent off her, until she felt a blast of sunlight and scraped into the front garden, expecting carnage—
But people were just standing there, silent, still, watching the skyfall of arrows from every direction.
Arrows from the Woods.
Agatha shielded herself in horror, then realized the arrows weren’t aimed at her. They weren’t aimed at any of the villagers. No matter where they came from out of the Woods, their shafts curved at the last second, tearing toward one and only one target.
“Eeeeeyiiiiii!”
Sophie ran around her house, ducking and batting arrows away with her glass heels.
“Agatha! Agatha, help!”
But there was no time, for a shaft almost sliced off her head, and Sophie ran down a hill, fast as she could, arrows following her all the way.
“Who would want me dead?” Sophie wailed to stained glass martyrs and statues of saints.
Agatha sat beside her in the empty pews. It had been two weeks since Sophie started hiding in the church, the only place where the arrows didn’t pursue her. Again and again she tried to break out, but the arrows returned with vengeance, slashing from the Woods, followed by spears, axes, daggers, and darts. By the third day, it was clear there would be no escape. Whoever wanted to kill her would wait as long as it took.
At first Sophie saw no reason to panic. The townspeople brought her food (taking heed of her “fatal allergies” to wheat, sugar, dairy, and red meat), Agatha brought her the herbs and roots she needed to make her creams, and Stefan brought assurances he wouldn’t rewed until his daughter was brought home safe. With the townsmen uselessly combing the forest for the assassins, the town scroll branded Sophie “the Brave Little Princess” for taking the burden of yet another curse, while the Elders ordered her statue be given a fresh coat of paint. Soon children clamored once more for autographs, the village anthem was amended to “Blessed Is Our Sophie,” and townsmen took turns keeping watch over the church. There was even talk of a permanent one-woman show in the theater once she was out of danger.
“La Reine Sophie, an epic three-hour celebration of my achievements,” Sophie raptured, smelling the sympathy bouquets that filled the aisle. “A bit of cabaret to stir the blood, a circus intermezzo with wild lions and trapeze, and a rousing rendition of ‘I Am but a Simple Woman’ to close. Oh, Agatha, how I’ve longed to find my place in this stagnant, monotonous town! All I needed was a part big enough to hold me!” Suddenly she looked worried. “You don’t think they’ll stop trying to kill me, do you? This is the best thing that’s ever happened!”
But then the attacks got worse.
The first night, firebombs launched from the Woods and annihilated Belle’s house, leaving her whole family homeless. On the second night, boiling oil flooded from the trees, immolating an entire cottage lane. In smoldering ruins, the assassins left the same message, burnt into the ground.
By the next morning, when the Elders took to the square to calm rioting villagers, Stefan had already made it to the church.
“It’s the only way the Elders and I can protect you,” he told his daughter, bearing a hammer and padlocks.
Agatha wouldn’t leave, so he locked her in too.
“I thought our story was over!” Sophie cried, listening to a mob of villagers outside chanting, “Send her back! Send her back!” She slumped in her seat. “Why don’t they want you? Why am I always the villain? And why am I always locked in?”
Next to her, Agatha gazed at a marble saint in a frieze above the altar, lunging for an angel. He stretched his strong arm, torqued his chest, as if he’d follow the angel wherever it went …
“Aggie?”
Agatha broke from her trance and turned. “You do have a way of making enemies.”
“I tried to be Good!” Sophie said. “I tried to be just like you!”
Agatha felt that sick feeling again. The one she’d been trying to keep down.
“Aggie, do something!” Sophie grabbed her arm. “You always fix things!”
“Maybe I’m not as Good as you think,” Agatha murmured, and pulled away, pretending to polish her clump. In the silence, she could feel Sophie watching her.
“Aggie.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did your finger glow?”
Agatha’s muscles clenched. “What?”
“I saw it,” said Sophie softly. “At the wedding.”
Agatha threw her a glance. “Probably a trick of light. Magic doesn’t work here.”
“Right.”
Agatha held her breath. She could feel Sophie thinking.
“But the teachers never relocked our fingers, did they?” her friend said. “And magic follows emotion. That’s what they told us.”
Agatha shifted. “So?”
“You didn’t look happy at the wedding,” Sophie said. “Are you sure something didn’t make you upset? Upset enough to do magic?”
Agatha met her eyes. Sophie searched her face, seeing right through her.
“I know you, Agatha.”
Agatha gripped the pew.
“I know why you were sad.”
“Sophie, I didn’t mean it!” Agatha blurted—
“You were upset with my father,” said Sophie. “For all he put me through.”
Agatha goggled at her. She recovered and nodded. “Right. Uh-huh. You got me.”
“At first I thought you’d done the spell to stop his wedding. But that doesn’t make any sense now, does it?” Sophie said with a snort. “That would mean you sent the arrows for me.”
Agatha croaked a laugh, trying not to look at her.
“Just a trick of light,” Sophie sighed. “Like you said.”
They sat in silence and listened to the chants.
“Don’t worry about my father. He and I’ll be fine,” Sophie said. “The witch won’t come back, Aggie. Not as long as we’re friends.”
Her voice was more naked than Agatha had ever heard it. Agatha looked up, surprised.
“You make me happy, Agatha,” said Sophie. “It just took me too long to see it.”
Agatha tried to hold her gaze, but all she could see was the saint above the altar, hand lunging towards her, like a prince reaching for his princess.
“You’ll see. We’ll come up with a plan, like always,” Sophie said, reapplying pink lipstick between yawns. “But maybe a little beauty nap first …”
As she curled up on the pew like a cat, pillow to her stomach, Agatha saw it was her friend’s favorite, stitched with a blond princess and her prince, embraced beneath the words “Ever After.” But Sophie had revised the prince with her sewing kit. Now he had boxy dark hair, goonish bug eyes … and a black dress.
Agatha watched her best friend fall into sleep a few breaths later, free from nightmares for the first time in weeks.
As the chants outside the church grew louder—“Send her back! Send her back!”—Agatha stared at Sophie’s pillow, and her stomach wrenched with that sick feeling.
The same feeling she felt looking at the storybook prince in her kitchen. The same feeling she felt watching a man and wife exchange vows. The same feeling she felt as she held Sophie’s hand, growing stronger, stronger, until her finger had glowed with a secret. A secret so terrible, so unforgivable, that she’d ruined a fairy tale.
For in that single moment, watching the wedding she’d never have, Agatha had wished for something she never thought possible.
She wished for a different ending to her story.
An ending with someone else.
That’s when the arrows came for Sophie.
The arrows that wouldn’t stop, no matter how much she tried to take her wish back.
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That night they flattened Radley’s house first, with a boulder lobbed over the trees, then the crooked clock tower, which tolled broken moans as screaming villagers fled through the square. Soon whole lanes went up in splinters as parents clung to their children in wells and ditches, watching rocks fly across the moon like meteors. When the blitz ended at four in the morning, only half the town remained. The trembling villagers looked out at the theater, illuminated in the distance, the lights on its red curtain rearranged:
SOPHIE OR DIE.
While Sophie slept calmly through all this, Agatha sat trapped in the church, listening to the screams and thumps. Give them Sophie, and her best friend would die. Don’t give them Sophie, and her whole town would die. Shame burnt her throat. Somehow she’d reopened the gates between the worlds. But to who? Who wanted Sophie dead?
There had to be a way to fix this. If she’d reopened the gates, surely she could close them!
First she tried to make her finger glow again, focusing on her anger until her cheeks puffed—anger at the assassins, anger at herself, anger at her stupid, unlit finger that looked even paler than before. Then she tried doing spells anyway to repel the raiders, which went about as well as expected. She tried praying to stained glass saints, wishing on a star, rubbing every lamp in the church for a genie, and when it all failed miserably, she pried Sophie’s pink lipstick from her fist and scratched “TAKE ME INSTEAD” on the dawn-lit window. To her surprise, she got an answer.
“NO,” flames spelled across the forest fringe.
For a moment, through trees, Agatha saw a glint of red. Then it was gone.
“WHO ARE YOU?” she wrote.
“GIVE US SOPHIE,” the flames answered.
“SHOW YOURSELF,” she demanded.
“GIVE US SOPHIE.”
“YOU CAN’T HAVE HER,” Agatha scrawled.
A cannonball smashed through Sophie’s statue in reply.
Sophie stirred behind her, mumbling about the connection between poor sleep and pimples. Banging around in the dark, she lit a candle that streaked the hemlock rafters with bronze glow. Then she did a few bumbling yoga moves, nibbled on an almond, rubbed her face with grapefruit seeds, trout scales, and cacao cream, and twirled to Agatha with a sleepy smile. “Morning, darling, what’s our plan?”
But hunched in the windowsill, Agatha just stared out the broken glass, and then Sophie did too, at the leveled town, the homeless masses picking through rubble, and her severed statue head gaping at her from the church steps. Sophie’s smile slowly vanished.
“There’s no plan, is there?”
CRACK!
The oak doors shivered as a hammer bashed away a padlock.
CRACK! CRACK!
“Assassins!” Sophie cried.
Agatha leapt up in horror. “The church is hallowed ground!”
Boards snapped; screws loosened and clinked to the floor.
The girls backed against the altar. “Hide!” Agatha gasped, and Sophie ran around the lectern like a headless chicken—
Something metal slipped into the door.
“A key!” Agatha squeaked. “They have a key!”
She heard the lock catch. Behind her, Sophie fluttered uselessly between curtains.
“Hide now!” cried Agatha—
The door crashed open, and she spun to the dark threshold. Through weak candlelight, a hunched black shadow slunk into the church.
Agatha’s heart stopped.
No …
The crooked shadow glided down the aisle, flickering in flamelight. Agatha dropped to her knees against the altar. Her heart was rattling so hard she couldn’t breathe.
He’s dead! Ripped to pieces by a white swan and thrown to the wind! His black swan feathers rained over a school far, far away! But now the School Master was creeping towards her, very much alive, and Agatha cowered against the lectern with a shriek—
“The situation has become untenable,” said a voice.
Not the School Master’s.
Agatha peeked through fingers at the Elder with the longest beard, standing over her.
“Sophie must be moved to safety,” said the younger Elder behind him, doffing his black top hat.
“And she must be moved tonight,” said the youngest at the rear, stroking his meager beard.
“Where?” a voice breathed.
The Elders looked up to see Sophie in the marble frieze over the altar, pressed against a naked saint.
“THAT’S where you hid?” barked Agatha.
“Where will you take me?” Sophie asked the Eldest, trying in vain to extricate herself from the nude statue.
“It’s been arranged,” he said, replacing his hat as he walked towards the door. “We’ll return this evening.”
“But the attacks!” Agatha cried. “How will you stop them?”
“Arranged,” said the middle, following the Eldest out.
“Eight o’clock,” said the youngest, trailing behind him. “Only Sophie.”
“How do you know she’ll be safe!” Agatha panicked—
“All arranged,” the Eldest called, and locked the door behind him.
The two girls stood in dumb silence before Sophie let out a squeal.
“See? I told you!” She slid down the frieze and smushed Agatha in a hug. “Nothing can ruin our happy ending.” Humming with relief, she packed her creams and cucumbers in her pretty pink suitcase, for who knew how long it’d be before they’d let her friend visit with more. She glanced back at Agatha’s big dark eyes fixed out the window.
“Don’t fret, Aggie. It’s all arranged.”
But as Agatha watched the villagers sift through ruins, glowering bloodshot at the church, she remembered the last time her mother said the Elders “arranged” things … and hoped this time they’d have better results.
Before sunset, the Elders allowed Stefan to come, who Sophie hadn’t seen since he locked her in. He didn’t look the same. His beard was overgrown, his clothes filthy, his body sallow and malnourished. Two of his teeth were missing, and his left eye socket was bruised blue. With his daughter protected by the Elders, the villagers had clearly expelled their frustrations on him.
Sophie forced a sympathetic look, but her heart twinged with glee. No matter how Good she tried to be, the witch inside still wanted her father to suffer. She looked over at Agatha, chewing on her nails in a corner, pretending not to listen.
“Elders said it won’t be long,” Stefan said. “Once those cowards in the forest realize you’ve been hidden, sooner or later they’ll come looking. And I’ll be ready.” He scratched at his blackened pores and noticed his daughter wincing. “I know I’m a sight.”
“What you need is a good honeycream scrub,” Sophie said, digging through her bag of beauty products until she found its snakeskin pouch. But her father was just staring out at the demolished town, eyes wet.
“Father?”
“The village wants to give you up. But the Elders will do anything to protect you, even with Christmas coming. They’re better men than any of us,” he said softly. “No one in town will sell to me now. How we’re going to survive …” He wiped his eyes.
Sophie had never seen her father cry. “Well it’s not my fault,” she blurted.
Stefan exhaled. “Sophie, all that matters is you get home safe.”
Sophie fiddled with her pouch of honeycream. “Where are you staying?”
“Another reason I’m unpopular,” her father said, rubbing his black eye. “Whoever’s after you blasted the other houses in our lane, but left ours alone. Our food store’s all gone, but Honora still finds a way to feed us every night.”
Sophie gripped the pouch tighter. “Us?”
“Boys moved to your room until all’s safe and we can finish the wedding.”
Sophie spurted him with white gobs. Stefan smelled the honeycream and instantly started scrounging through her bag—“Anything here the boys can eat?”
Agatha could see Sophie about to faint and stepped in. “Stefan, do you know where the Elders will hide her?”
He shook his head. “But they assure me the villagers won’t find her either,” he said, watching Sophie whisk her bag as far across the church from him as she could. Stefan waited until she was out of earshot. “It’s not just the assassins we have to keep her safe from,” he whispered.
“But she can’t last long alone,” Agatha pressed him.
Stefan looked through the window at the woods shutting Gavaldon in, dark and endless in the fading light. “What happened when you were out there, Agatha? Who wants my daughter dead?”
Agatha still had no answer. “Suppose the plan doesn’t work?” she asked.
“We have to trust the Elders,” Stefan said, averting his eyes. “They know what’s best.”
Agatha saw pain cloud his face. “Stefan suffered worst of all.” That’s what her mother had said.
“I’ll fix this somehow,” Agatha said, guilt squeezing her voice. “I’ll keep her safe. I promise.”
Stefan leaned in and took her face into his hands. “And it’s a promise I need you to keep.”
Agatha looked into his scared eyes.
“Oh good grief.”
They turned to see Sophie at the altar, bag clenched to her chest.
“I’ll be home by the weekend,” she frowned. “And my bed better have clean sheets.”
As eight o’clock approached, Sophie sat on the altar table, surrounded by dripping candles, listening to her stomach rumble. She’d let her father take the last of her butterless bran oat crackers for the boys, because Agatha had practically forced her. The boys would gag on them, surely. That made her feel better.
Sophie sighed. The School Master was right. I am Evil.
Yet for all his powers and sorcery, he hadn’t known there was a cure. A friend who made her Good. As long as she had Agatha, she’d never be that ugly, horrible witch again.
When the church darkened, Agatha had resisted leaving her alone, but Stefan forced her. The Elders had been clear—“Only Sophie”—and now was not the time to disobey their orders. Not when they were about to save her life.
Without Agatha there now, Sophie suddenly felt anxious. Was this how Agatha used to feel about her? Sophie had treated her so callously back then, lost in her princess fantasies. Now she couldn’t imagine a future without her. No matter how hard it was, she’d endure the days ahead in hiding—but only because she knew she’d have her friend at the end of it. Her friend who had become her real family.
But then why had Agatha been acting so strange lately?
The past month, Sophie had noticed a growing distance. Agatha didn’t laugh as much on their walks, was often cold to the touch, and seemed preoccupied with her thoughts. For the first time since they met, Sophie had started to feel she had more invested in this friendship.
Then came the wedding. She had pretended not to notice Agatha’s hand, dripping, trembling in hers as if wanting to slip out. As if gripping a terrible secret.
“Maybe I’m not as Good as you think.”
Sophie’s pulse hammered in her ears. Agatha’s finger couldn’t have glowed that day.
Could it?
She thought of her mother, who too had beauty, wit, and charm … who too had a friend she had long trusted … only to be betrayed by her and die broken and alone.
Sophie shook off the thought. Agatha had given up a prince for her. Almost given her life for her. Agatha had found them a happy ending against all odds.
In the cold, dark church, Sophie’s heart skittered out of beat.
So why would she ruin our fairy tale?
Behind her, the church doors creaked open. Sophie turned with relief and saw the shadows waiting in their gray cloaks, black hats in hand.
Only the Eldest was holding something else.
Something sharper.
The problem with living in a graveyard is the dead have no need for light. Besides the flittering torches over the gates, the cemetery was pitch-black at midnight, and anything beyond just an inky shadow. Peering through her window’s broken shutters, Agatha caught the sheen of white tents down the hill, pitched to house those left homeless by the attacks. Somewhere out there, the Elders were about to move Sophie to safety. All she could do was wait.
“I should have hidden near the church,” she said, and licked a fresh scratch from Reaper, who still acted like she was a stranger.
“You can’t disobey the Elders,” said her mother, sitting stiffly on her bed, eyes on a mantel clock with hands made of bones. “They’ve been civil since you stopped the kidnappings. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Oh please,” Agatha scoffed. “What could three old men possibly do to me?”
“What all men do in times of fear.” Callis’ eyes stayed on the clock. “Blame the witch.”
“Mmhmm. Burn us at the stake too,” Agatha snorted, flopping onto her bed.
Tension thickened the silence. She sat up and saw her mother’s strained face, still staring ahead.
“You’re not serious, Mother.”
Sweat beaded on Callis’ lip. “They needed a scapegoat when the kidnappings wouldn’t stop.”
“They burnt women?” Agatha uttered in shock.
“Unless we married. That’s what the storybooks taught them to do.”
“But you never married—” Agatha countered. “How did you survive—”
“Because I had someone stand up for me,” her mother said, watching the bones strike eight. “And he paid the price.”
“My father? You said he was a rotten two-timer who died in a mill accident.”
Callis didn’t answer, gazing ahead.
A chill prickled up Agatha’s spine. She looked at her mother. “What did you mean when you said Stefan suffered worst of all? When the Elders arranged his marriage?”
Callis’ eyes stayed on the clock. “The problem with Stefan is he trusts those he shouldn’t. He always believes people are Good.” The long bone ticked past eight. Her shoulders slumped with relief. “But no one is as Good as they seem, dear,” Callis said softly, turning to her daughter. “Surely you know that.”
For the first time, Agatha saw her mother’s eyes. There were tears in them.
“No—” Agatha gasped, a red rash searing her neck.
“They’ll say it was her choice,” Callis rasped.
“You knew,” Agatha choked, lurching for the door. “You knew they weren’t moving her—”
Her mother intercepted her. “They knew you’d bring her back! They promised to spare you if I kept you here until—”
Agatha shoved her into the wall—her mother lunged for her and missed. “They’ll kill you!” Callis screamed out the window, but darkness had swallowed her daughter up.
Without a torch, Agatha stumbled and tripped down the hill, rolling through cold, wet grass until she barreled into a tent at the bottom. Mumbling frantic apology to a family who thought her a cannonball, she dashed for the church between homeless dozens stewing beetles and lizards over fires, wrapping their children in mangy blankets, bracing for the next attack that would never come. Tomorrow the Elders would mourn Sophie’s valiant “sacrifice,” her statue would be rebuilt, and the villagers would go on to a new Christmas, relieved of another curse …
With a cry, Agatha threw the oak doors open.
The church was empty. Long, deep scratches ripped down the aisle.
Sophie had dragged her glass slippers all the way.
Agatha sank to her knees in mud.
Stefan.
She had promised him. She had promised to keep his daughter safe.
Agatha hunched over, face in her hands. This was her fault. This would always be her fault. She had everything she wanted. She had a friend, she had love, she had Sophie. And she had traded her for a wish. She was Evil. Worse than Evil. She was the one who deserved to die.
“Please … I’ll bring her home …,” she heaved. “Please … I promise … I’ll do anything …”
But there was nothing to do. Sophie was gone. Delivered to invisible killers as a ransom for peace.
“I’m sorry … I didn’t mean it …” Agatha wept, spit dripping. How could she tell a father his daughter was dead? How could either of them live with her broken promise? Her sobs slowly receded, curdling to terror. She didn’t move for a long time.
At last Agatha slumped up in a nauseous daze and staggered east towards Stefan’s house. Every step away from the church made her feel sicker. Limping down the dirt lane, she vaguely felt something sticky and wet on her legs. Without thinking, she wiped a gob off a knee with her finger and smelled it.
Honeycream.
Agatha froze, heart pounding. There was more cream on the ground ahead, spurted in a desperate trail towards the lake. Adrenaline blasted through her blood.
Nibbling his toenails in his tent, Radley heard crackles behind him and turned just in time to see a shadow swipe his dagger and torch.
“Assassin!” he squeaked—
Agatha swung her head back to see men explode out of tents and chase her as she tracked the honeycream like breadcrumbs towards the lake. She ran faster, following the trail, but soon the globs turned smaller and smaller and then sprayed to specks in every direction. As Agatha hesitated, searching for another sign to guide her, the men reached the lake, racing east around the shore towards her. But there were three figures across the lake, hunting her from the west. In their torchlight, she saw the shadows of three long cloaks and beards—
Elders.
They’d kill her.
Agatha spun, waving her torch in front of her, as both sides converged. Sophie,where are you—
“Kill him!” she heard a man’s voice cry from the mob.
Agatha swiveled in shock. She knew his voice.
“Kill the assassin!” the man screamed again as his mob ran towards her.
Panicked, Agatha stuttered forward, swinging the torch at the trees. Something heavy whizzed past her ear, another past her ribs—
Then a sparkle flared ahead and she froze her flame on it.
The empty honeycream pouch lay at the forest edge, snakeskin scales glinting.
A hard, cold blow smashed into her back. Agatha buckled to her knees and saw a jagged rock on the ground beside her. She turned to see more men aiming stones at her head, less than fifty feet away from the east. Rushing in from the west, the Elders held up their torches, about to glimpse her face—
Agatha hurled her torch in the lake, plunging her into pitch darkness.
With confused cries, the men whisked torches wildly to find the assassin. They saw a shadow sprint past them for the trees. Like lions to a kill, they charged in a grunting, vengeful mob, chasing faster, faster, one breaking from the pack, and just as the man who screamed for blood caught the assassin by the neck, the shadow whirled to face him—
Stefan gasped in shock, long enough for Agatha to press her lips to his ear.
“I promise.”
Then she was gone into the labyrinth, like a white rose into a grave.
(#u5f6a2e56-a64a-55a5-8a69-b1badc632dc8)
Agatha heard the men’s shouts recede with the light of their torches. Kneeling against a wet, crumbly tree trunk in darkness, she folded her shivering arms into her black dress.
A few distant hoots and skitters muffled to silence. Agatha didn’t move, her spine throbbing where the rock hit her. All this time she had focused on rescuing her best friend and going back. Back to what? Murderous Elders? More assassin attacks? A village that wanted Sophie gone?
She thought of innocent women burnt publicly in a square, not so long ago, and her stomach turned over. How can we ever go home? Their future in Gavaldon was just as dark as the Woods around her now. To go home, she couldn’t just rescue Sophie. She had to defeat these assassins—whoever they were—and stop their attacks once and for all.
But she had no idea how to even begin looking for her friend. For hundreds of years, the villagers had stormed into the forest, seeking its lost children—only to come out the other side, right where they started. Like all the missing children, she and Sophie had seen what lay beyond the forest: a dangerous world of Good and Evil that had no end. They had been the lucky ones to return, sealing the gates between reality and fantasy forever … or so she’d thought. One wish, and the gates had reopened.
Wherever Sophie was, she was in terrible danger.
Rising from a crouch, Agatha stepped into the Endless Woods, clumps crunching on dead leaves. Inching forward, she probed blindly with her hands, feeling splintered bark, cobwebbed branches … Her head smacked into a tree and a shadow flung out, spewed something wet at her face, and vanished with a hiss. In response came a chorus of grunts and groans, all through the woods, like a sleeping enemy called to arms. Dazed, Agatha scraped the goo off her face and pulled Radley’s dagger from her pocket. Scuffling sounds came from beneath her feet.
Through dead leaves, she saw pupils open and shut in the undergrowth, yellow and green, glinting in one place, reappearing in another. Agatha shrank against the tree, trying not to blink. Little by little, her eyes adjusted, just in time to see eight slinky shadows unfurl from the ground in a circle around her, like coiling trails of smoke.
Snakes.
Only they were thicker than snakes, black as ash, with flattened heads and needle-sharp barbs through every scale. They rose higher, higher around Agatha, angling towards her with long, overlapping hisses, opening their full-fanged jaws wide—
All at once, they spat.
Gobs of mucus pinned Agatha to the tree, and she dropped the dagger. She tried to wrench free, but sour film smacked into her mouth and eyes so all she could see was a ring of blurry, spiny silhouettes. They all aimed at different parts of her body, then curled their trunks around her, barbs piercing into her skin. Flailing silently, Agatha saw a last one, bigger than the rest, lower from a branch and loop its cold, black tail around her neck. As its barbs pricked her throat, she gasped for more breath, but the monster’s head was slithering up her face now. It pressed its fat nose against the film over her cheeks, glaring at her through thin, acid-green pupils … and started to squeeze. Agatha choked and closed her eyes.
She felt no hurt, only her soul searching for a memory … She was sitting on a lakeshore, head on someone’s shoulder. Arm in arm, they held each other, sun drenching their skin, breaths quietly matched. Agatha listened to the silence of happiness, Ever After in a single moment … Then sharp, stabbing pain flooded her body and she knew the end had come. Gripping the arm beside her, Agatha gazed into their lake’s reflection, needing to see her happy ending’s face, one last time—
It wasn’t Sophie’s.
Light speared the darkness. The snakes recoiled with screams and scudded back under dead leaves.
Agatha opened her eyes. Dazed, she looked around for the source of light. Through the veil of goo, she saw it was her fingertip, burning gold for the first time since the wedding. She was at once relieved and sickened. Both times it had happened thinking of him.
Magic follows emotion, Yuba had warned. She’d lost control of both.
This time, however, her finger didn’t dim. Agatha held it up, confused. She focused on her need to get off this tree, and suddenly the glow pulsed brighter, as if waiting for instructions. Agatha’s heart pumped faster. She’d crossed into the fairy-tale world. Her magic was back.
Bursting with pain and stuck to a tree, Agatha was hardly in shape to remember spells from school. But when her breaths settled, she managed a basic melt jinx, and the mucus rinsed away with the blood, leaving her black dress sticky and soaked. Still, she was alive somehow, and with a wretched groan, Agatha picked up Radley’s dagger and pried off the soggy bark.
Finger aglow, she swept it like a torch through knotted trees, searching for a path, like Yuba had taught them. Like all the group leaders at the School for Good and Evil, the old gnome had used the Blue Forest, a lush, tranquil training ground meant to mimic the Endless Woods and prepare students for what they’d face. Agatha squeezed between two rotted tree trunks, trying to ignore the burning cuts all over her body. Now the Blue Forest seemed like the School Master’s cruel joke.
Agatha wrenched between more webbed trees towards a gap in the thicket, hoping it’d be the path. She didn’t dare call Sophie’s name and signal the assassins she was on their trail.
With each step, Agatha felt a growing sense of doom. She’d been in the Endless Woods twice before, but this time it was different. There was no school to save her. There was no Tedros.
Her fingerglow pulsed brighter.
Tedros of Camelot.
Finally she said his name to herself, here, alone in the Woods. The last time she’d seen her prince was in the twilight of her and Sophie’s kiss, a kiss he thought would be his. As he watched her disappear into thin air, he reached for her, choking a scream—“Wait!”
She’d had the choice to take his hand. She’d had the choice to stay as his princess. She felt it as her body glowed to light, trapped between worlds.
But she chose Sophie, and then Agatha was gone.
She was so sure she’d made the right choice. It was the only ending she ever wanted. But the more she tried to forget him, the more her prince came. In dreams, day and night … his pained blue eyes … his body lunging … his big, strong hand, reaching for hers …
Until one day she reached back.
Just find Sophie, she gritted, remembering her promise to Stefan. All she wanted was Sophie home alive—charming, maniacal, ludicrous Sophie. She’d never doubt her happy ending again.
As she waded through a mess of fallen branches towards the gap in the trees, Agatha held up her lit finger and saw it wasn’t a path at all. It was a vast cesspool of mud, rusted red, stretching east and west as far as she could see. She picked up a rock and lobbed it into the pool. The splash wasn’t shallow.
Suddenly Agatha noticed two shadows down the bank, probing at the red mud with dark hooves: a horned stag with his female deer. After a few more testing prods, the stag seemed satisfied, and both slid into the mud side by side, swimming towards the distant bank. Relieved, Agatha rolled up her dress to follow them—
Something snatched the female deer and Agatha stumbled back in shock. Three long, spiny white crocodile snouts rose from the mud, thin and rectangular, with enormous round nostrils and black shark teeth, tearing into the thrashing female. They pulled her under, ignoring the bigger male completely as he flailed whimpering to the far shore.
Agatha didn’t try to cross.
Tears in her eyes, she staggered back the way she came, sweeping her fingerglow across the maze of trees. Where was her friend? What had they done with her? Trying to stifle her sobs, she limped towards the forest edge, seeing nothing but the shadows of skeletal branches … slivers of dark clouds … a hot glow of pink …
She stopped her finger on it, pulsing like a beacon to bad behavior. Anyone else would have mistaken it for an animal’s eye. But Agatha knew.
Only one animal on earth made a pink like that.
She tore through trees, fighting her pain, following the pink glow fading weaker in the distance. As she neared, she began to see smears of blood on trees, like the trail of a wounded beast. She plowed through broken branches and ripped away vines, hair snaring on nettles, until she caught wisps of lavender perfume. Agatha jumped over a log, heart bursting from her chest, and charged into the small glade—
“Sophie!”
Sophie didn’t respond. Facing away, she was slumped on her knees behind a far tree, arms over her head. The second finger on her right hand pulsed her signature pink glow a few last times and dulled to pale.
“Sophie?” Agatha said. Her own gold fingerglow went cold.
Sophie still didn’t move.
Agatha approached the tree, dread rising. She could hear her friend’s shallow breaths. Slowly Agatha reached out and touched bare shoulder through Sophie’s torn dress.
There was blood on it.
Agatha spun her around. Sophie’s hands were lashed to a branch with braided horse reins. There were shallow knife pricks in each of her palms, from which the Elders had taken blood and smeared a scarlet message on Sophie’s chest.
Frantic, Agatha cut Sophie down with her knife, trying in vain to think of a spell to wash away the blood. She scrubbed at her friend’s skin with shaking palms. “I’m sorry—” she choked, severing the last rein. “I’ll get us home—I promise—”
The instant she was free, Sophie covered Agatha’s mouth with ice-cold hands. Agatha followed her wide, bloodshot eyes …
There was something on all the trees ahead, flapping milky white in the darkness. Agatha held up her glowing finger.
Parchment scrolls crackled in the wind like dead leaves, tacked to the trunks. Each one was the same.
The face on the posters was Sophie’s.
“That’s impossible!” Agatha cried. “He’s dea—”
She froze.
Between trees she caught glints of red. Something was coming.
Agatha grabbed Sophie’s wrist and dragged her behind a trunk. Muffling Sophie’s moans with her hand, Agatha slowly peeked out.
Through tangled branches, she saw men in red leather hoods, eyeholes cut away. They carried fire-tipped arrows, which lit up their sleeveless black leather uniforms and bare, muscular arms. She tried to count how many there were—10, 15, 20, 25 … until she counted one whose violet eyes glared right at her. Grinning, he raised his bow.
“Down!” Agatha yelped—
The first arrow singed Sophie’s neck as both girls dove into dirt. Neither spoke as they floundered through snarls of black briars, dozens of flaming arrows barely missing them and igniting trees left and right. Hand in hand, the girls fled deeper into the Woods, looking for somewhere to hide, red hoods gaining, until they came to a break in the trees and finally glimpsed the forest path, serene in moonlight. Wheezing with relief, they ran for it and stopped short.
The path forked into two. Both trails were thin and sooty, crooking away in opposite directions. Neither looked more hopeful than the other, but from reading storybooks, the girls knew.
Only one was correct.
“Which way?” Sophie rasped.
Agatha could see just how weak and shaken her friend was. She had to get her to safety. Hearing the skimming of arrows again, Agatha swung her head between the paths, burning trees growing nearer … nearer …
“Aggie, which way?” Sophie pressed.
Agatha’s eyes darted uselessly back and forth, waiting for a sign—
Sophie gasped. “Look!”
Agatha swiveled to the east path. A glowing blue butterfly flapped in darkness, high above the trail. It beat its wings faster and nosed forward, as if urging them to follow.
“Come on,” Sophie said, suddenly strong again, and surged forward.
“We’re following a butterfly?” Agatha retorted as she chased Sophie past WANTED signs on trees ahead.
“Don’t worry. It’s leading us out of here!”
“How do you know?”
“Hurry! We’ll lose it!”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through—” Agatha heaved, puffing behind.
“Let’s not play who’s had it worse, shall we!”
The butterfly sped up as if nearing its destination and veered around a bend, wings brightening to blinding blue. Sophie grabbed Agatha by the wrist, dragged her faster around the curve—
Into a dead end of fallen trees.
The butterfly was gone.
“No!” Sophie squeaked. “But I thought—I thought—”
“It was a special butterfly?”
Sophie shook her head, eyes welling, as if her friend couldn’t understand. Then, over Agatha’s shoulder, she saw a torch-lit shadow inch across the trees, then two more …
The hoods had found their path.
“We had our happy ending—” Sophie backed against a trunk. “This is all my fault—”
“No …,” Agatha said, looking down. “It’s mine.”
Sophie’s heart clamped. It was the same feeling she had alone in the church, thinking about how her friend had changed. A feeling that told her none of the last month was an accident.
“Agatha … why is this all happening?”
Agatha watched the shadows grow closer around the bend. Her eyes stung with tears. “Sophie … I—I—I—made a—mistake—”
“Aggie, slow down.”
Agatha couldn’t look at her. “I opened it—I opened our fairy tale—”
“I don’t understand—”
“A w-w-wish!” Agatha stammered, reddening. “I made a wish—”
Sophie shook her head. “A wish?”
“I didn’t mean it—it happened so fast—”
“A wish for what?”
Agatha took a deep breath. She looked into her friend’s scared eyes.
“Sophie, I wished I was with—”
“Tickets,” a voice said.
Both girls turned to see an alarmingly thin caterpillar with a top hat, curled mustache, and purple tuxedo poking out of a tree hollow.
“Thank you for calling the Flowerground. No spitting, sneezing, singing, sniffling, swinging, swearing, slapping, sleeping, or urinating in the flowertrains. Violations will result in the removal of your clothes. Tickets?”
Sophie and Agatha gaped at each other. Neither had the faintest idea how to call the Flowerground.
“Look, mister,” Agatha pressured, glancing back at shadows nearing the dead-end turn, “we need to ride right now and we don’t have—”
“Leave it to me,” Sophie whispered, and twirled. “Such a pleasure to see you again, conductor! Remember me? We met when you graciously escorted our class to the Garden of Good and Evil. And look at that lovely mustache! I just love a good mustache—”
“No ticket, no ride,” the caterpillar crabbed, and withdrew.
“But they’ll kill us!” Agatha cried, seeing red hoods turn into view—
“Special circumstances can be presented in writing on Form Code 77 at the Flowerground Registry Office, open on alternate Mondays from 3:00 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.—”
Agatha grabbed him from the tree. “Let us in or I eat you.”
The caterpillar bleached in her grip. “NEVERS!” he called. Vines shot out and sucked Agatha and Sophie into the hollow as arrows set the tree aflame.
The two girls fell through a pit of swirling pastel colors until vines flung them over a snapping Venus flytrap into a tunnel of blinding-hot mist. Shielding their eyes, the girls felt their vines cinch around their chests like straitjackets and hook on to something above them. Both peeked through their hands to see that they were dangling in midair from a luminescent green tree trunk stenciled:
“The butterfly called the train somehow!” Sophie yelled from her tight harness as the track propelled them ahead. “See! The butterfly was trying to help us!”
Coming out of the mist, Agatha gaped at the Flowerground for the first time, speechless. Before her was a spectacular underground transport system, big as half of Gavaldon, made entirely of plants. Color-coded tree trunks crisscrossed like rail tracks in a bottomless cavern, whisking passengers dangling from vine straps to their respective destinations in the Endless Woods. The conductor, perched in a glass-windowed compartment inside ARBOREA’s green trunk, grumpily called stops into a willow microphone as flowertrains flitted by: “Maidenvale!” “Avalon Towers!” “Runyon Lane!” “Ginnymill!”
Whenever passengers heard their stop, they pulled hard on their vine strap; the strap fastened around their wrist, unfurled off their track, and ferried them high to one of many windwheel exits that churned them out of the Flowerground and up onto land.
Agatha noticed their green line’s trunk was jam-packed with women in twittering conversation, some well dressed and cheerful, others oddly haglike and unattractive for Evers, while the red ROSALINDA LINE running perpendicular had only a few glum, scraggly-looking men. Under those two tree tracks, the yellow DAHLIA LINE buzzed with groups of beautiful and homely women, while its crisscrossing pink PEONY LINE had only three rumpled, dirty male dwarfs. Agatha didn’t remember the caterpillar saying anything about women and men sitting apart, but then again she couldn’t remember half his stupid rules.
She was distracted by two parakeets, feathers the color of a rain forest, who fluttered up with glasses of celery-cucumber juice and pistachio muffins. On the illuminated tree trunk above her head, an orchestra of well-dressed lizards struck up a baroque waltz on violins and flutes, accompanied by a chorus of caroling green frogs. For the first time in weeks, Agatha managed a smile. She inhaled the sweet, nutty muffin in one bite and washed it down with the tart green juice.
In the harness next to her, Sophie sniffed and poked at her muffin.
“You going to eat that?” Agatha said.
Sophie shoved it at her, mumbling something about butter and the devil’s work. “It’s easy to get home,” she said, watching Agatha scarf it. “All we have to do is ride this line in the opposite direct—”
Agatha had stopped chewing. Slowly Sophie followed her friend’s eyes to her own punctured palms … to the raw marks around her wrists left by the Elders’ reins … to the scarlet letters faint on her chest …
“We can’t go home, can we?” Sophie breathed.
“Even if we prove the Elders lied, the School Master will still hunt you,” said Agatha miserably.
“He can’t be alive. We saw him die, Aggie.” Sophie looked up at her friend. “Didn’t we?”
Agatha didn’t have an answer.
“How did we lose it, Aggie?” Sophie said, looking so confused. “How did we lose our happy ending?”
Agatha knew this was the time to finish what she’d started at the hollow. But gazing into Sophie’s big doe eyes, she couldn’t bear to break her heart. Somehow there had to be a way to fix this without her friend ever knowing what she’d wished for. Her wish was just a mistake. A mistake she’d never ever have to face.
“There has to be a way to get our ending back,” Agatha said, determined. “We just need to seal the gates—”
But Sophie was staring past her, head cocked. Agatha turned around.
The Flowerground was empty behind them. All its passengers had disappeared.
“Aggie …,” Sophie wheezed, squinting into the distant mist—
Agatha saw them now too. Red hoods swinging across the tracks, straight for their train.
Both girls tore at their harnesses, but the vines yoked them tighter. Agatha tried to make her finger glow, but it wouldn’t light—
“Aggie, they’re coming!” Sophie yelled, seeing the hoods leap onto the red line two tracks above.
“Pull on your vine!” Agatha shouted, for that’s how she’d seen the others get off the ride. But no matter how hard she or Sophie tugged, the track just whisked them along.
Agatha fumbled for Radley’s dagger and cut herself free, eyeing the red hoods getting closer. “Stay there!” she screamed at Sophie, measuring the distance to her friend’s vine. Dangling from her strap, Agatha winced at the giant flytraps snapping out of the bottomless pastel pit below. With a cry, she kicked and swung herself into the tunnel wind for her friend—
Agatha’s hands missed the strap and she crashed into Sophie, grappling her like a tree.
The green tree trunk turned bright orange and started flashing. “VIOLATION,” a crabby voice boomed over a speaker. “NO SWINGING. VIOLATION. NO SWINGING. VIOLATION—”
A flock of green parakeets flew in and started pecking at Agatha’s dress, trying to pull it off. She dropped her knife. “What the—”
“Get off her!” Sophie shrieked, slapping the birds away.
“VIOLATION,” the crabby voice blared. “NO SLAPPING. VIOLATION. NO SLAPPING.”
The lizards and frogs atop their track skittered down the green-flowered vines and started tugging at Sophie’s clothes. Aghast, Sophie smacked at them, sending lizards and flowers flying. Agatha inhaled the pollen and sneezed.
“VIOLATION. NO SNEEZING. VIOLATION.” Birds, lizards, and frogs from other lines descended to denude both girls as punishment—
“We need to get off!” Agatha cried.
“I know! I only have two buttons left!” Sophie squealed, slapping the frog away.
“No! We need to get off now!”
Agatha pointed at the red hoods swinging onto their track—
“Follow me!” she cried to Sophie, shaking off a rainbow of lizards, and swung to the next strap. She glanced back to see Sophie still grappling a canary on her collar. “Shoo! This is handmade!”
“NOW!” Agatha roared—
Sophie gasped and swung for the next vine. She missed and plunged screaming towards a gnashing flytrap. Agatha blanched in horror—
Sophie belly flopped onto the blue HIBISCUS LINE below, running parallel at high speed. Hands and legs wrapped around the glowing trunk, she looked up at Agatha, who heaved with relief.
“Aggie, watch out!” Sophie yelled—
Agatha wheeled to a hood on her vine. He grabbed her throat.
Hearing Agatha’s choked gurgles above her, Sophie tried to stand on her trunk, then saw a thorn tunnel ahead about to decapitate her and plastered down just as her train whooshed through. Suddenly she heard a twinkly sound and swerved her head down the tunnel to see the glowing blue butterfly, hovering in place above the track.
“Help us!” Sophie begged—
The butterfly beat its wings and whizzed forward. As her train came out of the tunnel, Sophie scooted down the tree trunk to follow it, shadows of the hood strangling Agatha darkening the track ahead. Frantic, Sophie tried to keep up with the butterfly, but two red hoods landed in front of her, bows and arrows in hand. Just as they aimed, she looked back with terror and saw the hood about to snap Agatha’s neck—
The butterfly dove and yanked the vine under Sophie’s hand. In an instant, the vine snared Sophie’s wrist, ripped her off the track, and lassoed Agatha’s hand on the way up. The hoods whirled in shock, spewing their knives and arrows at them, but the vine coiled like a whip and launched both girls upwards into a blue windwheel of light. The rush of air sucked them towards the light portal in a storm of loose petals, pulling up, up, up—
And into a lush field.
Kneeling in a bed of tall red and yellow lilies, Agatha and Sophie heaved for breath, faces scratched, petals in hair, and dresses barely still on. Both looked down at the dirt-plugged hole they’d just spouted from, broiled with arrows from below.
“Where are we?” Sophie said, searching for the blue butterfly.
Agatha shook her head. “I don’t—”
Then she saw a red lily and a yellow lily whispering to each other, giving her strange looks.
She’d seen flowers talking about her once before, she thought. In a field just like this, until they’d tugged her by the wrist and yanked her up to …
Agatha lurched to her feet.
The School for Good soared above them, shimmering in red-orange sunrise over the crystal-clear side of Halfway Bay. Its four glass towers, once divided between pink and blue, were now only blue, with flags bearing butterflies of the same color billowing from sharp minarets.
“We’re back,” Sophie gasped.
Agatha went white as snow.
Back to the one place she’d tried to forget. Back to the one place that could ruin everything.
Ahead, the closed doors to the Good castle lay atop a hill. Golden spiked gates barred the path up the Great Lawn, mirrored words arching over them:
THE SCHOOL FOR GIRL EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT
Agatha closed and reopened her bleary eyes, for she had seen wrong.
It still said “GIRL.”
“Huh?”
Sophie stood up beside her. “That’s strange.”
“Well, ‘Good’ and ‘Girl’ aren’t so far apart,” Agatha said. “Maybe one of the nymphs got confused.”
But then she saw what Sophie was looking at. At the halfway point across the bay, Good’s lake slimed into Evil’s moat. Only the moat wasn’t black, like it used to be. It was rusted red, the color of the cesspool in the Woods and guarded by the spiny white crocodiles she had seen eat the female deer—at least twenty of them, lurking in the sludge, black shark teeth glinting.
Slowly Agatha looked up at the School for Evil looming above the moat. Three bloodred towers, jagged with spikes, flanked a smooth silver tower, twice as tall as the others. Atop the four towers, black flags crackled in the fog, emblazoned with scarlet snakes.
“There used to be three Evil towers,” Sophie said, squinting. “Not four …”
Voices rose across the bay and the two girls ducked into the lilies.
Out of the Woods stormed men in black through Evil’s castle gates.
They were wearing red leather hoods.
“The School Master’s men!” Sophie cried as they faded into the fog.
Agatha whitened. “But that means—”
She whirled back to the bay.
“It’s … gone,” breathed Agatha, for the School Master’s sky-high silver tower, once guarding the halfway point between moat and lake, had simply … disappeared.
“No, it’s not,” Sophie said, still eyeing the School for Evil.
Now Agatha saw why there were four towers there instead of three.
The School Master’s tower had moved to Evil.
“He’s alive!” Agatha cried, gaping at his silver spire. “But how—”
Sophie pointed. “Look!”
In the tower’s single window, veiled by fog, a shadow stared down at them. All they could see of its face was a gleaming silver mask.
“It’s him!” Sophie hissed. “He’s leading Evil!”
“Agatha! Sophie!”
The girls swiveled from the lilies to see Professor Dovey running from Good castle in her green high-necked gown.
“Come quickly!”
As the two girls hurried behind her through Good’s golden gates, Agatha glanced back at the School Master’s tower and the masked shadow in the window. All they had to do was kill him again, and her mistake would be hidden forever. They’d go home safe, her promise to Stefan kept, and Sophie would never know what she’d wished for. Looking up at that shadow lording over Evil, Agatha waited for her heart to rage with purpose, to propel her into battle … but instead her heart did something else.
It fluttered.
The way a princess’s did in storybooks.
When she saw her prince.
(#ulink_1e1f07c3-0e51-515a-8a21-c89a4eff5846)
As she and Sophie sprinted behind Professor Dovey into the mirrored corridor, Agatha tried to find her breath. Professor Dovey was a famous fairy godmother, who’d always looked out for her. She had to give them answers.
“Who are those red hoods?” Agatha asked.
“How did the School Master survive?” said Sophie.
“Why are the Nevers on his side?” said Agatha.
“Quiet!” Professor Dovey snapped, erasing their footsteps with her magic wand. “We don’t have much time!”
“You don’t seem surprised to see us,” Agatha whispered, but her fairy godmother didn’t respond as she rushed them into Good’s deserted foyer, magically bolting doors behind them.
Only months ago, Sophie had eviscerated the hall in her witch’s revenge on Agatha and Tedros, blasting its stained glass windows, spiral staircases, and marble floors to shards. But now the two friends drew breaths at its redone facade. Where there used to be two pink staircases and two blue, all four stairwells were now the same royal blue as the castle. Lit by high stained glass windows, the staircases spiraled up to the dormitory towers, names tattooed on richly decorated balusters: HONOR, VALOR, PURITY, and CHARITY. Agatha had loathed the prissy princess pink of the Purity and Charity towers, but seeing them turned the same color as the prince towers gave her an unsettled feeling.
Sophie nudged her, and Agatha turned to see her peering curiously at the Legends Obelisk in the center of the foyer, a soaring crystal column blanketed with portrait frames. Inside each of the frames was a painting of a past student, next to a storybook illustration of what the child became upon graduation. But looking up at the gold-framed Evers on top who became princesses and queens, the silver-framed ones in the middle who became helpers and sidekicks, and the bottom-rung lot who became cinder sweeps and servants, the two girls noticed something peculiar …
“Where are the boys?” Sophie said, for all their portraits had been removed.
Agatha swung her head to the Honor staircase: the frieze of knights and kings had been replaced with a frieze of sword-brandishing, chain-mailed princesses. Sophie swiveled to the Valor staircase, once decorated with burly hunters and their trusty hounds—now huntresses in houndskins and decidedly female dogs. Both girls twirled to the lettered murals across the walls that once spelled E-V-E-R … and now spelled G-I-R-L.
“It is a School for Girls!” said Agatha, thunderstruck. “What happened to Good?”
“We can’t fight the School Master without boys!” cried Sophie.
“Shhhh!” Professor Dovey hissed, rushing them up the Valor staircase. “No one must know you’re here!”
As the girls chased her elegant silver-haired bun through Valor’s princely blue arches and murals, they gawked at the once virile visions of princes destroying demons and saving helpless princesses, now flaunting different endings: Snow White smashing out of her glass coffin with her fists, Red Riding Hood slitting the wolf’s throat, Sleeping Beauty setting her spindle on fire … The red-blooded princes, hunters, men who rescued them, who saved their lives … gone.
“It’s like Everboys never existed!” whispered Agatha.
“Maybe the School Master killed them all!” whispered Sophie.
She suddenly heard soft tinkling and twirled to see three glowing blue butterflies peeking from behind a wall. They caught her looking and with a high-pitched meep! ducked and disappeared.
“What is it?” Agatha said, glancing back.
“Hurry!” Professor Dovey scolded, and the two girls scampered to follow, stooping past the Laundry, where two seven-foot, floating nymphs scrubbed sudsy blue bodices, through the Supper Hall, where enchanted pots stewed saffron rice and lentil soup, and past the Valor Common Room to the rear stairwell. Exhausted and aching from their torments in the Woods, Sophie and Agatha tried to keep up, but Professor Dovey was sprier than she looked.
“Where are we going?” Agatha panted.
“To the only other person who can keep you alive,” her fairy godmother shot back, bustling up the stairs.
Sophie and Agatha instantly ran faster, up five long flights to the lone white door on the sixth floor—
“Professor Sader’s office?” Agatha puffed. “But he’s dead!”
Professor Dovey ran her fingers over the raised blue dots on the former History teacher’s door. It swung open without a sound, and Sophie and Agatha scrambled in behind her.
A thin woman stood at the window, long black braid dangling over the back of her pointy-shouldered purple gown. “Did anyone see you?”
“No,” said Professor Dovey.
Lady Lesso spun to Sophie and Agatha, violet eyes flashing.
“Then it’s time they learned what they’ve done.”
“We did this?” Agatha blurted.
“But we weren’t even here!” said Sophie, turning between the Dean of Evil at the window and the Dean of Good at Professor Sader’s old desk, overflowing with open books.
Lady Lesso glowered at their dirt-smudged faces. “In this world, actions have consequences. Endings have consequences.”
“But our fairy tale ended happily!” Sophie said.
Professor Dovey let out a groan.
“Why don’t you tell us how it ended?” Lady Lesso sneered, blue veins throbbing.
“We killed the School Master and solved his riddle!” Sophie said.
“That’s how Sophie and I went home!” said Agatha.
“Clarissa, show them how it really ends,” Lady Lesso growled.
Professor Dovey flung a book across the desk. It was heavy and thick, bound with brown sheepskin and spattered with mud. Agatha opened to the first soggy page. Black calligraphy, slightly smeared, spilled across fresh parchment.
Sophie turned the page to a richly colored painting of her and Agatha, standing before the School Master.
Once upon a time, the script below read, there were two girls.
Agatha remembered the line. The Storian had written it to start their fairy tale when they broke into the School Master’s tower. Flipping the book’s pages, Agatha saw her and Sophie’s story unfold in a brilliant sweep of paintings: Sophie trying to win Tedros’ kiss … Agatha saving Tedros’ life in a brutal attack … Agatha and Tedros falling in love … Sophie transforming into a vengeful witch … the School Master stabbing Sophie … Agatha reviving her with love’s kiss … and then the very last page … a dazzling vision of Tedros desperately reaching for Agatha as she and Sophie disappeared, three words beneath to close their story …
They were gone.
Agatha felt tears rise, soaking in all the pain and love she and Sophie had shared to get home.
“It’s the perfect fairy tale,” Sophie said, meeting Agatha’s eyes with a choked-up smile.
They turned to the teachers, who looked deathly grim. “It’s not over,” said Lady Lesso.
The girls peered down at the book, confused. Their grimy hands lifted the last page, and they saw there was something on the other side.
A painting of Tedros, back turned, walking into dark fog, all alone.
And Sophie and Agatha lived happy ever after, for girls don’t need princes for love to call …
No, they don’t need princes in their fairy tales at all.
“This one’s from Maidenvale. But you can find it anywhere, really. They’re even telling it in Netherwood.”
Sophie and Agatha raised their heads to Professor Dovey, frowning over the messy desk.
“It’s the only story anyone wants to hear.”
Now the girls saw that all the open books weren’t there by accident. Each book on the desk was spread to its last page. Some were in oil paints, some in watercolor, some in charcoal and ink; some were in a language the girls knew, others in scripts they didn’t. But all ended their version of The Tale of Sophie and Agatha the same way: Tedros alone and unneeded, slumping into darkness.
“Goodness, all this gloom because we’re popular?” Sophie said. “You can’t be surprised. Snow White and Cinderella are sweet and all. But who wants them when they can have me?”
She turned to Agatha for support, but her friend was staring out the window. “Aggie?”
Agatha didn’t answer. Slowly she approached the window, and Lady Lesso stepped aside without a word. At Sader’s desk, Professor Dovey held her breath.
From the steep window, Agatha looked down at the Blue Forest, the enchanted training ground for Good and Evil, sprawled in an array of hues behind the school. It was as it always was, quiet and thriving despite the autumn chill, neatly fenced in by spiked golden gates.
The sounds were coming from beyond the gates.
At first she thought they were dead leaves, swathing the Endless Forest in tawny brown and orange beneath stripped, crooked trees. Then she looked closer and saw they were men.
Thousands of them were crammed against the Blue Forest gates in a filthy homeless camp, hunched around fires like miserable peasants. She couldn’t see faces, but she glimpsed scraggly beards and blackened cheeks, mottled breeches and bony legs, ripped coats and sashes with gleaming …
Crests.
These weren’t peasants. They were—
“Princes,” Sophie gasped, looking out beside her.
“It’s her!” a voice screamed from the crowd. Heads swung to the tower window.
“It’s the witch!”
All at once, a savage mob rushed the Forest gates—
“Death to Sophie!”
“Kill her!”
“Kill the witch!”
The men fired arrows and catapulted stones at the tower, but the weapons instantly vanished into an enchanted shield, bubbly and violet tinged, that appeared over the school gates. As the crowd roared and swung pickets, mounted with the same WANTED signs the girls had seen in the woods, an intrepid prince leapt onto the spiked gates. The gold metal magically sizzled and he let go in shock, impaling on spikes below. Sophie spun in horror—
“How can those be princes?” she cried.
“How can those be princes?” Lady Lesso mimicked. “Those princes are there because of you.”
Agatha and Sophie gaped at each other. “We don’t understand—” Agatha spluttered.
Professor Dovey ground her teeth. The only time Agatha had seen her fairy godmother this furious was when she had disobeyed a teacher her first year and almost burned down the castle.
“Think, Agatha. Once upon a time, you believed yourself an ugly witch. But instead, your destiny was to become a princess. To find Ever After with the most coveted prince in our land. It would have been Good’s greatest victory! A restoration of all the values we’d lost! Kill the School Master, send your Evil friend home safe—and stay here with Tedros forever, as his future queen. All you had to do was take his hand before you disappeared. That would have been the correct fairy tale. But instead …”
She looked daggers at Sophie. “You chose her.”
“And rightly so,” Sophie riposted. “If you knew Agatha at all, you’d know she could never give me up for a boy.” She whirled to her friend, knowing this time Agatha would defend her. But again, Agatha didn’t. She just gulped hard and stared at her muddy clumps.
“What happened after we left?” Agatha said.
“The Eviction.”
The girls turned to Lady Lesso, who shuddered at the memory.
“After your kiss, students tried to return to their schools, but the Evil towers ejected the Nevergirls. Sixty girls flung through windows into the bay—from stairs, classrooms, beds, toilets, common rooms … They tried to go back, but the Evil gates barred their entry. All the Nevergirls fled to Good for sanctuary, and the Evergirls welcomed them, inspired by your happy ending.”
“As soon as they arrived, the Good towers evicted the Everboys just as rudely,” Professor Dovey went on. “The moment the boys were all gone, the castle magically changed to what it is now—their portraits removed, murals repainted, friezes recarved, as if mirroring your tale. The School for Good had become the School for Girls.”
And indeed, the glittering crests over her and Lady Lesso’s hearts, once silver swans, were now sparkling blue butterflies. Agatha shook her head, confused.
“But those aren’t Everboys from school!” She pointed out the window. “Those are real princes!”
“What happened here happened everywhere in the Endless Woods,” Professor Dovey said gravely. “As your story spread like a plague and princesses imagined a world without princes, the men were magically ejected from their castles and left homeless. They appealed to witches to break the curse, but they too had heard The Tale of Sophie and Agatha. Stirred by the power of your bond, witches joined forces with princesses and took control of the kingdoms.”
“Witches and princesses are friends?” Sophie said in disbelief.
“No one thought it possible until your fairy tale,” said Professor Dovey. “And now it is men and women who are enemies.”
Agatha thought back to the Flowerground—the twittering women in groups, some pretty and cheerful, some homely and queer … the few scraggly, lonely males …
“But we don’t want the princes homeless!” Agatha cried. “We don’t want them to be enemies!”
“We certainly don’t want them to smell,” murmured Sophie.
“You made princes irrelevant,” Lady Lesso retorted. “You made them impotent. You made them obsolete. And now you’ve made them turn to a new leader for revenge.”
The girls followed her eyes to the sea of WANTED signs hoisted outside the gates, demanding Sophie’s head at the orders of this leader.
“The School Master!” Sophie broke in. “We saw him—”
“Did you now?” Lady Lesso sneered.
“He’s in the Evil castle! We have to kill him!” Sophie swiveled to Agatha. “Tell her!”
Agatha ignored the fluttering in her stomach. “But he couldn’t have lived,” she said, almost to herself. She looked up. “You were there too, professors. All of us saw him die.”
“Indeed,” said Professor Dovey. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t replaced.”
“Replaced?” the girls blurted.
“Naturally Lady Lesso and I believed ourselves the best candidates,” Professor Dovey said, smoothing her gown’s beetle wings. “Homeless and hated, the princes needed leaders they could trust. We assured them The Tale of Sophie and Agatha was closed forever. Under our protection, the Storian would restore boys and girls to balance, as it does Good and Evil. But just as we tried to bridge this peace between boys and girls …” Her face dimmed. “Something odd happened.”
She thrust out the last page of their fairy tale and waited for the girls to say something.
“They drew Tedros taller than he is,” Sophie suggested.
“Isn’t something missing?” the Dean moaned.
Agatha remembered the storybook under her bed … the wedded princess and prince …
“‘The End,’” she said. “Why doesn’t it say ‘The End’?”
Professor Dovey glared at her and slowly lifted the book to the light. Beneath the last line of their fairy tale, the two girls could see faded ink spelling those very two words …
Before they had been erased.
“What happened?” Sophie breathed.
“It seems your book has reopened,” Professor Dovey said, guiding their eyes to all the other versions of their story splayed across the desk. ‘The End’ had disappeared off each of them too.
Sophie rifled through the pile. “But how can we lose a happy ending!”
“Because one of you wished for a different one,” Lady Lesso lashed, not looking at her. “One of you wanted a new Ever After. And now, one of you has put our school on the brink of war.”
“That’s ludicrous,” Sophie huffed. “I know I wanted to be a princess—but I can’t, can I? I saw what this place did to me and have no desire to spend more time in it, even if Gavaldon smells like horse bottom and has no endurable men. So if I didn’t make the wish, then surely it’s a mista—”
But now she saw who Lady Lesso was staring at, and her cheeks lost all blood.
Sophie slowly turned to her friend, shadowed in the corner. “Aggie, at the hollow, you said … you said you made a … That’s not what you meant, right?”
Agatha couldn’t look at her.
Sophie’s hands were trembling. “Aggie, tell me it’s not what you meant.”
Agatha tried to find words—something to redeem herself—
“All of this …,” Sophie gasped. “Everything that happened … is because of you?”
Agatha burned scarlet. She spun to Lady Lesso. “How do I fix it? How do I get Sophie home safe?”
The Evil teacher let the question dangle while she inspected her sharp red nails.
“It’s simple,” she said finally, lifting her eyes. “You must wish to end with each other, at the same time. Wish for each other and only each other, and the Storian will write ‘The End’ once more.”
“And we’ll leave the Woods?” Agatha pressed.
“Never to be hunted again—as long as your wish is true.”
Agatha let out a rush of air. “We can fix it.” She turned to Sophie. “We can get our ending back! The village won’t hurt us!”
Sophie backed away. “What ending did you want?”
“Don’t do this,” Agatha said.
“What else could you possibly want?” Sophie demanded.
“It was a mistake, Sophie—”
“Answer me.”
“Sophie, please—”
Sophie locked her gaze. “What did you wish for?”
“We can fix this now,” Agatha begged.
“I’m afraid you can’t.”
Both girls turned.
“The Storian must write ‘The End’ to seal your wish,” said Professor Dovey. “And at the moment, it is unable.”
“What do you mean?” Agatha flushed angrily. “Where is it?”
“Where it always is,” said Lady Lesso, scowling back. “With the School Master.”
“Huh?” Agatha said. “But you said he was replace—”
The flutter in her heart.
The face she couldn’t see.
Agatha slowly looked up.
“Who doesn’t want your ending sealed?” Lady Lesso purred. “Who wants a new ending to your fairy tale?”
She held up their story’s last page … a boy walking into fog all alone …
“Who heard his princess’s wish?”
Agatha whirled to the window. Lightning exploded over the School Master’s tower across the bay with a whip crack of thunder, and she saw the silver-masked shadow in its flash—
Golden hair, a body of muscle, a glinting sword sheathed …
The sky went dark, and he was gone.
Agatha felt faint. All the attacks … all the destruction …
“Him,” Sophie whispered, crumpling against the wall. “You wished for … him.”
Agatha searched for something to say, but one look at Sophie, curled up in a grubby pink heap, and she knew. There was nothing to say.
“How?” Agatha whispered. “How could he hear it?”
“Because you wanted him to,” Lady Lesso slashed, prowling towards Agatha. “From the day you left, Tedros believed one day you’d call for him. From the day you left, he and his boys hunted your village, trying to cross into Woods Beyond—until your wish finally opened the gates.”
Agatha paled, watching Lady Lesso circle her. “But your prince has to make sure his princess chooses him this time. He needs insurance you won’t repeat your mistakes. So Tedros stole the Storian from under our noses, knowing the School Master’s tower follows the pen wherever it goes. Now he’ll stop the Storian from writing ‘The End’ to your tale—until he has his new ending.”
Agatha’s stomach went cold. “What’s the new ending?” she rasped.
Lady Lesso stared through her. “Killing Sophie.”
Sophie slowly lifted her eyes, red and raw.
“Tedros believes killing Sophie will fix your fairy tale as it should have been,” said Professor Dovey. “The witch dies. The princess free to her prince. Your ending rewritten, just like Agatha wished.”
Agatha couldn’t breathe under Sophie’s scorching stare.
“Why don’t you save Tedros the trouble?” Sophie hissed. “Kill this witch yourself.”
“That would solve everything,” sighed Professor Dovey.
Both girls turned.
“Oh dear,” said their teacher. “Did I say that out loud?”
“She’ll die soon enough,” Lady Lesso snarled. “Tedros counted on Sophie coming here for protection. Now he and his army will come to kill her.”
“Army?” Agatha blanched. “He has an army?”
“You’ve forgotten about his school,” said Lady Lesso.
Agatha swung her head to the window. Through the sheets of rain, she could see the red hoods skulking around Evil’s towers, in black leather uniforms crested with scarlet snakes and shiny black boots. Slowly she lowered her eyes to the gate on the castle shores, rusted iron words arched over it:
THE SCHOOL FOR BOY VENGEANCE AND RESTITUTION
“One wish has so many consequences, doesn’t it?” Lady Lesso said, leering at Agatha. “Tedros has promised whoever kills Sophie half his father’s treasure as a reward. Needless to say, both the Ever- and Neverboys took up the challenge.”
“As did all those princes outside,” Professor Dovey said, watching the filthy masses swarming the gates. “Tedros knows he can’t attack us with just his school. Our teachers wouldn’t give up Sophie without a fight.”
“So he’s using the princes to force our hand,” Lady Lesso groused. “I cast a shield around the perimeter of both schools to keep them out. But if the princes get through, Tedros will have enough men to storm our castle and kill Sophie.”
Agatha stared out at the red fortress, still numb. “The Storian’s in a boys’school?”
“Either free it and get Sophie home alive … or kiss Tedros before he kills her.” Professor Dovey met Agatha’s shocked eyes. “Kiss your prince and mean it, and you’ll stay here with him Ever After. Sophie will be gone from your story forever … and vanish home alone.”
“Home alone?” Sophie gasped as if she’d been shot. “Gavaldon alone? While she gets … him?”
“These are the only two endings that can prevent war,” Professor Dovey said.
The only sound in the room was the echo of murderous princes.
Sophie gave Agatha a horrible look and curled back into her ball.
Tedros, Agatha gritted. How could she wish for a boy who’d take love this far? How could she wish for a boy who’d kill her best friend? Her old witchy self would never have let this happen.
“Third option,” she said, storming to the door. “Tell Tedros he’s a delusional ass.”
“No.”
Agatha turned.
“You wished for him,” Sophie spat, blotched with rage. “And you want me to trust you two alone?”
Agatha cowered. Sophie looked even more a witch than she did in the graveyard.
“I won’t intervene in your lovers’ quarrel, but I suggest Agatha make her choice soon,” Lady Lesso snapped. “Once Tedros breaks the princes through my shield, all our lives will be in danger.”
“We’ll hide you and Sophie in the Blue Forest until you have a plan,” Professor Dovey said to Agatha, pulling out a ring of keys. “None of the girls can know you’ve come.”
Agatha looked up, dazed. “Why not?”
“Because unlike your two teachers, they think this is the best thing that’s ever happened,” said a honey-smooth voice.
The two professors and two girls turned to see a tall, ravishing woman push through the door, milky smooth and full-bosomed in a teacher’s electric-blue dress decorated with a pattern of butterflies. She had a waterfall of chestnut hair to her midback, forest-green eyes under thick dark brows, a luscious pink mouth, and a gap between her two shiny front teeth.
“My brother’s office?” she said, biting her bee-stung lips. “I wasn’t aware it was where we held secret meetings.”
“It’s the only place we can’t be overheard,” Lady Lesso returned, her voice oddly tentative.
“Well I do believe I should have been alerted to our honored guests,” the woman said breathily, turning to Sophie and Agatha. “After all, they are the reason this magnificent school exists.”
The two girls gawped at her.
“We’ve been meticulously preparing for your arrival,” said the stranger, knitting her arched brows. “And we nearly may have missed it.” She flashed a glare at the two teachers.
Agatha shook her head. “But how did you know we were com—”
“Goodness, you two look frightful,” the woman said, magically restoring their faces and dresses with her finger. Only Sophie’s dress magically lost its pink color too and drained blank white.
Sophie grabbed her hem. “What happened to my—”
“Come, girls.” The woman sashayed for the door. “We’ve put your books and schedules in your room.”
“Schedules!” Professor Dovey launched to her feet. “You’re not thinking of them going to class, Evelyn!”
The woman twirled. “As long as they are at my school, they will attend class and abide by the rules. Which includes staying in their school at all times. Surely you don’t object to the rules?”
Sophie and Agatha waited for the professors to indeed object, but Dovey and Lesso were curiously quiet, eyes on a pair of blue butterflies that had settled on the tips of their noses.
“I see our former deans neglected to inform you about the most important change at your new school,” the stranger said, smiling at the two girls. “Evelyn Sader. Dean of the School for Girls. Sorry for the hurry. I don’t want to keep everyone waiting. Follow me, please.”
As she turned and swept through the door, Sophie saw the two butterflies land on her matching dress and vanish magically into its pattern. She let out a breath of surprise. “Keep who waiting?”
As more butterflies fell into her dress, the beautiful woman didn’t look back.
“Your army,” she said, as if she’d just listened to their entire conversation.
(#ulink_467db7eb-6dd8-56d2-9273-94379c20d678)
“An army dedicated to producing stories just like yours,” said Dean Sader, clacking through the sun-washed breezeway from Valor to Honor in her blue-glass heels. “Your tale was just a taste of what princesses and witches can do together. Here you will lead an entire school!”
“A school—” Agatha choked, chasing her down the Honor stairs. “We need to go home!”
“You see, the former deans and I have a difference of opinion,” said Dean Sader as butterflies flew in from every direction and vanished into her dress. “They think you must leave our world to find your happy ending together. And I think you must stay.”
“But the boys are going to kill me!” Sophie said, bumping Agatha hard as she passed.
“Mmmm, let’s say you do break into a castle full of bloodthirsty males,” the Dean said, sweeping her buxom behind through the foyer. “Let’s say you free the Storian against all odds.” She stopped outside the frosted doors of the Gallery of Good. “The wish won’t work unless you mean it.”
She gazed at Sophie. “How can you wish for Agatha if you know she wants her prince?”
The Dean turned to Agatha. “How can you wish for Sophie if you fear the witch inside?”
She leaned in so close the girls could smell her flawless honeycream skin.
“How can you wish for someone you do not trust?”
Sophie’s and Agatha’s eyes met dartingly, hoping the other would argue. Neither did.
“Your friendship must be fixed before you can go home. And here you will fix what is broken,” Dean Sader said, a last butterfly fluttering into her dress. “Fairy tales have trained us to believe a beautiful bond like yours cannot last. Why? Because a boy must come between you. A boy so threatened by your story that he’s willing to kill to destroy it. But at my school, we teach you the truth.” She opened the door to pitch darkness.
“That a girl without a boy is the greatest happy ending of all.”
Her finger magically lit a torch, and the flame roared red to a burst of drums. Agatha and Sophie leapt back—
Twenty rows of girls stood frozen, heads bowed, each wearing a white veil, royal-blue harem pants, and a light blue bodice stitched with a butterfly crest over the heart. There were more than 100 of them, stretching through the exhibits of the museum, past its open rear doors, and into the vast ballroom of Good Hall. Faces obscured, they stood eerily still, arms raised with hands to opposite elbows as if summoning genies. Hovering above them, just beneath the ceiling, two more veiled girls on magic carpets beat snare drums faster and faster.
At the front of this parade was a lone girl without anyone else in her row. Her veil was blue instead of white, her hair ginger red, and the pallid skin on her thin arms dotted with strawberry freckles. Slowly she raised her arms …
The drums stopped.
With an untamed screech, the girl blew a blast of fire that singed the magic carpets and sent Agatha and Sophie quailing from flames. As the drums beat once more, the girl whipped into a whirling belly dance, punctuating each move with a wild whistle or trill.
“One look at her, and Tedros will forget all about his wish maker,” said Sophie coldly.
“Sophie, I’m sorry.” Agatha shifted closer to her friend. “I really am.”
Sophie shifted away.
“I’d never lose you for a boy,” Agatha prodded. But eyeing the dancing girl, she suddenly felt a twinge of jealousy … Had Tedros seen her?
She crushed the thought. Tedros wanted to kill her best friend and she was still thinking of him? He’s the enemy, you idiot!
Stefan’s face haunted her, begging her to return Sophie home safe. Where was the Agatha who’d do anything to protect her best friend? The one who had control over her feelings? The one who was Good?
By now, the rows behind started to echo the leader’s dance, flowing with crisp hand movements. Then, with a sudden flourish, the girls all turned to each other and danced in pairs. Hands brushed and clasped as they touched backs before lifting arms and switching places, never losing the touch of their palms. In their glinting blue harem pants and white veils, they looked like swaying sea anemones. Despite the storm in her heart, Sophie managed a smile. She had never seen something so beautiful. Then again, she’d never seen girls dance without boys.
Agatha didn’t like Sophie’s expression. “Sophie, I need to talk to Tedros.”
“No.”
“I said I’m sorry. You have to let me fix it—”
“No.”
“The fool thinks I want you killed!” Agatha said, smacking away a blue butterfly on her shoulder. “I’m the only one who can make him see reason.”
“A prince who thinks he’s School Master, bet half his fortune on my head, and you think he’ll see reason,” Sophie said, letting the butterfly perch on her. “I’m surprised Good ever wins if it’s this naive.”
Agatha glanced at the Dean’s back to them. She couldn’t possibly eavesdrop with the drums pounding and the dancing girl hooting like a hyena, but Agatha had the strange feeling she could hear everything.
“Sophie, I lost myself for a moment,” she whispered. “It was a mistake.”
Sophie watched the lead girl spew another jet of fire. “Maybe the Dean is right,” she said, not whispering at all. “Maybe I should stay here.”
“What? We don’t even know where she came from, let alone how she’s Dean! You saw the look on Professor Dovey’s face. You can’t trust her—”
“Right now, I trust her more than I trust you.”
Agatha could have sworn she saw the Dean grin. “You’re not safe here, Sophie! Tedros will come for you!”
“Let him. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I want you home alive!” Agatha begged. “I want us to forget ever coming to the School for Good and Evil! I don’t want Tedros!”
Sophie whirled, snarling. “Then why did you wish for him?”
Agatha froze.
“Let the gifts begin!” the Dean decreed.
“Gifts!” Sophie spun from Agatha, beaming. “At last, some good news.” She sidled up to the Dean as the veiled girls fanned to the walls like a clamshell opening, leaving a wide aisle down the middle.
Agatha followed warily, remembering what this world had once done to her and her best friend. The longer they stayed here, the longer they were in danger. She had to get Sophie home now.
Moving into the sunlight of a small window, she noticed the museum exhibits had changed. Evidence of boys’ achievements had all been stripped and replaced with relics from her and Sophie’s fairy tale: Agatha’s Evergirl uniform, Sophie’s Lunchtime Lectures sign, Agatha’s note to Sophie during the Trial by Tale, the slashed lock of hair from Sophie’s Doom Room punishment, and dozens of others, each enshrined in a blue-tinted glass case. On the main wall, the Ever After mural, which once celebrated the marriage of prince and princess, was now covered with a navy canvas, embroidered with butterflies. Indeed, the only holdover was Professor Sader’s old nook of paintings off the far corner. As a seer who could glimpse the future, the former History teacher had once drawn paintings of every Reader who had come from Gavaldon to the School for Good and Evil. Whenever Agatha needed answers, she always drifted back to these paintings, finding new clues. All she wanted was to study them again now, but there were two veiled girls marching towards her down the aisle, carrying an enormous purple vase.
“From Maidenvale,” said Dean Sader, honeyed voice now deep and commanding. “An urn from Princess Riselda, who like hundreds of others heard your story and realized she’d be happier without her prince. She had his throne burned and offers the ashes to you.”
The girls held up the urn to Sophie and Agatha, who peered at its carving of a prince magically ejected out a castle window to crocodiles below.
“We don’t want it,” Agatha crabbed.
“Shall we put it in my room?” smiled Sophie, turning to the Dean.
“Room?” Agatha blurted. “Sophie, you’re not staying—”
But now two girls were marching down the aisle with oriental, bamboo drapes.
“From Pifflepaff Hills,” the Dean boomed. “A hand-painted tree curtain from Princess Sayuri, who read your tale and realized that without princes, princesses and witches are happier.”
Its exquisitely painted bamboo reeds depicted a princess and witch embracing in one panel, while in the other, a prince who looked a lot like Tedros was flogged to a pulp by a beast.
“This is horrible,” Agatha snapped.
“Hang them by my bed,” Sophie chimed to the two veiled girls. “What’s next?”
The Dean pointed a gold-lacquered nail down the aisle. “From Netherwood, a tapestry of homeless princes …”
“I wish Professor Dovey and Lady Lesso could appreciate someone as chic as you,” Sophie fawned to the Dean, as the procession of prince-abusing gifts continued, including prince voodoo dolls, looted prince swords, and a carpet made out of prince hair. “Do classes start today?”
The Dean grinned as she glided away. “Including mine.”
“You’re not serious,” Agatha hissed to Sophie. “Now you want to go to class?”
“Let’s hope they renovated those rooms made of candy.” Sophie hand combed her hair, readying for the day. “I’m allergic to the smell.”
“Sophie, there is a bounty on your head—”
“And lastly, a gift from me,” declared Dean Sader, standing in front of the covered Ever After mural. “Students, your old school taught you balance was about vanquishing Good or Evil. But how can there be balance between Evers and Nevers until there is balance between Boys and Girls? It is no mistake our Readers have returned to join our school, for their fairy tale remains unfinished.”
She looked right at the two girls. “And the battle for its ending just begun.”
She let the canvas fall. Agatha and Sophie drew breaths.
The words EVER AFTER, giant and glimmering, still peeked from painted clouds at the top of the mural in gold block letters. Everything else had been redone.
Now the scene depicted two sprawling blue-glass castles around a lake, as girls in azure uniforms gathered on tower balconies, basked on the lakeshores, and strolled the gated grounds. Some of these girls were beautiful, some were ugly, but they worked, lived, and idled together without division, as if witches and princesses were always meant to be friends.
There were boys in the painting too, if one could call them that. With black peasant rags and ogrishly distorted faces, they scooped manure, raked a blue forest behind the castle, and built up the towers in miserable chain gangs before retreating to filthy prison slums at the fringes of the gates. Female overseers drove them like chattel and the boys put up no fight, slaves resigned to eternal servitude. Agatha’s eyes rose to the top of the painting, where haloed in sun two women with crystal diadems surveyed their kingdom from the highest balcony …
“It’s us,” Sophie gasped.
“It’s … this school,” scowled Agatha.
“Your true Ever After,” the Dean said, stepping between them. “Captains of these hallowed halls, leading girls to a princeless future.”
Agatha grimaced at the vision of Everboys and Neverboys hated and enslaved. “This school isn’t our ending,” she said, turning to Sophie. “Tell her we have to leave!”
But Sophie was gazing at the painting, eyes wide. “How do we make it come true?”
Agatha stiffened.
“How all heroes win their happy ending, dear,” the Dean said, touching both their shoulders. “By facing the enemy.” She grinned out the window at Tedros’ tower. “And slaying him.”
Agatha and Sophie locked eyes in surprise.
“My cherished students!” The Dean swept her hand over the crowd. “Welcome our Readers back to school!”
With a roar, the mob tore off their veils and rushed the two girls.
“You’re home!” gushed Reena, embracing Agatha with freckly Millicent, while green-skinned Mona and one-eyed Arachne smooshed Sophie into a hug—
“Didn’t know we were friends—” Sophie croaked, suffocated—
“We’re on your side against Tedros,” Arachne cheered, Millicent on her arm as if Evers and Nevers were suddenly bosom buddies. “All of us!”
“You’re our heroes,” Reena said to Agatha, who noticed the Arabian princess looked a bit bigger in the bottom. “You and Sophie taught us the truth about boys!”
Agatha fumbled for words before a shrieking blur bear-hugged her and Sophie. “My roommates!” Beatrix yipped. “Aren’t you excited? The Dean put you both with me!”
Neither Sophie nor Agatha had time to process this cataclysm, because they were goggling at something more alarming— “Your hair!” Sophie cried.
“No boys means no need to look like stupid princesses,” Beatrix said, rubbing her shaved head proudly. “Think about how much time I wasted last year on Tedros and Balls and beautifying all day. And for what? Now I read, I study, I learned to speak Elf … I finally know what’s going on in our world!”
“But what about Beautification?” Sophie fretted.
“That’s long gone. There is no beauty or ugliness at the School for Girls!” said Reena, who, Sophie saw with horror, wasn’t wearing a shred of makeup. “We wear pants, we don’t do our nails … we even eat cheese!”
Sophie gagged and looked for the Dean, but butterflies were trailing her out of the gallery. “But surely some lipstick is allowed—”
“You can do whatever you want!” Arachne said, showing off a smatter of hideous blush on both cheeks. “Nevers can groom, Evers don’t have to. It’s all your choice!”
Millicent leaned in with a grin. “I haven’t washed my hair for a month.”
Sophie and Agatha both recoiled, only for the latter to be tackled by a yelping heap—
“Eeeeeeyiiiiiiii! You’re here! My best friend in the whole world!” Kiko gave Sophie a phony smile. “And you too.” Then Kiko hugged Agatha again, her brown, almond-shaped eyes tearing up. “You don’t know how much I prayed for you to come back! It’s like heaven here! Wait until you take History—the Dean teaches it and we go into the stories—and there’s dance lessons and a school newspaper and a book club and we put on a play instead of a Ball and we can sleep in each other’s rooms and—”
Kiko couldn’t finish because there were flocks of girls besieging Sophie and Agatha now, each girl acting as if she was their best friend too.
Agatha tried to fend off her horde and lunged to Sophie across the masses. “We have to get out of here right no—” She tripped and landed face-first. “Will you sign my storybook?” Giselle asked, black hair sheared into a blue mohawk. Agatha crawled back like a crab into more clamoring fans.
As girls thrust books, cards, body parts for Sophie to sign, Beatrix forced the girls into a receiving line and let them pay tribute one by one. Sophie could hardly tell who was from Good and who from Evil anymore, since more of the Evergirls had hacked their hair and let their figures go, while a large number of Nevergirls were experimenting with makeup and diets.
Meanwhile, Agatha finally extricated herself from her gaggle. But just as she grabbed Sophie’s arm to end this idiocy, she froze still.
The dancing girl shuffled towards them in her sky-blue veil. Gangly as an egret, she didn’t so much walk as tiptoe, the heels of her white slippers never touching the ground. She pattered down the aisle, past gaping girls, until she stopped sharply in front of the two Readers. The girl raised her head of flowing, red hair and lifted the veil from her face.
Sophie and Agatha were both very confused.
She didn’t look like any girl they’d ever seen, and yet she seemed almost familiar. She had a long, pointy nose, a strong jaw, and close-set blue eyes. Her neck was strangely long, and her cropped blouse revealed perfect stomach muscles that rippled beneath her pale, freckled skin. The girl smiled ethereally, looked into their eyes, and unleashed a low squawk that made Sophie and Agatha jump. Then she blew them a kiss, replaced her veil, and shuffled out of the hall.
All the girls watched her in dumb silence until the mob started pushing towards Sophie and Agatha again and Beatrix blew her whistle.
“What was that?” Agatha said to Kiko as she crankily signed an autograph.
“Her name is Yara,” Kiko whispered. “No one knows how she got in! Doesn’t speak, doesn’t eat, far as we can tell, and disappears all the time. Probably has nowhere to live, poor thing. But the Dean lets her stay out of the goodness of her heart. Some people think she’s half stymph.”
Agatha frowned, thinking of the bony, carnivorous birds that hated Nevers. “How can someone be half stym—”
She lost her train of thought, because Sophie had culled the girls all to herself, smiling imperiously, signing autographs, and kissing cheeks, as if she’d finally found her way home.
“Can I help you fight boys?” Arachne hollered.
“Can I be your Vice Captain?” yelled Giselle.
“Can I be your Vice-Vice Captain?” echoed Flavia.
“Sit with my group for lunch!” Millicent called.
“No, sit with us!” Mona countered—
“How glorious it is to have fans again,” Sophie said, ignoring Agatha’s horrified look and dotting an autograph with hearts. “Here I am trying to get home where no one wants me, and instead stumble upon paradise, where everyone does.”
“If you’re miserable with Beatrix, don’t worry,” Kiko said, noticing Agatha’s glum face. “You can always stay with me.”
Agatha turned to her, and Kiko suddenly understood. “You aren’t staying, are you?” Kiko rasped.
The crowd went silent around her.
“Now tell me about this school play,” Sophie said loudly to Reena. “Have you cast the lead par—”
She stopped, for all the students had followed Agatha’s gaze out the window. Across the bay, fog brewed thicker around the grisly red castle.
“If we stay, we’re starting war,” Agatha said to the girls. “All of you would be in danger.”
She turned to Sophie. “You heard the professors. We can fix what I’ve done without anyone dying. Not you. Not Tedros. Not anyone here. We wish for each other, and we can forget this school ever happened.” She touched her friend’s shoulder. “It’s Evil if we stay, Sophie. And you’re not Evil.”
Sophie slowly gazed up at a sea of blameless girls, who would no doubt die at the hands of Tedros and his red hoods. Only Agatha had forgotten the Dean’s warning. They could go home as long as both of them meant their wish. But Sophie knew Agatha couldn’t mean a wish for her friend. Agatha couldn’t forget this school.
Because a friend wasn’t enough for Agatha anymore.
Agatha wanted a prince.
“We’ll hide in the Blue Forest and come up with a plan,” Agatha said to her quietly, anxious to escape before the Dean returned. “Maybe we can mogrify into the Boys’ school.”
Crestfallen, Sophie said nothing—
Until she met her own eyes in the painting on the wall.
Atop the castle in her crystal crown, she looked just like someone she knew, with the same goldspun blond hair, emerald eyes, and ivory skin. Someone who too had lost her happy ending to a boy. Someone who had died all alone because of it.
“You are too beautiful for this world, Sophie.”
It was the last thing her mother had ever said.
She wanted me to find it, Sophie thought, this world where she wouldn’t end like her mother.
A world where she and Agatha would be happy forever.
A world where a boy could never come between them.
A world without princes.
And only one prince stood in her way, Sophie gritted, tears glistening.
A prince that Agatha would surely forget once he was dead.
“It isn’t Evil, Aggie,” Sophie vowed. “This school is our only hope.”
Agatha tightened. “Sophie, what are you—”
“He says he wants me?” Sophie bellowed to her waiting army. She bared teeth at Tedros’ castle.
“Then let him come for me.”
The girls let out a raucous cheer and mobbed their new leader.
“Death to Tedros!”
“Death to Boys!”
Agatha drained of color as Sophie met her eyes and vanished into the swarm.
One wish, and she’d set a war in motion. A war between two sides fighting for her heart. A war between two people she loved. A war between her best friend and a prince.
Agatha’s soul scorched with guilt, a promise to a father gone up in flames.
I need help, she prayed, watching Sophie blow kisses to her soldiers. Someone who could see through all this. Someone to tell her who was Good this time and who was Evil.
As she retreated from the horde, she noticed an odd glint from the corner, hovering near the floor in Sader’s dark nook of paintings. Slowly two tiny yellow eyes floated towards her, like suspended marbles. Two more suddenly glowed next to them, then two more, as hunched shadows pattered from behind a marble column.
The three black rats glowered at Agatha as if she’d said the magic words. Then they skittered through the back doors to lead her to their master.
(#ulink_a251f5f1-1258-5b1e-9ae3-d333b2a87f02)
“So let me get this straight,” Hester glared, straddling a gilded sink next to Anadil, both in their saggy black Nevers’ tunics. “Tedros wants to kill Sophie. Sophie wants to kill Tedros. And unless you find an ending with one of them now, everyone in this school dies.”
Agatha nodded weakly, leaning against one of Honor Tower’s ivory bathroom stalls, fitted with a sapphire toilet and tub. She never thought she’d be so happy to see two witches in her life. Unlike the rest of the girls, neither of them had changed. Hester’s red-and-black-streaked hair was greasier than ever, and the buckhorned red demon tattoo around her neck back to full color after a failed spell had weakened it the year before. Anadil, meanwhile, looked even paler than she did before, if that was possible for an albino with ghostly white skin and hair. Straddling the sink next to Hester, she dangled a live lizard to her three black rats that looked just like the ones slain in last year’s Good-Evil war.
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Soman Chainani
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Сказки
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: It’s all happy ever after in the School for Good and Evil… or is it? The second title in the NYT bestselling fantasy adventure series – perfect for girls who prefer their fairy tales with a twist.After saving themselves and their fellow students from a life pitched against one another, Sophie and Agatha are back home again, living happily ever after. But life isn′t exactly a fairy tale…When Agatha secretly wishes she’d chosen a different happy ending with Prince Tedros, the gates to the School for Good and Evil open once again. But everything has changed and a happy ending seems further away than ever…