The Last Ever After
The Last Ever After
Soman Chainani
Can Agatha and Sophie find the perfect ending to their story in this epic third instalment to this bestselling series.Once best friends, Agatha and Sophie were pulled apart like strangers, each in the arms of a boy, Good with Good, Evil with Evil… is their friendship lost forever after…But as they settle into their new lives, their story begs to be re-written, and this time, theirs isn’t the only one. With the girls apart, Evil has taken over and the villains of the past have come back to change their tales and turn the world of Good and Evil upside down.With Evers being murdered and Nevers reigning supreme, the girls need to restore the balance, find the end to their story, and—hopefully—become friends again
Copyright (#ulink_8a2c36ce-2ff2-5b3d-a239-16d7f9a1f6a6)
START YOUR EDUCATION AT WWW.SCHOOLFORGOODANDEVIL.COM (http://www.schoolforgoodandevil.com)
HarperCollins Children’s Books
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First published in hardback in the USA by HarperCollins Children’s Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. in 2015
First published in paperback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015
This electronic edition published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015
The School for Good and Evil: The Last Ever After
Text copyright © 2015 by Soman Chainani
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Iacopo Bruno
Cover Design © HarperCollins Publishers 2015
Cover Illustrations © Iacopo Bruno 2015
Soman Chainani and Iacopo Bruno assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007502868
Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007502851
Version: 2016-12-08
Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.
T. H. White, The Once and Future King
Contents
Cover (#u0699c26b-4d6a-5be1-860d-6b030b6ce536)
Title Page (#u6c1300a0-2b62-5b72-848d-e055d06ade50)
Copyright (#ueec1efb9-9113-5e67-996f-e01a93942b53)
Epigraph (#ue670b138-8c1e-578f-a4fb-14663f9f1a70)
Part I (#u73255fb6-5314-5f2f-b521-13efdde0ca1c)
Chapter 1: The Master and the Queen (#uc73eebf0-f5d0-5aad-99fc-ddcedaed3092)
Chapter 2: After Ever After (#u18724056-b903-5fc7-a6c6-59b5c81c82e6)
Chapter 3: The New or the Old (#uf8c56c0e-8379-590d-ba1b-281ebd2f41a8)
Chapter 4: Death at an Execution (#ua40be4aa-a949-588f-8146-00add9666fa4)
Chapter 5: A Princess Returns (#u1032aa08-4060-5ad7-ae7f-8275f499c813)
Chapter 6: A Forest No Longer Blue (#ubd4c0454-b900-51ee-8612-c76258efac8f)
Chapter 7: Evil Is the New Good (#u20126b94-69c7-56d0-a7d5-0a27971501f2)
Chapter 8: When Good Rescues Go Bad (#u43eb271d-bd61-5038-a0b9-cf8c819525ff)
Chapter 9: The Worst Evers Ever (#u377ab680-18c6-50a8-9e3e-2915469fb1d9)
Chapter 10: The Missing Thirteenth (#u70a46e6a-9c10-5a87-ad6b-a6b59c2c7236)
Chapter 11: Appointment with the Deans (#u47d9c0c8-6066-5ca6-af22-d8745ea3296b)
Chapter 12: Find the Spy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13: Too Many Boys (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14: Where Wizards Go to Think (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15: The Magician’s Plan (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16: Edgar and Essa (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17: Missions Impossible (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18: Tedros in the Sky with Chocolate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19: Old School Reunions (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20: Last Stop on the Fairy Dust Express (#litres_trial_promo)
Part II (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21: Peer Pressure (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22: Everything Old Is New Again (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23: Two Queens (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24: Who Do You Belong With? (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25: The Scorpion and the Frog (#litres_trial_promo)
Part III (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26: In Darkness Comes a Queen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27: Rebel Hearts (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28: Who’s Helping Who (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29: Failed Assignments (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30: Apologies and Confessions (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31: Spies in the Stymph Forest (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32: The Meaning of Evil (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33: An Unexpected History Lesson (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34: The War of All Things (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35: Never Ever After (#litres_trial_promo)
Read more School for Good and Evil (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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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(#ulink_5b7d373d-0927-505d-b3c0-1b9590474e00)
t is natural to doubt your true love when you do not know if he is young or old.
He certainly looks young, Sophie thought, peering at the lean, shirtless boy as he gazed out the tower window, bathed in faded sunlight. Sophie studied his hairless white skin and snug black breeches, his thick spiked hair the color of snow, his tight-veined arms, his glacier-blue eyes … He didn’t look a day more than sixteen. And yet somewhere within this beautiful stranger was a soul older than sixteen—much, much older than sixteen. For the last three weeks, then, Sophie had refused his ring. How could she bond herself to a boy with the School Master inside of him?
And yet the more Sophie looked at him, the more she couldn’t see the School Master. All Sophie could see was a fresh, ethereal youth asking for her hand, with sharp cheekbones and full lips—more handsome than a prince, more powerful than a prince, and unlike Prince You-Know-Who, this boy was hers.
Sophie reddened, remembering she was all alone in this world. Everyone else had abandoned her. Every desperate effort to be Good had been punished with betrayal. She had no family, no friends, no future. And now, this ravishing boy in front of her was her last hope for love. Panic burned through her muscles and dried out her throat. There was no choice anymore. Sophie swallowed and slowly stepped towards him.
Look at him. He’s no older than you, she soothed herself. The boy of your dreams. She reached shaking fingers for his bare shoulder … until she suddenly froze in her tracks. It was only magic that had brought this boy to life, she thought, pulling her hand back into her sleeve. But how long does magic last?
“You’re asking yourself the wrong questions,” came the smooth voice. “Magic thinks nothing of time.”
Sophie lifted her eyes. The boy didn’t look at her, his focus on the sallow sun, barely a force through the morning fog.
“Since when can you hear my thoughts?” Sophie said, unnerved.
“I don’t need to hear thoughts to know how a Reader’s mind thinks,” he replied.
Sophie took her place beside him in her black cloak, feeling the chill off his marble-colored skin. She thought of Tedros’ skin, always sweaty and tan, with the warmth of a bear’s. A hot flash bolted through her body—rage or regret or something in between. She forced herself closer to the boy, her arm brushing his pale chest.
He still didn’t look at her.
“What is it?” Sophie asked.
“The sun,” he said, watching it flicker through the mist. “Every day it rises weaker than the one before.”
“If only you had power to make the sun shine too,” Sophie murmured. “Every day could be a tea party.”
The boy shot her a sour glare. Sophie stiffened, reminded that unlike her once Good best friend, her new suitor was neither Good nor friendly. She quickly looked back out the window, shivering at an icy breeze. “Oh for heaven’s sake, suns weaken in the winter. Don’t need a sorcerer to know that.”
“Perhaps it takes a Reader to explain this too,” he replied, sweeping to the white stone table in the corner, where a long, knife-sharp pen, shaped like a knitting needle, hovered over an open storybook. Sophie turned to the book, glimpsing the colors of the last page: her painted self kissing the School Master back to youth as her best friend vanished home with a prince.
“Three weeks since the Storian wrote our Never After,” said the boy. “Within days, it should have begun a new story with love on Evil’s side now. Love that will destroy Good, one fairy tale at a time. Love that turns the pen into Evil’s weapon instead of its curse.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “Instead it reopens the book it just closed and stays there, hanging over The End like a play whose curtain won’t shut.”
Sophie couldn’t look away from Agatha and Tedros on the page, embracing lovingly as they disappeared. Sophie’s gut twisted, her face searing hot— “Here,” she croaked, slamming the cover down on them, and shoving the cherry-red storybook next to The Frog Prince, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and the rest of the Storian’s finished tales. Her heartbeat calmed. “Curtain shut.”
Instantly the book ricocheted off the shelf and smashed into her face, knocking her against the wall, before it flew onto the stone table, swinging open to the last page once more. The Storian glimmered defiantly above it.
“This is no accident,” spoke the boy, stalking towards Sophie as she rubbed her stinging cheek. “The Storian keeps our world alive by writing new stories, and at the moment, it has no intention of moving on from your story. And as long as the pen does not move on to a new story, the sun dies, day by day, until the Woods go dark and it is The End for us all.”
Sophie looked up at him, silhouetted by the weak light. “But—but what is it waiting for?”
He leaned in and touched her neck, his fingers frigid on her peach-cream skin. Sophie recoiled, jamming into the bookshelf. The boy smiled and drew closer, blocking out the sun. “I’m afraid it has doubts whether I’m your true love,” he cooed. “It has doubts whether you’ve committed to Evil. It has doubts whether your friend and her prince should be gone forever.”
Sophie slowly gazed up at the black shadow.
“It meaning you,” said the School Master, holding out his hand.
Sophie looked down to see the ring of gold in his cold, young palm and her terrified face in its reflection.
Three weeks before, Sophie had kissed the School Master into a boy and banished her best friend home. For a moment, she’d felt the relief of victory as Agatha silently disappeared with Tedros. Her best friend may have chosen a prince over her, but there was no such thing as a prince in Gavaldon. Agatha would die an ordinary girl, with an ordinary boy, while she basked in Ever After, far, far away. Wrapped in the arms of her true love, soaring towards his silver tower in the sky, Sophie waited to feel happy. She’d won her fairy tale and winning was supposed to mean happiness.
But as they landed in his murky, stone chamber, Sophie started to shake. Agatha was gone. Her best friend. Her soulmate. And with her, she’d taken a boy who Sophie had grown close to in so many forms: when she was a girl, when she was a boy, when he was her true love, when he was just her friend. Agatha had won Tedros, the only boy Sophie ever truly knew; Tedros had won Agatha, the one person Sophie never thought she’d live without. And Sophie had won a beautiful boy of whom she knew nothing, except the dark depths of his evil. As the School Master moved towards her, young as a prince, with a cocky smile, Sophie knew she’d made a mistake.
Only it’d been too late to turn back. Through the window, Sophie glimpsed Agatha’s vanishing embers, the castles rotting vulturous black, boys and girls smashing into vicious war, teachers firing spells at students, at each other … Stunned, she’d twirled to the School Master—only to see the frost-haired boy on one knee before her, ring in hand. Take it, he’d said, and two years of war would cease. No more Good versus Evil. No more Boys versus Girls. Instead, only indisputable Evil: a School Master and his queen. Take the ring, the beautiful boy said, and she would have her happy ending at last.
Sophie didn’t.
The School Master left her alone in the tower, sealing the window so she couldn’t escape. Every morning when the clock struck ten, he came and asked again, his young, sinewy body inexplicably clad in different clothes—one day a lace-up shirt, the next day a draping tunic or tight vest or ruffled collar—and his cloud-white hair just as fickle, whether sleeked or tousled or curled. He brought gifts too: exquisite jeweled gowns, luscious bouquets, lavender perfumes, vials of creams and soaps and herbs, always anticipating her next wish. Still Sophie shook her head each time and then he’d be gone without a word, scowling with teenage sulk. She’d stay there, trapped in his chamber alone, with the company of his fairy-tale library and his old blue robes and silver mask abandoned like relics to hooks on a wall. Food would appear magically three times a day at the moment she felt hungry, and precisely what she was craving, in perfect portions on plates made of bone—steamed vegetables, steamed fruit, steamed fish, and the occasional bowl of bacon and beans (she couldn’t shake the cravings from her time as a boy). When night fell, a giant bed would materialize in the chamber, with velvet sheets the color of blood and a white lace canopy. At first, Sophie couldn’t sleep, petrified he would come in the dark. But he never returned until the next morning for their silent ritual of ring and refusal.
By the second week, Sophie began to wonder what had happened to the schools. Had her rejections prolonged the war between boys and girls? Had she cost any lives? She tried to ask what had become of her friends—of Hester, Dot, Anadil, Hort—but he answered no questions, as if the ring was the price of moving forward.
Today was the first day he’d even spoken since he brought her here. Now, standing beside him in the glow of a dying sun, Sophie saw she could no longer delay without consequence. The time had come for her to seal her ending with him or slowly fade into death too. The gold ring sparkled brighter in the School Master’s hand, promising new life. Sophie looked up at the bare-chested boy, praying to see a reason to take it … and saw nothing but a stranger. “I can’t,” she breathed, shrinking against a shelf. “I don’t know the first thing about you.”
The School Master stared at her, square jaw flexing, and put the ring back into his breeches. “What is it you would like to know?”
“For one thing, your name,” Sophie said. “If I’m going to stay here with you, I need something to call you.”
“The teachers call me ‘Master.’”
“I’m not calling you ‘Master,’” Sophie snapped.
He gritted his teeth about to fire back, but Sophie wasn’t cowed. “Without me, your Never After doesn’t exist,” she preempted, voice rising. “You’re nothing but a boy—a well-built, virile, obscenely handsome boy—but still, a boy. You can’t lord over me. You can’t scare me into true love. I don’t care if you’re gorgeous or rich or powerful. Tedros had all of those things and la-di-da, didn’t that turn out well. I deserve someone who makes me happy. At least as happy as Agatha and Agatha doesn’t have to call Tedros ‘Prince’ for the rest of her life, does she? Because Tedros has a name, like every boy in the world, and so do you and I will call you by it if you expect me to actually give you a chance.”
The School Master swelled crimson, but Sophie was breathing flames now. “That’s right. I’m in charge now. You might be the Master of this infernal school, but you are not my Master and you never will be. You said it yourself: the Storian won’t write because it is waiting for my choice, not yours. I choose whether I take your ring. I choose whether this is The End. I choose whether this world lives or dies. And I’m happy to watch it burn to dust if you expect a slave instead of a queen.”
The School Master glowered at her, veins pulsing beneath his ghost-white neck. He bit his lip so hard Sophie thought he was about to eat her and she stepped back in horror, only to see him slacken with an angry pant and look away. Then he was quiet for a very long time, his fists clenched.
“Rafal,” he mumbled. “My name is Rafal.”
Rafal, Sophie thought, astonished. In an instant, she saw him anew: the callow milk of his skin, the adolescent sparkle in his eyes, the erect puff to his chest, matching the storm and youth of a name. Rafal. What is it about a name that gives us a story to believe in?
She suddenly felt the blush of desire, craving to touch him … until she remembered what choosing him would mean. This was a boy who’d butchered his own blood in the name of Evil and he believed her capable of the same. Sophie held herself back.
“What was your brother’s name?” she asked.
He spun, eyes aflame. “I don’t see how that will help you get to know me any better.”
Sophie didn’t press the point. Then behind him, she noticed the fog abating, revealing a greenish haze over two black castles in the distance. It was the first time in three weeks he’d unsealed the window long enough for her to see through. But both schools seemed dead quiet, no sign of life on any of the roofs or balconies. “W-w-where is everyone?” she sputtered, squinting at the healed Bridge between the castles. “What happened to the girls? The boys were going to kill them—”
“A queen would have the right to ask me questions about the school she rules,” he said. “You are not a queen yet.”
Sophie cleared her throat, noticing the bulge of the ring in his tight pocket. “Um, why do you keep changing clothes? It’s … strange.”
For the first time, the boy seemed uncomfortable. “Given your refusals, I assumed dressing like the princes you chase would move things along.” He scratched his rippled stomach. “Then I remembered the son of Arthur wasn’t fond of shirts.”
Sophie snorted, trying to ignore his perfect torso. “Didn’t think the all-powerful were capable of self-doubt.”
“If I was all-powerful, I could make you love me,” he growled.
Sophie heard the petulance in his voice and for a moment saw an ordinary boy, lovesick and striving for a girl he couldn’t have. Then she remembered this was no ordinary boy. “No one can make anyone love them,” she hit back. “I learned that lesson harder than anyone. Besides, even if you could make me love you, you could never love me. You can’t love anything. Not if you embrace Evil as a choice. It’s why your brother is dead.”
“And yet, I’m alive because of true love’s kiss,” he said.
“You tricked me into it—”
“You never broke your grip.”
Sophie blanched. “I’d never kiss you and mean it!”
“Oh? For me to return to life, to return to youth … the kiss had to go both ways, didn’t it?” He looked into Sophie’s stunned face and grinned. “Surely your best friend taught you that.”
Sophie said nothing, the truth extinguishing her fight. Just as Agatha once could have taken Tedros’ hand before she chose Sophie instead, Sophie too could have sent the School Master back to the grave. But here they were, both beautiful and young, victims of a kiss she was trying to deny. Why had she held on to him that night? Sophie asked herself. Even once she knew it was him she was kissing? Looking up at the porcelain boy, she thought of everything he’d done to win her, across death and time … his unyielding faith that he could make her happy, beyond any family, friend, or prince. He had come for her when no one else wanted her. He had believed in her when no one else did. Sophie’s voice clumped in her throat. “Why do you want me so much?” she rasped.
He stared at her, the clamp of his jaw easing, his lips falling open slightly. For a moment, Sophie thought he looked the way Tedros did when he let down his guard—a lost boy playing at a grown-up. “Because once upon a time, I was just like you,” he said softly. He blinked fast, falling into memory. “I tried to love my brother. I tried to escape my fate. I even thought I’d found—” He caught himself. “But it only led to more pain … more Evil. Just as every time you seek love, it leads you to the same. Your mother, your father, your best friend, your prince … The more you chase the light, the more darkness you find. And yet still you doubt your place in Evil.”
Sophie tensed as he gently lifted her chin. “For thousands of years, Good has told us what love is. Both you and I have tried to love in their way, only to suffer pain,” he said. “But what if there’s a different kind of love? A darker love that turns pain into power. A love that can only be understood by the two who share it. That’s why you held our kiss, Sophie. Because I see you for who you really are and love you for it when no one else can. Because what we’ve sacrificed for each other is beyond what Good can even fathom. It doesn’t matter if they don’t call it love. We know it is, just as we know the thorns are as much a part of the rose as the petals.” He leaned in, lips caressing her ear. “I am the mirror of your soul, Sophie. To love me is to love yourself,” he whispered. Then he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it like a prince, before he gently let it go.
Sophie’s heart wrenched so sharply she thought he’d torn it out of her. She’d never felt so naked in her life and huddled tighter into her black cloak. Then little by little, staring into the harsh symmetry of his face, Sophie felt her breath come back, a strange safe warmth flooding her core. He understood her, this dark-souled boy, and in the sapphire facets of his eyes, she suddenly saw how deep they went. She shook her head, rattled. “I don’t even know if you’re really a boy.”
He smiled at her. “If your fairy tale has taught you one lesson, Sophie, it is that things are only as you see.”
Sophie frowned. “I don’t understand—” she started … but somewhere in her soul she did.
The boy looked out at the sun, frail and hazy over his school, and Sophie knew that the time for questions was over. As he slid his hand into his pocket, Sophie could feel her whole body trembling, as if pulled towards a waterfall she wouldn’t escape.
“Will we be as happy as Tedros and Agatha?” she pressed, voice cracking.
“You must trust your story, Sophie. It has come to The End for a reason.” He turned to her. “But now it’s time for you to believe it.”
Sophie looked down at the gold circle in his hand, breaths growing faster, faster … With a shudder, she pushed him away. He reached for her and Sophie shoved him against the wall, pinning her own palm flat against his frigid chest. He didn’t resist as Sophie moved her hand over his sternum, eyes wild, panting hard. She didn’t know what she was looking for until she found it beneath her fingers and froze. Her hand rose and fell on his chest, rose and fell, his heart throbbing between them. Slowly Sophie looked up at him, drinking in his strong, hopeful beat, no different than her own.
“Rafal,” she whispered, wishing a boy to life.
His fingertips caressed her face and for the first time, Sophie didn’t flinch from the cold. As he drew her in, Sophie felt the doubts melt out of her, fear giving way to faith. Black cloak pressed to his white body, like two swans in balance, Sophie raised her left hand into the sunlight, steady and sure. Then Rafal slipped his ring onto her finger, the warm gold sliding up her skin inch by inch, until it fit tight. Sophie let out a gasp and the snow-white boy smiled, never breaking his gaze.
In each other’s arms, Master and Queen turned to the enchanted pen over their fairy tale, ready for it to bless their love … ready for it to close their book at last …
The pen didn’t move.
The book stayed open.
Sophie’s heart stalled. “What happened?”
She followed Rafal’s eyes to the red-amber sun, which had darkened another shade. His face steeled to a deadly mask. “It seems our happy ending isn’t the one the pen doubts.”
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ou don’t know the first thing about me,” Tedros spat, and clubbed his princess in the face with a musty pillow.
Agatha coughed and bashed him with a pillow right back, knocking him against her black bed frame, as feathers burst all over him. Reaper leapt onto Tedros’ face, trying to eat them. “I know too much about you is the problem,” Agatha snarled and grabbed at the poorly set bandage under her prince’s blue collar. Tedros shoved her away—Agatha tackled him back, before Tedros snatched Reaper and threw the cat at her head. Agatha ducked and Reaper sailed into the bathroom, flailing bald, wrinkled paws, before landing headfirst in the toilet. “If you knew me, you’d know I do things myself,” Tedros huffed, tightening his shirt laces.
“You threw my cat at me?” Agatha yelled, launching to her feet. “Because I’m trying to save you from gangrene?”
“That cat is Satan,” Tedros hissed, watching Reaper try to climb out of the toilet bowl and slide back down. “And if you knew me, you’d know I hate cats.”
“No doubt you like dogs—wet-mouthed, simple, and now that I think about it, a lot like you.”
Tedros glowered at her. “Getting personal over a bandage, are we?”
“Three weeks and the wound isn’t healing, Tedros,” Agatha pressed, scooping Reaper up and toweling him off with her sleeve. “It’ll fester if I don’t treat it—”
“Maybe they do it differently in graveyards, but where I come from, a bandage does the trick.”
“A bandage that looks like it was made by a two-year-old?” Agatha mocked.
“You try getting stabbed with your own sword as you’re vanishing,” said Tedros. “You’re lucky I’m even alive—one more second and he’d have run me through—”
“One more second and I’d have remembered what an ape you are and left you behind.”
“As if you could find a boy in this rat trap town better than me.”
“At this point, I’d trade you for a little space and quiet—”
“I’d trade you for a decent meal and a warm bath!” Tedros boomed.
Agatha glared at him, Reaper shivering in her arms. Finally Tedros exhaled, looking ashamed. He stripped off his shirt, spread out his arms, and sat on the bed. “Have at it, princess.”
For the next ten minutes, neither spoke as Agatha rinsed the four-inch gash across her prince’s chest with rose oil, witch hazel, and a dash of white peony from her mother’s cart of herbal potions. Thinking about how Tedros earned the wound, a hairbreadth from his heart, made Agatha’s stomach chill, and she forced her focus back to her task. She didn’t need to think about it—not when the screaming nightmares did the job of reminding her well enough. The School Master turning young … grinning at Tedros, bound to a tree … eyes flashing red as he stabbed … How Tedros didn’t have nightmares about their last moments at school, Agatha couldn’t grasp, but maybe that was the difference between a prince and a Reader. To a boy from the Woods, every day that didn’t end in death was a good one.
Agatha sprinkled boiled turmeric on his wound and Tedros clenched with low moans. “Told you it wasn’t healing,” she murmured.
Tedros gave her a lion’s growl and turned away. “Your mother hates me. That’s why she’s never home.”
“She’s busy looking for patients,” said Agatha, rubbing the yellow powder in. “Have to eat, don’t we?”
“Then why does she leave her medicine cart here?”
Agatha’s hand paused on Tedros’ chest. She’d been asking herself the same question about her mother’s long disappearances. Agatha rubbed harder and her prince winced. “Look, for the last time, she doesn’t hate you.”
“We’ve been trapped in this house for three weeks, Agatha. I eat all her food, am crap at cleaning, tend to clog the toilet, and she keeps seeing us fighting. If she doesn’t hate me, she will soon.”
“She just thinks you’re a complication to an already complicated situation.”
“Agatha, there is an entire town out there that will kill us on sight. There’s nothing complicated about it,” Tedros argued, sitting up on his knees. “Listen, I’ll be sixteen in a month. That means I take over Camelot as king from my father’s council. Sure, the kingdom’s broke, half the people are gone, and the place is in shambles, but we’ll change all that! That’s where we belong, Agatha. Why can’t we go back—”
“You know why, Tedros.”
“Right. Because you don’t want to leave your mother forever. Because I don’t have a family anymore and you do,” he said, looking away.
Agatha’s neck rashed red. “Tedros—”
“You don’t need to explain,” her prince said quietly. “If my father was still alive, I’d never leave him either.”
Agatha moved closer to him. He still didn’t look at her. “Tedros, if your kingdom needs you … you should go back,” she forced herself to say.
Her prince sighed. “I’d never leave you, Agatha.” He pulled at a thread in his dirty socks. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to. Only way back into the Woods is to make the wish together.”
Agatha went rigid. He’d thought about leaving her behind? She swallowed hard and grasped his arm. “I can’t go back, Tedros. Terrible things happen to us in the Woods,” she rasped anxiously. “We were lucky to escape—”
“You call this ‘lucky’?” He finally looked at her. “How long can we stay trapped in this house, Agatha? How long can we be prisoners?”
Agatha tensed. She knew he deserved answers, but she still didn’t have them. “It doesn’t matter where your Ever After is, does it? It just matters who you’re with,” she said, trying to sound hopeful. “Surely a teacher said that once.”
Tedros didn’t smile. Agatha lurched up and ripped a strip from a clean towel hanging on the bedpost. Tedros flopped back onto the bed, arms splayed cactus-style, and lapsed into silence, as Agatha bound his wound tight with the cloth.
“Sometimes I miss Filip,” he said softly.
Agatha looked at him, startled. Tedros turned pink and picked at his nails. “It’s stupid, given all he did to us—or she … or whatever. I should hate him—her, I mean. But boys get each other in a way girls can’t. Even if he wasn’t really a boy.” Tedros saw Agatha’s face. “Forget it.”
“You really think I don’t know you?” Agatha asked, hurt.
Tedros held his breath a moment, as if contemplating whether to be honest or to lie. “It’s just … those first two years, we were chasing the idea of being together, rather than actually being together. I got to know Filip better than I ever got to know you: staying up past curfew together, stealing lamb chops from the Supper Hall, or even just sitting on a rooftop and talking—you know, about our families or what we’re afraid of or what kind of pie we like. Doesn’t matter how it all turned out, really … He was my first real friend.” Tedros couldn’t look at Agatha. “You and I never even got to be friends. Don’t even have nicknames for each other. With you, it was always stolen moments and faith that love would somehow be enough. And now, here we are, three weeks cooped up in a house, no time alone or room to go for a walk or a hunt or a swim, and then sleeping, eating, breathing with the other person hovering around like a keeper, and still we feel like strangers. I’ve never felt so old.” He glimpsed Agatha’s face. “Oh come on, surely you feel it too. We’re like fusty married saps. Every tiny thing that bothers you about me must be magnified a thousand times.”
Agatha tried to look understanding. “What bothers you about me?”
“Oh let’s not play this game,” Tedros puffed, rolling onto his stomach.
“I want to know. What bothers you about me?”
Her prince didn’t answer. Agatha flicked hot turmeric onto his back.
Tedros flipped over angrily. “First off, you treat me like I’m an idiot.”
“That’s not true—”
Tedros frowned at her. “Do you want to know or not?”
Agatha folded her arms.
“You treat me like I’m an idiot,” Tedros repeated. “You pretend to be busy every time I attempt conversation. You act like it’s easy for me to give up my home, even though a princess is supposed to follow her prince. You clump around the house in those horrible shoes like an elephant, you leave the floor wet after your baths, you never even try to smile these days, and if I question anything you say or do, you give me this attitude that I shouldn’t dare challenge you because you’re just so … so …”
“So what?” Agatha glared.
“Good,” said Tedros.
“My turn,” said Agatha. “First off, you act like you’re my captive, as if I kidnapped you away from your best friend, who doesn’t even exist—”
“Now you’re just being spiteful—”
“You make me feel guilty for bringing you here, as if I shouldn’t have saved your life. You act like you’re all sensitive and chivalrous and then declare things like a princess should ‘follow’ her prince. You’re impulsive, you sweat too much, you make sweeping generalizations about things you know nothing about, and whenever you knock things over, which is often, you blame my house instead of yourself—”
“There’s barely any room to walk—”
“You’re used to living in a castle! With west wings and throne rooms and pretty little maids,” Agatha snapped. “Well, we’re not in a castle, oh princely one—we’re in real life. Have you thought that maybe I’m spending all my time worrying about keeping us alive? Have you thought that maybe I’m trying to figure out how to make our happy ending happy and that’s why I’m not spending all my time smiling like a clown and having deep conversations over cappuccino? Of course not, because you’re Tedros of Camelot, handsomest boy in the Woods and god forbid he feel old!”
Tedros cocked a grin. “That handsome, am I?”
“Even Sophie was more tolerable than you!” Agatha yelled into a pillow. “And she tried to kill me! Twice!”
“So go into the Woods and get your Sophie back!” Tedros retorted.
“Why don’t you go and get your Filip back!” Agatha barked—
Then slowly, they both blushed to silence, realizing they were talking about the same person.
Tedros slid next to his princess and put his arms around her waist. Agatha gave in to his tight, warm hug, trying not to cry.
“What happened to us?” she whispered.
When Agatha rescued Tedros from the School Master, she thought she’d found the way out of her fairy tale. She’d escaped death, saved her prince, and left the Woods behind, with her lying, betraying best friend still in it. As she clutched her true love, haloed by the white light between worlds, Agatha breathed in the relief of Ever After. She had Tedros at last—Tedros who loved her as much as she loved him … Tedros whose kiss she could still taste … Tedros who would make her happy forever …
Agatha smashed face-first into a wall of dirt.
Dazed, she’d opened her eyes to pitch darkness, her body on top of her prince’s in Gavaldon’s snowy cemetery. In an instant, she remembered all she’d once left behind in this tiny village: a broken promise to Stefan to bring his daughter home, the Elders’ threat to kill her, the stories of witches once burned in a square … Relax. This is our happy ending, she’d soothed herself, her breath settling. Nothing bad can happen anymore.
Agatha squinted and saw the slope of a roof atop the snow-capped hill, shaped like a witch’s hat. Her heart had swelled at the thought of being home once and for all, of seeing her mother’s euphoric face … She looked down at her prince with an impish grin. If she doesn’t have a stroke first.
“Tedros, wake up,” she’d whispered. He’d stayed limp in her arms in his black Trial cloak, the only sounds coming from a few crows pecking at grave worms and a weak torch crackling over the gate. She grabbed her prince by the shirt strings to shake him, but her hands were flecked with something warm and sticky. Slowly Agatha raised them into the torchlight.
Blood.
She’d dashed frantically between jagged graves and sharp-edged weeds, clumps crunching through powdery snow, before she saw the house ahead, none of its usual candles lit over the porch. Agatha turned the doorknob slowly, but the hinges squeaked and a body bolted out of bed, tangled in sheets like a bumbling ghost. Finally Callis’ head poked through, her big bug eyes blinking wide. For a split second, she colored with happiness, reunited with her daughter who’d been gone for so long. Then she saw the panic in Agatha’s face and went pale. “D-d-did anyone see you?” Callis stammered. Agatha shook her head. Her mother smiled with relief and rushed to embrace her, before she saw her daughter’s face hadn’t changed. Callis froze, her smile gone. “What have you done?” she gasped.
Together, they’d fumbled down Graves Hill, Callis in her saggy black nightgown, Agatha leading her back to Tedros. Plowing through snow, they lugged him home, each grappling one of his arms. Agatha peeked up at her mother, just an older version of herself with helmet-black hair and pasty skin, waiting for her to balk at the sight of a real-life prince—but Callis’ pupils stayed locked on the darkened town below. Agatha couldn’t worry to ask why. Right now, saving her prince was the only thing that mattered.
As soon as they pulled him through the door, her mother lay Tedros on the rug and slit open his wet shirt, the prince unconscious and covered with cockleburs, while Agatha lit the fireplace. When Agatha turned back, she nearly fainted. The sword wound in Tedros’ chest was so deep she could almost see the pulsing of his heart.
Agatha’s eyes filled with tears. “H-h-he’ll be okay, won’t he? He has to be—”
“Too late to numb him,” said Callis, rifling through drawers for thread.
“I had to bring him, Mother—I couldn’t lose him—”
“We’ll talk later,” Callis said so sharply Agatha shrank to the wall. Crouched over the prince, her mother made it five stitches in, barely closing the wound, before Tedros roused suddenly with a cry of pain, saw the needle in a stranger’s hand, and grabbed the nearest broomstick, threatening to bash her head in if she got an inch closer.
He and Callis had never quite seen eye to eye after that.
Somehow Agatha sweet-talked Tedros into sleeping, and that next morning, while he snuffled shallow breaths, his stitches half-done, Callis took her daughter into the kitchen, hanging a black sheet to close off the bedroom. Agatha had sensed the tension immediately.
“Look, first time we met, he threatened to kill me too,” she’d cracked, pulling two iron plates from the cupboard. “He’ll grow on you, I promise.”
Callis ladled foggy stew from the cauldron into a bowl. “I’ll sew him a new shirt before he leaves.”
“Uh, Mother, there’s a real-life prince from magical fairy land sleeping on our floor and you’re worrying about his shirt?” Agatha said, perching on a creaky stool. “Forget that the sight of me within a hundred feet of a boy should be cause for a town parade or that you’ve been telling me fairy tales are real from the day I was born. Don’t you want to know who he is—” Agatha’s eyes widened. “Wait. Before he leaves? Tedros is staying in Gavaldon … forever.”
Callis put the bowl in front of Agatha. “No one likes toad soup cold.”
Agatha bucked up. “Look, I know it’s crowded with him here. But Tedros and I can get work in the village. Think about it, if we save up enough, maybe we can all move to a bigger house, maybe even something in the cottage lanes.” Agatha grinned. “Imagine, Mother, we could actually have living neighbors—”
Callis fixed her with a cold, brown stare and Agatha stopped talking. She followed her mother’s eyes to the small, slime-crusted window over the sink. Agatha pushed out of her chair, bowl untouched, and grabbed a wet dishtowel from the rack. Pressing against the glass, she scraped at the gray smear of dust, grease, and mildew, until a stream of sunlight pierced through. Agatha backed away in surprise.
Down the snow-coated hill, bright red flags billowed from every lamppost in the square:
“Witch?” Agatha choked, gaping at a hundred reflections of her own face. Beyond the square, the colorful storybook houses, decimated by attacks from the Woods, had been rebuilt as monotonous stone bunkers. A phalanx of guards in long black cloaks and black-iron masks carried spears, patrolling the cottage lanes and forest perimeter. Dread rising, Agatha’s eyes slowly fell on the spot where her and Sophie’s statues once glistened near the crooked clock tower. Now there was only a raised wooden stage, with a giant pyre made of birches, two flaming torches fixed to the scaffolding, and a banner of her and Sophie’s faces hanging between them.
Agatha’s stomach dropped. She’d escaped a public execution at school only to find one at home.
“I warned you, Agatha,” her mother said behind her. “The Elders believed Sophie a witch who brought the attacks from the Woods. They ordered you not to go after her the night they surrendered her to the attackers. The moment you disobeyed them, you became a witch too.”
Agatha turned, her legs jellying. “So they want to burn me?”
“If you’d come back alone, the Elders might have spared you.” Callis was sitting at the table, head in hands. “You could have taken punishment, like I did for letting you escape.”
A chill went up Agatha’s spine. She looked at her mother, but there were no wounds or marks on her hooked-nose face or gangly arms; all her fingers and toes were intact. “What did they do to you?” Agatha asked, terrified.
“Nothing that compares to what they’ll do to you both when they find him.” Callis looked up, eyelids raw. “The Elders always despised us, Agatha. How could you be so stupid to bring someone back from the Woods?”
“The s-s-storybook said ‘The End,’” Agatha stuttered. “You said it yourself—if our book says ‘The End,’ this has to be our happy ending—”
“Happy ending? With him?” Callis blurted, jolting to her feet. “There is a reason the worlds are separate, Agatha. There is a reason the worlds must be separate. He will never be happy here! You are a Reader and he is a—”
Callis stopped and Agatha stared at her. Callis quickly turned to the sink and pumped water into a kettle.
“Mother …,” Agatha said, suddenly feeling cold. “How do you know what a Reader is?”
“Mmm, can’t hear you, dear.”
“A Reader,” Agatha stressed over the strident cranks. “How do you know that word—”
Callis pumped louder. “Must have seen it in a book, I’m sure …”
“Book? What book—”
“One of the storybooks, dear.”
Of course, Agatha sighed, trying to relax. Her mother had always seemed to know things about the fairy-tale world—like all parents in Gavaldon who had feverishly bought storybooks from Mr. Deauville’s Storybook Shop, hunting for clues about the children kidnapped by the School Master. One of the books must have mentioned it, Agatha told herself. That’s why she called me a Reader. That’s why she wasn’t surprised by a prince.
But as Agatha glanced up at Callis, back to her, pumping water into the kettle, Agatha noticed that the pot was already full and overflowing into the sink. She watched her mother staring off into space, hands clenched, pumping water faster, faster, as if pumping memories away with it. Slowly Agatha’s heart started to constrict in her chest, until she felt that cold sensation deepening … whispering that the reason her mother wasn’t fazed by Tedros’ appearance wasn’t because she’d read storybooks … but because she knew what it was like to live through one …
“He returns to the Woods as soon as he wakes,” Callis said, releasing the pump.
Agatha wrenched out of her thoughts. “The Woods? Tedros and I barely escaped alive—and you want us to go back?”
“Not you,” said Callis, still turned. “Him.”
Agatha flared in shock. “Only someone who’s never experienced true love could say such a thing.”
Callis froze. The skeleton clock ticked through the loaded silence.
“You really believe this is your happy ending, Agatha?” Callis said, not looking at her.
“It has to be, Mother. Because I won’t leave him again. And I won’t leave you,” Agatha begged. “I thought maybe I could be happy in the Woods, that I could run away from real life … but I can’t. I never wanted a fairy tale. All I ever wanted was to wake up every day right here, knowing I had my mother and my best friend. How could I know that friend would end up being a prince?” Agatha dabbed at her eyes. “You don’t know what we’ve been through to find each other. You don’t know the Evil that we left behind. I don’t care if Tedros and I have to stay trapped in this house for a hundred years. At least we’re together. At least we’ll be happy. You just have to give us the chance.”
Quiet fell in the sooty kitchen.
Callis turned to her daughter. “And Sophie?”
Agatha’s voice went cold. “Gone.”
Her mother gazed at her. The town clock tolled faintly from the square, before the wind drowned it out. Callis picked up the kettle and moved to the wooden stove. Agatha held her breath, watching her spark a flame beneath the pot and stew a few wormroot leaves in, circling her ladle again and again, long after the leaves had dissolved.
“I suppose we’ll need eggs,” said her mother at last. “Princes don’t eat toads.”
Agatha almost collapsed in relief. “Oh thank you thank you thank you—”
“I’ll lock you both in when I go to town each morning. The guards won’t come here as long as we’re careful.”
“You’ll love him like a son, Mother, you’ll see—” Agatha grimaced. “Into town? You said you had no patients.”
“Don’t light the fireplace or open the windows,” ordered Callis, pouring two cups of tea.
“Why won’t the guards come here?” Agatha pushed. “Wouldn’t it be the first place they’d check?”
“And don’t answer the door for a soul.”
“Wait—what about Stefan?” Agatha asked, brightening. “Surely he can talk to the Elders for us—”
Callis whirled. “Especially not Stefan.”
Mother and daughter locked stares across the kitchen.
“Your prince will never belong here, Agatha,” said Callis softly. “No one can hide from their fate without a price.”
There was a fear in her mother’s big owl eyes that Agatha had never seen before, as if she was no longer talking about a prince.
Agatha crossed the kitchen and wrapped her mother in a deep, comforting hug. “I promise you. Tedros will be as happy here as I am,” she whispered. “And you’ll wonder how you ever could have doubted two people so in love.”
A clang and clatter echoed from the bedroom. The curtain drew back behind them before collapsing entirely, and Tedros lumbered through, groggy, red-eyed, and half-naked with a torn, bloodied piece of bedsheet stuck haplessly over his wound. He sat down at the counter, smelled the soup and gagged, shoving it aside. “We’ll need a sturdy horse, steel-edged sword, and enough bread and meat for a three-day journey.” He looked up at Agatha with a sleepy smile. “Hope you said your goodbyes, princess. Time to ride to my castle.”
That first week, Agatha believed this was just another test in their story. It was only a matter of time before the pyre came down, the death sentence lifted, and Tedros felt at ease with ordinary life. Looking at her handsome, teddy-bear prince who she loved so much, she knew that no matter how long they stayed in this house, they would still find a way to be happy.
By the second week, however, the house had started to feel smaller. There was never enough food or cups or towels; Reaper and Tedros fought like demented siblings; Agatha began to notice her prince’s irritating habits (using all the soap, drinking milk out of the jug, exercising every second of the day, breathing through his mouth); and Callis had the burden of supporting two teenagers who didn’t like to be supported at all. (“School was better than this,” Tedros carped, bored to tears. “Let’s go back and you can finish getting stabbed,” Agatha replied.) By the third week, Tedros had taken to playing rugby against himself, dodging invisible opponents, whispering play-by-play, and flinging about like a caged animal, while Agatha lay in bed, a pillow over her head, clinging to the hope that happiness would fall like a fairy godmother from a star. Instead, it was Tedros who fell on her head one day while catching a ball, reopening his stitches in the process. Agatha belted him hard with her pillow, Tedros clocked her with his, and soon the cat was in the toilet. As they lay on the bed, covered in feathers, Reaper dripping in the corner, Agatha’s question hung in the air unanswered.
“What happened to us?”
As the fourth week went on, Tedros and Agatha stopped spending time together. Tedros ceased his manic workouts and sat hunched at the kitchen window, unshaven and dirty, silently looking out at the Endless Woods. He was homesick, Agatha told herself, just as she’d once been in his world. But each day, a darker anguish settled into his face, and she knew it was deeper than homesickness—it was the guilt of knowing that somewhere out there, in a land far away, there would soon be no new king to take the crown from the old. But Agatha had nothing to say to make him feel better, nothing that didn’t sound self-serving or trite, and hid beneath her bedcovers, reading her old storybooks again and again.
Gazing at beautiful princesses kissing dashing princes, she wondered how her Ever After had gone rancid. All these fairy tales had tied up so neatly and satisfyingly … while the more she thought about her own, the more loose ends seemed to appear. What had happened to her friends: to Dot, Hester, Anadil, who had risked their lives for her during the Trial? What had happened to the Girls, charging into war against Aric and the Boys? Or to Lady Lesso and Professor Dovey, now faced with the School Master’s return? Agatha’s chest clamped. What if the School Master started kidnapping children from Gavaldon again? She thought about the parents who would lose more daughters and sons … about Tristan and how his parents would learn about his death … about the balance in the Woods, tilting to death and Evil … about her once Evil best friend, left to fend for herself …
Sophie.
This time no anger came at the name. Only an echo, like the password to her heart’s cave.
Sophie.
Sophie, who she’d loved through Good and Evil. Sophie, who she’d loved through Boys and Girls. Sophie, who she vowed to protect forever, young or old, until death did them part.
How do you turn your back on your best friend? How do you leave them behind?
For a boy.
Shame colored her cheeks.
For a boy who can barely stand the sight of me anymore.
Agatha’s heart shrank as small and hard as a pebble. All this time, she thought she had to choose between Sophie and Tedros to find a happy ending. And yet, each time she picked one over the other, the story twisted back upon itself and the world fell out of balance more than before. Every thought of Sophie, alone in a tower with a deadly villain, brought on more guilt, more pregnant fear, as if she was trapped in a purgatory of her own making, as if she hadn’t failed by choosing a prince over her best friend … but in making that choice at all.
“I think about her too.”
She turned and saw Tedros at the window, watching her, his mouth trembling. “About how we just left her,” he rasped, eyes welling. “I know she’s a bad friend, I know she’s Evil, I know Filip was a lie … but we just left her … with that monster. We left all of them. The whole school … just to save ourselves. What kind of prince is that, Agatha? What would my father think of me?” Tears spilled down his stubbled cheeks. “I don’t want you to leave your mother. I really don’t. But we’re not happy, Agatha. Because the villain’s still alive. Because we’re not heroes at all. We’re … cowards.”
Agatha looked into her prince’s messy, earnest face, and remembered why she loved him. “This isn’t our happy ending, is it?” she breathed.
Tedros smiled, his old glow returning.
And for the first time since they came home, Agatha smiled too.
(#ulink_4bc9ce8b-f9df-5892-a454-4250344d1f25)
aybe we have to close our eyes,” said Tedros.
“Or do a rain dance in pajamas while singing ‘Ring Around the Rosie,’” Agatha grumped, Reaper fast asleep in her lap. “It’s past dinnertime and I’m starving. How many times can we try this?”
“Oh I’m sorry. Do you have somewhere better to be at the moment?”
Agatha watched a roach mosey by, cram under the double-locked front door, and disappear. “You have a point,” she said, and shut her eyes.
“All right,” Tedros sucked in, closing his eyes. “One … two … three!”
Agatha scrunched up her face, Tedros did too, and both of them thrust their index fingers at the other. They exhaled at the same time and opened their eyes.
Neither of their fingertips was glowing.
Tedros peered closely at Agatha’s. “You bite your nails too much.”
“Oh for crying out loud. We can’t get into the Woods unless our magic comes back,” she barked, shoving her hand in her pocket. “Magic follows emotion. That’s what we learned at school. You said it yourself! If we both make the wish at the same time, the gates should open—”
“Unless one of us is having doubts,” said Tedros.
“Then I suggest you get over them,” Agatha huffed, standing up. “Let’s try in the morning. Mother’s never this late. She’ll be here any second—”
“Agatha.”
She saw Tedros giving her that lopsided grin … the one that said he knew exactly what she was thinking, even if she was doing everything she could to keep it from him.
“You’re smarter than you look,” she groused, sitting back down.
“And you’re the one famous for not judging books by their covers.” He scooted next to her. “Look, if you want to say goodbye to your mother first—”
“That’ll just make the doubts worse,” mumbled Agatha. “How do you tell your mother you’re leaving her forever?”
“Wouldn’t know. My mother left me without saying goodbye,” Tedros replied.
Agatha looked at him, suddenly feeling very stupid. Tedros slid closer. “What is it, my love?” he asked. “What are you really afraid of?”
Agatha felt panic rising, something coming up she couldn’t keep down—
“What if I’m the problem?” she blurted. “Every time I try to be happy, it goes wrong. First with Sophie, then with you, and all I can think of is that it’s not us who’s broken … it’s me. The girl who ruins everyone’s story. The girl who’s meant to be alone. That’s why I’m afraid to leave my mother. Because what if I’m not supposed to be with you, Tedros? What if I’m supposed to end here, just like her, never finding love at all?”
Tedros froze, taken aback.
Slowly Agatha felt the air return to her lungs, as if a boulder had lifted off her chest.
Her prince traced his finger between bricks in the floor. “We only see the finished storybooks, Agatha. How do we know every Ever After doesn’t take a few tries? Think about it. Each time you left the Woods, you tried to come back to your old life. But this time is different, isn’t it? When we get to our true ending, you’ll have a new life with me. We’ll have my kingdom to protect, until we’re old ourselves and it’s time to pass it on. Just like my father did and his father and all who came before.”
Looking at him, Agatha realized how selfish and small-hearted she’d been by keeping her prince here.
“I promise,” he said, squeezing her hand. “This time, we will be happy.”
“All right, say we do get back to the School for Good and Evil,” Agatha allowed. “What’s our plan?”
“Make things right, of course,” Tedros puffed. “Rescue Sophie, kill the School Master, take back Excalibur, free the other students, and you and I go to Camelot in time for my sixteenth birthday, and coronation as king. The End.” He paused. “The real End.”
Agatha made a sound halfway between a cough and a sneeze.
“All right, Sophie can come too, if you’re going to be difficult about it,” he sighed.
“Tedros, my love,” said Agatha cuttingly. “You think we can just waltz through the school gates and kill the School Master like we’re buying bonbons from the bakery?”
“I think buying anything from the bakery would pose far more obstacles at the moment,” said Tedros, eyeing the triple-locked door.
Agatha let go of him and braced for a fight. “First off, the School Master is an all-powerful sorcerer who last we saw came back from death, turned young again, and stabbed you with your own sword. Second, for all we know, he’s killed the Evers and has everyone on his side. And third, you don’t think he’ll have guards and traps and—”
“Merlin had a saying: ‘Worrying doesn’t solve problems. Just gives you gas,’” Tedros yawned.
“I take back the smarter than you look thing,” Agatha groaned. Her cat stirred and staggered out of her arms, but not before spitting in Tedros’ lap. The prince backhanded it and Reaper fled, throwing Agatha a horrible scowl at her choice of mate.
“He used to love me,” Agatha said, watching her cat gnaw the head off a dead canary.
“Agatha, look at me.”
“Tedros, you don’t even have your sword, let alone a plan. We’re going to die.”
“Agatha, please look at me.”
She did, with folded arms.
“You can’t plan your story any more than you can plan who you’re going to fall in love with. That’s the point of a story,” said Tedros. “And even if you could, what’s the fun of living through it if you know what’s going to happen? All we know is that Good always wins, right? So if Good hasn’t beaten Evil yet, our fairy tale can’t be over. As soon as we make our wish, we’ll be back where we belong, chasing our happy ending. Trust our story, Agatha. We’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
“And what about Sophie?” Agatha asked. “What if she hasn’t forgiven us?”
Tedros thought for a moment. “Everything Sophie did, she did to get closer to you or me. We’ve all made mistakes, that’s for sure. But Good or Evil, Boy or Girl, the three of us are in this tale together.” He leveled eyes with her. “So how can Sophie be happy until we are?”
Agatha fell quiet, aware of the dark room hemming her in with her prince and yet keeping them apart.
Long before she ever met her best friend, she’d secretly read storybooks from Mr. Deauville’s, buying them right after the shop opened, when no one else was inside, and paying for them with the coins her mother had given her for sweets. She drank in the lesson of those fairy-tale books more than any hot cream or fudge, that same lesson told and retold: you didn’t need a hundred true loves to find Ever After … you just needed one. It didn’t matter if an entire town called her a freak or a witch or a vampire. If she could just find that one person who loved her—one measly soul—then she’d have everything a princess did, minus the horrific pink dress, obnoxious blond hair, and moony-eyed face.
From the moment she met Sophie, Sophie was that soul: the friend who made her feel normal, who made her feel needed, who so clearly cared about her, despite all her efforts to disguise it. Back then, Agatha had done everything she could to ensure they’d end up together forever, rather than let her best friend be stolen away by a boy … until Agatha somehow fell in love with that boy herself. And so the story had turned on its head, this time Sophie doing everything she could to keep a boy and her best friend apart. It was a wicked love triangle, with Sophie the point that had to be removed, until finally Agatha and Tedros had rid themselves of her, turning that triangle into a straight line between them—prince and princess united at last, just like in the storybooks buried under her bed. But now, as Agatha sat in darkness, feeling more and more like the graveyard girl of old, she wondered if the reason she missed her best friend was the simplest of all. What if Sophie wasn’t the force that kept her and Tedros apart? What if Sophie was the force that brought them together?
Without Sophie, she never could have opened up her heart.
Without Sophie, she never could have learned to love.
Without Sophie, there never could have been a Tedros and Agatha.
“Princess? What is it?”
Agatha slowly looked up at her prince, new life in her eyes. “Let’s go find our best friend.”
Tedros blinked at her, stunned. His cheeked pinked and his Adam’s apple bobbed, words swallowed by emotion. He placed his hand behind his back. “Wish to reopen our story, then?”
Agatha smiled and hid her hand. “Wish to reopen our story.”
Tedros closed his eyes. “One …”
“Two …,” said Agatha, closing hers.
They took a joint breath and thrust out their fingers. “Three—”
The door slammed open to a sharp heel-crack of boots. Agatha lurched to her feet.
There was an Elderguard in the doorway, the outlines of a black cloak and slatted iron mask blending into the night.
Tedros instantly clasped Agatha and yanked her to the kitchen wall. He grabbed a meat knife from the sink and brandished it at the guard, blocking his princess’s body with his. “Move another inch and I’ll cut your throat!” Tedros spat.
The guard threw the door shut and hissed back at them. “Hide! Both of you!”
Agatha squinted at the big brown eyes glinting through the guard’s mask. “Mother?”
“Hide now!” Callis shrieked, shoring her body against the door.
Agatha couldn’t move, trying to process what was happening, gaping at her mother in the same uniform as the town guards ordered to execute her. “I d-d-don’t under—”
But then Agatha heard them coming … footsteps … voices …
She tackled Tedros to the ground. Stunned, the prince lost his grip on the knife and flailed to reach it as Agatha yanked him by the belt buckle under the bed. Tedros lunged over her and snatched the knife—
The door flung open and Agatha spun to see Callis seized from behind and shoved to the wall by two guards.
“No!” Agatha gasped, leaping out, but Tedros pulled her down under the bed, fumbling his knife at the same time. He stabbed his hand for it, only to see Agatha’s hip knock it away. In horror, they both watched the blade skid across the floor and halt beneath the heel of a muddy leather boot. Slowly their eyes traced up.
A tall guard prowled into the house, teeth bared through his mask. From his pocket, he pulled a fistful of eggs, rolling them around in his big hand like marbles.
“First time I saw her stealing them, I thought maybe she can’t afford to pay. Second time, I thought maybe she’s gone hungry. But the third time …” He let the eggs drop and splatter at Callis’ feet. “I wonder who’s she stealing ’em for.”
He spun and kicked aside the bed, revealing Tedros, unarmed and fists up. The guard’s brutal blue eyes honed in on the prince.
“You and I can duel like men,” Tedros threatened. “But leave my princess alone.”
The guard stared at him strangely … then lifted his gaze. His pupils froze, reflecting Agatha behind Tedros, prostrate on the floor.
In a flash, he threw Tedros aside, knocking the prince to the floorboards. But the guard’s eyes stayed on Agatha.
She trembled as his boots crackled through the bleeding eggs, step by step, until he placed his sharp, filthy shoe tip upon her neck.
He took off his mask.
“So much for promises,” Stefan snarled.
The cage was meant for only one prisoner, not three, so Agatha had to stand with her mother, Reaper curled in Callis’ arms, while Tedros crouched in a daze, clutching his black eye. Back at the house, Agatha told him not to resist, but Tedros assured her Camelot’s future king could flatten six armed guards with his bare hands.
He’d been wrong.
Agatha held on to the rusty bars, tottering for balance, as the horse dragged the cage through the darkened cemetery, Stefan at the reins. She could see a crowd forming in front of the torchlit pyre, watching the guards march down the hill ahead of the prisoners.
“That was your punishment for letting me escape, wasn’t it? The Elders made you a guard,” Agatha said, turning to her mother. “That’s why they never searched the house. Because you were with them, protecting the town from your own daughter.”
Callis paled as she saw the distant pyre, two fiery torches hanging from its scaffolding. “When the people blamed you and Sophie for the attacks, the Elders named me and Stefan leaders of a new patrol, responsible for catching you two if you ever dared return. It was a test of our loyalty, of course. Either we saw our own children as traitors and vowed to make them burn or we’d be burned as traitors ourselves.” She looked at Agatha. “The difference between Stefan and me is that he took the vow seriously.”
“How could Stefan betray his own daughter? It was the Elders who gave Sophie to the attackers. They’re the Evil ones! Why would he obey them—”
But as the cage creaked into the moonlit square, Agatha saw the answer to her question. The widow Honora and her two young boys, Jacob and Adam, huddled near the back of the growing crowd, watching Stefan lead in the prisoners. Agatha knew how much the two boys meant to Sophie’s father, who seemed to love them far more than his own daughter. But it wasn’t the boys that Agatha fixed on. It was the gold band, gleaming on the ring finger of Honora’s left hand.
“He had to obey them,” Callis said quietly. “Because the Elders made Stefan choose between his old and new family.”
Agatha looked at her, stunned.
“Leave it to me,” a voice groused under them.
Tedros careened to his feet between Agatha and her mother, knocking both of them against the bars. “They’ve woken the beast,” he boiled, struggling to blink his swollen eye. “No one’s laying a hand on us.”
The cage door swung open behind him and two guards gagged Tedros with a mucky cloth and hoisted him out by his armpits, before roughly nabbing Callis too. Before Agatha could react, Stefan leapt into the cage and took her for himself.
“Stefan, listen to me—Sophie needs our help—” Agatha appealed as he pulled her through the crowd, who was abusing her with cries of “witch” and “traitor” along with chunks of spoiled food. “I know you have a new family, but you can’t give up on her—”
“Give up? You think I gave up? On my own child?” he seethed, pulling her up the stairs to the pyre behind Tedros, who kicked at his guards with muffled yells. “You promised me, Agatha. You promised you’d save her. And instead you left her there to die. Now you’ll see how it feels.”
“Stefan, we can still save her!” sputtered Agatha. “Tedros and me!”
“I always thought one day my daughter would abandon you for a boy,” said Stefan. “Turns out I had the story all wrong.”
He bound her to the pyre with a long rope around her belly, as two guards shoved Tedros in next to her. Agatha could feel the heat of the flaming torches above her.
“Stefan, you have to believe me! We’re Sophie’s only hope—”
He gagged her with a black cloth, but just as he cinched it, Agatha managed one last breath—
“The School Master has her!”
Stefan’s hands froze and his blue eyes met hers, big and wide. Then a hush swept over the crowd and Agatha knew her time was up.
The Elders had come.
(#ulink_95940bb2-5749-5e38-88bb-0370222800d1)
’m afraid we only have room for two on the pyre,” said the gray-cloaked Elder with the longest beard, grinning at Agatha and Tedros as he paced the stage, top hat in hand. He leered down at Callis at the front of the massive crowd, her hands tied, standing between the two younger Elders, both in gray cloaks and tall black hats. “We’ll let mother watch before her turn,” he mused, as the two Elders dragged Callis into the mob.
Agatha spotted Reaper’s shadow sprinting away from her mother and towards Graves Hill, a scrap of what looked like parchment between his teeth. Trapped on the pyre, she wrestled hopelessly against her binds, sweating from the heat of the torches above her. If her mother had entered the house one second later, she and Tedros would have had their magic back—they’d be far into the Woods by now, her mother no longer in danger. Stifling tears, Agatha searched for her again, but darkness rendered the crowd a sea of shadows. They’d called her a witch from the day she was born, destined to burn on a stake, and now they’d made their tales come true. In the front row, a few rosy-faced children gawked at Tedros, clinging storybooks to their chests, like talismans against the boy from inside of them.
“But we are not savages, of course,” said the Elder, turning to the captives. “Justice is only delivered when there is a crime.”
The crowd buzzed impatiently, eager to see the show and get to bed.
“Let us meet our guest from the Woods,” the Elder proclaimed. His shiny eyes flicked to Tedros. “What is your name, boy?”
A guard ripped out Tedros’ gag. “Touch her and I kill you,” the prince lashed.
The Elder raised his brows. “Ah, I see,” he said, peering between Tedros and Agatha. “For two hundred years, those from the Woods have kidnapped our young, ripped apart our families, and attacked our homes. For two hundred years, those from the Woods have brought our children nothing but terror, pain, and suffering. And here you are, the first to ever stand before us, claiming to protect one? An improbable twist …” He studied the way Tedros looked at Agatha, his tone easing. “But if it’s true, perhaps mercy is in the cards after all. Only the hardest of hearts can resist young love.”
The crowd rumbled, as if they’d cast their own hearts in stone to see vengeance for all the curses of the Woods. But as Agatha searched the Elder’s face, the old man’s smile was almost friendly now.
“You’ll let us live?” Tedros insisted.
Agatha’s heart hammered, praying her prince had just saved them.
The Elder touched Tedros’ chest with a shriveled hand. Tedros winced, his wound still tender. “You’re young and handsome, with your whole life ahead of you,” the Elder cooed. “Tell us what you know about those that attacked us and I promise we won’t hurt you.”
Agatha’s stomach sank. That tone. She’d heard it before. It was the same way he’d told Sophie she’d be sheltered from her assassins …
Before he left her to die.
Agatha pressed her fist into Tedros’ ribs. Whatever he did, he couldn’t play this game—
“Tedros,” the prince proclaimed to the Elder. “Tedros is my name.”
Agatha bristled, shoving him harder.
“And how do you know our beloved Agatha, Tedros?” coaxed the Elder, leaning closer.
“She’s my princess,” Tedros declared, gently clasping Agatha’s fist. “Soon to be Queen of Camelot and bloodline to King Arthur, so I suggest you unhand us at once.”
The mob quieted in disbelief, children clutching their storybooks tighter. (Red-haired Radley gaped goonishly at Agatha. “Must be slim pickings in the Woods,” he murmured.)
“A real-life prince!” The Elder stepped back. For the first time, he looked unsettled by Tedros, as if forced to acknowledge the possibility of a world bigger than his own. “And to what do we owe this honor?”
Agatha squirmed against her binds, trying to get Tedros to look at her.
“I’m taking her to my castle in the Woods,” Tedros testified, eyes fixed on the Elder. “We pose absolutely no threat to you.”
“And yet we were attacked only months ago by assassins from the Woods,” the Elder said, masses clamoring behind him. “Attacks from which we are still rebuilding.”
“Well, the attacks are over,” retorted Tedros. “Your town is safe.”
Agatha dug her heel into his foot. Tedros shook her off.
“Oh really? Do your princely powers come with foresight?” the Elder scoffed, the audience echoing his laughter. “How would you know anything about the fate of our town, let alone the attacks?”
Agatha shouted into her gag to stop him—
“Because I ordered them,” Tedros fired.
The crowd went still. Agatha slumped against the rope.
The Elder stared at Tedros … then broke into a slow grin, color growing in his cheeks. “Well. We’ve learned all we need to know about our dear guest, haven’t we?” He smiled wolfishly at the prince and walked off the stage, passing Stefan with a glare. “Do the witch first.”
Roars detonated from the mob, flocking closer to the pyre.
Tedros spun to Agatha and saw her face. “But he promised us!” he cried.
The Elder glanced back as he descended the steps. “Every story has a lesson doesn’t it, young prince? Perhaps yours is that you’re too old to believe in fairy tales.”
Agatha felt Tedros gush into a sweat as the guards regagged him. Frantic, the prince thrashed at the rope, trying to free his princess, but his flailing only made the rope cut tighter. Choking for breath, Agatha hunted wildly for her mother, but still couldn’t find her. She whirled to Stefan, knowing she was about to die—
But Stefan hadn’t moved from the side of the stage, his gaze fixed on her.
“Is there a problem, Stefan?” the Elder said, now at the front of the mass.
Stefan kept staring at Agatha.
“Or should we replace our prisoners with your new family?” the Elder said.
Stefan turned sharply. Guards held Honora, Jacob, and Adam in the crowd.
Stefan’s teeth bit the inside of his cheeks. Then his expression darkened. He moved towards Agatha, no longer able to look at her. Body close to hers, he reached up and took a flaming torch from the scaffolding. Agatha cowered from the wrath of the flame as he drew it down, blinding her with smoke. She could hear Tedros’ muffled yells, the echoes of the shouting hordes, but they were drowned out by the raging torch fire, hissing like a demon snake. Eyes watering, she caught flashes of Stefan’s heaving chest, his quivering grasp on the torch, the red splotches across his cheeks …
“Please—” Agatha gasped into her gag.
Stefan still couldn’t look at her, the torch shaking so much that embers scattered onto Agatha’s dress, burning tiny holes.
“Stefan …,” the Elder warned in a menacing voice.
Stefan nodded, tears and sweat mixing. The crowd went dead quiet, seeing him bend towards the stake. He raised the torch to the sticks over Agatha’s head, the flames about to lick onto the wood—
“Take me!” Callis’ anguished voice pierced the silence. “Please, Stefan! Let me die with her!”
Stefan froze, his flame so close to Agatha it scorched the gag in her mouth. Heart stopped, Agatha watched him deliberate a moment, his face calcifying into a mask …
Then he backed away and turned to the Elder.
“It is a mother’s last request,” said Stefan, adding a snort. “Shove her in with her traitor daughter and watch the flesh melt off ’em. They deserve to writhe together, don’t they?”
Even the most bloodthirsty spectators looked flummoxed, deferring to the Elder.
The Elder’s pupils raked Stefan over, before his lips pursed in a flat line.
“Quickly then.”
“No!” Agatha shrieked, her gag breaking away.
Guards wrenched Callis from the crowd onto the stage and shoved her next to Agatha, binding her waist to the pyre. Helpless, Tedros ripped at the rope, his bicep veins about to burst.
“This is my fault …,” Agatha sobbed. “This is all my fault—”
“Close your eyes, dear,” said Callis, trying not to cry. “It will all go fast from here.”
Agatha looked up and saw Stefan’s hand wasn’t shaking on the torch anymore. With an eerie calm, he advanced towards her and her mother, the dancing flame reaching for the wood sticks between them. He finally met Agatha’s eyes, a strange sadness in his face.
“If you ever see my daughter again, beyond this world … tell her I love her.”
“Now, Stefan,” the Elder commanded.
Petrified, Agatha seized Tedros’ hand as she leaned into her mother’s shoulder. She saw Stefan looking at Callis, his lips trembling.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” he whispered.
“You saved me once upon a time, Stefan.” Callis smiled mournfully at him. “I owe you a debt.”
“I c-c-can’t,” Stefan faltered.
“You must,” said Callis, hard as steel.
“NOW!” the Elder thundered.
With a pained cry, Stefan plunged the torch at Callis. Agatha screamed—
Callis thrust out her finger from beneath the binds and shot a blast of green light at the torch. The fire turned green and ricocheted off the pyre like a comet, blasting Stefan off the platform, before circling the stage in a wall of green flames, sealing the captives in.
Before Agatha could suck in a breath, her mother cut her and Tedros loose from the rope with her glowing fingertip. She grabbed Agatha and spoke over the villagers’ cries beyond the firewall—
“The spell won’t last, so listen carefully. Stefan knew what I was, Agatha. From the night you went after Sophie, we had a plan to save you girls from the Elders if you ever returned. Stefan would do anything to keep his daughter safe. But when you came back without Sophie, Stefan had no reason to keep to the plan and endanger his new family … unless he believes his daughter still needs you. You must repay my old debt to him, Agatha. You must save Sophie as Stefan saved you. You hear me? Do not fail. Now run for Graves Hill as fast as you can—”
“You’re a w-w-witch—” Agatha spluttered, trying to find air. “You were a witch all along—”
“The grave between the two swans. Help will be there, waiting for you,” her mother cut in. “You must find the grave before it’s too late.”
Dazed, Tedros turned to Agatha, expecting her to know what her mother was talking about. But Agatha was paralyzed, staring ahead. Tedros spun back to Callis. “Who? Who will be waiting for u—”
Only now Tedros saw what his princess was looking at … the circle of fire falling around the stage, Callis’ spell about to end. In the green firelight, Agatha glimpsed Stefan, stunned on the ground but unharmed, before a fleet of shadows jumped over him, throttling towards the stage. Tedros and Agatha raised their eyes at the same time to see the guards charging through the crowd with spears, dashing right for them.
Callis took Agatha’s face in her hands. “Don’t look back, Agatha.” She kissed her daughter’s forehead hard. “Whatever you do, promise me you won’t look back.”
With a scared cry, Agatha grabbed her mother’s hand, but her prince was already dragging her towards the edge of the stage away from the sprinting guards. Tedros hooked his arm over Agatha and flung the both of them off the platform in a flying leap. Spinning around, Agatha pulled her mother with them, holding on to her hand with every ounce of strength—
Callis smiled at Agatha in the fading firelight and let her daughter go.
Agatha crashed in dirt, twisting her ankle, before Tedros lifted her up in darkness, towing her towards the town gates. “No—I can’t leave her—” she croaked, resisting him.
“‘Don’t look back.’ That’s what she said,” Tedros fought, goading her ahead. “Trust your mother, Agatha. She’s a witch. A powerful witch. We’re the ones who need saving now.”
Hearing the guards’ shouts, Agatha let Tedros shove her forward. She pinned her eyes on Graves Hill ahead, hobbling beside him. Don’t look back, she begged herself, Tedros clenching her like a vise. Don’t look back …
Agatha looked back to see three guards hurdle the sinking firewall towards Callis, spears about to impale her. Her mother held her ground.
“What is she doing?” Agatha choked, freezing in horror.
“Agatha, don’t!” cried Tedros—
Agatha broke free of him and started running back. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING—”
“Kill her!” the Elder’s voice shouted faraway.
Callis raised her arms, welcoming the guards.
They charged and Agatha’s mother fell.
“NO!” Agatha screamed, voice tearing out of her throat. She sank to her knees at the foot of Graves Hill. Her eyes fogged. Her heart deadened. All she saw was a blur of shadows swarming her mother as the shallow fires extinguished, an army of darkness overwhelming the last ashes of light.
“She let them …,” Agatha whispered. “She let them kill her.”
Little by little, she felt the dirt wet on her knees, the numbness wearing off to an onslaught of pain—the dagger-edged thoughts that she had no family anymore … that her only parent had deserted her … that her mother had given her nothing to come home to ever again. She curled into herself, sobbing with fury. Men were no match for a witch. She could have done another spell! She could have ripped them all to shreds! Agatha cried and cried until she heard a strange echo between shuddering breaths … the whispered sound of her name …
Agatha lifted her eyes to a swollen-eyed boy standing over her, beautiful and scared, and for a moment, she saw nothing but a stranger. It was only when Agatha saw his legs unsteady, that she knew her prince was trying to tell her something. Slowly Tedros pointed a shaky finger over her head. Agatha turned.
Six guards raced towards them from the square, armed with torches and spears.
“We have to run, Agatha,” Tedros rasped. “We have to run right now.”
Agatha didn’t move, still nauseous. “How could she let them …”
“To save you, Agatha,” her prince implored, watching the guards gain ground. “And everything she did, everything your mother and Sophie’s father did to keep us alive will be in vain if we don’t go now.”
Agatha gazed into the wet pools of his eyes and suddenly she understood. Her mother didn’t want her to stay with her. Her mother didn’t want her to come back to Gavaldon. She wanted Agatha to save her best friend … to find happiness with her prince … to abandon this world for a better one, far far away …
Because her happy ending wasn’t here. It was never here.
Her mother had died to set her free.
Do not fail.
She had to find her real ending.
She had to run.
Agatha looked up at the guards bolting towards them, spears gleaming in torchlight. Rage blasted through her blood and scorched through her muscles, nothing holding her back anymore. Lunging to her feet, she hurtled up the slope of Graves Hill.
“Come on! We’ll lose them in the graves!”
Together, they ripped through the rusted graveyard gates into the dark expanse of graves. Even in pitch black, Agatha knew every step, navigating the headstones like a wily squirrel, while Tedros collided with them, cursing so barbarically even the grave worms fled.
Panting fire, his princess led him into the thick of the cemetery. The Elders had taken her family from her. They wouldn’t take her prince too.
“The grave between the swans,” Tedros called out behind her. “She said help would be waiting there—”
“Swans?” Agatha blurted. “There are no swans in Gavaldon!”
Tedros looked back down the hill and saw the guards barreling up, carrying torches. “Thirty seconds, Agatha! We have thirty seconds!”
Agatha scoured stones and plaques and obelisks for evidence of a swan. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for!”
“Twenty seconds!” Tedros voice rang out.
She couldn’t see her prince anymore. Agatha whirled desperately, trying to steady her mind. The only birds she’d ever seen in Gavaldon were smog-colored ducks and obese pigeons. She’d never even seen a real swan, especially not on Graves Hill—
Agatha’s heart pattered faster.
But she had seen swans before, hadn’t she? Swans were the symbols of the School for Good and Evil: one black, one white … representing two School Masters in balance … one brother Good, one brother Evil …
If Callis was a witch, she’d have known the Good and Evil swans. That’s how she knew so much about the school, Agatha thought. Her mother must have seen it for herself …
“Ten seconds!” Tedros shouted—
Agatha closed her eyes and tried to focus, her temples throbbing.
Swans … school … Stefan …
“You saved me,” Callis had whispered to him.
What had she meant? If Callis and Stefan had a history, maybe the swans involved something that connected her mother and Sophie’s father … something that both of them had in common … or someone …
Agatha’s heart stopped. Her eyes shot open.
She was already running.
“What is it?” Tedros yelled, seeing her shadow dart deeper into the cemetery, towards the house on Graves Hill.
“Here! It’s over here!”
Tedros chased her, squinting at her outline fading into the dark. He looked back and saw the army of shadows smash through the graveyard gates, spears glinting. Tedros dove to the ground behind a domed stone. He peeked over it and saw the guards sweeping torches over the rows of graves. Tedros ducked down. “This is worse than the Woods,” he wheezed, crawling through stones to follow Agatha. “Sooooo much worse—”
Then he saw her, crouched in the final row of headstones, only a short distance from her house. Tedros skidded into dirt beside her. “They’re coming, Agatha!”
“Sophie’s mother. That’s what connected them,” Agatha said, gripping a tablet gravestone knifing out of the ground, engraved with the words “Loving Wife and Mother.” Two smaller dirt-caked graves, one lighter, one darker, flanked it on either side like wings. “Before Sophie, she couldn’t have a child. Two boys, both born dead.”
She ran her hand over the lighter of the two boys’ graves, pulling away the grime. Tedros’ eyes bulged as Agatha’s fingers cleared the headstone, revealing a small black swan carved into the unmarked grave. Tedros tore away the moss from the darker grave, revealing a white swan set in the stone. He and Agatha both turned to the larger grave in the middle, towering between the two swans.
“When she couldn’t have a child, Sophie’s mother went to see mine as a patient. That’s what Sophie told me,” Agatha pressed. “Somehow it’s all connected. Sophie’s mother … my mother being a witch … the debt she owed Stefan … I don’t know how it’s connected, but it has to be—”
Firelight swept over the both of them.
Agatha and Tedros flattened to the ground and swiveled to see the guards five rows back.
“We found the swans—we found the grave—” Tedros panicked, gaping at the bigger headstone. “Where’s the help?”
Agatha shook her head. “We can’t fight the guards without magic, Tedros! We need to make our wish!”
The prince swallowed. “Wish to reopen our story on three, okay? Hands behind our back—” He stopped.
His right fingertip was already glowing gold.
Agatha looked down at hers, glowing almost an identical shade.
“Did you make the wish?” Tedros asked.
Agatha shook her head.
“Neither did I,” Tedros said, confused. “How could our fingers be glowing, then?”
Torchlight shined in their faces.
“They’re here!” a guard cried. “They’re over here!”
Agatha spun to see shadows vaulting over the last rows of graves. “Unless my mother didn’t interrupt our wish in the house. Unless our wish worked when we made it the first time. Unless our fairy tale was open all along.”
Agatha looked at her prince, deathly white. “We’re already back in our story, Tedros. We’ve been in our story from the moment the guards found us …”
Tedros looked up at the spears slashing towards their hearts. “Which means we die at The End, Agatha!”
Terrified, she and Tedros clasped hands, each backing away from the spears into one of the swans—
Just in time to see a pale hand reach out of the grave between them and pull them both in.
(#ulink_8d5d8c9b-e4da-5c39-8e9c-683de7183425)
raves are meant for dead people, who have no reason to see, breathe, or use the toilet. Unfortunately for Agatha, she needed to do all three. Trapped underground in darkness, she and Tedros inhaled mouthfuls of soil while tangled in each other’s sweaty limbs. Agatha couldn’t make out her prince’s face, but heard him hyperventilating with panic.
“You’re using up all our air!” Agatha hissed.
“Graves have b-b-bodies—d-d-dead bodies—”
Agatha blanched with understanding and gripped on to any of Tedros’ flesh she could find. “Sophie’s mother … she p-p-pulled us in?”
“C-c-can’t see a thing. For all we know she’s right next to us!”
“Magic,” Agatha wheezed. “Use magic!”
Tedros gulped a breath and focused on his fear, until his finger flickered gold like a candle, lighting up a wide, shallow grave the size of a large bed. Shivering on top of each other, Tedros and Agatha slowly turned to their right.
Dirt.
No body. No bones.
Just dirt.
“Where is she?” Agatha choked, rolling off Tedros, who groaned and rubbed his chest. She snatched her prince’s wrist and swept his fingerglow over the right half of the grave, spotting only a pair of dung beetles fighting over a dirt ball in the corner. She shook her head, baffled, and swung Tedros’ hand to the left—
Both of them froze.
Two sparkling brown eyes glared at them through a black ninja mask.
Agatha and Tedros opened their mouths to scream, but the figure gagged them with slender hands.
“Shhhh! They’ll hear you!” the stranger whispered in a low, breathy voice.
Tedros gaped at the ninja in the grave with them, wrapped in draping black robes. “Are you … are you Sophie’s mother …”
The ninja let out a giggly squeak. “Oh how absurd. Now shhhh!”
Agatha tensed. That squeak. Where had she heard it before? She tried to catch Tedros’ eye, hoping he’d heard it too, but her prince was smothering the stranger in a hug.
“Oh thank God! We’ve been trapped for a month in the smallest, foulest house you can imagine, almost burned at the stake, almost skewered by an army, and then you pulled us in, whoever you are, which means you have to get us out! We need to get to the School for Good and Evil and rescue our best friend. Surely you know it. It’s halfway between the Murmuring Mountains and—”
The ninja gagged him with a fist. “I know cats that listen better than you.”
“You have no idea,” Agatha murmured, punchy from the lack of air.
A sharp crackle ripped above their heads, like a sword splitting earth, and the grave tremored, caving clumps of dirt into their faces.
“Check ’em all,” someone growled gruffly, followed by more sharp tremors. “Intercepted a message from the League of Thirteen. Said they’d be comin’ through a grave.”
Agatha’s stomach plunged. The voice didn’t sound like an Elder’s.
“Coulda been more specific. Thousands of ’em and I’m starvin’,” a thick, oafish voice added. “Besides, should be out fixin’ our stories like the others, not diggin’ around in graves. What’s so important about these two anyway?”
“School Master wants ’em. Reason enough for you,” said the gruff one, punctuated by another violent crackle. “He’ll give us a turn at our stories soon enough.”
Agatha and Tedros swiveled to each other. The School Master’s men in Gavaldon? How had they gotten past the guards? The ceiling shook harder, showering clumps of earth.
“Think he’ll let us eat an Everboy as a reward?” asked the oafish one.
“Might even let us eat two,” the gruff voice chortled—
A black furry claw smashed through the ceiling into the grave, with five knife-edged talons snatching right and left. Agatha and Tedros choked back screams as the ninja flattened them against the dirt wall, the hooked talons swiping at air, missing the inseam of Tedros’ breeches by a whisker. It slashed in vain a few more times and then curled into a fist.
“Nothin’ here,” the gruff voice growled. “Come on, let’s eat. Maybe we’ll find a juicy little boy in the Oakwood.”
The claw withdrew empty-handed and vanished, followed by loud, thudding stomps.
A terrorized silence passed … then Tedros and Agatha shoved mouths to a hole in the ceiling and sucked down air. Agatha glanced at Tedros to make sure he was okay, expecting he’d be doing the same for her. Instead, her prince was pulling at his breeches, looking down his own pants. Tedros smiled, relieved … then saw Agatha frowning.
“What?” Tedros said.
Agatha was about to question his priorities, then noticed the footsteps had stopped. The voices too. Agatha’s eyes shot wide open and she dove for her prince—“Tedros, watch out!”
The black claw crashed through the ceiling and grabbed Agatha off her prince, dragging her out of the grave. Tedros leapt to clasp her leg too late. He craned up in horror to see the claw pull his princess into the night sky, dangling her like a caught mouse.
Agatha stared into the bloodshot yellow eyes of a tall, bony brown wolf on two legs, fur and flesh flaking off his face, leaving gaping holes over pieces of his skull.
“Lookie here. A princess returns,” the wolf snarled gruffly, cheekbones poking through one of these holes.
Agatha paled. Was he the one talking about the School Master before? How could an Evil wolf have crossed into Gavaldon? And where was the Elderguard? Her eyes darted around, but all she could see in the darkness was a smattering of crooked headstones. She tried to make her finger glow, but the wolf was gripping her hand too tightly.
“Storian ain’t writing, world dying, armies rising—all ’cause of you?” he purred, tracing her pallid skin and charcoal hair. “Less princess, I’d say, and more … skunk. How Good’s fallen in my time away. Even runty Red Riding Hood was a more tempting treat.”
Agatha had no idea what he was talking about, but after all she’d been through tonight, the last thing she needed was to be insulted for her looks by a puny wolf with a skin condition.
“And yet, Red Riding Hood’s wolf learned his lesson, didn’t he?” she warned, knowing her prince must be nearby. “Messed with Good and a hunter tore out his stomach.”
“Tore out his stomach?” said the wolf, appalled.
“With his bare hands,” Agatha lied loudly, signaling Tedros.
“And is this wolf … dead?”
“Very dead, so beat it before MY hunter comes,” Agatha yelled, cuing Tedros again.
“Dead as in doornail dead?” the wolf fretted.
“Dead, dead, dead,” Agatha snapped, squinting angrily for her prince.
“Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead,” mumbled the wolf, mulling this gruesome fate. “Well, if that’s true …” He lifted big, shiny eyes. “How am I still here?”
Agatha’s eyes lowered to his other claw, tapping at a hideous scar crisscrossing his belly. Her face lost all of its blood. “I-i-impossible—”
“Can I eat this one?” an oafish voice said behind her. Agatha spun to see a 10-foot, bald, humpbacked giant, swinging Tedros upside down by his bootstrap. The giant’s flesh peeled off his skull, covered in zigzagged stitches, as he probed and pinched Tedros’ muscles. “Ain’t seen such firm meat since young Jack came up my beanstalk.”
Agatha’s heart rose into her throat. Red Riding Hood’s dead wolf … Jack’s dead giant … alive? Tedros met her eyes, ashen and upside down, clearly petrified by the same question.
“I told you. School Master wants ’em conscious,” the wolf groused.
The giant sighed miserably … then saw the wolf smirking.
“But that don’t mean we can’t break off a piece or two,” the wolf said, gripping Agatha harder.
She and Tedros let out twin cries as the giant and wolf raised them high in the air and slowly lowered their legs into their mouths like pork ribs—
“That would be a very poor decision,” said an airy voice.
The wolf and giant both froze jaws over their prey, eyes flicking to the ninja on the ground. The wolf pulled Agatha out of his mouth and smiled at the masked stranger, prepared to delay a snack if it might result in a larger meal. “And why’s that, oh Faceless One?”
“Because if you release them, I’ll let you go on your way,” said the ninja.
“And if we don’t?” snorted the giant, mouth full of Tedros, shivering between the giant’s teeth.
“Then you’ll be woefully outnumbered,” said the ninja.
“Strange …,” the wolf replied, prowling towards the stranger, Agatha in hand. “Given your prince and princess are a bit held up, I see one of you and two of us.” He loomed over the ninja in the moonlight. “Which means it’s you that’s outnumbered.”
Slowly the ninja looked up. The black mask came off, revealing almond-shaped eyes, olive skin, and black hair flowing in the wind.
Princess Uma smiled. “Then you’re not looking very closely.”
She let out a piercing squeak through her teeth and a roar echoed from every side of the darkness, a thunder beneath their feet. For a moment, the wolf and giant spun dumbly, the roar crashing towards them north and south, east and west … until they dropped their two prisoners like hot potatoes. From the ground, Agatha raised her glowing finger just in time to see a stampede of bulls leap over her body and ram into the wolf and giant like balls to bowling pins. Horses and bears sprang over Tedros, tearing into the monsters with their hooves and claws. By the time Agatha and Tedros wobbled to their feet, their gold glows illuminating the scene, the wolf and giant were howling for mercy atop the beastly tide bucking them into the darkness. Princess Uma whistled a cheery thank-you and her animal army echoed with singsong growls. Soon their shadows faded and the wolf and giant were gone.
Agatha whirled to Princess Uma, a teacher at the School for Good who she’d once mocked as helpless and passive and weak, but who had just saved her and Tedros’ lives. “I thought the princes killed you!” Agatha cried. “Hester said Dean Sader left you to die in the Woods. We all thought you were dead—”
“A professor of Animal Communication unable to survive in the Woods?” Princess Uma swished her finger and turned her black robes to pink, a silver swan crest stitched over the heart. “Even your mother had more faith in me and we’ve never met.”
“You … you know my mother?” Agatha asked. Knew, a voice corrected. Agatha battled a fresh wave of nausea. She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“Only through her messages to the League,” Uma replied.
“League? What League?” Tedros broke in.
“The League of Thirteen, of course,” said Uma, unhelpfully. “Her last message to us made three things very clear: That we protect your lives. That we get you to Sophie. And that we’d find you right here.”
Tedros and Agatha followed their teacher’s eyes down to the empty grave that once held Sophie’s mother … Only the headstone was different now. Instead of a tall rectangle, it was a murky oval, with a long crack down the middle, carved with thick black letters.
“Vanessa was Sophie’s mother. ‘Butterfly,’ I think the name means,” remembered Tedros, studying the stone. “Sophie told me one night when she was Filip.”
“Sophie never told me her mother’s name,” Agatha said, hurt.
“Perhaps because you never asked,” said Tedros. His face changed. “Wait a second. Her name wasn’t on the grave before. And look, it doesn’t say ‘Loving Wife and Mother’ like it used to.” He squinted at the shadows of crooked slabs around them. “We’re in the same graveyard, in the exact same spot. Doesn’t make any sense. A gravestone can’t just change—”
“Unless you’re not in the same graveyard at all,” Princess Uma said behind them.
Agatha and Tedros spun to see their teacher shoot a bolt of white glow into the sky. From every direction, thousands of fireflies whizzed to it like a signal, swarming over the Evers’ heads and detonating neon-green wings into a giant light cloud, illuminating a sprawling landscape in every direction. Prince and princess gazed out at a vast cemetery, with thousands and thousands of gravestones sloping over steep, barren hills. For a moment, Agatha thought Graves Hill had magically grown bigger. But it was what lay beyond the cemetery that made Agatha feel faint—a dark, endless gnarl of black trees, rearing high into the night like a primeval monster.
They weren’t on Graves Hill.
They weren’t in Gavaldon at all.
“We’re in the Woods,” Agatha rasped.
She was suddenly aware of the sea of dead bodies under her feet. In an instant, the images she’d been damming up broke through with a vengeance—guards, spears, her mother falling … Agatha buckled, about to retch—
Tedros’ hand touched her arm. “I’m right here.”
His voice brought her back to the moment. Agatha swallowed the acid taste in her mouth and uncurled to stand, clutching her prince by the shirt laces. She steadied her legs, trying to see a graveyard in front of her, just a graveyard and nothing more …
“Hold on. I’ve been here before,” said Tedros, searching the landscape.
“Each Forest Group makes a trip first year to scavenge meerworms. No doubt Yuba accompanied you,” Princess Uma replied.
“The Garden of Good and Evil,” said Tedros. “That’s what he called it. Every Ever or Never whose name makes it into a storybook is buried here.”
Under the firefly cloud, he scanned thousands of coffins down one side of the hills, teeming with glittering gem-crusted memorials for pairs of Evers, united in life and now in death. “That’s Ever Embankment, where the greatest heroes are,” he said. “Except Dad, of course.”
Agatha looked at her prince, waiting for him to go on, but he turned back to her. “We must have come out the other side of Vanessa’s grave. One end is Gavaldon, the other end the Woods. It’s the only explanation. But how would your mother have known the grave was a portal?”
Agatha thought of the black and white swans on the two graves flanking Sophie’s mother’s. “Even if she did know somehow, why would Sophie’s mother’s grave connect the two worlds?”
“You’re asking the wrong questions, students.”
Agatha and Tedros looked up at Princess Uma, studying them intently.
“You should be asking why her grave is empty.”
Uma circled her finger at the sky and the firefly cloud swept over their heads, illuminating the slope Agatha and Tedros were standing on. A bank of cracked and moldy headstones glowed in the alien green light, jutting from ragged black mounds.
“Necro Ridge,” said Tedros. “It’s where the worst villains are buried.”
“Sophie’s mother was a Never?” Agatha asked, disoriented.
“Not according to our findings. The League of Thirteen has no evidence of a Vanessa of Woods Beyond attending the School for Good and Evil, being mentioned in a fairy tale, or having her body buried here at all,” said Uma, pocketing gooey gray meerworms off a tomb. “And yet, she has a grave amongst our most famous Nevers.”
“You keep talking about this League,” Tedros rankled. “I’ve never heard of them—”
“As you shouldn’t,” said Uma, even more unhelpfully than before. “Listen to me, Agatha. There are no words to ease the pain you’re in right now. But your mother died before she could give the League the answers we needed. Think back. Do you have any idea why Vanessa’s name is carved into a headstone on Necro Ridge? And where her body might be?”
“I don’t see why we should help a League we know nothing about,” Tedros grouched.
But Agatha’s head was still swimming. Her own mother, Callis, had moved between the two worlds as a witch without anyone in Gavaldon knowing, including her own daughter. And yet, her mother fit all the traits of a Never—unmarried, mysterious, reclusive … If anything, Agatha should have seen the clues. But Sophie’s mother? Sophie had spoken only rapturously of her mother, doting on her wicked, unfaithful husband until her dying day. There was no hint of her being anything other than a radiant, loving caretaker and wife. So how could her name be on a villain’s tomb? Agatha shook her head, at a dead end … until her eyes suddenly flared wide.
“The Crypt Keeper will know!”
Quickly she scoured the horizon for the blue-skinned, dreadlocked giant she’d learned about at school, responsible for digging and filling graves. “Hort said he buries everybody himself. Never lets anyone interfere. That’s why Hort’s dad’s been waiting for a coffin all these years. So the Crypt Keeper has to know why Sophie’s mother has a headstone here …” But the hills were deserted, except for a few hovering vultures nearby. She turned to Uma. “Where is h—”
Agatha stopped cold, seeing Uma’s expression.
Slowly Agatha turned back to the vultures.
Lying on the ground beneath them was a massive, blue-skinned body crumpled in a spray of dirt. His bones were broken and his throat split open, the blood staining his neck long dried out. Agatha could see the whites of his wide-open eyes, as if the shock of dying paled to the shock of what killed him.
Agatha felt Tedros squeeze her hand with his sweaty palm, telling her she hadn’t seen the worst of it. Dread growing, she tracked his gaze past the dead Crypt Keeper and across the 200 graves on Necro Ridge, marking the resting place of famous fairy-tale villains. But now Agatha saw why there were so many mounds of dirt, blacking out the grass. Every single one of the famous villains’ tombs had been dug up, the insides of all of them …
“Empty,” said Agatha. “The villains’ graves are empty.”
Legs shaky, Tedros gaped at the bodiless graves. “Red Riding Hood’s wolf … Jack’s giant … and a whole lot worse …”
Agatha whitened, remembering who the wolf said they worked for. “And they’re all under the School Master’s control.”
Princess Uma came up behind them. “For hundreds of years, Evil lost every story because Good had love on its side. Love gave Good a power and purpose Evil couldn’t match. But those happy endings held only as long as Evil wasn’t able to love. Things have changed, students. The School Master has found someone who loves him and who he loves in return. He’s proved Evil deserves a chance to rewrite its fairy tales. Now every old villain gets a new turn at their story. Every dead villain is reborn.”
True love? The School Master? Agatha shook her head, trying to understand. How could anyone love him?
Suddenly Agatha noticed Vanessa’s empty grave again and her heart seized. “Wait—Sophie’s mother … body missing … means she’s … she’s—”
“She wasn’t buried here, remember?” Uma said, cutting her off. “We don’t even know if her body was buried at all. And yet, the Crypt Keeper saved this grave for Sophie’s mother amongst the famous Nevers—the Crypt Keeper, who answers to no one but the Storian itself. Why he saved a villain’s grave for her could be our greatest clue to understanding how the School Master came to choose his new queen.”
Agatha felt a cold darkness rip through her stomach. She had a thousand questions: about her mother and her best friend’s mother, about letters and Leagues, about empty graves and undead villains … but only one mattered.
“Queen?” she whispered, slowly looking up. “Who?”
Uma met her eyes. “Sophie took the School Master’s ring. She is his true love.”
Agatha couldn’t speak.
“But … but we came to rescue her from him,” Tedros said, stunned.
“And you must. But it will not be an easy task,” said Uma. “Sophie’s kiss may have brought him back to life—but it is his ring on her finger that makes the power of that kiss last. As long as Sophie wears his ring, the School Master remains immortal. And yet, there is a way to undo the kiss, children. A way to destroy the School Master once and for all. And it is our one and only hope.” Her voice was fiery, urgent. “You must convince Sophie to destroy the School Master’s ring by her own hand. Convince Sophie to destroy his ring and the School Master will be destroyed with it forever.”
Agatha was still lost in a fog.
“But beware,” Uma added. “While you seek your true ending to The Tale of Sophie and Agatha, the School Master seeks his too.”
Tedros could see Agatha staring into space, no longer listening. “And what ending is that?” he asked.
Uma leaned in, her soft features hardening. “The wolf and giant were no accident. War is coming, Son of Arthur. As long as Sophie wears the School Master’s ring, all of Good is in terrible danger, past and present, young and old. Either you and your princess bring Sophie back to Good … or Good as we know it will be wiped out forever. That is the ending he seeks.”
Agatha’s heartbeat swirled in her ears.
Once upon a time, she and Sophie had slain a deadly villain who’d torn them apart.
Now her best friend had given her heart to that villain.
“But he’s Evil. She knows he’s Evil … and Sophie isn’t Evil anymore,” Agatha breathed, looking up. “Why would she want to be with him?”
“For the same reason you and your prince want to be with each other.” Uma gave her a wistful smile. “To be happy.”
Agatha and Tedros watched the Princess circle her finger, extinguishing the fireflies, and hasten towards the dark Woods beyond the hills. “Quickly, Evers,” she said, snatching a few more meerworms off a grave. “It’s a two-day journey to school and we must get to Sophie before they find you.”
Tedros frowned, lagging behind. “Before who finds us?”
“Who?” Uma glared back, incredulous. “Whoever else was in those graves.”
(#ulink_89769759-bfff-5263-9dd6-97a119c07b54)
afal never slept in his chamber, so when the pen finally began to write, in the first hours of dawn, it was Sophie who was there to see it.
She’d been ill for six nights, ever since she took his ring—so ill, with a scorching fever and bone-numbing chills that she’d yet to leave her bed. Curled up in blankets, she imagined Tedros and Agatha gallivanting about town, snacking on Battersby’s cupcakes (maybe he’ll get fat, she hoped) and watching the sunset by the lake (maybe he’ll drown), while here she was cooped in a sooty tower, sniffling and shivering like a snotty Rapunzel, and no one liked Rapunzel because she was boring.
“You said—I could—see the school,” she’d babbled to Rafal in a sweaty fit this morning. “I want to see—Hester—Anadil—”
“And infect them with whatever plague you’re carrying?” he teased, wrapping her in a fresh blanket.
She’d have pressed her case, if only he hadn’t been taking such good care of her. He barely left her side during the day: sponging her forehead, feeding her bone-marrow soup, bringing her baggy, black nightdresses that she could hibernate inside, and enduring her inane blathering about Tedros and Agatha and how little or much fun they must be having, depending on whether her jealousy was at a peak or a valley in any given moment. Soon Sophie began to dread the nights, when Rafal would go away, just as she once dreaded those first mornings when she was afraid he’d come. In her delirious haze, she began to crave the marble cradle of his arms … his fresh, teenage scent … his cold touch on her burning skin … his silvery voice pulling her out of nightmares …
“I bet you … made me sick … so I’d need you …,” Sophie slurred as he’d left.
The young School Master looked back and smiled.
As her fever deepened, Sophie’s nightmares grew clearer. Tonight she’d been dreaming of a pitch-black tunnel with a halo of light at its end. Floating in the dark tunnel was a giant gold ring, lined with razor-sharp teeth, spinning in midair and blocking her path. As she moved towards it, the ring spun faster, until she could see her reflection in the mirrored blur of teeth. Only, as she drew towards the ring, Sophie realized the reflection wasn’t hers at all. It was a face she’d never seen before—a strange man’s, with wild brown hair, dark, leathery skin, and a fat, hooked nose. Confused, Sophie leaned in to see him … closer … closer … until the man lifted black, bloodshot eyes, with a dangerous grin—
Then he stabbed out his hands and slammed Sophie into the guillotine of teeth.
Sophie gasped awake, scared out of her wits—
She froze dead still. Someone was in the chamber. Scratching and rustling, like a black cat sharpening its nails.
Chest hammering, she squinted into the early morning. No one there. Slowly she turned her head and to her relief, saw it wasn’t a person making the sounds, but a whirring gleam of steel. Still half-asleep, she first thought it a spindle, before she remembered spindles were for Sleeping Beauty, the lamest princess of all time and surely dead by now since she was old and old people die and Sophie wasn’t old or dead … and well, that finally got her out of bed.
She had to blink a few times to make sure what she was seeing was indeed there: the Storian itself doing all that scratching and rustling—the pen that had dimmed the Endless Woods by refusing to write, now … writing.
But how? she thought. The Storian had been stalled over the last page of her and Agatha’s storybook for weeks. It hadn’t moved an inch when she took the School Master’s ring. Which meant it wasn’t her ending the pen had been doubting, but rather—
Sophie’s heart skittered. Impossible …
Pulling her blankets around her, she tiptoed forward in her saggy black nightdress, afraid the slightest sound might disrupt it. But as Sophie grew closer, she saw the pen wasn’t writing at all, but chipping at her storybook like a bricklayer removing bricks, scraping off the last line, letter by letter, until “THE END” was fully gone. With a red-hot glow, the Storian twirled into the air, like a butterfly freed from its cocoon, and dove back down to the book, continuing the story right where it left off. The steel nib spilled ink onto brand-new pages, filled by dozens of flurried paintings Sophie could hardly follow: walls of emerald flames … guards in black masks … swan-marked tombs … a cadaverous wolf and giant … until swirls of forest green streaked across a blank sheet.
Two lean bodies came into view, framed by the high, twisting trees of the Woods. Sophie watched the pen fill in the blankness of their faces … a boy’s slate-blue eyes and juicy lips … a girl’s flat brows and sunken cheeks … It can’t be, she thought, waiting for the Storian to slash an errant line. But every stroke made the scene more and more real, as if birthed from her own memory, until Sophie was sure this was all still a dream, for the pen was drawing two people in the Woods—two people who couldn’t be in the Woods, because they’d found a happy ending somewhere else. She pinched her arm hard, expecting to wake up in bed, but they only grew clearer: Agatha and Tedros, alive on the page, gazing at her with wide eyes, inviting her in.
They’re … back? Sophie gasped, heart swelling. Jealousy and betrayal and pain broke away like a soft eggshell and a warm wave of hope flooded through her before she could keep it down. She caressed her two best friends, looking out of her storybook, and let herself feel what she’d been ashamed of all this time.
I miss you, Aggie.
I miss you, Teddy.
Tears rising, she imagined herself in the empty space on the page between them—
Until the Storian drew Agatha and Tedros’ hands intertwined across the gap, the two Evers following a shadow into the darkness of the Woods.
Sophie studied their clasped fingers, no longer any room for her.
“They’re coming for you,” said a voice behind her.
Sophie turned to Rafal, gorgeously posed against the window like a teen rebel, clad in a lace-up black shirt and black leather pants. His ice-blue stare lingered on the storybook, but carried no surprise, as if he’d been waiting for the prince and princess to return.
“I told you it wasn’t our ending the Storian questioned,” he said. “Turns out your friends aren’t happy without you. They think you need to be rescued from me. That your ending is with them.”
Sophie looked back at the Storian, writing beneath the painting of Agatha and Tedros in fresh ink:
“Love wasn’t enough for them anymore. They needed their best friend.”
Sophie gaped at the storybook. Here she’d been, berating herself for thinking of Aggie and Tedros every spare second … when they’d been thinking of her too? She smiled at the thought, touched. Then her smile evaporated.
“How can three people have a happy ending?” Sophie asked.
Rafal watched her carefully. “If one person is happy alone, of course.”
“While two get each other?” Sophie asked, frowning.
“Oh you’d get used to it. Watching them kiss by the fireplace … sitting alone during supper while they nuzzle each other … trailing behind them on garden strolls like a puppy on a leash … settling year by year into your role as the third wheel …” Rafal glided towards her, half of his face still in shadow. “Then again, you could always meet a boy in Camelot. Not much of a kingdom anymore, but plenty of peasant boys to choose from. Sunburnt cheeks, yellow teeth, chubby backsides, not a coin in their pockets. But a nice, normal boy and isn’t that what matters?” He drew her into his arms. “A boy who lives with his old, wrinkled mother in her ramshackle house, raising goats and pigs. A boy who will give you an ordinary life, where you fry his meat and bathe old Mummy and raise sunburnt, chubby little sons …”
Sophie was tensing so much she couldn’t breathe. “That will never happen,” she whispered and her muscles relaxed in his grip.
“Didn’t think so,” Rafal whispered back. He touched her shoulder, his long, milky fingers tracing up her neck. Sophie’s skin quivered. She’d never had a boy hold her that she hadn’t manipulated. She’d never had a boy touch her that didn’t mind the storms and rages of her heart. She’d never had a boy love her for everything she was, warts and all.
Sophie looked up and saw him in the light—pearly, angelic skin, powder-blue eyes, luscious pink mouth, like a young Jack Frost—so white-hot and handsome that she suddenly felt the uglier of the two. “You might like me now, but what happens when I get old?” she asked. “Will you still want me then?”
Rafal smiled. “My brother and I stayed young as long as we loved each other. When I broke our bond, I was destined to age and die like every other villain who proved they couldn’t love. But your kiss restored my youth, Sophie. Your love will let me live forever, just like my brother’s love once did. Just like my love once kept him alive too. Which means as long as you wear my ring, neither you nor I will ever grow old.”
Sophie turned to him. “I’ll live forever?”
Rafal pulled her in once more. “We will. Together.”
Live forever? Sophie thought in a fog. Old but young … young but old … just like the beautiful boy holding her. What would it be like to love someone forever? Could love even last that long? She thought of Agatha on the lakeshore, vowing to be her friend forever … Tedros on a moonlit bridge, promising to be her prince forever … Agatha and Tedros kissing, swearing to each other … “Forever …”
Only Forever never seemed to last.
Sophie lay against Rafal’s firm chest, studying the gold ring on his finger, matching the one on hers. All this time she’d been so hurt by her two best friends who deserted her, so sure they’d forgotten her and gone on to perfect happiness. Instead they’d come back to redo their Ever After, wanting her, needing her to be happy. Sophie waited to feel the same feeling, to choose her best friends even it meant she ended up alone …
But all Sophie could feel were the arms of a boy who’d stayed loyal to her from the beginning, a Forever that finally sounded like the truth.
She spun and kissed Rafal, his mouth cold against hers, holding it long and slow, waiting for something in her heart to stop her. Nothing did. As their lips parted, she saw the Storian conjure a new page, capturing their kiss in brilliant colors, before adding a closing line:
“But friendship wasn’t enough for Sophie anymore. She needed love.”
Sophie looked up at Rafal, her forehead beaded with sweat. He put his hand to it.
“Look at that. Fever’s broken.”
Together, they watched the sun slide out from behind a cloud, Sophie expecting its return to brilliant life … only to see the sun still yolky and anemic against a cold blue morning, even weaker than before. Only it wasn’t just weaker, it was leaking small gobs of yellow light into the sky, drip, drip, drip, like an icicle in summer. Sophie stepped closer to the window ledge, eyes wide. There was no question about it.
The sun was melting.
She whirled to the School Master. “But you said if the Storian wrote—”
“A new story. And ours still needs an end,” said Rafal soberly. “Our storybook can’t close now that your friends have come back. Not as long as they have a new ending in mind. An ending where Good wins and Evil dies …”
He paused, locking into her emerald eyes.
“They’re coming to kill me, Sophie.”
Sophie held his stare, stunned, and looked down at Agatha and Tedros, on their way through the Woods to rescue her. In their version of the story, they would save her from an Evil School Master. But to Sophie, her Good friends were about to slay the only boy who’d ever loved her, so she could be a sidekick to someone else’s Ever After.
Sidekick. That’s the ending they thought she deserved.
Sophie burned, glaring at her gold ring. She was a queen.
“I won’t let them hurt you,” she seethed.
“You’d do that for me?” The School Master’s boyish face contorted with emotion. “You’d fight your own friends?”
Sophie tensed. “F-f-fight Agatha and Ted—? But I thought—”
“That they’ll leave us in peace and go on their way if you tell them to?” Rafal asked sweetly.
“But I can’t fight her. Surely there’s another way—” Sophie pressed.
His eyes hardened. “War is the only way.”
Sophie bristled at the change in his tone. But she knew he was right. After the young School Master nearly killed Tedros with Tedros’ own sword, the prince was coming for his blood, and Agatha would be behind him. War was on the horizon and Sophie had to take a side.
Sophie thought of all the times Agatha had allied with Tedros against her: during the Circus of Talents and Evil Ball, then in her secret plan to kiss Tedros and banish her home during the Boy-Girl War. Sophie’s blood simmered to a boil. Agatha had even believed she was turning into a witch in the Blue Forest, believing Tedros over her, when it was Dean Sader’s magic all along. “I’m not this!” she’d cried, begging her friend to see the truth. But Agatha had stayed firmly by her prince’s side.
Sophie too had a side to take—even if it meant fighting her best friend. Just like Agatha would protect her prince, she would protect her one true love.
“This is it, isn’t it?” she whispered, watching the melting sun. “Either they die … or we do. Good versus Evil. That’s the way all fairy tales end.”
She saw Rafal’s chest rise on a breath, as if at last they were on the same page. “Your friends think they can stop our book from closing, my love,” he said, sweet once again. “They think they can stop the future. But they’re too late.”
He watched the fading sun, as if studying an hourglass. “The war against Good has already begun.”
Sophie saw him look back at her with a snakelike grin and she began to sense there was more to his return than kisses and rings. “But Good always wins in the end—” she started, only to see the School Master grinning wider.
“You’ve forgotten the one thing I have on my side that they no longer do.” Rafal moved towards her, slowly, smoothly …
“You.”
Sophie met his gaze, breathless.
“Come my queen,” he said, fingers slipping into hers. “Your kingdom awaits.”
Sophie’s heart pumped faster. Kingdom … Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little girl in a pink princess dress, waiting by her window to be kidnapped, convinced that one day she’d be the ruler of a faraway land …
She looked up at Rafal, the old glint back in her eye. “So much for Camelot.”
Sophie smiled, her ring brushing his, and she followed her love hand in hand to fight for their happy ending—just like a prince and princess on the page she’d left behind.
“Shouldn’t I change first? I can’t go gadding about in this,” Sophie huffed, trying to pin down her nightdress, battered by the wind.
Her glass slippers wobbled on the window ledge, sending silver pebbles cascading into the abyss of green fog. She wrenched back against the tower wall, clutching Rafal’s bicep. They were so high in the sky she couldn’t see the ground. “Surely there are stairs we can take. Only a half-wit would build a tower without stairs or a rope or a suitable fire escape—”
“Do you trust me?”
Sophie looked into Rafal’s eyes, hot with adrenaline, not a trace of fear in them.
“Yes,” Sophie whispered.
“Then don’t let go.” He seized her by the waist and dove off the tower.
Green mist gobbled them as they plunged at bullet speed into arctic cold. Any instinct for Sophie to scream vanished because of how tightly Rafal held her, muscles sealing her to his chest. Safe in his arms, she let herself go, gasping as Rafal slip-turned like a hawk with dangerous speed, their entwined limbs spinning towards earth. With a full somersault, he rocketed back up and Sophie howled with abandon, closing her eyes and holding out her arms against him like wings. They soared in and out of shadows, amber sunrays flickering on her eyelids, the taste of clouds in her mouth. If only Agatha could see her now, she thought—happy, in love, and recklessly alive, like a princess riding a dragon instead of fighting it. Rafal shot across the bay like a fireball and she pressed her cheek into his neck, electrified by his skin on hers, his steaming breaths faster and faster, his hands tighter and tighter … until his feet gently touched down without a sound and Sophie felt herself suspended in space like the Storian over her book.
She nestled into him, scarlet and hot.
“Do it again,” she whispered.
Rafal chuckled, touching her face, and slowly Sophie opened her eyes to the world.
The first thing she noticed is that the Blue Forest was no longer blue.
She pulled away from Rafal, windswept and dizzy, and staggered forward from the tower, anchored in the middle of the forest.
The Blue Willows had rotted to black husks. The once-weatherproof blue grass was now urine yellow, cracking and breaking under her feet. Bracing from the wintry breeze, Sophie crawled through diseased, fallen trunks in the Turquoise Thicket, her nightgown catching on cancerous fungus and mold. Worst of all was the stench: an acrid, acid reek that made her eyes water and grew stronger the deeper she went into the Forest. By the time she reached the Tulip Garden, a stinking ashpit of amber and brown, she’d covered her face with both hands, barely able to stand straight. She looked back for Rafal, but couldn’t see him.
Sophie gasped a shallow breath and plowed forward. She had to get out of here.
She shambled into the Fernfield, desperate to find the North Gates and stopped short. The ferns, once thigh-high with lush, cobalt fronds, was a wasteland of dead animals, swarming with roaches and flies. Under the jaundiced sun, carcasses of emaciated rabbits, storks, squirrels, and deer littered the dirt in front of the sealed gates, as if they’d all tried to flee and failed.
Then she heard a familiar hissing.
She raised her eyes to dozens of black spiricks, coiled around the gates, flicking red tongues. Sophie shrank from the flat-headed snakes with deadly barbs through every scale, that once prevented anything from getting into the School for Boys, and now prevented all the animals from getting out. Sophie slowly looked up at the School Master’s tower in the distance, looming over the Blue Forest like a landmark in a demented park.
Sophie’s heart sagged. The Blue Forest had once been the school’s kitschy backyard, a safeguarded replica of the deadly Woods. She smiled, reliving her liveliest moments here: running circles around a rabid stymph in the Blueberry Fields while Agatha berated her; seducing Tedros in the Thicket with couture Evil uniforms; her heart pattering as the prince leaned in to kiss her over the Blue Brook … Then her smile slowly dissipated as other moments from the Forest came back too. Tedros rejecting her in the Shrubs when she didn’t save him in a Trial; Tedros in the Blue Willows, looking so betrayed as she reverted from Filip’s body; Agatha and Tedros recoiling from her in the Pine Glen, before they’d tried to send her home … Soon the bad memories overwhelmed the good and as Sophie looked up at the Forest, it turned a shade blacker and bleaker before her eyes.
“It likes you,” Rafal drolled, coming up behind her.
Sophie spun. “What? I did that?”
“You did all of this,” he said, scanning the whole dead Forest. “You and me together.”
“I-I-I don’t understand,” Sophie stammered. “I don’t want the Forest like this—”
“It doesn’t matter what you think you want. It only matters what’s truly inside you,” said Rafal. “The Schools mirror back their Masters’ souls, as does the Storian they both protect. When my brother ruled with me, the castles reflected the balance between us: one light for Good, one dark for Evil. Last year, with Evelyn Sader and Tedros at war, the castles reflected the balance between Boys and Girls.” He caressed Sophie’s ring. “But now with you by my side, there’s a new balance … beyond Good and Evil … beyond Boys and Girls …”
Sophie tracked his gaze up to the two black castles lording over the Forest, tipped with alien-green fog. At first glance, both castles appeared indistinguishable … but then Sophie peered closer. The old Evil castle had turned to jagged stone, resembling the jaws of a monster, while the once bloodred creepers coiling its three towers were the same eerie green as the fog. The old Good castle was black too, circled with the same green mist, but its four towers had sharpened turrets and smooth, shiny walls that looked wet, as if the entire school was made out of polished obsidian. Linked by the foggy bridge in the distance, the two schools seemed like a Before and After: one castle a fiendish, saw-toothed crumble; one castle a cold, sleek fortress.
Confused, Sophie inched closer towards the Forest gates, trying to get a better view of the schools … when the spiricks’ eyes all darted to her. Sophie stumbled back, expecting them to spit their noxious poison—instead, they all bowed their heads like slaves and the golden gates parted, offering a clear path into the Clearing.
Spooked, Sophie scampered out of the Forest. Thankfully there were no surprises in the Clearing. Just as before, there were two Tunnels of Trees diverging out of the field, one into each castle. During the war between Boys and Girls, the tunnels had been sealed with giant rocks, but now they were wide open like they were first year. Only as Sophie drew closer, she saw that both tunnels were labeled with wooden boards, nailed over the entrances. Crooked black letters slashed across each one.
The tunnel leading into the jagged, pockmarked castle said:
The tunnel leading into the smooth, shiny castle said:
A hand took hers and Sophie jumped. She looked up at Rafal, grinning sharp teeth.
“A time-tested Master. A fresh, young queen,” he said. “And a School for Evil reborn.”
Sophie smiled weakly, shoving down the sinking feeling in her stomach.
He led her into the tunnel marked NEW and Sophie hurried to catch up, reminding herself that she’d finally found love, real love, and it was worth anything she had to do to keep it.
(#ulink_73bf0f6a-7220-5df8-8b33-3d0749a14952)
he Tunnel of Trees led straight to the Good castle doors, lit by candles usually visible by now through the branches. But the deeper Sophie went, the darker the tunnel became, a sharp clacking sound amplifying ahead, like an aggressive clock. Uneasy, she took Rafal’s hand.
“I didn’t expect Dean Sader to make a holy mess of things,” he sighed. “I thought that by putting a piece of my soul into Evelyn, I’d have some control over her in the event of my death—”
Sophie could hear the sounds growing louder. Click clack. Click clack. Click clack.
“From within Evelyn’s body, I had enough control to ensure she brought you back to school … and, one day, to me,” he continued. “And yet, I couldn’t control all of her. That crude business of slaveboys and worlds without princes, and girls good, boys bad … She was always resentful of her brother’s gifts and I’m afraid my students had to suffer for it.”
Sophie could hardly hear him over the clacking, as she glimpsed frosted doors ahead, black instead of the old white, the once blue torch flames above it now green.
“She left behind an ugly war, with Boys and Girls hell-bent on destroying each other,” he was saying, “but in the end, it wasn’t hard to make them lay down their arms. After all, no matter how divided they’d become, now they have something even stronger uniting them …”
He stopped at the doors with a dashing grin. “Me.”
Sophie stared at him. Confused, she flung open the doors—
A crush of bodies nearly flattened her and she hugged a wall for dear life.
“Welcome to the School for New Evil,” said Rafal.
In a black-marble foyer, boys and girls in crisp black uniforms and black berets marched by in perfect lines. Chins up, chests out, they stomped with steely stares, right-left, right-left, past the four glass staircases, now hued green. The boys were in belted leather breeches, half-sleeved black shirts with starched collars, narrow green ties, and thick-heeled boots, while the girls wore skin-hugging black pinafores over plunging green blouses, knee-high socks, and flat black slippers. Two of the girls marched in front of Sophie: green-skinned Mona and one-eyed, bald Arachne, tight lipped and eyes fixed ahead. Ravan was right behind them, his oily face scrubbed clean, his once long, matted hair clipped short and neat. Impish Vex tramped next to him, head shaved, spine straight, subtly picking at breeches wedged up his bottom.
Sophie stiffened in shock. Nevers chic … clean … in straight lines? She’d once despised the villains for their poor appearance, but now it was Sophie who felt embarrassed by her own unwashed cheeks and dumpy black nightgown. She tried to catch more Nevers’ faces beneath their berets, but the foyer was dark, holding them in shadow. The only lights seemed to come from fleeting flashes of green glow, dispersed over the army in sync with the march, as if there was an invisible swarm of fireflies keeping time.
Then Sophie noticed another haze of green light over the Legends Obelisk, centered between the four staircases, crammed with student portraits. Looking for the source, she scanned up the high stained glass windows (once haloed visions of a white swan, now replaced with a glaring black swan) to the domed sunroof, sealed over with deadly stalactites, glowing snake-green like a malevolent chandelier. As Sophie’s gaze roamed to the buffed staircases, shiny onyx arches, and ruthless marchers, she saw that Good’s home and all that came with it—elegance, discipline, style—had been usurped entirely by Evil.
And yet, watching this parade, Sophie felt her stomach relax, for there wasn’t anything the least bit sinister about Evil wanting to be “New” or adding a dash of color or showing off a bit of thigh. Indeed, she’d held lunchtime rallies her first year, pleading for all three—
Suddenly, beneath the stalactites, she caught sight of another face in the Never army: a scared-looking boy with a big chest and hairy arms. Chaddick’s gray eyes met Sophie’s, just as shocked to see her as she was to see him. Out of the corner of his lips he mouthed the word “Help”—before a burst of green firefly lights detonated near him, and he whipped his gaze forward, wincing with pain.
Flummoxed, Sophie slid along the wall, trying to catch a last look as he vanished into the wings. Chaddick? Good’s most loyal sidekick? Why was he with Nevers?
But from her new vantage point, Sophie saw more Evers in black uniforms spliced into the march: luscious, caramel-skinned Reena … tall, willowy Giselle … sleek dark-skinned Nicholas … redheaded, freckled Millicent … baby-faced Hiro … all trembly and tense as fireflies popped off around them like warning shots.
Dread rising, Sophie turned back to the Legends Obelisk. The Evers’ portraits, once smiling and kind, were painted with baleful scowls and sneers, matching the Nevers’ frames, now jammed onto the same column.
“Evers learning … Evil?” Sophie breathed, looking up at Rafal.
“Evers and Nevers both,” the young School Master corrected. “After two years of war, a unified school, protecting the future of Evil.” He surveyed his troops. “The students had to adjust to all being in the same castle, of course. More of them per room, more competition in classes … but if anyone has any complaints, I haven’t heard them.”
Sophie squinted out the window, remembering the other tree tunnel. “But what’s in the ‘Old’ school?”
Rafal eyed the rotted towers across Halfway Bridge. “If the School for New will write Evil’s future, then the School for Old rewrites its past …” His pupils shot to Sophie lizard quick. “But you are not to step foot in the School for Old. It is forbidden to all students and to you. Understand?” He stared her down, looking like a headmaster despite his youth.
Sophie nodded, startled.
“Your responsibilities are here and only here,” he commanded, “ensuring your young colleagues adjust to their new school. With the volatility of the past two years, all students will be held to—how should I put it—a higher standard than before.”
“But you told us all souls are born Good or Evil,” Sophie prodded, “that they can’t be changed—”
“And yet, a wise girl taught me it isn’t who you are that matters, it’s what you do. And now all of them will do Evil.” His gaze slid past her. “Just like their new queen.”
Sophie followed his sightline to the foyer’s wall murals, all featuring her and the young School Master kissing against celestial night skies. They were both in black leather, wearing jagged metal crowns, as fiery stars cast halos over their heads. In each mural, a single green letter was superimposed on their embracing bodies. Once spelling out G-O-O-D, the wall paintings now spelled … E-V-I-L.
As students kept filing past, Sophie turned full circle, soaking in her painted image on every wall: her golden hair fanned beneath a spiked queen’s crown; her lips pressed against her true love’s, a boy so smoldering, so intense, so unnerving that he’d have made Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty dump their princes at first sight. All her life, she’d devoured storybooks, desperate to have her own face big enough someday for the world to worship … to have an Ever After that would make girls writhe with jealousy … And now Sophie realized she’d won. She was the face of a school. The face of a generation. The face of the future. Sophie couldn’t stop an imperious grin, feeling more and more like her old self.
“For hundreds of years, Readers like you wanted to be Good because Good always wins. But our story will change all that,” said Rafal, pulling her into him. “Evil is the new Good.”
Sophie felt so safe in his arms that his words washed over her. “Evil is the new Good,” she burbled, cuddling into him … until she saw sweet, cherubic Kiko in line, sniffling back tears, an elaborate black veil over her face, as if on her way to a funeral. “But suppose they can’t be Evil?” Sophie said guiltily, pulling away.
“Every student has a choice: join Evil or die,” he snarled, simmering with hot-blooded youth. “And it is not enough to join Evil. They must excel at it.”
He was looking at the green glass staircases at the corners of the room, the banisters no longer carved with the four values of Good. Instead each staircase had a new inscription:
LEADERS
HENCHMEN
ANIMALS
PLANTS
“Third year is tracking year,” Rafal said. “We’ll house students by rankings, as they prepare to enter their new lives beyond graduation. And if that isn’t enough incentive to perform … let’s just say I do better than butterflies.”
With a swish of his finger, he brightened the glow of the chandelier and now Sophie saw the fireflies weren’t fireflies at all. Floating over the students was a cloud of black-winged fairies, armed with whippy green stingers and jaws of black shark teeth. If any Ever or Never lagged in line or glanced in Sophie’s direction, the fairies stung them with a blast of angry light, jabbing and biting them on until the last of the terrified students disappeared into the wings. As the fairies whizzed after them, Sophie caught a glimpse of their faces—hideously peeling skin, serrated stitches, and eyes cloud-white like zombies. Sophie recoiled in surprise, only to see one fairy in the group stop and peer straight at her: a boy fairy she knew with sunken cheeks and short, wispy wings.
Bane. The Good fairy she’d killed first year.
Except now Bane was right here in front of her, zombified and Evil, glowering back at his killer.
Sophie plastered against the wall, looking for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. Bane ripped towards her with a violent hiss, his knife-edged teeth gleaming—
The School Master shot him with white sparks, sending Bane sputtering out of the foyer like a popped balloon.
Cowering with relief, Sophie looked up at Rafal. “Dead f-f-fairies … undead?”
“Once upon a time, Nevers who failed at being Evil were turned into slaves for Good. Now they have a second chance to prove their love of Evil and their loyalty to me.” His eyes seared into hers. “Just like you.” He walked away, humming a soft tune. “Come, my love. There’s more to see.”
Sophie didn’t follow, her breath stoppered.
Don’t go, whispered a soft voice inside her.
Agatha’s voice.
This isn’t you, Sophie.
This isn’t real love.
Sophie felt her back sweating, the gold ring on her finger suddenly scalding hot.
He’s using you.
Light flooded through her and Sophie couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes, the ring boiling on her skin as if about to eat through her—as if she had to destroy it right now—
“Sophie.”
Her lids opened.
“No one loves you but me,” said Rafal, his voice like a dagger. “No one will ever love you but me.”
Sophie stared into his pupils and saw her own reflection. The ring went cold on her finger. Agatha’s voice quieted inside of her.
Rafal took her by the waist and this time, Sophie didn’t resist. As he guided her ahead towards the Leaders staircase, she heard his voice echoing inside her … No one but me … echoing deeper, echoing deeper, like a pebble down a well until it settled at the bottom, an undeniable truth. Looking up at Rafal, she nestled tighter into his side, afraid to let him go—
She stopped cold.
A raven-haired boy was standing ahead, at the edge of the foyer. Tight chest and stomach muscles pressed against his black uniform shirt, and his breeches revealed smooth, chiseled calves. His dark bangs draped over his forehead and his long nose was the only feature out of proportion on his small, heart-shaped face. Sophie drew a breath, taken by his cool, erect stance, and for a moment she thought him the strange man from her dream. But he was too young, clearly a student. Only she didn’t recognize him from either school—
But then Sophie saw his eyes.
Scorching her with hate.
His beady, weaselly eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be somewhere, Hort?” the School Master said, glowering at him.
Hort’s glare slashed deeper into Sophie, honing in on her hand in Rafal’s, before he finally glanced up. “I was throwing hammers in the gym, Master,” he said, flat and hard. “Earned extra time.”
“Right. You’ve been racking up the first ranks, I hear,” said the School Master, pulling Sophie tighter and making sure Hort saw it. “Keep up the good work, Captain.”
Hort gave Sophie a last deadly look before he walked into the wings.
Sophie didn’t move, her heart thundering. First ranks? … gym? … Captain? Hort?
“Shall we?”
She looked up at Rafal, who was staring blackly at where Hort had just been.
“I don’t want you to miss your first class,” he said, slipping a small scroll of paper into her hand, before he glided up the stairs in front of her.
Sophie lagged behind, still dazed by Hort’s reappearance and the weird looks between him and Rafal—
Then her eyes bulged wide.
“My first what?”
“Class?” Sophie fluttered after the School Master, frantically scanning the parchment. “Advanced Uglification … Advanced Henchmen Training—this is a schedule! You said I was a queen! A queen doesn’t go to class—”
“A queen has responsibilities,” said Rafal, calmly stepping off the first-floor landing.
“Oh I’m sorry, did Cinderella go to class for her happy ending? Did Snow White find true love and then go do homework?” Sophie squawked. “A queen’s life should be a cornucopia of servant briefings, bodice fittings, court meetings, caviar tastings, attaché dinners, ball planning, and sea-salt massages by scantily clad boys. Not a return to plebeian students and insipid class—”
Sophie stopped short, noticing her surroundings. The entrance hallway to sea-themed Honor Tower, whose walls and ceiling once mimicked a princely blue tidal wave, now had its surging waters painted the same slime green as the fog tipping the two castles. For a moment, she was confused by the change, until she looked out a porthole window and saw Halfway Bay in the melted sunlight. For the first time in two years, there was no dividing line between the waters, no halves to the bay at all. Its entire body was the same slime green as the painted tides on the walls around her.
“One dip and it’ll rip the flesh right off your bones,” said Rafal, posed against a column. “Good deterrent against anyone who might try to swim into the school or swim … out.”
Sophie heard the warning in his voice, for she’d tried to escape through the bay each of the past two years. Clearly Rafal was still testing her new allegiance to him. Where had the crogs gone? she distracted herself, searching for the stymph-eating white crocodiles that once protected the moat. Then she glimpsed a flesh-eaten, disembodied snout floating along the bright green surface. The crogs had lasted about as long as the stymphs.
Sophie followed Rafal across the seashell floor, now artistically smattered with bloody splashes, while an old statue of a smiling, barechested merman, trident on his lap, had been rechiseled with a gnashed scowl, curled fists, and a trident poised to kill. Turning the corner, Sophie took in epic murals along the walls, once visions of Good’s most honorable victories, now flaunting different endings: a wolf biting into Red Riding Hood’s neck … a giant atop a beanstalk snapping Jack like a twig … Snow White and her dwarves facedown in blood … Captain Hook plunging his hook into Peter Pan’s heart …
Sophie knew she should be sickened by what she was seeing, but instead felt a mutinous thrill at the sight of Evil winning so defiantly, so matter-of-factly, as if Good was never supposed to win at all. How could she not take secret pleasure in the thought? Her whole life she’d tried to be Good. She’d tried to join their school where she thought she belonged. Only Good had rejected her, again and again until here she was, Queen of Evil … queen of the same school she once thought a mistake. Soaking in the last mural—Sleeping Beauty and her prince, lashed to a spinning wheel, set aflame by a black-caped witch—Sophie started to feel disoriented, as if she couldn’t remember the real endings anymore.
What if I’d learned these stories as a child? Would I have ever wanted to be Good?
Doesn’t matter, Sophie thought, breaking from her trance. “An inspired bit of redecorating, Rafal. But it still doesn’t make any of it true.”
“Says who?” he called back.
Sophie frowned at the murals. “Says the storybooks, obviously. I can paint an ending where I bask on a tropical island, serviced by well-muscled slaves. But it’s just a fantasy. All of these are fantasies. They don’t mean anything. The real endings already happened.”
Rafal turned. “And what about your kiss with Agatha? Or Agatha’s kiss with Tedros? Weren’t those real endings too? And yet here we are, back in your story, as if those endings never happened. Endings can change, my queen.”
He gazed out a window at the School for Old. “And change they must.”
Sophie could have sworn she heard a roar from deep within the Old castle, like a monster breaking out of its cage.
“The Deans are eager to meet you,” he said, heading towards the rear staircase. “They’ll take you to your class.”
Sophie didn’t move, hands on hips. “You said it yourself. Agatha and Tedros are on their way to kill you. I can’t be in class! I have to protect you … I’ll fight with you—”
“And who do you think will be your army against Agatha and Tedros, if not your class?” he said, not looking back.
“What? No one at this school even likes me—they’ll never listen to me—”
“On the contrary, they have to listen to you,” Rafal said, fading up the stairs.
Standing alone in the hallway, Sophie watched his shadow spiral up the banister. She groaned, glancing quickly at her schedule.
Sophie snorted, confused. “There’s a mistake on here—has my name for—”
“Your class.”
Your class.
No.
Not possible.
Sophie dropped the schedule like a stone.
“I’m a teacher?”
(#ulink_80ca3dab-51e4-5220-926c-21e33db4e801)
he path through webbed trees was so narrow and dark that the three Evers had to travel one behind the other, like ducks out of a pond. While Tedros fixed his gold fingerglow on Princess Uma ahead, he kept peeking back at Agatha, whose gold fingerglow was pinned on him.
“Stop checking on me,” Agatha finally snapped.
“Oh, no, it’s just … I didn’t remember our glows matching so much,” Tedros fumbled and quickly turned around.
Agatha didn’t answer. For one thing, she was sick of his worried glances and sugar-sweet conversation, as if she was about to have a nervous breakdown or drown herself in the nearest pond. For another, she didn’t feel like talking to anyone (least of all about inane color symmetries), anxious the conversation might drift back to her mother. But most of all, she was preoccupied with wresting Sophie away from the School Master, rehearsing again and again what she’d say to her best friend when they finally made it to school.
Tell her how much you miss her … or should I apologize first? … How do you apologize for ruining someone’s life? “Sorry I tried to banish you forever” … “Sorry I thought you were a witch” … “Sorry I never asked your mother’s name and I’m a crap friend …”
Agatha gulped. Oh, why drudge up the past? Just get her to destroy the ring and then focus on the future. The three of us at Camelot—a clean slate—
Agatha smiled, trying to be confident … and slowly deflated.
Apologize first.
Agatha tensed again. But suppose she won’t destroy the ring? she thought, remembering how handsome the young School Master was. She thinks he’s her true love, Uma had said, and Agatha knew from experience that Sophie wasn’t one to give up on love once she thought she’d found it. What if she’s happy without me? What if she doesn’t want me anymore?
“I’ll rescue Sophie when we find her,” Tedros broke in, as if he’d decoded her silence. “Not sure she’ll want you there, to be honest. Let me talk to her alone.”
Agatha looked up, aghast.
“For one thing, you’ve been through enough already, my love,” her prince added, hopping over a log. “Second, you tend to faint at crucial moments. And third, Sophie and I have our own special bond.”
Agatha followed him, stumbling over the log. “First of all, I’m fine. Second, I fainted once—”
“Twice: waltz class and by the lake—”
“And third, she’s my best friend—I’ll rescue her—”
“Look, it’s best if I do it,” Tedros said, walking faster. “You two seem to have serious communication issues.”
“And you two don’t?” Agatha said, chasing him.
“All you and Sophie ever do is fight—”
“Because it always involves you!”
“Well, without you, she and I get along just swell,” puffed Tedros.
“When have you two even had a conversation?” said Agatha.
“We were roommates last year—”
“When she was a boy!”
“What does that have to do with anything—”
“A boy you tried to kiss!”
Tedros whirled, beet red. “So? You’re allowed to kiss her and I’m not?”
“Not when she’s a boy!” Agatha barked.
“You kissed her when she was a girl!” roared Tedros—
“I like you two better when you’re quiet,” Princess Uma hissed, glaring from the path.
Tedros mumbled something about “females” and “hypocrites” and stamped ahead, no longer checking back on his princess.
For the next three hours, Uma, Tedros, and Agatha slogged and shivered single file through the Endless Woods, stopping only when Agatha collided with a tree (often) or Tedros needed to pee (even more often). (“What’s wrong with you?!” Agatha growled. “It’s cold!” Tedros yelled.) Agatha tried to ask her teacher about her mother’s past—had Callis been in a storybook? How did she end up in Gavaldon?—but Uma said there’d be time for questions once they made it to League Headquarters.
“League Headquarters?” frowned Tedros. “I thought we were going to school—”
“And who do you think will get you into school?” said Uma. “The School Master has turned the castles into a fortress of Evil. Try and enter alone and you will be dead before you breach the gates. Your mother knew the League of Thirteen is your only hope to get to Sophie alive.” Uma glanced worriedly at the sun. “Besides, you’ll be safe at Headquarters tonight. Won’t last a minute in the Woods after dark on your own.”
“Have you seen any other undead villains? Besides the wolf and giant?” Agatha said, trying to keep their teacher talking.
“Not yet.” Uma looked back at her. “Another reason to be quiet.”
Dawn blossomed to a crisp, windy morning, and the students no longer needed their fingerglows to see. As Agatha and Tedros moved deeper into the Woods, huddled in their cloaks, Agatha noticed an eerie green haze thicken the air, sour smelling and cold. It reminded her of the jellied mildew on her front porch, where Reaper collected his headless birds. Her stomach turned, thinking of her bald little cat, all alone in her house. She wrenched her focus back to the present, to the tree branches passing over her head, spindly and jointed … like a skeleton’s hands … ticking on her mother’s clock …
Agatha’s gut twisted deeper.
“When will it w-w-warm up?” Tedros asked, teeth chattering. “Sun’s acting like it’s half asleep.”
Indeed, Agatha had been waiting for the sun to brighten too, but with each hour, it stayed sickly pale, even as it rose higher in the sky. She began to notice cankered tree trunks and fragile ferns, a skeletal chipmunk quailed in mulch, and the corpses of a few malnourished crows. Agatha fingered a single flowering plum, quivering on a bare tree; it withered under her fingers and rotted to black.
“Agatha, look,” Tedros said.
She followed his eyes to a titanic wreckage of vines, trees, and glass thirty yards off the path, glittering in sun mist like an imploded greenhouse. Tedros deviated off the trail to get a closer look, Agatha tailing behind him. As she neared the colossal ruins, at least fifteen feet high, she glimpsed petals and leaves flaking off the tree trunks, catching the light like new blossoms in spring. But drawing closer, Agatha saw all these petals and leaves were dead, sprinkling the dirt between decaying blue frogs. Agatha ran her hands along one of the fallen trunks, her fingers tracing letters etched into the wood: HIBISCUS LINE.
“It’s a Flowerground train,” said Tedros, inspecting a dead vine. “Whole Forest seems to be dying. Maybe the sun’s too weak to keep any of the plants alive?”
Agatha didn’t answer, still riled up from their earlier spat.
“But why would the sun be any weaker than before?” Tedros prodded.
Silence hung awkwardly.
They both mumbled about getting on and spun from each other, as if to follow Princess Uma, but she was far ahead on the path, a miniature shadow, and they had to run after her when they realized she wasn’t going to stop.
They followed her through Willow Walk, Thicket Tumble, and Pumpkin Point, as rickety wooden signs named these parts, which all mirrored portions of the Blue Forest back at school, only bigger and drearier. Occasionally Uma stopped to let them eat a few sludgy meerworms from her pockets (Uma herself abstained, saying it’d be rude to eat her “friends”) or to ask a sparrow or chipmunk to guide them to the nearest pond, where they’d inhale palmfuls of brackish water. Still, for all the menace of the Woods, they didn’t come across anything that resembled a human being, let alone a zombie villain, and Agatha started to wonder if she’d imagined everything that had happened on Necro Ridge.
As if reflecting her easing mind, the tangled forest opened up the farther they went, with more air between trees and the thorny brush turning into a green carpet of grass, though Agatha could see slivers of yellow starting to creep in. When they passed a gilded plaque that said FOXWOOD, Uma’s shoulders noticeably relaxed, and soon the dirt path widened so that they could all walk together, breathing in clearer air and a tangibly safe feeling, as if they’d entered a protected realm.
“The oldest Ever kingdom,” Uma said, finally at ease.
Over the trees to the west, Agatha could see the thin spires of a golden castle shimmering like organ pipes, but her teacher was already steering them to the east, down denser paths.
“We’ll avoid the thoroughfares and go through the glens. Best to avoid you meeting any Evers for the time being.”
“Why’s that?” Agatha asked, but Uma was too busy gibbering to a passing bee.
By the late afternoon, they came upon a large stone well, its wooden roof draped in browning white roses, while a dove pecked at the dry bucket. Agatha brushed away the roses to read white words painted on the roof:
“League Headquarters is only an hour’s walk from here, so we’ll easily make it by sunset,” said Princess Uma, slipping a meerworm in front of the dove. The dove perked up at the sight of Uma and chirped back brightly. “He says that with the School Master’s return, Evers have been keeping out of the Woods. But he knew I’d still come to check on my friends.”
The dove peered at Agatha and Tedros and let out a few inquisitive tweets.
“Yes, sweetie, they’re the ones,” nodded Uma, stroking the dove, and the bird gave the young couple nervous glances, adding a few whispered peeps. “He hears you’re the Evers destined to vanquish the School Master.” Uma held in a grin. “And he thinks your children will look very … interesting.”
Tedros laughed. Agatha didn’t.
“Might as well show you Snow’s house along the way,” Uma said, forging up the trail. “Princes occupied it after the Boy Eviction, until the School Master returned and the girls begged all the boys to come back and help protect the kingdoms. Turns out all it takes to bring enemies to peace is a bigger enemy. Probably hasn’t been anyone here in weeks, then. I used to have sooo many friends at Cottage White, you know—sheep, pigs, even horses! Always wanted to bring my classes here to talk to them, but Clarissa said the animals in the Blue Forest were perfectly adequate for lessons. She’s never liked field trips. Thinks the students spend all their time kissing behind trees.” Uma fluttered ahead. “A bit true, I suppose.”
As Agatha watched her go, Tedros slid next to his princess. “Just hear me out. I don’t mean to say you’re not as good friends with Sophie as I am—”
“You barely know her,” Agatha fired.
“Can you listen for two seconds without trying to eat me?” Tedros shot back.
Agatha fumed quietly.
“Look, both of us know you’re her best friend. That you’re the one who’s spent the most time with her,” said Tedros. “But you don’t understand why Sophie took his ring in the first place. Sophie just wants to be loved, okay? She’s willing to embrace the darkest Evil, all so that she doesn’t end up alone. I know how much pain is inside her, because she told me. Pain she would never confess to you, because she doesn’t want you to see it.”
“You think Sophie’s more honest with you than with me?” asked Agatha.
“It’s more complicated than that. Sophie thought I loved her once, Agatha. She thought I was her prince. You told me yourself: all Sophie ever wanted was a happy ending that looked just like ours. If you talk to her, she’ll never destroy that ring. She’ll compare herself to you and all those feelings will come up. She’ll feel like a third wheel to you and me. She’ll feel alone.”
“And let me guess: only you can make her destroy his ring,” Agatha needled.
“Yes,” Tedros said fervently. “Because I can make her see that if she comes with us, she’ll still have a chance at true love one day, even if it isn’t with him. I can make her see how beautiful and vibrant and alive she is … how soft and clever and fun and …” He smiled, lost in his memory of her. “I can make her feel loved in a way you can’t.”
Agatha took in her prince’s glazed smile as he stared off in space. He used to look at her the same way once. Now he was talking about another girl with that very same look.
Tedros blinked out of his trance and saw Agatha burning pink.
“I rescue her alone. Got it?” she said, shoving past him and trundling up the path, before she stopped and glowered back. “And if you ever dare faint anywhere near me, I’m not catching you!”
Tedros snorted. “Princes don’t faint!”
Agatha gritted her teeth and stormed ahead, until she caught up with her teacher.
Princess Uma gave her a look and glanced at Tedros, muttering to himself a ways behind. “Ever Afters always look so easy in storybooks, don’t they?”
“Sometimes I feel like he needs a real princess,” murmured Agatha.
“Have you been a ghost all this time and I haven’t known it?”
“You know what I mean. I feel like deep down, he wants someone pretty and bubbly and who treats him like a prince.” Agatha peeked up at her teacher. “Someone whose kids won’t look so interesting.”
“I had a prince with shiny hair and a small nose like me and who I always put first,” Uma replied. “Ever After wasn’t any easier.”
“You had a prince?”
“Kaveen, Prince of Shazabah. Aladdin’s great-grandson. Saved me from a hive of bloodsucking bees during the Trial by Tale my first year. The bees nearly killed him and Kaveen lost his chance to win Captain … but in the end, he’d won me. Clarissa used to catch us hiding in the library after curfew. That tortoise was always asleep and there’s this cushy little nook behind the Love Spells shelf. Our initials are still carved into the wood.” She smiled, reminiscing. “After we were married, I was kidnapped by a warlock from Netherwood, intent on ransoming me back to my prince. Part of me knew I should wait for Kaveen to come and rescue me. But I couldn’t risk my prince’s life! Suppose Kaveen got hurt? Suppose the warlock killed him?” Uma’s caramel eyes glistened. “A white stag from the Woods answered my call for help. He ripped the warlock through his heart with his horns and battled his henchmen while I escaped. By the time Kaveen arrived, I was already free.”
“I remember seeing it in a painting,” Agatha said, for Uma had presented her storybook the first day of school. “It was your happy ending.”
“Looks like it on a page, doesn’t it?” her teacher said softly. “The Storian wrote the triumph of Princess Uma for all to hear—only my prince wasn’t a part of it. I became legendary for my deep friendship with the animals, while Kaveen was endlessly taunted for arriving to save his princess too late. A princess famous for all time and her prince, a failure. No one sees that in a storybook, do they?” She paused. “He never said he blamed me, of course. But the stress slowly takes its toll, day after day, until one day you realize you’re always fighting or ignoring each other and you can’t go back to the way it was before. Your happy ending no longer feels happy at all.”
A hot rash rose on Agatha’s neck. “What happens then?”
“Then you’re both better off with someone else, aren’t you? Or even alone …” Uma’s voice cracked. “Like me.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “Once happiness is gone between two people, I don’t think it ever comes back.”
“But … but it has to come back!” Agatha fought. “That’s why Tedros and I came back—to be happy together—”
Uma smiled sadly. “Then you’ll have to prove me wrong, won’t you?”
Agatha shook her head. “But you’re a real princess! If you couldn’t keep your prince, then how can—”
“Does Snow White still live in the cottage?” Tedros piped, busting in between them.
Agatha cleared her throat. Uma dabbed at her eyes with her pink sleeve. “A queen in a cottage? Don’t be silly,” she pooh-poohed, walking quicker. “Snow lives in the king’s castle, the one you saw before. She’s on her own now, since the king died of a snakebite five years back and her dwarf friends are scattered in other kingdoms, rich and well taken care of. When the School Master returned, the League offered to shelter Snow at Headquarters, but she said she was quite happy in her new life and had no intention of revisiting the old.”
“What does the League have to do with Snow White’s old life?” asked Agatha.
“And why would the League protect someone whose story is over?” Tedros scoffed—
A chilling, high-pitched scream tore through the Woods.
The three Evers stopped dead, looking up at a long, eight-foot-high wall of wilting lilacs, stretching out at the end of the path.
The scream came from behind it.
“We’ll take another route!” Uma panicked. “Let’s use the— Tedros! What are you doing?!”
Tedros hustled towards the hedge. “Sounded like a girl’s cry for help.”
Speechless, Uma whirled to Agatha. “Come, follow m— Agatha!”
“If he’s going to rescue a random girl, I should keep my eye on him, don’t you think?” said Agatha.
Uma was about to level them both with a stun spell, but it was too late; they were already clawing through the lilacs. “‘Rescue them from a grave’—those were my orders,” Uma puffed as she smushed through the flower wall after them. “Not ‘chase grandstanding princes’ or ‘manage jealous girlfrien—’”
She came through and froze. Agatha and Tedros stood rigid next to her.
Nestled into the back of a clearing, Cottage White lay ahead, half in shadow, two stories of lumpy wood, with a coned, pink roof shaped like a princess’s cap. An explosion of colorful shrubs and flowers had grown untended on the roof and first-story eaves, and rain had bled the colors into the wood, so that the house had the tint of a rainbow on all its sides. In the front garden, amidst the unkempt blooms and a meeting post for tours, there were seven pairs of brass shoes laid out in a row, tarnished and dented, a tribute to seven old dwarves who’d gone on to new lives. Only now, as the three Evers stared out at fourteen shoes that were supposed to be empty, they saw they weren’t empty at all.
Before each brass pair lay a dwarf’s body, facedown in a puddle of blood. Each was dressed in a tunic of a solid color from head to toe, with matching velvet nightcaps, their tiny feet perfectly fitted into the sculpted shoes.
From the pallor of their hands and the stiffness of their legs, it was clear at once they were all dead.
“No … not … not possible—” Uma gasped, stumbling back.
“You said they were g-g-gone from here!” Agatha stuttered, recoiling against the hedge.
“For decades!” Uma choked out. “Someone must have—someone must have brought them back—”
“What monster would bring dwarves back just to kill them?” said Agatha.
Uma looked at her, blank.
“Well, whoever did it is gone,” rasped Tedros, scanning the Woods around them. He bucked up, struggling to act the prince. “I’ll, um, check if any of them are still alive.”
Uma rushed after him. “If so, we must bring them back to the League!”
Agatha stayed behind, gaping at the bodies and bright red puddles. Death everywhere: dwarves … Crypt Keeper … her mother … She spun away, bursting into chills, trying not to connect them. Heaving tight breaths, she focused on the grass under her feet, on her chapped, tingling fingers, until her mind slowed enough for her to think. Who would take all the trouble to bring seven dwarves from different places back to their old home? Who would kill them in cold blood and organize their bodies so precisely? Agatha shook her head, thinking of that horrible scream for help. Who could be so grotesque … so Evil—
Agatha’s heart stopped.
That scream.
High-pitched. Female.
It hadn’t been a dwarf’s.
Slowly Agatha lifted her eyes to Snow White’s cottage, like a moth finding a flame.
Neither her prince nor her teacher noticed her move from the hedges, nor the door creaking in the wind, as they went on from dwarf to dwarf, listening to each small heart.
By the time Tedros heard the silence of the last, Agatha was already inside.
(#ulink_af67b346-682f-5e41-bd71-12424afdc427)
he first thing Agatha noticed about Snow White’s house is that it smelled like Sophie. Standing in the shadowed doorway, she closed her eyes and inhaled the scent … lavender cotton candy … vanilla-coated fog …
The pink front door shivered and groaned behind her. She’d left it open and she could hear Tedros and Uma in the garden, debating what to do with the bodies. She didn’t know why she hadn’t made Tedros check the house with her; perhaps after their argument in the Woods, she wanted to do something without him … or perhaps she wanted to test if he’d even notice her gone … or perhaps she’d spent so much of the journey acting touchy and weak that she wanted to make up for it … Whatever the reason, here she was, all alone, looking for whoever made that scream.
Agatha opened her eyes. On a breath, she forged deeper into the house.
The living room had a snuggly feel to it, with a sooty fireplace facing big-armed calico chairs, a fluffy red-brown rug made out of hawk feathers, a shelf of gemstones, seashells, and animal eggs beneath a shut, slatted window, and a steep, stumpy wooden staircase in the back corner, barricaded with red velvet rope. Agatha peered at a brass plaque on the wall:
Behind the den, the kitchen was roped off, just like the staircase, but Agatha peeked in to see a dusty, deserted nook, no footprints on the floor or signs of life, except for a few flies milling around a leaky faucet.
“Agatha?” Tedros called outside. “Where are you?”
Agatha sighed, stomach relaxing. The scream must have been one of the dwarves’ after all. She shuddered at such a morbid thought and hustled towards the front door, determined to get to League Headquarters. Whoever this League was, her mother had trusted them to help her. “You must save Sophie as Stefan saved you,” Callis’ voice echoed—
Agatha stopped cold in the foyer.
A creak echoed somewhere upstairs …
Then it went quiet.
Slowly she raised her eyes to the ceiling.
She knew a sensible princess would have called her prince, but instead, she was moving into the den again, slipping off her clumps one by one before she left them on the lambskin chair. She felt her bare toes rake through the feathers of the rug, her eyes pinned on the ceiling until she squeezed under the rope at the rear of the room. She slid up the stairs on her hands and knees like a cat, taking time between steps, so the cricks and cracks of the stairs were camouflaged by the swinging squeaks of the front door.
At the top of the stairs was a narrow hallway with two rooms. Agatha rose up carefully and peeked into the first. Seven small beds lay in a cramped row, as if in an orphanage hall, each neatly made with different colored sheets, matching the tunics of the seven dead bodies outside.
Agatha felt a rush of sadness. Death had been rare to her before last night and now it followed her like a shroud. What was it like to be alive one moment—like her mother, like the Crypt Keeper, like these seven helpers of Good—and then be gone the next? What happens to all your thoughts, your fears, your dreams? What happens to all the love you’ve yet to give? Her body quivered, as if she’d gone too deep, and she was suddenly aware of the stillness around her. Why am I still here? she berated herself, turning around. Tedros would be worried sick by now. Quickly she stepped out of the dwarves’ quarters and leaned over to check the next room—
Agatha grabbed the wall in shock.
In a frost-white bedroom, a frail female’s body lay facedown on the wood floor, her head hidden under the canopied bed. A crystal crown gleamed on its side nearby, as if it’d tumbled off her when she fell. But the dead woman wasn’t what made Agatha gape in horror.
An old crone in black was kneeling next to the body. She had red eyes and a pig nose, a patchwork of stitches, and brown, shriveled flesh flaking off her, just like Red Riding Hood’s wolf and Jack’s giant in the Woods. In her clawlike hand, she clutched a musty storybook, pulled open to its last page: a painting of a prince kissing Snow White back to life, while seven dwarves smiled on blissfully, a dead witch on the ground behind them.
A dead witch that looked just like the old crone holding the storybook.
“That was the old,” the witch purred, leering at the book’s last page …
Before Agatha’s eyes, the painting magically redrew, until the old witch now crouched over Snow White’s dead body instead, the dwarves behind her all slain.
“And this is the new,” the witch grinned.
Agatha’s focus swung back to the corpse half-hidden under the bed … to the royal crown askew … and a deep dread snaked up her spine, remembering something Jack’s giant had said on Necro Ridge …
“Should be out fixin’ our stories like the others.”
“He’ll give us a turn at our stories soon enough,” Red Riding Hood’s wolf had answered.
The witch snapped the storybook shut with a triumphant cackle, jolting Agatha out of her thoughts. She glanced up to see the hag rearing to her feet, her back angled to the door—
“Agatha!” Tedros’ voice yelled outside.
The witch dropped the book to the floor. Before Agatha could move, she spun and met her eyes with a lethal stare.
Agatha shrank into the hall’s corner, flattening against the wall.
The witch drew a thin, jewel-handled dagger from her cloak, caked with dried blood.
Agatha whirled towards the staircase. Too far to run. She spun back to see the witch prowl towards her, trapping her in the corner. Agatha’s finger glowed gold with terror, the witch ten feet away, but she couldn’t remember a single spell from class. Agatha opened her mouth to scream for her prince. The witch was too fast. She hurled the knife for Agatha’s throat like a bullet—
With a cry, Agatha shot a ray of gold light from her finger and the knife turned into a peach-petaled daisy, floating to the floor.
Gulping breaths, Agatha stared at the flower, thankful Sophie had used the hex against her first year. It was the only spell she’d never forget.
“Agatha!” Tedros shouted again.
Agatha looked up urgently, but it was too late. The witch slammed her against the wall, appallingly powerful, reeking of decay, and held her up by the throat with her liver-spotted hand. Breath choked, Agatha glimpsed the charred scars across the witch’s ankles and legs. “Ordered to dance … until she fell dead …,” Agatha remembered, struggling to stay conscious as the witch squeezed her neck harder. She and Sophie once danced in red-hot shoes too … a first-year punishment from Yuba … Or was it second year? … Agatha could feel her mind fading, the witch’s thumb crushing her windpipe. She tried to think of Sophie’s face as they danced … her helpless face, those suffering eyes … Darkness strangled her, pulling her under. No … please … not yet … Sophie—I’ll save—you—
A bolt of will flashed through her and she sank her teeth into the witch’s bony arm and bit as hard as she could. The old crone shrieked and let go. Agatha doubled over, gagging and wheezing, the witch still gaping at her, as if biting wasn’t part of a Good girl’s playbook, as if this greasy-haired, bug-eyed punk might be one of Evil’s after all—
Agatha kneed her in the gut and dove for the stairs, about to reach the first step, only to feel the witch’s boot crush the back of her leg. Agatha buckled to the floor, slamming her nose into the wood. She felt the hot blood seeping out of it and staunched it with her hand as she twirled around to defend against the witch—
But the hallway was empty, the witch gone.
Agatha hobbled to the edge of the stairs. The den was as quiet as when she came in, the slatted window over the bookshelf wide open and blowing in the breeze.
Tedros burst through the front door, his face cherry red. “Agatha, where are—” He saw her on the staircase and flushed two shades redder. “DO YOU WANT ME TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK! I’M SCREAMING LIKE A FOOL, NOT KNOWING IF YOU’RE ALIVE OR DEAD, AND HERE YOU ARE PLAYING HIDE-AND-SEEK LIKE A CHILD ON A PLAYGROUND, LOOKING A HOLY BLOODY MESS AND—”
Tedros’ face changed.
“Agatha,” he whispered, looking very scared. “Why are you bleeding?”
Agatha shook her head, tears welling, hyperventilating too fast to talk—
A cry came from outside.
Agatha and Tedros went rigid with twin gasps. “Uma.”
Instantly, the prince dashed out the door, Agatha racing behind him—
Princess Uma sat against a tree, near the dwarves’ corpses, her eyes spooked wide and legs out straight like a porcelain doll’s.
Tedros skidded to his knees in front of her, jostling her by the shoulders. Uma didn’t move. “What’s wrong with her!” he cried.
Agatha landed next to him and touched Uma’s face. Her fingers made a hollow sound on her teacher’s ashen skin. “Petrification,” she said, remembering the curse once used against the teachers.
“What’s the counterspell?” her prince pushed.
Agatha paled. “Only the one who casts the spell can reverse it.” She looked at Tedros. “That witch … that witch did it—”
“What witch?” Tedros pressed, but Agatha was frantically scouring the deserted glen … She slumped. They’d never find that old hag. Princess Uma was as good as dead.
Not her too. Not our only hope. Agatha tuned out a bird’s loud chirps and sank her face in her hands. How do we get to Sophie now?
“Agatha …”
“Not now,” she whispered, head throbbing with fear, grief, and strident birdcalls.
“Agatha, look …”
Agatha spun. “I said not no—”
She frowned.
The dove from the well was in the prince’s lap tweeting angrily at both of them.
“What’s it saying?” Tedros asked her.
“How should I know?”
“You’re the one who took Animal Communication!”
“And burned down the school in the process—”
Agatha stopped because the dove was drawing in the dirt with its wing. “Why is he drawing an elephant?”
The dove let out a torrent of chirps, furiously modifying his picture.
“It’s a weasel,” Tedros guessed. “Look at the ears.”
“No, it’s a moose—”
“Or a raccoon.”
The dove was apoplectic now, slashing more lines.
“Oh. A rabbit,” said Agatha.
“Definitely a rabbit,” Tedros agreed.
He looked at Agatha. “Why’s he drawing a rabbit?”
The dove rolled his eyes and stabbed his wing ahead.
Tedros and Agatha turned and saw a fat, balding white rabbit glaring at them from behind a tree, wearing a dirty blue waistcoat with a silver swan crest over the heart, a hideous white cravat, and crooked spectacles low on his nose. The rabbit yanked a pocketwatch out of his coat, pointed crabbily at it, and scampered down a dirt path out of the glen.
“Um. I think he wants us to follow him,” said Agatha.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” said Tedros, slinging Uma over his shoulder and lumbering ahead. “Stay any longer and we might end up as dead as those dwarves.”
“But shouldn’t we know where he’s taking us?” Agatha called out. “We can’t just follow a strange animal in a scarf—”
“Sooner we follow him, sooner we find someone who knows how to unpetrify a teacher,” her prince called back.
They followed the rabbit through inky trees as blackness swept over the Woods like a plague, the sun offering no resistance against the night. Soon they could barely see at all, and if it wasn’t for the rabbit’s corpulent pace, they’d have lost him in the dark. Ominous howls and low screams crackled ahead of them and Agatha tried to ignore the skitters and slithers in the underbrush lining the path. Yellow and red eyes peeped overhead like malevolent stars, warning her that danger was coming and coming fast. If only we knew where League Headquarters was, Agatha thought miserably. Her mother had sacrificed her life to make sure they reached the League … and I didn’t bother to ask Uma where it was? Why didn’t I have a backup plan in case something happened? Why can’t I think straight? Now instead of finding the one place where they’d be safe tonight, they were on some wild-goose chase, carrying a petrified teacher and chasing a time-obsessed bunny to who knows where. With Tedros lagging under Uma’s weight, Agatha kept pace with the rabbit for more than an hour, silently punishing herself for their predicament, until she finally glimpsed a wisp of white smoke emanating through pine trees ahead.
Drawing closer, Agatha began to smell a faint tinge of sandalwood mixed with a familiar scent she couldn’t quite place, and as they moved into a tiny clearing, she saw that the smoke plumes were coming from a hole in the dirt, half-covered with dead fern fronds. The rabbit kicked the ferns aside and disappeared down the burrow, before peeking his face through the gap impatiently.
Agatha paused, reluctant to follow a stranger into a hole—
Tedros barreled right by her. “Nothin’ to lose,” he mumbled.
Before Agatha could argue, her prince lowered Uma into the hole and slid in behind her. Irritated, Agatha lowered herself down after him, landing awkwardly in darkness before Tedros caught her into his chest, soaking her with sweat. He smells good, Agatha noticed, inhaling his minty fresh scent. How could a boy possibly smell like spring fields after everything they’d just been through? She suddenly thought of Sophie, who’d smelled of honeycream even after traipsing up Graves Hill in the worst heat. Maybe that’s why Tedros missed Sophie, Agatha thought bitterly … they could lie around all day sniffing each other, flawless gold-haired idols, while here she was, a “holy bloody mess,” reeking of stress, dirt, and undead witch—
“Anyone here?” Tedros called.
Agatha snapped to attention, embarrassed by her thoughts. It was pitch-black in the hole, the rabbit nowhere to be seen.
“Hello?” Tedros echoed.
Nothing answered him.
The prince held out his hand and felt a wall of solid earth in front of him. “Why do we always end up in dirt?”
Agatha’s stomach rumbled. “Maybe the dove was telling us to eat the rabbit instead of follow him.”
“Or maybe the rabbit was telling us to leave Uma here, while we go look for League Headquarters.”
“You want us to dump a petrified teacher in a hole and leave?” said Agatha, flabbergasted.
“It’s not like she’s going anywhere.”
“Suppose you’ll dump me in a hole the moment I’m inconvenient too,” Agatha murmured, strangely confessional in the dark.
“Huh?”
“Then you can go get your sweet-smelling, beautiful, vibrant Sophie all alone,” Agatha vented, unable to stop herself.
“You didn’t happen to eat any strange mushrooms on the way, did you?”
“Go ahead, laugh. You can name your children Blond and Blonder.”
“Never pegged you as a jealous type,” Tedros marveled.
“Jealous? Why? Because you almost kissed her as a boy and a girl? Because you can make her feel loved in a way that I can’t? Me? Jealous?” Agatha ranted, thoroughly ashamed of herself now.
“Isn’t Sophie supposed to be the crazy one?”
“Bet you wouldn’t leave her in a dark pit—”
“And we thought Tweedledee and Tweedledum were hopeless,” said a hoary voice.
Agatha and Tedros choked, recognizing it at once, and twirled to see a torch spark to flame in the grip of a white-bearded gnome wearing a belted green coat with a silver swan over the heart and a pointy orange hat. A gnome Agatha thought had been killed in a fire, but now here he was, alive in a secret den. She burst into a smile, glowing with relief—
Yuba didn’t smile back. “First you lose a teacher because you fail to protect each other in the face of mortal danger. Then you fight so often and loudly that you’ve alerted the entire Woods as to your whereabouts. Now you’re so busy insulting each other that you forget to use a simple glow spell to illuminate your surroundings in the time that a Cave Troll could have bashed both your heads to smithereens. If it wasn’t for a rabbit rescuing you from yourselves, you two nincompoops would be dead before dawn,” he lashed, fingers twitching on his white staff as if he wanted to beat them with it. “A Bad Group is one thing. But you two Evers might just be the Worst Evers … Ever.”
Agatha and Tedros looked down, humiliated.
Yuba sighed. “Lucky for you, the League needs you as much as you need it.”
Torches roared to flame, lighting up a squad of strangers behind him in a giant cave headquarters the size of a small house.
“Presenting the honorable League of Thirteen, legendary legion of Good and Enlightenment,” Yuba proclaimed with an imperious smile, clearly expecting the Evers to look impressed, awed, or at least grateful for the glorious platoon that they had come all this way to see.
Agatha and Tedros blanched in horror instead.
Because the League of Thirteen that was their only hope to save Sophie, the League of Thirteen that was their only hope to stay alive … were all very, very old.
(#ulink_a0d702b6-dd8f-5686-9066-37b687d73236)
ou’ve got to be kidding,” Tedros cracked, as he and Agatha goggled at the saggy, ancient crew.
Agatha counted four men and four women—a geriatric gang of liver spots, turkey necks, hairy ears, foggy eyes, yellowed teeth, beady grins, bony limbs, and heads of sparse, colorless, or poorly dyed hair. Two of the eight were in rickety wheelchairs, three had walking canes, two were hunched and bandy-legged, and one was a morbidly obese woman in a muumuu, slathering on makeup at a mirror.
All of them had silver swan crests over their hearts, like Uma, Yuba, and the White Rabbit, badges of membership to a League her mother had trusted with her daughter’s life.
She sent us here for a reason, thought Agatha desperately. Would they rip off masks, revealing invincible warriors? Would they magically turn young like the School Master? Agatha held her breath, waiting and praying for something to happen …
The League blinked back, like fish in an aquarium, waiting for something to happen too.
“Told ya they wouldn’t recognize us,” grumped the fat woman at the mirror.
“Recognize you?” In the reflection, Agatha glimpsed the woman’s pink, hoggish pallor, squinty green eyes, wide jowls, hideously rouged cheeks, and nest of flat curls that she’d tried to dye brown and had turned blue instead. She looked like a doll salvaged from the bottom of a swimming pool. “I’m quite sure I’ve never seen you—or any of you—in my life,” Agatha said, scanning the group. She turned to Tedros, hoping he’d seen something in them she hadn’t, but her prince was red as a fire ant, about to explode.
“This is who’s supposed to get us to Sophie?” he barked, blue eyes raking the puke-colored carpet, flower-patterned sofas, moth-eaten curtains, and thirteen hard, thin mattresses split into two rows. “A retirement home for the about-to-be dead?”
Yuba yanked him to the corner. “How dare you speak that way to the League!” he hissed, peeking to make sure the others couldn’t hear. “You know the lengths I’ve gone to find them? To bring them here? And here you act as if they have to introduce themselves to you like common folk—you, a boy who has no accomplishments to his name—”
“Tell that to a king in a few weeks!” Tedros bellowed.
“You arrogant prat! The way you’ve bungled things, you won’t make it a few days, let alone to a coronation!” Yuba shot back.
“First thing I’ll do is outlaw old gnomes!”
“Listen, my mother knew the League would help us,” Agatha broke in, giving Tedros a “calm-down” look. “That’s why she wrote them. So clearly we’re missing something—”
“Yeah, like people who aren’t a thousand years old!” Tedros lashed, earning another miffed look from his princess. “What,” he said, turning his fury on her. “We barely escape our own execution, then we learn our best friend loves an Evil sorcerer, then we travel night and day, surviving zombies and witches and graves, all to find a League your mother promised would get us to Sophie and this is it? Bollocks. Let’s go. Better chance of breaking into the school ourselves—”
“She was my mother, Tedros,” Agatha said. “And I trust her more than anyone in this world to know what’s best for us. Even you.”
Tedros fell quiet.
Agatha glanced back and saw the old, swan-crested strangers completely ignoring them now, knitting, reading, napping, card playing, and pulling out false teeth to eat their gruel. Her faith in her mother suddenly wavered.
“Listen to me, both of you,” said Yuba. “When our thirteenth member returns, your questions will be answered. Until then, you both need some strong turnip tea and a bowl of oat porridge. Having survived in the Woods these last few months after 115 years of sanctuary at school, I know firsthand how intense your journey must have been—”
“Thirteenth member?” Agatha skimmed the room. “I only count eight.” Then she noticed the White Rabbit in the corner, slicing a carrot into fifths on a plate, the silver swan over his heart glimmering in torchlight. “Um, nine.”
“Ten, actually,” said Tedros, and Agatha followed his eyes to the silver swan on Yuba’s green coat.
“A founding member of the League,” the gnome puffed proudly. “And Uma makes eleven, of course, and—” Yuba flushed. “Uma! Goodness me!” He whirled to the Princess petrified in the corner. “Leaving her there like a house cat! Tink! Tink, where are you!”
Something snored loudly behind Agatha and she turned to see a pear-shaped fairy the size of a fist bolt awake and fall off a dirty ottoman. The fairy craned up groggily, with poufy gray hair, a green dress eight sizes too small, ragged gold wings, and garish red lipstick. Eyes darting right and left as if she knew she was supposed to be awake but had no idea why, she spotted Uma frozen in the corner and yelped, flapping and sputtering towards her like a dying bee. Then she slipped her hand into her dress, snatched a handful of what looked like moldy soot, and dumped it goonishly over Uma’s head.
Nothing happened.
“Dad took me to Ali Baba’s harem for my birthday once. This is so much more embarrassing,” Tedros mumbled, stomping towards the entrance hole to leave—
Uma coughed behind him. Tedros swiveled to see the princess levitating three feet off the ground, her skin filling out from pasty white to its usual rich olive color. Uma stretched her smooth, lithe arms into the air with a yawn, smiled at the fairy glassily … and collapsed to the ground, asleep once more.
“Here you were worried about your fairy dust being too old, Tink,” Yuba chuckled, patting the fairy’s head.
The fairy still looked gloomy and spurted squeaky gibberish.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Tink. You can’t expect to have the same stamina as when you were sixteen. Besides, we didn’t need Uma to fly from here to Shazabah; we just needed your dust to unpetrify her. A few sound hours of sleep and she’ll be good as new. Now where were we,” the gnome mulled, turning back to the Evers. “Oh yes, rabbit makes nine, Uma makes ten, I make eleven, and Tinkerbell makes twelve, so that just leaves—”
“Tinkerbell?” Agatha blurted.
“The real Tinkerbell?” asked Tedros, staring at the fairy’s mottled face, potbelly, and ash-colored hair. “But she’s so … so …”
Agatha gave him a lethal look, but it was too late. Tinkerbell burst into sobs and hid under an ottoman.
“He didn’t mean it, Tink,” Yuba huffed and smacked Tedros in the backside with his staff.
“I don’t understand,” Agatha said, bewildered. “What is Tinkerbell doing here?”
“Really found yourselves some smarties, didn’t you, Yuba,” said a bald, skinny man in a green vest with elfish ears and delicate features, knitting a lime-green sock. “Still can’t see who we are.”
“Maybe we need to count your rings like a tree,” Tedros muttered, rubbing his behind.
“Go ahead, make all the old jokes you want, pretty boy,” the bald man fired. “As if you won’t get to our age yourself someday.”
“Well, it seems our two amateurs need introductions after all,” Yuba scolded, giving Tedros and Agatha furious scowls before shoving them into two of the rocking chairs. He turned back to his League. “Who wants to go first?”
“Don’t see why we should introduce ourselves,” the sock-knitting man crabbed. “Don’t see why we should let these two stay here at all.”
Yuba exhaled impatiently. “Because these two Evers are our only hope to—”
“What’s the point? You heard the boy. We’re on death’s door anyway,” the bald man pouted.
“Oh come now,” Yuba said, softening. “What’d you say when I came to fetch you from Neverland? Holed up in your tree house all alone, refusing to join the League, even when I told you your life was in terrible danger. But then I told you about these two young Evers and you lit up like a little boy. Told me you’d do anything to be around young people again … that they were the only ones who ever truly understood you, Peter …”
Peter looked up at Yuba, blue eyes glistening. Then he looked back down. “Tink made me come,” he muttered. The fairy squealed in protest and pelted him with a lump of gruel.
Agatha and Tedros gawped at each other. Peter? Peter Pan?
“I’m with Peter,” boomed the huge, blue-haired woman, spinning from the mirror. “Not even out of school, these little brats. Should be lickin’ our feet and beggin’ for autographs! Instead they somehow get their own fairy tale—students! a fairy tale!—and now that tale’s got its panties in a knot, wakin’ our old villains from the dead and draggin’ us straight out of our Ever Afters—”
“Ever Afters! Ha!” chimed a gangly, high-voiced man in suspenders and beige breeches, with big, twinkly eyes, a long nose, and a full head of white hair. Tiny round scars marked all the joints of his long, tanned limbs, as if he’d once been screwed together. “First of all, Peter can barely leave his house he’s so depressed at growing up. Second, I’d never have wished to be a real boy if the Blue Fairy told me real boys end up with arthritis and bad eyes and permanent constipation. And third, Ella told me herself she preferred sweeping cinders to being a queen.”
“When did I ever say that?” the fat woman squawked.
“Last night,” the long-nosed man replied, looking surprised by her question. “You drank a barrel of wine and told me you miss cleaning for your stepsisters, because at least you felt useful and stayed fit and now you’re old and bored and big as a house—”
“WHO ASKED YOU?” thundered the woman. “YOU SPENT HALF YOUR LIFE AS A PUPPET!”
“First they get mad at me for lying. Now they get mad at me for telling the truth,” moped the long-nosed man, curling into a sofa.
Agatha’s and Tedros’ eyes bulged even wider. “Pinocchio?” said Tedros.
“Cinderella?” said Agatha.
“Don’t give me that face,” Cinderella sneered back at her. “For bein’ Camelot’s supposed future queen, you ain’t much to look at yourself.” Her hawkish green eyes shot down to Agatha’s clumps. “Bet no one wants to see those feet in glass slippers.”
“Hey now! She’s my princess!” Tedros jumped in.
“I don’t blame you, handsome,” Cinderella smirked, voice smooth as an eel. “Your daddy didn’t have good taste in girls either.”
Tedros looked like he’d been kicked in the pants.
Yuba sighed. “Professor Dovey had just as much faith in Agatha as she did in you, Ella. So I suggest you treat our guests with respect—”
“We have the respect when these two studenten fix the mess!” croaked a wild-haired, hunchbacked man in a wheelchair with owlish gray eyes and a harsh foreign accent. “Think they’re special because Storian writes their story? Well, at least our stories have end, yes? But these two change ending again and again—‘Are we heppy yet?’ ‘Are we heppy yet?’ Bah. Fools! Now see! School Master young, Evil redoing stories, and dead witch hunting me I have to kill all over again—”
“I killed her, Hansel and I am not killing smelly witch again,” said a wild-haired woman in a wheelchair next to him with the same accent, her big gray eyes flaying Agatha and Tedros. “Your story bringing villains out of graves, your responsibility put them back.” She smiled phonily. “And I’m Gretel, since the bossy little gnome said we must introduce ourselves.”
“Which leaves me and Briar Rose (or Sleeping Beauty for the uneducated Reader), who were planning our fairy-tale wedding until you came along,” said a freckle-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a brown tunic and white lederhosen. He was holding hands with an elegant, white-haired woman in a revealing puce gown. “Now we’re hiding from my man-eating giant and Rose’s curse-obsessed fairy—”
“When Jack and I should be picking out a cake,” Briar Rose glared.
“That makes seven of us who think these young twerps should sleep in the Woods,” trumped Cinderella.
Tink squeaked.
“Eight,” said Cinderella.
Tedros and Agatha gawked at the gang of famous old fairy-tale heroes who just voted them out of their cave.
“It’s why I tried to avoid you meeting Evers on the trails …” Uma yawned in the corner. “Everyone blames you for messing up the Woods.” She fell back asleep.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think they’re adorable,” chirped a short, big-bottomed old woman with a dyed brown bob and a red-hooded cape. “Isn’t that what being old is for? Mentoring younger folk to get through their stories?”
“Oh go back to granny’s, you blithering ass,” growled Cinderella.
Red Riding Hood shut up.
“You all act as if we don’t need our young guests,” Yuba’s voice slashed through the cave.
Everyone twirled to see the old gnome standing in front of the moth-holed curtain hanging across the cave wall, the White Rabbit standing at his side like a magician’s assistant. “Let me remind you that one week ago, the School Master placed his ring on his queen’s finger, earning her vow of true love. That same night, the villains rose from their graves on Necro Ridge and the Crypt Keeper was killed.”
On Yuba’s cue, the rabbit drew the curtain back, revealing dozens of storybooks spread open to their last pages, tacked to the wall with sharpened sticks.
“Two days later, Rapunzel and her prince were kidnapped by Mother Gothel and hurled from her tower to their deaths,” the gnome declared, illuminating one of the storybooks with his staff and its gruesome new ending to Rapunzel’s story. “Then yesterday Tom Thumb was eaten alive by a giant, while Rumpelstiltskin killed the miller’s daughter who’d once guessed his name,” Yuba went on, lighting up two more storybooks with revised endings. “And today, Snow White and her seven dwarves have been murdered at Cottage White, where they once lived happily.” He snapped his staff like a whip, lighting up a last storybook with a loud crack. “All of these victims refused to leave their homes and join our League in hiding, as did many others who may soon suffer the same fate.”
A tense silence filled the cave as Agatha took in the painting of a dead maiden and her seven dwarves—the same scene the witch had presided over as it transformed. Agatha rubbed unconsciously at the deep bruises on her forearm and wrist.
“S-S-Snow is dead?” Pinocchio whispered.
“Pretty, sweet Snow?” echoed Peter Pan.
(“Wasn’t that pretty,” Cinderella mumbled.)
The League members all gazed at Snow White’s terrible new ending, their eyes wet and scared, as if her death suddenly made the others real.
“I saw who killed her.”
Agatha’s voice came out before she even knew it.
The whole League slowly looked up at her.
Agatha slid her focus to the floor, palms clammy as she relived the scene in the glen. “It was the wicked queen in an old woman’s disguise, her ankles and legs burnt up, just like the fairy tale said. Her skin was peeling off like a corpse and she smelled like decaying flesh. And her eyes … they were bloodshot and dead, like there was no soul inside of her.” Agatha shook her head, trying to understand. “She could have killed me or Uma or Tedros, but she didn’t. As if she’d already done what she came to do.” She looked up at the League. “The wolf and Jack’s giant talked about it on Necro Ridge too … getting a turn at changing their stories … we didn’t know what they meant—”
“Wolf on Necro Ridge?” Red Riding Hood cut in. “My wolf?”
“And my giant?” echoed Jack, clutching Briar Rose.
“They’re all out there, then,” Agatha said anxiously. “Dead villains. Waiting for their turn to rewrite their fairy tales. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t make a shred of sense,” said Tedros, turning to Yuba. “Why would the School Master’s army waste time rewriting a bunch of old stories? Why kill old heroes who aren’t a threat to anyone? Why not attack the Ever kingdoms instead?”
Even Yuba was tight-lipped, fingers fidgeting on his staff, as if he’d pondered the question and had no answer.
The old heroes blinked at the gnome, fear filling their faces.
“We are heroes, yes?” Hansel challenged. “We must fight back!”
“Against two hundred dead witches, monsters, and who-knows-what running around the Woods? Don’t be an imbecile,” Gretel snapped. “Why do you think we’re here in stinky cave hiding?”
“Can’t hide for long. They’ll find us all eventually, no matter how often we move Headquarters,” soured Cinderella. “School Master’s got love on his side now. He’s invincible. What do we got except age spots and cricked necks?”
“Ella’s right,” Jack sighed. “As long as the School Master’s got a queen who loves him, all of us are gonna end up dead as Snow.”
“Then what do we do?” mewled Red Riding Hood.
“The only thing we can do,” said Yuba, eyes shifting to Agatha and Tedros. “Convince his queen to destroy that love.”
The League went quiet.
“The crackpot plan again,” Cinderella murmured.
“You really think you can do it? You really think you can make your friend destroy the School Master’s ring?” Peter Pan asked, peering at the two young Evers.
“Why would she give up true love for you?” Pinocchio prodded.
Agatha felt emotion rising into her throat. “I wish there was a way to explain me and Sophie. We’re different—very different—and still the same. Sure, we fought and pushed each other’s buttons and we’re terrible at listening to each other, but we shared the same heart. Saw life through each other’s eyes. I never thought I could live without her.” She paused, tangled in memories. “Somehow things changed. Maybe that’s growing up, I don’t know. Every time we tried to hold on to each other, we hurt each other instead. It was both our faults, but mine most of all. I stopped telling her the truth. I stopped trusting the one person who taught me how to trust in the first place. I thought I’d lost her forever, that it was too late to ever make things the way they were before … but deep down I still feel like there’s a way. There has to be a way.” Agatha managed a sad smile. “Because if anyone can make Sophie see what love really is … it’s her best friend, isn’t it?”
The League’s old faces melted to childlike stares, as if finally seeing the young girl with hope instead of disdain.
Tedros stepped next his princess, chest proud. “Exactly. Leave Sophie to me.”
Agatha’s smile vanished.
The League looked between them, thoroughly confused who Sophie’s best friend was.
“All that matters now is that we get to Sophie—” Tedros started.
“Right,” Agatha interjected. “And we know she’s somewhere in the School for Good and Evi—”
“Which means getting in and finding her without being caught,” Tedros spoke over her.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Gretel shot back. “School Master is young and strong, School Master has both castles, School Master has army of dead … and you think you can get into his school?”
Agatha frowned. “Um, that’s the whole reason we came to you, obviously. Because we need your help breaking into—”
“Help? Your mother’s message said ‘hide you,’” Hansel jeered from his wheelchair. “Does it look like we can help?”
“We can barely can get to the toilet these days, let alone lead a raid on a castle,” cracked Cinderella, expelling a loud fart.
The League members burst into laughter. Even the White Rabbit.
“Some sneak attack! With my joints, they’ll hear us five miles away!” Pinocchio quipped.
“Don’t worry, P! We can beat them with our canes!” said Peter.
“Or my basket of goodies! Hard and crusty by now!” giggled Red Riding Hood.
Gretel shrieked a snort and the others howled so loudly, doubled over with tears, that even Uma jolted awake at the noise.
Agatha glanced at Tedros, who scowled at her venomously for trying to make him believe in these useless old fogies. She swiveled back to the heroes. “But t-t-that’s why we came all this way! That’s why we trusted in you! My mother wrote the League to protect us—my mother told us you’d help—”
“Because your mother knew that the League of Thirteen had a thirteenth member,” said a deep voice.
Agatha and Tedros turned to see a tall shadow standing at the cave entrance.
“She knew these twelve would keep you safe. But help?” the voice said, as the shadow slid into the light. “I’m afraid that’s only me.”
“Ah, just in time …,” smiled Yuba.
Agatha stared at a long, gangly nut-brown old man with a thick white beard and twisty white moustache. He wore a sweeping violet cape lined with fur tippets and stitched with the signs of the zodiac, a droopy, dented cone hat patterned with stars, large horn-rimmed spectacles, and a pair of plushy violet slippers.
I’ve seen him before, Agatha thought, too tired to think clearly. In the Woods? No … it was a storybook, wasn’t it? … a storybook that Dean Sader had taken her whole class inside.This old man was there, inside a dusty cave, filled with burbling laboratory vessels and shelves of grubby vials and jars … arguing with a king about a spell … a king that looked a lot like …
Agatha’s heart seized, her eyes shooting open, and she spun to Tedros behind her—
But her prince was already pale as a ghost.
“Merlin,” he gasped.
His legs crumpled and he fell all at once like a tree in a forest, his princess right there to catch him.
(#ulink_475d3cfc-f4ff-50fe-82fe-c61dbb3d10e2)
s midnight came and went, Sophie sat calmly in the School Master’s window, her hair wet, her ebony dress bunched at the knees as she pressed bare toes against the wall. She looked out at the fluorescent green bay, reflecting the shadows of two black castles, both dark and quiet.
Just this morning, she’d been reeling with doubts: from a school that turned Evers into Nevers … from Agatha’s voice, impelling her to destroy Rafal’s ring … from a schedule that called her a teacher of Evil when she still didn’t feel Evil at all.
She turned to the Storian over her storybook, painting a scene of Agatha and Tedros following a white rabbit through the Woods. With every minute, her friends were getting closer to school, closer to seeing her again, closer to convincing her to leave Evil behind forever …
Sophie smiled, feeling the gold ring lock tight on her finger.
Or so they think.
How quickly things changed in a fairy tale.
Twelve hours earlier, Sophie had been chasing after the School Master, as he crossed a green breezeway tunnel into the old Valor tower.
“Teach Evil? Teach Curses and Death Traps?” Sophie yelped, gripping her schedule as she floundered after him in her black nightgown and glass heels. “Have you lost your mind!”
“It was the Dean’s suggestion. Wish I’d come up with it myself, if only to prevent her the satisfaction of a good idea,” Rafal groused, ascending the staircase carved HENCHMEN. “Now that I’m young, she’s been treating me like I’m incapable of running my own school. Even had the gall to tell me that my flights over the bay are disruptive since students keep peeking out the window during challenges. I am the School Master, thank you. If I want to go for a spin, I’m perfectly welcome to—”
“Rafal.”
Sophie’s voice was so sharp that he stopped and stared down at her through the gap in the black staircase.
“I wish we had time for adolescent rants, but whoever this Dean is, she expects me to be a teacher at this school, when a) all the students are my age, b) none of them like me, and c) I don’t know the first thing about teaching!”
“Really?” He resumed his ascent. “I distinctly remember you hosting Lunchtime Lectures for the entire school.”
“Teaching kids how to cure dandruff is different than teaching them how to be Evil!” Sophie said, chasing him towards the top floor. “Let me get this straight. Agatha and Tedros are coming to kill you and here I am in a nightgown, expected to give homework and grade papers—”
But Rafal was already at the lone black-marble door atop the staircase.
“Professor Dovey’s office?” Sophie asked, accosting him. “She’s who wanted me to be a teacher? She’s Dean of Evil?”
But then Sophie saw that the door once inlaid with a glittering green beetle was now inlaid with two violet, intertwined snakes. Beneath the snakes, letters cut from amethysts spelled out a single word:
“Deans?” Sophie wrinkled her nose. “There’s more than one? But who are—”
The door swung open magically, revealing a thin, tight-jawed woman with a long black braid and a sharp-shouldered purple gown, studying a scrap of parchment at Professor Dovey’s old desk.
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Soman Chainani
Can Agatha and Sophie find the perfect ending to their story in this epic third instalment to this bestselling series.Once best friends, Agatha and Sophie were pulled apart like strangers, each in the arms of a boy, Good with Good, Evil with Evil… is their friendship lost forever after…But as they settle into their new lives, their story begs to be re-written, and this time, theirs isn’t the only one. With the girls apart, Evil has taken over and the villains of the past have come back to change their tales and turn the world of Good and Evil upside down.With Evers being murdered and Nevers reigning supreme, the girls need to restore the balance, find the end to their story, and—hopefully—become friends again
Copyright (#ulink_8a2c36ce-2ff2-5b3d-a239-16d7f9a1f6a6)
START YOUR EDUCATION AT WWW.SCHOOLFORGOODANDEVIL.COM (http://www.schoolforgoodandevil.com)
HarperCollins Children’s Books
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in hardback in the USA by HarperCollins Children’s Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. in 2015
First published in paperback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015
This electronic edition published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015
The School for Good and Evil: The Last Ever After
Text copyright © 2015 by Soman Chainani
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Iacopo Bruno
Cover Design © HarperCollins Publishers 2015
Cover Illustrations © Iacopo Bruno 2015
Soman Chainani and Iacopo Bruno assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007502868
Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007502851
Version: 2016-12-08
Now, in their love, which was stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.
T. H. White, The Once and Future King
Contents
Cover (#u0699c26b-4d6a-5be1-860d-6b030b6ce536)
Title Page (#u6c1300a0-2b62-5b72-848d-e055d06ade50)
Copyright (#ueec1efb9-9113-5e67-996f-e01a93942b53)
Epigraph (#ue670b138-8c1e-578f-a4fb-14663f9f1a70)
Part I (#u73255fb6-5314-5f2f-b521-13efdde0ca1c)
Chapter 1: The Master and the Queen (#uc73eebf0-f5d0-5aad-99fc-ddcedaed3092)
Chapter 2: After Ever After (#u18724056-b903-5fc7-a6c6-59b5c81c82e6)
Chapter 3: The New or the Old (#uf8c56c0e-8379-590d-ba1b-281ebd2f41a8)
Chapter 4: Death at an Execution (#ua40be4aa-a949-588f-8146-00add9666fa4)
Chapter 5: A Princess Returns (#u1032aa08-4060-5ad7-ae7f-8275f499c813)
Chapter 6: A Forest No Longer Blue (#ubd4c0454-b900-51ee-8612-c76258efac8f)
Chapter 7: Evil Is the New Good (#u20126b94-69c7-56d0-a7d5-0a27971501f2)
Chapter 8: When Good Rescues Go Bad (#u43eb271d-bd61-5038-a0b9-cf8c819525ff)
Chapter 9: The Worst Evers Ever (#u377ab680-18c6-50a8-9e3e-2915469fb1d9)
Chapter 10: The Missing Thirteenth (#u70a46e6a-9c10-5a87-ad6b-a6b59c2c7236)
Chapter 11: Appointment with the Deans (#u47d9c0c8-6066-5ca6-af22-d8745ea3296b)
Chapter 12: Find the Spy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13: Too Many Boys (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14: Where Wizards Go to Think (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15: The Magician’s Plan (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16: Edgar and Essa (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17: Missions Impossible (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18: Tedros in the Sky with Chocolate (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19: Old School Reunions (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20: Last Stop on the Fairy Dust Express (#litres_trial_promo)
Part II (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21: Peer Pressure (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22: Everything Old Is New Again (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23: Two Queens (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24: Who Do You Belong With? (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25: The Scorpion and the Frog (#litres_trial_promo)
Part III (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26: In Darkness Comes a Queen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27: Rebel Hearts (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28: Who’s Helping Who (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29: Failed Assignments (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30: Apologies and Confessions (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31: Spies in the Stymph Forest (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32: The Meaning of Evil (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33: An Unexpected History Lesson (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34: The War of All Things (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35: Never Ever After (#litres_trial_promo)
Read more School for Good and Evil (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
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
(#ulink_eb87b408-e16b-5fa0-bdaa-37f5f61aa756)
(#ulink_5b7d373d-0927-505d-b3c0-1b9590474e00)
t is natural to doubt your true love when you do not know if he is young or old.
He certainly looks young, Sophie thought, peering at the lean, shirtless boy as he gazed out the tower window, bathed in faded sunlight. Sophie studied his hairless white skin and snug black breeches, his thick spiked hair the color of snow, his tight-veined arms, his glacier-blue eyes … He didn’t look a day more than sixteen. And yet somewhere within this beautiful stranger was a soul older than sixteen—much, much older than sixteen. For the last three weeks, then, Sophie had refused his ring. How could she bond herself to a boy with the School Master inside of him?
And yet the more Sophie looked at him, the more she couldn’t see the School Master. All Sophie could see was a fresh, ethereal youth asking for her hand, with sharp cheekbones and full lips—more handsome than a prince, more powerful than a prince, and unlike Prince You-Know-Who, this boy was hers.
Sophie reddened, remembering she was all alone in this world. Everyone else had abandoned her. Every desperate effort to be Good had been punished with betrayal. She had no family, no friends, no future. And now, this ravishing boy in front of her was her last hope for love. Panic burned through her muscles and dried out her throat. There was no choice anymore. Sophie swallowed and slowly stepped towards him.
Look at him. He’s no older than you, she soothed herself. The boy of your dreams. She reached shaking fingers for his bare shoulder … until she suddenly froze in her tracks. It was only magic that had brought this boy to life, she thought, pulling her hand back into her sleeve. But how long does magic last?
“You’re asking yourself the wrong questions,” came the smooth voice. “Magic thinks nothing of time.”
Sophie lifted her eyes. The boy didn’t look at her, his focus on the sallow sun, barely a force through the morning fog.
“Since when can you hear my thoughts?” Sophie said, unnerved.
“I don’t need to hear thoughts to know how a Reader’s mind thinks,” he replied.
Sophie took her place beside him in her black cloak, feeling the chill off his marble-colored skin. She thought of Tedros’ skin, always sweaty and tan, with the warmth of a bear’s. A hot flash bolted through her body—rage or regret or something in between. She forced herself closer to the boy, her arm brushing his pale chest.
He still didn’t look at her.
“What is it?” Sophie asked.
“The sun,” he said, watching it flicker through the mist. “Every day it rises weaker than the one before.”
“If only you had power to make the sun shine too,” Sophie murmured. “Every day could be a tea party.”
The boy shot her a sour glare. Sophie stiffened, reminded that unlike her once Good best friend, her new suitor was neither Good nor friendly. She quickly looked back out the window, shivering at an icy breeze. “Oh for heaven’s sake, suns weaken in the winter. Don’t need a sorcerer to know that.”
“Perhaps it takes a Reader to explain this too,” he replied, sweeping to the white stone table in the corner, where a long, knife-sharp pen, shaped like a knitting needle, hovered over an open storybook. Sophie turned to the book, glimpsing the colors of the last page: her painted self kissing the School Master back to youth as her best friend vanished home with a prince.
“Three weeks since the Storian wrote our Never After,” said the boy. “Within days, it should have begun a new story with love on Evil’s side now. Love that will destroy Good, one fairy tale at a time. Love that turns the pen into Evil’s weapon instead of its curse.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “Instead it reopens the book it just closed and stays there, hanging over The End like a play whose curtain won’t shut.”
Sophie couldn’t look away from Agatha and Tedros on the page, embracing lovingly as they disappeared. Sophie’s gut twisted, her face searing hot— “Here,” she croaked, slamming the cover down on them, and shoving the cherry-red storybook next to The Frog Prince, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and the rest of the Storian’s finished tales. Her heartbeat calmed. “Curtain shut.”
Instantly the book ricocheted off the shelf and smashed into her face, knocking her against the wall, before it flew onto the stone table, swinging open to the last page once more. The Storian glimmered defiantly above it.
“This is no accident,” spoke the boy, stalking towards Sophie as she rubbed her stinging cheek. “The Storian keeps our world alive by writing new stories, and at the moment, it has no intention of moving on from your story. And as long as the pen does not move on to a new story, the sun dies, day by day, until the Woods go dark and it is The End for us all.”
Sophie looked up at him, silhouetted by the weak light. “But—but what is it waiting for?”
He leaned in and touched her neck, his fingers frigid on her peach-cream skin. Sophie recoiled, jamming into the bookshelf. The boy smiled and drew closer, blocking out the sun. “I’m afraid it has doubts whether I’m your true love,” he cooed. “It has doubts whether you’ve committed to Evil. It has doubts whether your friend and her prince should be gone forever.”
Sophie slowly gazed up at the black shadow.
“It meaning you,” said the School Master, holding out his hand.
Sophie looked down to see the ring of gold in his cold, young palm and her terrified face in its reflection.
Three weeks before, Sophie had kissed the School Master into a boy and banished her best friend home. For a moment, she’d felt the relief of victory as Agatha silently disappeared with Tedros. Her best friend may have chosen a prince over her, but there was no such thing as a prince in Gavaldon. Agatha would die an ordinary girl, with an ordinary boy, while she basked in Ever After, far, far away. Wrapped in the arms of her true love, soaring towards his silver tower in the sky, Sophie waited to feel happy. She’d won her fairy tale and winning was supposed to mean happiness.
But as they landed in his murky, stone chamber, Sophie started to shake. Agatha was gone. Her best friend. Her soulmate. And with her, she’d taken a boy who Sophie had grown close to in so many forms: when she was a girl, when she was a boy, when he was her true love, when he was just her friend. Agatha had won Tedros, the only boy Sophie ever truly knew; Tedros had won Agatha, the one person Sophie never thought she’d live without. And Sophie had won a beautiful boy of whom she knew nothing, except the dark depths of his evil. As the School Master moved towards her, young as a prince, with a cocky smile, Sophie knew she’d made a mistake.
Only it’d been too late to turn back. Through the window, Sophie glimpsed Agatha’s vanishing embers, the castles rotting vulturous black, boys and girls smashing into vicious war, teachers firing spells at students, at each other … Stunned, she’d twirled to the School Master—only to see the frost-haired boy on one knee before her, ring in hand. Take it, he’d said, and two years of war would cease. No more Good versus Evil. No more Boys versus Girls. Instead, only indisputable Evil: a School Master and his queen. Take the ring, the beautiful boy said, and she would have her happy ending at last.
Sophie didn’t.
The School Master left her alone in the tower, sealing the window so she couldn’t escape. Every morning when the clock struck ten, he came and asked again, his young, sinewy body inexplicably clad in different clothes—one day a lace-up shirt, the next day a draping tunic or tight vest or ruffled collar—and his cloud-white hair just as fickle, whether sleeked or tousled or curled. He brought gifts too: exquisite jeweled gowns, luscious bouquets, lavender perfumes, vials of creams and soaps and herbs, always anticipating her next wish. Still Sophie shook her head each time and then he’d be gone without a word, scowling with teenage sulk. She’d stay there, trapped in his chamber alone, with the company of his fairy-tale library and his old blue robes and silver mask abandoned like relics to hooks on a wall. Food would appear magically three times a day at the moment she felt hungry, and precisely what she was craving, in perfect portions on plates made of bone—steamed vegetables, steamed fruit, steamed fish, and the occasional bowl of bacon and beans (she couldn’t shake the cravings from her time as a boy). When night fell, a giant bed would materialize in the chamber, with velvet sheets the color of blood and a white lace canopy. At first, Sophie couldn’t sleep, petrified he would come in the dark. But he never returned until the next morning for their silent ritual of ring and refusal.
By the second week, Sophie began to wonder what had happened to the schools. Had her rejections prolonged the war between boys and girls? Had she cost any lives? She tried to ask what had become of her friends—of Hester, Dot, Anadil, Hort—but he answered no questions, as if the ring was the price of moving forward.
Today was the first day he’d even spoken since he brought her here. Now, standing beside him in the glow of a dying sun, Sophie saw she could no longer delay without consequence. The time had come for her to seal her ending with him or slowly fade into death too. The gold ring sparkled brighter in the School Master’s hand, promising new life. Sophie looked up at the bare-chested boy, praying to see a reason to take it … and saw nothing but a stranger. “I can’t,” she breathed, shrinking against a shelf. “I don’t know the first thing about you.”
The School Master stared at her, square jaw flexing, and put the ring back into his breeches. “What is it you would like to know?”
“For one thing, your name,” Sophie said. “If I’m going to stay here with you, I need something to call you.”
“The teachers call me ‘Master.’”
“I’m not calling you ‘Master,’” Sophie snapped.
He gritted his teeth about to fire back, but Sophie wasn’t cowed. “Without me, your Never After doesn’t exist,” she preempted, voice rising. “You’re nothing but a boy—a well-built, virile, obscenely handsome boy—but still, a boy. You can’t lord over me. You can’t scare me into true love. I don’t care if you’re gorgeous or rich or powerful. Tedros had all of those things and la-di-da, didn’t that turn out well. I deserve someone who makes me happy. At least as happy as Agatha and Agatha doesn’t have to call Tedros ‘Prince’ for the rest of her life, does she? Because Tedros has a name, like every boy in the world, and so do you and I will call you by it if you expect me to actually give you a chance.”
The School Master swelled crimson, but Sophie was breathing flames now. “That’s right. I’m in charge now. You might be the Master of this infernal school, but you are not my Master and you never will be. You said it yourself: the Storian won’t write because it is waiting for my choice, not yours. I choose whether I take your ring. I choose whether this is The End. I choose whether this world lives or dies. And I’m happy to watch it burn to dust if you expect a slave instead of a queen.”
The School Master glowered at her, veins pulsing beneath his ghost-white neck. He bit his lip so hard Sophie thought he was about to eat her and she stepped back in horror, only to see him slacken with an angry pant and look away. Then he was quiet for a very long time, his fists clenched.
“Rafal,” he mumbled. “My name is Rafal.”
Rafal, Sophie thought, astonished. In an instant, she saw him anew: the callow milk of his skin, the adolescent sparkle in his eyes, the erect puff to his chest, matching the storm and youth of a name. Rafal. What is it about a name that gives us a story to believe in?
She suddenly felt the blush of desire, craving to touch him … until she remembered what choosing him would mean. This was a boy who’d butchered his own blood in the name of Evil and he believed her capable of the same. Sophie held herself back.
“What was your brother’s name?” she asked.
He spun, eyes aflame. “I don’t see how that will help you get to know me any better.”
Sophie didn’t press the point. Then behind him, she noticed the fog abating, revealing a greenish haze over two black castles in the distance. It was the first time in three weeks he’d unsealed the window long enough for her to see through. But both schools seemed dead quiet, no sign of life on any of the roofs or balconies. “W-w-where is everyone?” she sputtered, squinting at the healed Bridge between the castles. “What happened to the girls? The boys were going to kill them—”
“A queen would have the right to ask me questions about the school she rules,” he said. “You are not a queen yet.”
Sophie cleared her throat, noticing the bulge of the ring in his tight pocket. “Um, why do you keep changing clothes? It’s … strange.”
For the first time, the boy seemed uncomfortable. “Given your refusals, I assumed dressing like the princes you chase would move things along.” He scratched his rippled stomach. “Then I remembered the son of Arthur wasn’t fond of shirts.”
Sophie snorted, trying to ignore his perfect torso. “Didn’t think the all-powerful were capable of self-doubt.”
“If I was all-powerful, I could make you love me,” he growled.
Sophie heard the petulance in his voice and for a moment saw an ordinary boy, lovesick and striving for a girl he couldn’t have. Then she remembered this was no ordinary boy. “No one can make anyone love them,” she hit back. “I learned that lesson harder than anyone. Besides, even if you could make me love you, you could never love me. You can’t love anything. Not if you embrace Evil as a choice. It’s why your brother is dead.”
“And yet, I’m alive because of true love’s kiss,” he said.
“You tricked me into it—”
“You never broke your grip.”
Sophie blanched. “I’d never kiss you and mean it!”
“Oh? For me to return to life, to return to youth … the kiss had to go both ways, didn’t it?” He looked into Sophie’s stunned face and grinned. “Surely your best friend taught you that.”
Sophie said nothing, the truth extinguishing her fight. Just as Agatha once could have taken Tedros’ hand before she chose Sophie instead, Sophie too could have sent the School Master back to the grave. But here they were, both beautiful and young, victims of a kiss she was trying to deny. Why had she held on to him that night? Sophie asked herself. Even once she knew it was him she was kissing? Looking up at the porcelain boy, she thought of everything he’d done to win her, across death and time … his unyielding faith that he could make her happy, beyond any family, friend, or prince. He had come for her when no one else wanted her. He had believed in her when no one else did. Sophie’s voice clumped in her throat. “Why do you want me so much?” she rasped.
He stared at her, the clamp of his jaw easing, his lips falling open slightly. For a moment, Sophie thought he looked the way Tedros did when he let down his guard—a lost boy playing at a grown-up. “Because once upon a time, I was just like you,” he said softly. He blinked fast, falling into memory. “I tried to love my brother. I tried to escape my fate. I even thought I’d found—” He caught himself. “But it only led to more pain … more Evil. Just as every time you seek love, it leads you to the same. Your mother, your father, your best friend, your prince … The more you chase the light, the more darkness you find. And yet still you doubt your place in Evil.”
Sophie tensed as he gently lifted her chin. “For thousands of years, Good has told us what love is. Both you and I have tried to love in their way, only to suffer pain,” he said. “But what if there’s a different kind of love? A darker love that turns pain into power. A love that can only be understood by the two who share it. That’s why you held our kiss, Sophie. Because I see you for who you really are and love you for it when no one else can. Because what we’ve sacrificed for each other is beyond what Good can even fathom. It doesn’t matter if they don’t call it love. We know it is, just as we know the thorns are as much a part of the rose as the petals.” He leaned in, lips caressing her ear. “I am the mirror of your soul, Sophie. To love me is to love yourself,” he whispered. Then he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it like a prince, before he gently let it go.
Sophie’s heart wrenched so sharply she thought he’d torn it out of her. She’d never felt so naked in her life and huddled tighter into her black cloak. Then little by little, staring into the harsh symmetry of his face, Sophie felt her breath come back, a strange safe warmth flooding her core. He understood her, this dark-souled boy, and in the sapphire facets of his eyes, she suddenly saw how deep they went. She shook her head, rattled. “I don’t even know if you’re really a boy.”
He smiled at her. “If your fairy tale has taught you one lesson, Sophie, it is that things are only as you see.”
Sophie frowned. “I don’t understand—” she started … but somewhere in her soul she did.
The boy looked out at the sun, frail and hazy over his school, and Sophie knew that the time for questions was over. As he slid his hand into his pocket, Sophie could feel her whole body trembling, as if pulled towards a waterfall she wouldn’t escape.
“Will we be as happy as Tedros and Agatha?” she pressed, voice cracking.
“You must trust your story, Sophie. It has come to The End for a reason.” He turned to her. “But now it’s time for you to believe it.”
Sophie looked down at the gold circle in his hand, breaths growing faster, faster … With a shudder, she pushed him away. He reached for her and Sophie shoved him against the wall, pinning her own palm flat against his frigid chest. He didn’t resist as Sophie moved her hand over his sternum, eyes wild, panting hard. She didn’t know what she was looking for until she found it beneath her fingers and froze. Her hand rose and fell on his chest, rose and fell, his heart throbbing between them. Slowly Sophie looked up at him, drinking in his strong, hopeful beat, no different than her own.
“Rafal,” she whispered, wishing a boy to life.
His fingertips caressed her face and for the first time, Sophie didn’t flinch from the cold. As he drew her in, Sophie felt the doubts melt out of her, fear giving way to faith. Black cloak pressed to his white body, like two swans in balance, Sophie raised her left hand into the sunlight, steady and sure. Then Rafal slipped his ring onto her finger, the warm gold sliding up her skin inch by inch, until it fit tight. Sophie let out a gasp and the snow-white boy smiled, never breaking his gaze.
In each other’s arms, Master and Queen turned to the enchanted pen over their fairy tale, ready for it to bless their love … ready for it to close their book at last …
The pen didn’t move.
The book stayed open.
Sophie’s heart stalled. “What happened?”
She followed Rafal’s eyes to the red-amber sun, which had darkened another shade. His face steeled to a deadly mask. “It seems our happy ending isn’t the one the pen doubts.”
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ou don’t know the first thing about me,” Tedros spat, and clubbed his princess in the face with a musty pillow.
Agatha coughed and bashed him with a pillow right back, knocking him against her black bed frame, as feathers burst all over him. Reaper leapt onto Tedros’ face, trying to eat them. “I know too much about you is the problem,” Agatha snarled and grabbed at the poorly set bandage under her prince’s blue collar. Tedros shoved her away—Agatha tackled him back, before Tedros snatched Reaper and threw the cat at her head. Agatha ducked and Reaper sailed into the bathroom, flailing bald, wrinkled paws, before landing headfirst in the toilet. “If you knew me, you’d know I do things myself,” Tedros huffed, tightening his shirt laces.
“You threw my cat at me?” Agatha yelled, launching to her feet. “Because I’m trying to save you from gangrene?”
“That cat is Satan,” Tedros hissed, watching Reaper try to climb out of the toilet bowl and slide back down. “And if you knew me, you’d know I hate cats.”
“No doubt you like dogs—wet-mouthed, simple, and now that I think about it, a lot like you.”
Tedros glowered at her. “Getting personal over a bandage, are we?”
“Three weeks and the wound isn’t healing, Tedros,” Agatha pressed, scooping Reaper up and toweling him off with her sleeve. “It’ll fester if I don’t treat it—”
“Maybe they do it differently in graveyards, but where I come from, a bandage does the trick.”
“A bandage that looks like it was made by a two-year-old?” Agatha mocked.
“You try getting stabbed with your own sword as you’re vanishing,” said Tedros. “You’re lucky I’m even alive—one more second and he’d have run me through—”
“One more second and I’d have remembered what an ape you are and left you behind.”
“As if you could find a boy in this rat trap town better than me.”
“At this point, I’d trade you for a little space and quiet—”
“I’d trade you for a decent meal and a warm bath!” Tedros boomed.
Agatha glared at him, Reaper shivering in her arms. Finally Tedros exhaled, looking ashamed. He stripped off his shirt, spread out his arms, and sat on the bed. “Have at it, princess.”
For the next ten minutes, neither spoke as Agatha rinsed the four-inch gash across her prince’s chest with rose oil, witch hazel, and a dash of white peony from her mother’s cart of herbal potions. Thinking about how Tedros earned the wound, a hairbreadth from his heart, made Agatha’s stomach chill, and she forced her focus back to her task. She didn’t need to think about it—not when the screaming nightmares did the job of reminding her well enough. The School Master turning young … grinning at Tedros, bound to a tree … eyes flashing red as he stabbed … How Tedros didn’t have nightmares about their last moments at school, Agatha couldn’t grasp, but maybe that was the difference between a prince and a Reader. To a boy from the Woods, every day that didn’t end in death was a good one.
Agatha sprinkled boiled turmeric on his wound and Tedros clenched with low moans. “Told you it wasn’t healing,” she murmured.
Tedros gave her a lion’s growl and turned away. “Your mother hates me. That’s why she’s never home.”
“She’s busy looking for patients,” said Agatha, rubbing the yellow powder in. “Have to eat, don’t we?”
“Then why does she leave her medicine cart here?”
Agatha’s hand paused on Tedros’ chest. She’d been asking herself the same question about her mother’s long disappearances. Agatha rubbed harder and her prince winced. “Look, for the last time, she doesn’t hate you.”
“We’ve been trapped in this house for three weeks, Agatha. I eat all her food, am crap at cleaning, tend to clog the toilet, and she keeps seeing us fighting. If she doesn’t hate me, she will soon.”
“She just thinks you’re a complication to an already complicated situation.”
“Agatha, there is an entire town out there that will kill us on sight. There’s nothing complicated about it,” Tedros argued, sitting up on his knees. “Listen, I’ll be sixteen in a month. That means I take over Camelot as king from my father’s council. Sure, the kingdom’s broke, half the people are gone, and the place is in shambles, but we’ll change all that! That’s where we belong, Agatha. Why can’t we go back—”
“You know why, Tedros.”
“Right. Because you don’t want to leave your mother forever. Because I don’t have a family anymore and you do,” he said, looking away.
Agatha’s neck rashed red. “Tedros—”
“You don’t need to explain,” her prince said quietly. “If my father was still alive, I’d never leave him either.”
Agatha moved closer to him. He still didn’t look at her. “Tedros, if your kingdom needs you … you should go back,” she forced herself to say.
Her prince sighed. “I’d never leave you, Agatha.” He pulled at a thread in his dirty socks. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to. Only way back into the Woods is to make the wish together.”
Agatha went rigid. He’d thought about leaving her behind? She swallowed hard and grasped his arm. “I can’t go back, Tedros. Terrible things happen to us in the Woods,” she rasped anxiously. “We were lucky to escape—”
“You call this ‘lucky’?” He finally looked at her. “How long can we stay trapped in this house, Agatha? How long can we be prisoners?”
Agatha tensed. She knew he deserved answers, but she still didn’t have them. “It doesn’t matter where your Ever After is, does it? It just matters who you’re with,” she said, trying to sound hopeful. “Surely a teacher said that once.”
Tedros didn’t smile. Agatha lurched up and ripped a strip from a clean towel hanging on the bedpost. Tedros flopped back onto the bed, arms splayed cactus-style, and lapsed into silence, as Agatha bound his wound tight with the cloth.
“Sometimes I miss Filip,” he said softly.
Agatha looked at him, startled. Tedros turned pink and picked at his nails. “It’s stupid, given all he did to us—or she … or whatever. I should hate him—her, I mean. But boys get each other in a way girls can’t. Even if he wasn’t really a boy.” Tedros saw Agatha’s face. “Forget it.”
“You really think I don’t know you?” Agatha asked, hurt.
Tedros held his breath a moment, as if contemplating whether to be honest or to lie. “It’s just … those first two years, we were chasing the idea of being together, rather than actually being together. I got to know Filip better than I ever got to know you: staying up past curfew together, stealing lamb chops from the Supper Hall, or even just sitting on a rooftop and talking—you know, about our families or what we’re afraid of or what kind of pie we like. Doesn’t matter how it all turned out, really … He was my first real friend.” Tedros couldn’t look at Agatha. “You and I never even got to be friends. Don’t even have nicknames for each other. With you, it was always stolen moments and faith that love would somehow be enough. And now, here we are, three weeks cooped up in a house, no time alone or room to go for a walk or a hunt or a swim, and then sleeping, eating, breathing with the other person hovering around like a keeper, and still we feel like strangers. I’ve never felt so old.” He glimpsed Agatha’s face. “Oh come on, surely you feel it too. We’re like fusty married saps. Every tiny thing that bothers you about me must be magnified a thousand times.”
Agatha tried to look understanding. “What bothers you about me?”
“Oh let’s not play this game,” Tedros puffed, rolling onto his stomach.
“I want to know. What bothers you about me?”
Her prince didn’t answer. Agatha flicked hot turmeric onto his back.
Tedros flipped over angrily. “First off, you treat me like I’m an idiot.”
“That’s not true—”
Tedros frowned at her. “Do you want to know or not?”
Agatha folded her arms.
“You treat me like I’m an idiot,” Tedros repeated. “You pretend to be busy every time I attempt conversation. You act like it’s easy for me to give up my home, even though a princess is supposed to follow her prince. You clump around the house in those horrible shoes like an elephant, you leave the floor wet after your baths, you never even try to smile these days, and if I question anything you say or do, you give me this attitude that I shouldn’t dare challenge you because you’re just so … so …”
“So what?” Agatha glared.
“Good,” said Tedros.
“My turn,” said Agatha. “First off, you act like you’re my captive, as if I kidnapped you away from your best friend, who doesn’t even exist—”
“Now you’re just being spiteful—”
“You make me feel guilty for bringing you here, as if I shouldn’t have saved your life. You act like you’re all sensitive and chivalrous and then declare things like a princess should ‘follow’ her prince. You’re impulsive, you sweat too much, you make sweeping generalizations about things you know nothing about, and whenever you knock things over, which is often, you blame my house instead of yourself—”
“There’s barely any room to walk—”
“You’re used to living in a castle! With west wings and throne rooms and pretty little maids,” Agatha snapped. “Well, we’re not in a castle, oh princely one—we’re in real life. Have you thought that maybe I’m spending all my time worrying about keeping us alive? Have you thought that maybe I’m trying to figure out how to make our happy ending happy and that’s why I’m not spending all my time smiling like a clown and having deep conversations over cappuccino? Of course not, because you’re Tedros of Camelot, handsomest boy in the Woods and god forbid he feel old!”
Tedros cocked a grin. “That handsome, am I?”
“Even Sophie was more tolerable than you!” Agatha yelled into a pillow. “And she tried to kill me! Twice!”
“So go into the Woods and get your Sophie back!” Tedros retorted.
“Why don’t you go and get your Filip back!” Agatha barked—
Then slowly, they both blushed to silence, realizing they were talking about the same person.
Tedros slid next to his princess and put his arms around her waist. Agatha gave in to his tight, warm hug, trying not to cry.
“What happened to us?” she whispered.
When Agatha rescued Tedros from the School Master, she thought she’d found the way out of her fairy tale. She’d escaped death, saved her prince, and left the Woods behind, with her lying, betraying best friend still in it. As she clutched her true love, haloed by the white light between worlds, Agatha breathed in the relief of Ever After. She had Tedros at last—Tedros who loved her as much as she loved him … Tedros whose kiss she could still taste … Tedros who would make her happy forever …
Agatha smashed face-first into a wall of dirt.
Dazed, she’d opened her eyes to pitch darkness, her body on top of her prince’s in Gavaldon’s snowy cemetery. In an instant, she remembered all she’d once left behind in this tiny village: a broken promise to Stefan to bring his daughter home, the Elders’ threat to kill her, the stories of witches once burned in a square … Relax. This is our happy ending, she’d soothed herself, her breath settling. Nothing bad can happen anymore.
Agatha squinted and saw the slope of a roof atop the snow-capped hill, shaped like a witch’s hat. Her heart had swelled at the thought of being home once and for all, of seeing her mother’s euphoric face … She looked down at her prince with an impish grin. If she doesn’t have a stroke first.
“Tedros, wake up,” she’d whispered. He’d stayed limp in her arms in his black Trial cloak, the only sounds coming from a few crows pecking at grave worms and a weak torch crackling over the gate. She grabbed her prince by the shirt strings to shake him, but her hands were flecked with something warm and sticky. Slowly Agatha raised them into the torchlight.
Blood.
She’d dashed frantically between jagged graves and sharp-edged weeds, clumps crunching through powdery snow, before she saw the house ahead, none of its usual candles lit over the porch. Agatha turned the doorknob slowly, but the hinges squeaked and a body bolted out of bed, tangled in sheets like a bumbling ghost. Finally Callis’ head poked through, her big bug eyes blinking wide. For a split second, she colored with happiness, reunited with her daughter who’d been gone for so long. Then she saw the panic in Agatha’s face and went pale. “D-d-did anyone see you?” Callis stammered. Agatha shook her head. Her mother smiled with relief and rushed to embrace her, before she saw her daughter’s face hadn’t changed. Callis froze, her smile gone. “What have you done?” she gasped.
Together, they’d fumbled down Graves Hill, Callis in her saggy black nightgown, Agatha leading her back to Tedros. Plowing through snow, they lugged him home, each grappling one of his arms. Agatha peeked up at her mother, just an older version of herself with helmet-black hair and pasty skin, waiting for her to balk at the sight of a real-life prince—but Callis’ pupils stayed locked on the darkened town below. Agatha couldn’t worry to ask why. Right now, saving her prince was the only thing that mattered.
As soon as they pulled him through the door, her mother lay Tedros on the rug and slit open his wet shirt, the prince unconscious and covered with cockleburs, while Agatha lit the fireplace. When Agatha turned back, she nearly fainted. The sword wound in Tedros’ chest was so deep she could almost see the pulsing of his heart.
Agatha’s eyes filled with tears. “H-h-he’ll be okay, won’t he? He has to be—”
“Too late to numb him,” said Callis, rifling through drawers for thread.
“I had to bring him, Mother—I couldn’t lose him—”
“We’ll talk later,” Callis said so sharply Agatha shrank to the wall. Crouched over the prince, her mother made it five stitches in, barely closing the wound, before Tedros roused suddenly with a cry of pain, saw the needle in a stranger’s hand, and grabbed the nearest broomstick, threatening to bash her head in if she got an inch closer.
He and Callis had never quite seen eye to eye after that.
Somehow Agatha sweet-talked Tedros into sleeping, and that next morning, while he snuffled shallow breaths, his stitches half-done, Callis took her daughter into the kitchen, hanging a black sheet to close off the bedroom. Agatha had sensed the tension immediately.
“Look, first time we met, he threatened to kill me too,” she’d cracked, pulling two iron plates from the cupboard. “He’ll grow on you, I promise.”
Callis ladled foggy stew from the cauldron into a bowl. “I’ll sew him a new shirt before he leaves.”
“Uh, Mother, there’s a real-life prince from magical fairy land sleeping on our floor and you’re worrying about his shirt?” Agatha said, perching on a creaky stool. “Forget that the sight of me within a hundred feet of a boy should be cause for a town parade or that you’ve been telling me fairy tales are real from the day I was born. Don’t you want to know who he is—” Agatha’s eyes widened. “Wait. Before he leaves? Tedros is staying in Gavaldon … forever.”
Callis put the bowl in front of Agatha. “No one likes toad soup cold.”
Agatha bucked up. “Look, I know it’s crowded with him here. But Tedros and I can get work in the village. Think about it, if we save up enough, maybe we can all move to a bigger house, maybe even something in the cottage lanes.” Agatha grinned. “Imagine, Mother, we could actually have living neighbors—”
Callis fixed her with a cold, brown stare and Agatha stopped talking. She followed her mother’s eyes to the small, slime-crusted window over the sink. Agatha pushed out of her chair, bowl untouched, and grabbed a wet dishtowel from the rack. Pressing against the glass, she scraped at the gray smear of dust, grease, and mildew, until a stream of sunlight pierced through. Agatha backed away in surprise.
Down the snow-coated hill, bright red flags billowed from every lamppost in the square:
“Witch?” Agatha choked, gaping at a hundred reflections of her own face. Beyond the square, the colorful storybook houses, decimated by attacks from the Woods, had been rebuilt as monotonous stone bunkers. A phalanx of guards in long black cloaks and black-iron masks carried spears, patrolling the cottage lanes and forest perimeter. Dread rising, Agatha’s eyes slowly fell on the spot where her and Sophie’s statues once glistened near the crooked clock tower. Now there was only a raised wooden stage, with a giant pyre made of birches, two flaming torches fixed to the scaffolding, and a banner of her and Sophie’s faces hanging between them.
Agatha’s stomach dropped. She’d escaped a public execution at school only to find one at home.
“I warned you, Agatha,” her mother said behind her. “The Elders believed Sophie a witch who brought the attacks from the Woods. They ordered you not to go after her the night they surrendered her to the attackers. The moment you disobeyed them, you became a witch too.”
Agatha turned, her legs jellying. “So they want to burn me?”
“If you’d come back alone, the Elders might have spared you.” Callis was sitting at the table, head in hands. “You could have taken punishment, like I did for letting you escape.”
A chill went up Agatha’s spine. She looked at her mother, but there were no wounds or marks on her hooked-nose face or gangly arms; all her fingers and toes were intact. “What did they do to you?” Agatha asked, terrified.
“Nothing that compares to what they’ll do to you both when they find him.” Callis looked up, eyelids raw. “The Elders always despised us, Agatha. How could you be so stupid to bring someone back from the Woods?”
“The s-s-storybook said ‘The End,’” Agatha stuttered. “You said it yourself—if our book says ‘The End,’ this has to be our happy ending—”
“Happy ending? With him?” Callis blurted, jolting to her feet. “There is a reason the worlds are separate, Agatha. There is a reason the worlds must be separate. He will never be happy here! You are a Reader and he is a—”
Callis stopped and Agatha stared at her. Callis quickly turned to the sink and pumped water into a kettle.
“Mother …,” Agatha said, suddenly feeling cold. “How do you know what a Reader is?”
“Mmm, can’t hear you, dear.”
“A Reader,” Agatha stressed over the strident cranks. “How do you know that word—”
Callis pumped louder. “Must have seen it in a book, I’m sure …”
“Book? What book—”
“One of the storybooks, dear.”
Of course, Agatha sighed, trying to relax. Her mother had always seemed to know things about the fairy-tale world—like all parents in Gavaldon who had feverishly bought storybooks from Mr. Deauville’s Storybook Shop, hunting for clues about the children kidnapped by the School Master. One of the books must have mentioned it, Agatha told herself. That’s why she called me a Reader. That’s why she wasn’t surprised by a prince.
But as Agatha glanced up at Callis, back to her, pumping water into the kettle, Agatha noticed that the pot was already full and overflowing into the sink. She watched her mother staring off into space, hands clenched, pumping water faster, faster, as if pumping memories away with it. Slowly Agatha’s heart started to constrict in her chest, until she felt that cold sensation deepening … whispering that the reason her mother wasn’t fazed by Tedros’ appearance wasn’t because she’d read storybooks … but because she knew what it was like to live through one …
“He returns to the Woods as soon as he wakes,” Callis said, releasing the pump.
Agatha wrenched out of her thoughts. “The Woods? Tedros and I barely escaped alive—and you want us to go back?”
“Not you,” said Callis, still turned. “Him.”
Agatha flared in shock. “Only someone who’s never experienced true love could say such a thing.”
Callis froze. The skeleton clock ticked through the loaded silence.
“You really believe this is your happy ending, Agatha?” Callis said, not looking at her.
“It has to be, Mother. Because I won’t leave him again. And I won’t leave you,” Agatha begged. “I thought maybe I could be happy in the Woods, that I could run away from real life … but I can’t. I never wanted a fairy tale. All I ever wanted was to wake up every day right here, knowing I had my mother and my best friend. How could I know that friend would end up being a prince?” Agatha dabbed at her eyes. “You don’t know what we’ve been through to find each other. You don’t know the Evil that we left behind. I don’t care if Tedros and I have to stay trapped in this house for a hundred years. At least we’re together. At least we’ll be happy. You just have to give us the chance.”
Quiet fell in the sooty kitchen.
Callis turned to her daughter. “And Sophie?”
Agatha’s voice went cold. “Gone.”
Her mother gazed at her. The town clock tolled faintly from the square, before the wind drowned it out. Callis picked up the kettle and moved to the wooden stove. Agatha held her breath, watching her spark a flame beneath the pot and stew a few wormroot leaves in, circling her ladle again and again, long after the leaves had dissolved.
“I suppose we’ll need eggs,” said her mother at last. “Princes don’t eat toads.”
Agatha almost collapsed in relief. “Oh thank you thank you thank you—”
“I’ll lock you both in when I go to town each morning. The guards won’t come here as long as we’re careful.”
“You’ll love him like a son, Mother, you’ll see—” Agatha grimaced. “Into town? You said you had no patients.”
“Don’t light the fireplace or open the windows,” ordered Callis, pouring two cups of tea.
“Why won’t the guards come here?” Agatha pushed. “Wouldn’t it be the first place they’d check?”
“And don’t answer the door for a soul.”
“Wait—what about Stefan?” Agatha asked, brightening. “Surely he can talk to the Elders for us—”
Callis whirled. “Especially not Stefan.”
Mother and daughter locked stares across the kitchen.
“Your prince will never belong here, Agatha,” said Callis softly. “No one can hide from their fate without a price.”
There was a fear in her mother’s big owl eyes that Agatha had never seen before, as if she was no longer talking about a prince.
Agatha crossed the kitchen and wrapped her mother in a deep, comforting hug. “I promise you. Tedros will be as happy here as I am,” she whispered. “And you’ll wonder how you ever could have doubted two people so in love.”
A clang and clatter echoed from the bedroom. The curtain drew back behind them before collapsing entirely, and Tedros lumbered through, groggy, red-eyed, and half-naked with a torn, bloodied piece of bedsheet stuck haplessly over his wound. He sat down at the counter, smelled the soup and gagged, shoving it aside. “We’ll need a sturdy horse, steel-edged sword, and enough bread and meat for a three-day journey.” He looked up at Agatha with a sleepy smile. “Hope you said your goodbyes, princess. Time to ride to my castle.”
That first week, Agatha believed this was just another test in their story. It was only a matter of time before the pyre came down, the death sentence lifted, and Tedros felt at ease with ordinary life. Looking at her handsome, teddy-bear prince who she loved so much, she knew that no matter how long they stayed in this house, they would still find a way to be happy.
By the second week, however, the house had started to feel smaller. There was never enough food or cups or towels; Reaper and Tedros fought like demented siblings; Agatha began to notice her prince’s irritating habits (using all the soap, drinking milk out of the jug, exercising every second of the day, breathing through his mouth); and Callis had the burden of supporting two teenagers who didn’t like to be supported at all. (“School was better than this,” Tedros carped, bored to tears. “Let’s go back and you can finish getting stabbed,” Agatha replied.) By the third week, Tedros had taken to playing rugby against himself, dodging invisible opponents, whispering play-by-play, and flinging about like a caged animal, while Agatha lay in bed, a pillow over her head, clinging to the hope that happiness would fall like a fairy godmother from a star. Instead, it was Tedros who fell on her head one day while catching a ball, reopening his stitches in the process. Agatha belted him hard with her pillow, Tedros clocked her with his, and soon the cat was in the toilet. As they lay on the bed, covered in feathers, Reaper dripping in the corner, Agatha’s question hung in the air unanswered.
“What happened to us?”
As the fourth week went on, Tedros and Agatha stopped spending time together. Tedros ceased his manic workouts and sat hunched at the kitchen window, unshaven and dirty, silently looking out at the Endless Woods. He was homesick, Agatha told herself, just as she’d once been in his world. But each day, a darker anguish settled into his face, and she knew it was deeper than homesickness—it was the guilt of knowing that somewhere out there, in a land far away, there would soon be no new king to take the crown from the old. But Agatha had nothing to say to make him feel better, nothing that didn’t sound self-serving or trite, and hid beneath her bedcovers, reading her old storybooks again and again.
Gazing at beautiful princesses kissing dashing princes, she wondered how her Ever After had gone rancid. All these fairy tales had tied up so neatly and satisfyingly … while the more she thought about her own, the more loose ends seemed to appear. What had happened to her friends: to Dot, Hester, Anadil, who had risked their lives for her during the Trial? What had happened to the Girls, charging into war against Aric and the Boys? Or to Lady Lesso and Professor Dovey, now faced with the School Master’s return? Agatha’s chest clamped. What if the School Master started kidnapping children from Gavaldon again? She thought about the parents who would lose more daughters and sons … about Tristan and how his parents would learn about his death … about the balance in the Woods, tilting to death and Evil … about her once Evil best friend, left to fend for herself …
Sophie.
This time no anger came at the name. Only an echo, like the password to her heart’s cave.
Sophie.
Sophie, who she’d loved through Good and Evil. Sophie, who she’d loved through Boys and Girls. Sophie, who she vowed to protect forever, young or old, until death did them part.
How do you turn your back on your best friend? How do you leave them behind?
For a boy.
Shame colored her cheeks.
For a boy who can barely stand the sight of me anymore.
Agatha’s heart shrank as small and hard as a pebble. All this time, she thought she had to choose between Sophie and Tedros to find a happy ending. And yet, each time she picked one over the other, the story twisted back upon itself and the world fell out of balance more than before. Every thought of Sophie, alone in a tower with a deadly villain, brought on more guilt, more pregnant fear, as if she was trapped in a purgatory of her own making, as if she hadn’t failed by choosing a prince over her best friend … but in making that choice at all.
“I think about her too.”
She turned and saw Tedros at the window, watching her, his mouth trembling. “About how we just left her,” he rasped, eyes welling. “I know she’s a bad friend, I know she’s Evil, I know Filip was a lie … but we just left her … with that monster. We left all of them. The whole school … just to save ourselves. What kind of prince is that, Agatha? What would my father think of me?” Tears spilled down his stubbled cheeks. “I don’t want you to leave your mother. I really don’t. But we’re not happy, Agatha. Because the villain’s still alive. Because we’re not heroes at all. We’re … cowards.”
Agatha looked into her prince’s messy, earnest face, and remembered why she loved him. “This isn’t our happy ending, is it?” she breathed.
Tedros smiled, his old glow returning.
And for the first time since they came home, Agatha smiled too.
(#ulink_4bc9ce8b-f9df-5892-a454-4250344d1f25)
aybe we have to close our eyes,” said Tedros.
“Or do a rain dance in pajamas while singing ‘Ring Around the Rosie,’” Agatha grumped, Reaper fast asleep in her lap. “It’s past dinnertime and I’m starving. How many times can we try this?”
“Oh I’m sorry. Do you have somewhere better to be at the moment?”
Agatha watched a roach mosey by, cram under the double-locked front door, and disappear. “You have a point,” she said, and shut her eyes.
“All right,” Tedros sucked in, closing his eyes. “One … two … three!”
Agatha scrunched up her face, Tedros did too, and both of them thrust their index fingers at the other. They exhaled at the same time and opened their eyes.
Neither of their fingertips was glowing.
Tedros peered closely at Agatha’s. “You bite your nails too much.”
“Oh for crying out loud. We can’t get into the Woods unless our magic comes back,” she barked, shoving her hand in her pocket. “Magic follows emotion. That’s what we learned at school. You said it yourself! If we both make the wish at the same time, the gates should open—”
“Unless one of us is having doubts,” said Tedros.
“Then I suggest you get over them,” Agatha huffed, standing up. “Let’s try in the morning. Mother’s never this late. She’ll be here any second—”
“Agatha.”
She saw Tedros giving her that lopsided grin … the one that said he knew exactly what she was thinking, even if she was doing everything she could to keep it from him.
“You’re smarter than you look,” she groused, sitting back down.
“And you’re the one famous for not judging books by their covers.” He scooted next to her. “Look, if you want to say goodbye to your mother first—”
“That’ll just make the doubts worse,” mumbled Agatha. “How do you tell your mother you’re leaving her forever?”
“Wouldn’t know. My mother left me without saying goodbye,” Tedros replied.
Agatha looked at him, suddenly feeling very stupid. Tedros slid closer. “What is it, my love?” he asked. “What are you really afraid of?”
Agatha felt panic rising, something coming up she couldn’t keep down—
“What if I’m the problem?” she blurted. “Every time I try to be happy, it goes wrong. First with Sophie, then with you, and all I can think of is that it’s not us who’s broken … it’s me. The girl who ruins everyone’s story. The girl who’s meant to be alone. That’s why I’m afraid to leave my mother. Because what if I’m not supposed to be with you, Tedros? What if I’m supposed to end here, just like her, never finding love at all?”
Tedros froze, taken aback.
Slowly Agatha felt the air return to her lungs, as if a boulder had lifted off her chest.
Her prince traced his finger between bricks in the floor. “We only see the finished storybooks, Agatha. How do we know every Ever After doesn’t take a few tries? Think about it. Each time you left the Woods, you tried to come back to your old life. But this time is different, isn’t it? When we get to our true ending, you’ll have a new life with me. We’ll have my kingdom to protect, until we’re old ourselves and it’s time to pass it on. Just like my father did and his father and all who came before.”
Looking at him, Agatha realized how selfish and small-hearted she’d been by keeping her prince here.
“I promise,” he said, squeezing her hand. “This time, we will be happy.”
“All right, say we do get back to the School for Good and Evil,” Agatha allowed. “What’s our plan?”
“Make things right, of course,” Tedros puffed. “Rescue Sophie, kill the School Master, take back Excalibur, free the other students, and you and I go to Camelot in time for my sixteenth birthday, and coronation as king. The End.” He paused. “The real End.”
Agatha made a sound halfway between a cough and a sneeze.
“All right, Sophie can come too, if you’re going to be difficult about it,” he sighed.
“Tedros, my love,” said Agatha cuttingly. “You think we can just waltz through the school gates and kill the School Master like we’re buying bonbons from the bakery?”
“I think buying anything from the bakery would pose far more obstacles at the moment,” said Tedros, eyeing the triple-locked door.
Agatha let go of him and braced for a fight. “First off, the School Master is an all-powerful sorcerer who last we saw came back from death, turned young again, and stabbed you with your own sword. Second, for all we know, he’s killed the Evers and has everyone on his side. And third, you don’t think he’ll have guards and traps and—”
“Merlin had a saying: ‘Worrying doesn’t solve problems. Just gives you gas,’” Tedros yawned.
“I take back the smarter than you look thing,” Agatha groaned. Her cat stirred and staggered out of her arms, but not before spitting in Tedros’ lap. The prince backhanded it and Reaper fled, throwing Agatha a horrible scowl at her choice of mate.
“He used to love me,” Agatha said, watching her cat gnaw the head off a dead canary.
“Agatha, look at me.”
“Tedros, you don’t even have your sword, let alone a plan. We’re going to die.”
“Agatha, please look at me.”
She did, with folded arms.
“You can’t plan your story any more than you can plan who you’re going to fall in love with. That’s the point of a story,” said Tedros. “And even if you could, what’s the fun of living through it if you know what’s going to happen? All we know is that Good always wins, right? So if Good hasn’t beaten Evil yet, our fairy tale can’t be over. As soon as we make our wish, we’ll be back where we belong, chasing our happy ending. Trust our story, Agatha. We’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
“And what about Sophie?” Agatha asked. “What if she hasn’t forgiven us?”
Tedros thought for a moment. “Everything Sophie did, she did to get closer to you or me. We’ve all made mistakes, that’s for sure. But Good or Evil, Boy or Girl, the three of us are in this tale together.” He leveled eyes with her. “So how can Sophie be happy until we are?”
Agatha fell quiet, aware of the dark room hemming her in with her prince and yet keeping them apart.
Long before she ever met her best friend, she’d secretly read storybooks from Mr. Deauville’s, buying them right after the shop opened, when no one else was inside, and paying for them with the coins her mother had given her for sweets. She drank in the lesson of those fairy-tale books more than any hot cream or fudge, that same lesson told and retold: you didn’t need a hundred true loves to find Ever After … you just needed one. It didn’t matter if an entire town called her a freak or a witch or a vampire. If she could just find that one person who loved her—one measly soul—then she’d have everything a princess did, minus the horrific pink dress, obnoxious blond hair, and moony-eyed face.
From the moment she met Sophie, Sophie was that soul: the friend who made her feel normal, who made her feel needed, who so clearly cared about her, despite all her efforts to disguise it. Back then, Agatha had done everything she could to ensure they’d end up together forever, rather than let her best friend be stolen away by a boy … until Agatha somehow fell in love with that boy herself. And so the story had turned on its head, this time Sophie doing everything she could to keep a boy and her best friend apart. It was a wicked love triangle, with Sophie the point that had to be removed, until finally Agatha and Tedros had rid themselves of her, turning that triangle into a straight line between them—prince and princess united at last, just like in the storybooks buried under her bed. But now, as Agatha sat in darkness, feeling more and more like the graveyard girl of old, she wondered if the reason she missed her best friend was the simplest of all. What if Sophie wasn’t the force that kept her and Tedros apart? What if Sophie was the force that brought them together?
Without Sophie, she never could have opened up her heart.
Without Sophie, she never could have learned to love.
Without Sophie, there never could have been a Tedros and Agatha.
“Princess? What is it?”
Agatha slowly looked up at her prince, new life in her eyes. “Let’s go find our best friend.”
Tedros blinked at her, stunned. His cheeked pinked and his Adam’s apple bobbed, words swallowed by emotion. He placed his hand behind his back. “Wish to reopen our story, then?”
Agatha smiled and hid her hand. “Wish to reopen our story.”
Tedros closed his eyes. “One …”
“Two …,” said Agatha, closing hers.
They took a joint breath and thrust out their fingers. “Three—”
The door slammed open to a sharp heel-crack of boots. Agatha lurched to her feet.
There was an Elderguard in the doorway, the outlines of a black cloak and slatted iron mask blending into the night.
Tedros instantly clasped Agatha and yanked her to the kitchen wall. He grabbed a meat knife from the sink and brandished it at the guard, blocking his princess’s body with his. “Move another inch and I’ll cut your throat!” Tedros spat.
The guard threw the door shut and hissed back at them. “Hide! Both of you!”
Agatha squinted at the big brown eyes glinting through the guard’s mask. “Mother?”
“Hide now!” Callis shrieked, shoring her body against the door.
Agatha couldn’t move, trying to process what was happening, gaping at her mother in the same uniform as the town guards ordered to execute her. “I d-d-don’t under—”
But then Agatha heard them coming … footsteps … voices …
She tackled Tedros to the ground. Stunned, the prince lost his grip on the knife and flailed to reach it as Agatha yanked him by the belt buckle under the bed. Tedros lunged over her and snatched the knife—
The door flung open and Agatha spun to see Callis seized from behind and shoved to the wall by two guards.
“No!” Agatha gasped, leaping out, but Tedros pulled her down under the bed, fumbling his knife at the same time. He stabbed his hand for it, only to see Agatha’s hip knock it away. In horror, they both watched the blade skid across the floor and halt beneath the heel of a muddy leather boot. Slowly their eyes traced up.
A tall guard prowled into the house, teeth bared through his mask. From his pocket, he pulled a fistful of eggs, rolling them around in his big hand like marbles.
“First time I saw her stealing them, I thought maybe she can’t afford to pay. Second time, I thought maybe she’s gone hungry. But the third time …” He let the eggs drop and splatter at Callis’ feet. “I wonder who’s she stealing ’em for.”
He spun and kicked aside the bed, revealing Tedros, unarmed and fists up. The guard’s brutal blue eyes honed in on the prince.
“You and I can duel like men,” Tedros threatened. “But leave my princess alone.”
The guard stared at him strangely … then lifted his gaze. His pupils froze, reflecting Agatha behind Tedros, prostrate on the floor.
In a flash, he threw Tedros aside, knocking the prince to the floorboards. But the guard’s eyes stayed on Agatha.
She trembled as his boots crackled through the bleeding eggs, step by step, until he placed his sharp, filthy shoe tip upon her neck.
He took off his mask.
“So much for promises,” Stefan snarled.
The cage was meant for only one prisoner, not three, so Agatha had to stand with her mother, Reaper curled in Callis’ arms, while Tedros crouched in a daze, clutching his black eye. Back at the house, Agatha told him not to resist, but Tedros assured her Camelot’s future king could flatten six armed guards with his bare hands.
He’d been wrong.
Agatha held on to the rusty bars, tottering for balance, as the horse dragged the cage through the darkened cemetery, Stefan at the reins. She could see a crowd forming in front of the torchlit pyre, watching the guards march down the hill ahead of the prisoners.
“That was your punishment for letting me escape, wasn’t it? The Elders made you a guard,” Agatha said, turning to her mother. “That’s why they never searched the house. Because you were with them, protecting the town from your own daughter.”
Callis paled as she saw the distant pyre, two fiery torches hanging from its scaffolding. “When the people blamed you and Sophie for the attacks, the Elders named me and Stefan leaders of a new patrol, responsible for catching you two if you ever dared return. It was a test of our loyalty, of course. Either we saw our own children as traitors and vowed to make them burn or we’d be burned as traitors ourselves.” She looked at Agatha. “The difference between Stefan and me is that he took the vow seriously.”
“How could Stefan betray his own daughter? It was the Elders who gave Sophie to the attackers. They’re the Evil ones! Why would he obey them—”
But as the cage creaked into the moonlit square, Agatha saw the answer to her question. The widow Honora and her two young boys, Jacob and Adam, huddled near the back of the growing crowd, watching Stefan lead in the prisoners. Agatha knew how much the two boys meant to Sophie’s father, who seemed to love them far more than his own daughter. But it wasn’t the boys that Agatha fixed on. It was the gold band, gleaming on the ring finger of Honora’s left hand.
“He had to obey them,” Callis said quietly. “Because the Elders made Stefan choose between his old and new family.”
Agatha looked at her, stunned.
“Leave it to me,” a voice groused under them.
Tedros careened to his feet between Agatha and her mother, knocking both of them against the bars. “They’ve woken the beast,” he boiled, struggling to blink his swollen eye. “No one’s laying a hand on us.”
The cage door swung open behind him and two guards gagged Tedros with a mucky cloth and hoisted him out by his armpits, before roughly nabbing Callis too. Before Agatha could react, Stefan leapt into the cage and took her for himself.
“Stefan, listen to me—Sophie needs our help—” Agatha appealed as he pulled her through the crowd, who was abusing her with cries of “witch” and “traitor” along with chunks of spoiled food. “I know you have a new family, but you can’t give up on her—”
“Give up? You think I gave up? On my own child?” he seethed, pulling her up the stairs to the pyre behind Tedros, who kicked at his guards with muffled yells. “You promised me, Agatha. You promised you’d save her. And instead you left her there to die. Now you’ll see how it feels.”
“Stefan, we can still save her!” sputtered Agatha. “Tedros and me!”
“I always thought one day my daughter would abandon you for a boy,” said Stefan. “Turns out I had the story all wrong.”
He bound her to the pyre with a long rope around her belly, as two guards shoved Tedros in next to her. Agatha could feel the heat of the flaming torches above her.
“Stefan, you have to believe me! We’re Sophie’s only hope—”
He gagged her with a black cloth, but just as he cinched it, Agatha managed one last breath—
“The School Master has her!”
Stefan’s hands froze and his blue eyes met hers, big and wide. Then a hush swept over the crowd and Agatha knew her time was up.
The Elders had come.
(#ulink_95940bb2-5749-5e38-88bb-0370222800d1)
’m afraid we only have room for two on the pyre,” said the gray-cloaked Elder with the longest beard, grinning at Agatha and Tedros as he paced the stage, top hat in hand. He leered down at Callis at the front of the massive crowd, her hands tied, standing between the two younger Elders, both in gray cloaks and tall black hats. “We’ll let mother watch before her turn,” he mused, as the two Elders dragged Callis into the mob.
Agatha spotted Reaper’s shadow sprinting away from her mother and towards Graves Hill, a scrap of what looked like parchment between his teeth. Trapped on the pyre, she wrestled hopelessly against her binds, sweating from the heat of the torches above her. If her mother had entered the house one second later, she and Tedros would have had their magic back—they’d be far into the Woods by now, her mother no longer in danger. Stifling tears, Agatha searched for her again, but darkness rendered the crowd a sea of shadows. They’d called her a witch from the day she was born, destined to burn on a stake, and now they’d made their tales come true. In the front row, a few rosy-faced children gawked at Tedros, clinging storybooks to their chests, like talismans against the boy from inside of them.
“But we are not savages, of course,” said the Elder, turning to the captives. “Justice is only delivered when there is a crime.”
The crowd buzzed impatiently, eager to see the show and get to bed.
“Let us meet our guest from the Woods,” the Elder proclaimed. His shiny eyes flicked to Tedros. “What is your name, boy?”
A guard ripped out Tedros’ gag. “Touch her and I kill you,” the prince lashed.
The Elder raised his brows. “Ah, I see,” he said, peering between Tedros and Agatha. “For two hundred years, those from the Woods have kidnapped our young, ripped apart our families, and attacked our homes. For two hundred years, those from the Woods have brought our children nothing but terror, pain, and suffering. And here you are, the first to ever stand before us, claiming to protect one? An improbable twist …” He studied the way Tedros looked at Agatha, his tone easing. “But if it’s true, perhaps mercy is in the cards after all. Only the hardest of hearts can resist young love.”
The crowd rumbled, as if they’d cast their own hearts in stone to see vengeance for all the curses of the Woods. But as Agatha searched the Elder’s face, the old man’s smile was almost friendly now.
“You’ll let us live?” Tedros insisted.
Agatha’s heart hammered, praying her prince had just saved them.
The Elder touched Tedros’ chest with a shriveled hand. Tedros winced, his wound still tender. “You’re young and handsome, with your whole life ahead of you,” the Elder cooed. “Tell us what you know about those that attacked us and I promise we won’t hurt you.”
Agatha’s stomach sank. That tone. She’d heard it before. It was the same way he’d told Sophie she’d be sheltered from her assassins …
Before he left her to die.
Agatha pressed her fist into Tedros’ ribs. Whatever he did, he couldn’t play this game—
“Tedros,” the prince proclaimed to the Elder. “Tedros is my name.”
Agatha bristled, shoving him harder.
“And how do you know our beloved Agatha, Tedros?” coaxed the Elder, leaning closer.
“She’s my princess,” Tedros declared, gently clasping Agatha’s fist. “Soon to be Queen of Camelot and bloodline to King Arthur, so I suggest you unhand us at once.”
The mob quieted in disbelief, children clutching their storybooks tighter. (Red-haired Radley gaped goonishly at Agatha. “Must be slim pickings in the Woods,” he murmured.)
“A real-life prince!” The Elder stepped back. For the first time, he looked unsettled by Tedros, as if forced to acknowledge the possibility of a world bigger than his own. “And to what do we owe this honor?”
Agatha squirmed against her binds, trying to get Tedros to look at her.
“I’m taking her to my castle in the Woods,” Tedros testified, eyes fixed on the Elder. “We pose absolutely no threat to you.”
“And yet we were attacked only months ago by assassins from the Woods,” the Elder said, masses clamoring behind him. “Attacks from which we are still rebuilding.”
“Well, the attacks are over,” retorted Tedros. “Your town is safe.”
Agatha dug her heel into his foot. Tedros shook her off.
“Oh really? Do your princely powers come with foresight?” the Elder scoffed, the audience echoing his laughter. “How would you know anything about the fate of our town, let alone the attacks?”
Agatha shouted into her gag to stop him—
“Because I ordered them,” Tedros fired.
The crowd went still. Agatha slumped against the rope.
The Elder stared at Tedros … then broke into a slow grin, color growing in his cheeks. “Well. We’ve learned all we need to know about our dear guest, haven’t we?” He smiled wolfishly at the prince and walked off the stage, passing Stefan with a glare. “Do the witch first.”
Roars detonated from the mob, flocking closer to the pyre.
Tedros spun to Agatha and saw her face. “But he promised us!” he cried.
The Elder glanced back as he descended the steps. “Every story has a lesson doesn’t it, young prince? Perhaps yours is that you’re too old to believe in fairy tales.”
Agatha felt Tedros gush into a sweat as the guards regagged him. Frantic, the prince thrashed at the rope, trying to free his princess, but his flailing only made the rope cut tighter. Choking for breath, Agatha hunted wildly for her mother, but still couldn’t find her. She whirled to Stefan, knowing she was about to die—
But Stefan hadn’t moved from the side of the stage, his gaze fixed on her.
“Is there a problem, Stefan?” the Elder said, now at the front of the mass.
Stefan kept staring at Agatha.
“Or should we replace our prisoners with your new family?” the Elder said.
Stefan turned sharply. Guards held Honora, Jacob, and Adam in the crowd.
Stefan’s teeth bit the inside of his cheeks. Then his expression darkened. He moved towards Agatha, no longer able to look at her. Body close to hers, he reached up and took a flaming torch from the scaffolding. Agatha cowered from the wrath of the flame as he drew it down, blinding her with smoke. She could hear Tedros’ muffled yells, the echoes of the shouting hordes, but they were drowned out by the raging torch fire, hissing like a demon snake. Eyes watering, she caught flashes of Stefan’s heaving chest, his quivering grasp on the torch, the red splotches across his cheeks …
“Please—” Agatha gasped into her gag.
Stefan still couldn’t look at her, the torch shaking so much that embers scattered onto Agatha’s dress, burning tiny holes.
“Stefan …,” the Elder warned in a menacing voice.
Stefan nodded, tears and sweat mixing. The crowd went dead quiet, seeing him bend towards the stake. He raised the torch to the sticks over Agatha’s head, the flames about to lick onto the wood—
“Take me!” Callis’ anguished voice pierced the silence. “Please, Stefan! Let me die with her!”
Stefan froze, his flame so close to Agatha it scorched the gag in her mouth. Heart stopped, Agatha watched him deliberate a moment, his face calcifying into a mask …
Then he backed away and turned to the Elder.
“It is a mother’s last request,” said Stefan, adding a snort. “Shove her in with her traitor daughter and watch the flesh melt off ’em. They deserve to writhe together, don’t they?”
Even the most bloodthirsty spectators looked flummoxed, deferring to the Elder.
The Elder’s pupils raked Stefan over, before his lips pursed in a flat line.
“Quickly then.”
“No!” Agatha shrieked, her gag breaking away.
Guards wrenched Callis from the crowd onto the stage and shoved her next to Agatha, binding her waist to the pyre. Helpless, Tedros ripped at the rope, his bicep veins about to burst.
“This is my fault …,” Agatha sobbed. “This is all my fault—”
“Close your eyes, dear,” said Callis, trying not to cry. “It will all go fast from here.”
Agatha looked up and saw Stefan’s hand wasn’t shaking on the torch anymore. With an eerie calm, he advanced towards her and her mother, the dancing flame reaching for the wood sticks between them. He finally met Agatha’s eyes, a strange sadness in his face.
“If you ever see my daughter again, beyond this world … tell her I love her.”
“Now, Stefan,” the Elder commanded.
Petrified, Agatha seized Tedros’ hand as she leaned into her mother’s shoulder. She saw Stefan looking at Callis, his lips trembling.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” he whispered.
“You saved me once upon a time, Stefan.” Callis smiled mournfully at him. “I owe you a debt.”
“I c-c-can’t,” Stefan faltered.
“You must,” said Callis, hard as steel.
“NOW!” the Elder thundered.
With a pained cry, Stefan plunged the torch at Callis. Agatha screamed—
Callis thrust out her finger from beneath the binds and shot a blast of green light at the torch. The fire turned green and ricocheted off the pyre like a comet, blasting Stefan off the platform, before circling the stage in a wall of green flames, sealing the captives in.
Before Agatha could suck in a breath, her mother cut her and Tedros loose from the rope with her glowing fingertip. She grabbed Agatha and spoke over the villagers’ cries beyond the firewall—
“The spell won’t last, so listen carefully. Stefan knew what I was, Agatha. From the night you went after Sophie, we had a plan to save you girls from the Elders if you ever returned. Stefan would do anything to keep his daughter safe. But when you came back without Sophie, Stefan had no reason to keep to the plan and endanger his new family … unless he believes his daughter still needs you. You must repay my old debt to him, Agatha. You must save Sophie as Stefan saved you. You hear me? Do not fail. Now run for Graves Hill as fast as you can—”
“You’re a w-w-witch—” Agatha spluttered, trying to find air. “You were a witch all along—”
“The grave between the two swans. Help will be there, waiting for you,” her mother cut in. “You must find the grave before it’s too late.”
Dazed, Tedros turned to Agatha, expecting her to know what her mother was talking about. But Agatha was paralyzed, staring ahead. Tedros spun back to Callis. “Who? Who will be waiting for u—”
Only now Tedros saw what his princess was looking at … the circle of fire falling around the stage, Callis’ spell about to end. In the green firelight, Agatha glimpsed Stefan, stunned on the ground but unharmed, before a fleet of shadows jumped over him, throttling towards the stage. Tedros and Agatha raised their eyes at the same time to see the guards charging through the crowd with spears, dashing right for them.
Callis took Agatha’s face in her hands. “Don’t look back, Agatha.” She kissed her daughter’s forehead hard. “Whatever you do, promise me you won’t look back.”
With a scared cry, Agatha grabbed her mother’s hand, but her prince was already dragging her towards the edge of the stage away from the sprinting guards. Tedros hooked his arm over Agatha and flung the both of them off the platform in a flying leap. Spinning around, Agatha pulled her mother with them, holding on to her hand with every ounce of strength—
Callis smiled at Agatha in the fading firelight and let her daughter go.
Agatha crashed in dirt, twisting her ankle, before Tedros lifted her up in darkness, towing her towards the town gates. “No—I can’t leave her—” she croaked, resisting him.
“‘Don’t look back.’ That’s what she said,” Tedros fought, goading her ahead. “Trust your mother, Agatha. She’s a witch. A powerful witch. We’re the ones who need saving now.”
Hearing the guards’ shouts, Agatha let Tedros shove her forward. She pinned her eyes on Graves Hill ahead, hobbling beside him. Don’t look back, she begged herself, Tedros clenching her like a vise. Don’t look back …
Agatha looked back to see three guards hurdle the sinking firewall towards Callis, spears about to impale her. Her mother held her ground.
“What is she doing?” Agatha choked, freezing in horror.
“Agatha, don’t!” cried Tedros—
Agatha broke free of him and started running back. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING—”
“Kill her!” the Elder’s voice shouted faraway.
Callis raised her arms, welcoming the guards.
They charged and Agatha’s mother fell.
“NO!” Agatha screamed, voice tearing out of her throat. She sank to her knees at the foot of Graves Hill. Her eyes fogged. Her heart deadened. All she saw was a blur of shadows swarming her mother as the shallow fires extinguished, an army of darkness overwhelming the last ashes of light.
“She let them …,” Agatha whispered. “She let them kill her.”
Little by little, she felt the dirt wet on her knees, the numbness wearing off to an onslaught of pain—the dagger-edged thoughts that she had no family anymore … that her only parent had deserted her … that her mother had given her nothing to come home to ever again. She curled into herself, sobbing with fury. Men were no match for a witch. She could have done another spell! She could have ripped them all to shreds! Agatha cried and cried until she heard a strange echo between shuddering breaths … the whispered sound of her name …
Agatha lifted her eyes to a swollen-eyed boy standing over her, beautiful and scared, and for a moment, she saw nothing but a stranger. It was only when Agatha saw his legs unsteady, that she knew her prince was trying to tell her something. Slowly Tedros pointed a shaky finger over her head. Agatha turned.
Six guards raced towards them from the square, armed with torches and spears.
“We have to run, Agatha,” Tedros rasped. “We have to run right now.”
Agatha didn’t move, still nauseous. “How could she let them …”
“To save you, Agatha,” her prince implored, watching the guards gain ground. “And everything she did, everything your mother and Sophie’s father did to keep us alive will be in vain if we don’t go now.”
Agatha gazed into the wet pools of his eyes and suddenly she understood. Her mother didn’t want her to stay with her. Her mother didn’t want her to come back to Gavaldon. She wanted Agatha to save her best friend … to find happiness with her prince … to abandon this world for a better one, far far away …
Because her happy ending wasn’t here. It was never here.
Her mother had died to set her free.
Do not fail.
She had to find her real ending.
She had to run.
Agatha looked up at the guards bolting towards them, spears gleaming in torchlight. Rage blasted through her blood and scorched through her muscles, nothing holding her back anymore. Lunging to her feet, she hurtled up the slope of Graves Hill.
“Come on! We’ll lose them in the graves!”
Together, they ripped through the rusted graveyard gates into the dark expanse of graves. Even in pitch black, Agatha knew every step, navigating the headstones like a wily squirrel, while Tedros collided with them, cursing so barbarically even the grave worms fled.
Panting fire, his princess led him into the thick of the cemetery. The Elders had taken her family from her. They wouldn’t take her prince too.
“The grave between the swans,” Tedros called out behind her. “She said help would be waiting there—”
“Swans?” Agatha blurted. “There are no swans in Gavaldon!”
Tedros looked back down the hill and saw the guards barreling up, carrying torches. “Thirty seconds, Agatha! We have thirty seconds!”
Agatha scoured stones and plaques and obelisks for evidence of a swan. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for!”
“Twenty seconds!” Tedros voice rang out.
She couldn’t see her prince anymore. Agatha whirled desperately, trying to steady her mind. The only birds she’d ever seen in Gavaldon were smog-colored ducks and obese pigeons. She’d never even seen a real swan, especially not on Graves Hill—
Agatha’s heart pattered faster.
But she had seen swans before, hadn’t she? Swans were the symbols of the School for Good and Evil: one black, one white … representing two School Masters in balance … one brother Good, one brother Evil …
If Callis was a witch, she’d have known the Good and Evil swans. That’s how she knew so much about the school, Agatha thought. Her mother must have seen it for herself …
“Ten seconds!” Tedros shouted—
Agatha closed her eyes and tried to focus, her temples throbbing.
Swans … school … Stefan …
“You saved me,” Callis had whispered to him.
What had she meant? If Callis and Stefan had a history, maybe the swans involved something that connected her mother and Sophie’s father … something that both of them had in common … or someone …
Agatha’s heart stopped. Her eyes shot open.
She was already running.
“What is it?” Tedros yelled, seeing her shadow dart deeper into the cemetery, towards the house on Graves Hill.
“Here! It’s over here!”
Tedros chased her, squinting at her outline fading into the dark. He looked back and saw the army of shadows smash through the graveyard gates, spears glinting. Tedros dove to the ground behind a domed stone. He peeked over it and saw the guards sweeping torches over the rows of graves. Tedros ducked down. “This is worse than the Woods,” he wheezed, crawling through stones to follow Agatha. “Sooooo much worse—”
Then he saw her, crouched in the final row of headstones, only a short distance from her house. Tedros skidded into dirt beside her. “They’re coming, Agatha!”
“Sophie’s mother. That’s what connected them,” Agatha said, gripping a tablet gravestone knifing out of the ground, engraved with the words “Loving Wife and Mother.” Two smaller dirt-caked graves, one lighter, one darker, flanked it on either side like wings. “Before Sophie, she couldn’t have a child. Two boys, both born dead.”
She ran her hand over the lighter of the two boys’ graves, pulling away the grime. Tedros’ eyes bulged as Agatha’s fingers cleared the headstone, revealing a small black swan carved into the unmarked grave. Tedros tore away the moss from the darker grave, revealing a white swan set in the stone. He and Agatha both turned to the larger grave in the middle, towering between the two swans.
“When she couldn’t have a child, Sophie’s mother went to see mine as a patient. That’s what Sophie told me,” Agatha pressed. “Somehow it’s all connected. Sophie’s mother … my mother being a witch … the debt she owed Stefan … I don’t know how it’s connected, but it has to be—”
Firelight swept over the both of them.
Agatha and Tedros flattened to the ground and swiveled to see the guards five rows back.
“We found the swans—we found the grave—” Tedros panicked, gaping at the bigger headstone. “Where’s the help?”
Agatha shook her head. “We can’t fight the guards without magic, Tedros! We need to make our wish!”
The prince swallowed. “Wish to reopen our story on three, okay? Hands behind our back—” He stopped.
His right fingertip was already glowing gold.
Agatha looked down at hers, glowing almost an identical shade.
“Did you make the wish?” Tedros asked.
Agatha shook her head.
“Neither did I,” Tedros said, confused. “How could our fingers be glowing, then?”
Torchlight shined in their faces.
“They’re here!” a guard cried. “They’re over here!”
Agatha spun to see shadows vaulting over the last rows of graves. “Unless my mother didn’t interrupt our wish in the house. Unless our wish worked when we made it the first time. Unless our fairy tale was open all along.”
Agatha looked at her prince, deathly white. “We’re already back in our story, Tedros. We’ve been in our story from the moment the guards found us …”
Tedros looked up at the spears slashing towards their hearts. “Which means we die at The End, Agatha!”
Terrified, she and Tedros clasped hands, each backing away from the spears into one of the swans—
Just in time to see a pale hand reach out of the grave between them and pull them both in.
(#ulink_8d5d8c9b-e4da-5c39-8e9c-683de7183425)
raves are meant for dead people, who have no reason to see, breathe, or use the toilet. Unfortunately for Agatha, she needed to do all three. Trapped underground in darkness, she and Tedros inhaled mouthfuls of soil while tangled in each other’s sweaty limbs. Agatha couldn’t make out her prince’s face, but heard him hyperventilating with panic.
“You’re using up all our air!” Agatha hissed.
“Graves have b-b-bodies—d-d-dead bodies—”
Agatha blanched with understanding and gripped on to any of Tedros’ flesh she could find. “Sophie’s mother … she p-p-pulled us in?”
“C-c-can’t see a thing. For all we know she’s right next to us!”
“Magic,” Agatha wheezed. “Use magic!”
Tedros gulped a breath and focused on his fear, until his finger flickered gold like a candle, lighting up a wide, shallow grave the size of a large bed. Shivering on top of each other, Tedros and Agatha slowly turned to their right.
Dirt.
No body. No bones.
Just dirt.
“Where is she?” Agatha choked, rolling off Tedros, who groaned and rubbed his chest. She snatched her prince’s wrist and swept his fingerglow over the right half of the grave, spotting only a pair of dung beetles fighting over a dirt ball in the corner. She shook her head, baffled, and swung Tedros’ hand to the left—
Both of them froze.
Two sparkling brown eyes glared at them through a black ninja mask.
Agatha and Tedros opened their mouths to scream, but the figure gagged them with slender hands.
“Shhhh! They’ll hear you!” the stranger whispered in a low, breathy voice.
Tedros gaped at the ninja in the grave with them, wrapped in draping black robes. “Are you … are you Sophie’s mother …”
The ninja let out a giggly squeak. “Oh how absurd. Now shhhh!”
Agatha tensed. That squeak. Where had she heard it before? She tried to catch Tedros’ eye, hoping he’d heard it too, but her prince was smothering the stranger in a hug.
“Oh thank God! We’ve been trapped for a month in the smallest, foulest house you can imagine, almost burned at the stake, almost skewered by an army, and then you pulled us in, whoever you are, which means you have to get us out! We need to get to the School for Good and Evil and rescue our best friend. Surely you know it. It’s halfway between the Murmuring Mountains and—”
The ninja gagged him with a fist. “I know cats that listen better than you.”
“You have no idea,” Agatha murmured, punchy from the lack of air.
A sharp crackle ripped above their heads, like a sword splitting earth, and the grave tremored, caving clumps of dirt into their faces.
“Check ’em all,” someone growled gruffly, followed by more sharp tremors. “Intercepted a message from the League of Thirteen. Said they’d be comin’ through a grave.”
Agatha’s stomach plunged. The voice didn’t sound like an Elder’s.
“Coulda been more specific. Thousands of ’em and I’m starvin’,” a thick, oafish voice added. “Besides, should be out fixin’ our stories like the others, not diggin’ around in graves. What’s so important about these two anyway?”
“School Master wants ’em. Reason enough for you,” said the gruff one, punctuated by another violent crackle. “He’ll give us a turn at our stories soon enough.”
Agatha and Tedros swiveled to each other. The School Master’s men in Gavaldon? How had they gotten past the guards? The ceiling shook harder, showering clumps of earth.
“Think he’ll let us eat an Everboy as a reward?” asked the oafish one.
“Might even let us eat two,” the gruff voice chortled—
A black furry claw smashed through the ceiling into the grave, with five knife-edged talons snatching right and left. Agatha and Tedros choked back screams as the ninja flattened them against the dirt wall, the hooked talons swiping at air, missing the inseam of Tedros’ breeches by a whisker. It slashed in vain a few more times and then curled into a fist.
“Nothin’ here,” the gruff voice growled. “Come on, let’s eat. Maybe we’ll find a juicy little boy in the Oakwood.”
The claw withdrew empty-handed and vanished, followed by loud, thudding stomps.
A terrorized silence passed … then Tedros and Agatha shoved mouths to a hole in the ceiling and sucked down air. Agatha glanced at Tedros to make sure he was okay, expecting he’d be doing the same for her. Instead, her prince was pulling at his breeches, looking down his own pants. Tedros smiled, relieved … then saw Agatha frowning.
“What?” Tedros said.
Agatha was about to question his priorities, then noticed the footsteps had stopped. The voices too. Agatha’s eyes shot wide open and she dove for her prince—“Tedros, watch out!”
The black claw crashed through the ceiling and grabbed Agatha off her prince, dragging her out of the grave. Tedros leapt to clasp her leg too late. He craned up in horror to see the claw pull his princess into the night sky, dangling her like a caught mouse.
Agatha stared into the bloodshot yellow eyes of a tall, bony brown wolf on two legs, fur and flesh flaking off his face, leaving gaping holes over pieces of his skull.
“Lookie here. A princess returns,” the wolf snarled gruffly, cheekbones poking through one of these holes.
Agatha paled. Was he the one talking about the School Master before? How could an Evil wolf have crossed into Gavaldon? And where was the Elderguard? Her eyes darted around, but all she could see in the darkness was a smattering of crooked headstones. She tried to make her finger glow, but the wolf was gripping her hand too tightly.
“Storian ain’t writing, world dying, armies rising—all ’cause of you?” he purred, tracing her pallid skin and charcoal hair. “Less princess, I’d say, and more … skunk. How Good’s fallen in my time away. Even runty Red Riding Hood was a more tempting treat.”
Agatha had no idea what he was talking about, but after all she’d been through tonight, the last thing she needed was to be insulted for her looks by a puny wolf with a skin condition.
“And yet, Red Riding Hood’s wolf learned his lesson, didn’t he?” she warned, knowing her prince must be nearby. “Messed with Good and a hunter tore out his stomach.”
“Tore out his stomach?” said the wolf, appalled.
“With his bare hands,” Agatha lied loudly, signaling Tedros.
“And is this wolf … dead?”
“Very dead, so beat it before MY hunter comes,” Agatha yelled, cuing Tedros again.
“Dead as in doornail dead?” the wolf fretted.
“Dead, dead, dead,” Agatha snapped, squinting angrily for her prince.
“Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead,” mumbled the wolf, mulling this gruesome fate. “Well, if that’s true …” He lifted big, shiny eyes. “How am I still here?”
Agatha’s eyes lowered to his other claw, tapping at a hideous scar crisscrossing his belly. Her face lost all of its blood. “I-i-impossible—”
“Can I eat this one?” an oafish voice said behind her. Agatha spun to see a 10-foot, bald, humpbacked giant, swinging Tedros upside down by his bootstrap. The giant’s flesh peeled off his skull, covered in zigzagged stitches, as he probed and pinched Tedros’ muscles. “Ain’t seen such firm meat since young Jack came up my beanstalk.”
Agatha’s heart rose into her throat. Red Riding Hood’s dead wolf … Jack’s dead giant … alive? Tedros met her eyes, ashen and upside down, clearly petrified by the same question.
“I told you. School Master wants ’em conscious,” the wolf groused.
The giant sighed miserably … then saw the wolf smirking.
“But that don’t mean we can’t break off a piece or two,” the wolf said, gripping Agatha harder.
She and Tedros let out twin cries as the giant and wolf raised them high in the air and slowly lowered their legs into their mouths like pork ribs—
“That would be a very poor decision,” said an airy voice.
The wolf and giant both froze jaws over their prey, eyes flicking to the ninja on the ground. The wolf pulled Agatha out of his mouth and smiled at the masked stranger, prepared to delay a snack if it might result in a larger meal. “And why’s that, oh Faceless One?”
“Because if you release them, I’ll let you go on your way,” said the ninja.
“And if we don’t?” snorted the giant, mouth full of Tedros, shivering between the giant’s teeth.
“Then you’ll be woefully outnumbered,” said the ninja.
“Strange …,” the wolf replied, prowling towards the stranger, Agatha in hand. “Given your prince and princess are a bit held up, I see one of you and two of us.” He loomed over the ninja in the moonlight. “Which means it’s you that’s outnumbered.”
Slowly the ninja looked up. The black mask came off, revealing almond-shaped eyes, olive skin, and black hair flowing in the wind.
Princess Uma smiled. “Then you’re not looking very closely.”
She let out a piercing squeak through her teeth and a roar echoed from every side of the darkness, a thunder beneath their feet. For a moment, the wolf and giant spun dumbly, the roar crashing towards them north and south, east and west … until they dropped their two prisoners like hot potatoes. From the ground, Agatha raised her glowing finger just in time to see a stampede of bulls leap over her body and ram into the wolf and giant like balls to bowling pins. Horses and bears sprang over Tedros, tearing into the monsters with their hooves and claws. By the time Agatha and Tedros wobbled to their feet, their gold glows illuminating the scene, the wolf and giant were howling for mercy atop the beastly tide bucking them into the darkness. Princess Uma whistled a cheery thank-you and her animal army echoed with singsong growls. Soon their shadows faded and the wolf and giant were gone.
Agatha whirled to Princess Uma, a teacher at the School for Good who she’d once mocked as helpless and passive and weak, but who had just saved her and Tedros’ lives. “I thought the princes killed you!” Agatha cried. “Hester said Dean Sader left you to die in the Woods. We all thought you were dead—”
“A professor of Animal Communication unable to survive in the Woods?” Princess Uma swished her finger and turned her black robes to pink, a silver swan crest stitched over the heart. “Even your mother had more faith in me and we’ve never met.”
“You … you know my mother?” Agatha asked. Knew, a voice corrected. Agatha battled a fresh wave of nausea. She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“Only through her messages to the League,” Uma replied.
“League? What League?” Tedros broke in.
“The League of Thirteen, of course,” said Uma, unhelpfully. “Her last message to us made three things very clear: That we protect your lives. That we get you to Sophie. And that we’d find you right here.”
Tedros and Agatha followed their teacher’s eyes down to the empty grave that once held Sophie’s mother … Only the headstone was different now. Instead of a tall rectangle, it was a murky oval, with a long crack down the middle, carved with thick black letters.
“Vanessa was Sophie’s mother. ‘Butterfly,’ I think the name means,” remembered Tedros, studying the stone. “Sophie told me one night when she was Filip.”
“Sophie never told me her mother’s name,” Agatha said, hurt.
“Perhaps because you never asked,” said Tedros. His face changed. “Wait a second. Her name wasn’t on the grave before. And look, it doesn’t say ‘Loving Wife and Mother’ like it used to.” He squinted at the shadows of crooked slabs around them. “We’re in the same graveyard, in the exact same spot. Doesn’t make any sense. A gravestone can’t just change—”
“Unless you’re not in the same graveyard at all,” Princess Uma said behind them.
Agatha and Tedros spun to see their teacher shoot a bolt of white glow into the sky. From every direction, thousands of fireflies whizzed to it like a signal, swarming over the Evers’ heads and detonating neon-green wings into a giant light cloud, illuminating a sprawling landscape in every direction. Prince and princess gazed out at a vast cemetery, with thousands and thousands of gravestones sloping over steep, barren hills. For a moment, Agatha thought Graves Hill had magically grown bigger. But it was what lay beyond the cemetery that made Agatha feel faint—a dark, endless gnarl of black trees, rearing high into the night like a primeval monster.
They weren’t on Graves Hill.
They weren’t in Gavaldon at all.
“We’re in the Woods,” Agatha rasped.
She was suddenly aware of the sea of dead bodies under her feet. In an instant, the images she’d been damming up broke through with a vengeance—guards, spears, her mother falling … Agatha buckled, about to retch—
Tedros’ hand touched her arm. “I’m right here.”
His voice brought her back to the moment. Agatha swallowed the acid taste in her mouth and uncurled to stand, clutching her prince by the shirt laces. She steadied her legs, trying to see a graveyard in front of her, just a graveyard and nothing more …
“Hold on. I’ve been here before,” said Tedros, searching the landscape.
“Each Forest Group makes a trip first year to scavenge meerworms. No doubt Yuba accompanied you,” Princess Uma replied.
“The Garden of Good and Evil,” said Tedros. “That’s what he called it. Every Ever or Never whose name makes it into a storybook is buried here.”
Under the firefly cloud, he scanned thousands of coffins down one side of the hills, teeming with glittering gem-crusted memorials for pairs of Evers, united in life and now in death. “That’s Ever Embankment, where the greatest heroes are,” he said. “Except Dad, of course.”
Agatha looked at her prince, waiting for him to go on, but he turned back to her. “We must have come out the other side of Vanessa’s grave. One end is Gavaldon, the other end the Woods. It’s the only explanation. But how would your mother have known the grave was a portal?”
Agatha thought of the black and white swans on the two graves flanking Sophie’s mother’s. “Even if she did know somehow, why would Sophie’s mother’s grave connect the two worlds?”
“You’re asking the wrong questions, students.”
Agatha and Tedros looked up at Princess Uma, studying them intently.
“You should be asking why her grave is empty.”
Uma circled her finger at the sky and the firefly cloud swept over their heads, illuminating the slope Agatha and Tedros were standing on. A bank of cracked and moldy headstones glowed in the alien green light, jutting from ragged black mounds.
“Necro Ridge,” said Tedros. “It’s where the worst villains are buried.”
“Sophie’s mother was a Never?” Agatha asked, disoriented.
“Not according to our findings. The League of Thirteen has no evidence of a Vanessa of Woods Beyond attending the School for Good and Evil, being mentioned in a fairy tale, or having her body buried here at all,” said Uma, pocketing gooey gray meerworms off a tomb. “And yet, she has a grave amongst our most famous Nevers.”
“You keep talking about this League,” Tedros rankled. “I’ve never heard of them—”
“As you shouldn’t,” said Uma, even more unhelpfully than before. “Listen to me, Agatha. There are no words to ease the pain you’re in right now. But your mother died before she could give the League the answers we needed. Think back. Do you have any idea why Vanessa’s name is carved into a headstone on Necro Ridge? And where her body might be?”
“I don’t see why we should help a League we know nothing about,” Tedros grouched.
But Agatha’s head was still swimming. Her own mother, Callis, had moved between the two worlds as a witch without anyone in Gavaldon knowing, including her own daughter. And yet, her mother fit all the traits of a Never—unmarried, mysterious, reclusive … If anything, Agatha should have seen the clues. But Sophie’s mother? Sophie had spoken only rapturously of her mother, doting on her wicked, unfaithful husband until her dying day. There was no hint of her being anything other than a radiant, loving caretaker and wife. So how could her name be on a villain’s tomb? Agatha shook her head, at a dead end … until her eyes suddenly flared wide.
“The Crypt Keeper will know!”
Quickly she scoured the horizon for the blue-skinned, dreadlocked giant she’d learned about at school, responsible for digging and filling graves. “Hort said he buries everybody himself. Never lets anyone interfere. That’s why Hort’s dad’s been waiting for a coffin all these years. So the Crypt Keeper has to know why Sophie’s mother has a headstone here …” But the hills were deserted, except for a few hovering vultures nearby. She turned to Uma. “Where is h—”
Agatha stopped cold, seeing Uma’s expression.
Slowly Agatha turned back to the vultures.
Lying on the ground beneath them was a massive, blue-skinned body crumpled in a spray of dirt. His bones were broken and his throat split open, the blood staining his neck long dried out. Agatha could see the whites of his wide-open eyes, as if the shock of dying paled to the shock of what killed him.
Agatha felt Tedros squeeze her hand with his sweaty palm, telling her she hadn’t seen the worst of it. Dread growing, she tracked his gaze past the dead Crypt Keeper and across the 200 graves on Necro Ridge, marking the resting place of famous fairy-tale villains. But now Agatha saw why there were so many mounds of dirt, blacking out the grass. Every single one of the famous villains’ tombs had been dug up, the insides of all of them …
“Empty,” said Agatha. “The villains’ graves are empty.”
Legs shaky, Tedros gaped at the bodiless graves. “Red Riding Hood’s wolf … Jack’s giant … and a whole lot worse …”
Agatha whitened, remembering who the wolf said they worked for. “And they’re all under the School Master’s control.”
Princess Uma came up behind them. “For hundreds of years, Evil lost every story because Good had love on its side. Love gave Good a power and purpose Evil couldn’t match. But those happy endings held only as long as Evil wasn’t able to love. Things have changed, students. The School Master has found someone who loves him and who he loves in return. He’s proved Evil deserves a chance to rewrite its fairy tales. Now every old villain gets a new turn at their story. Every dead villain is reborn.”
True love? The School Master? Agatha shook her head, trying to understand. How could anyone love him?
Suddenly Agatha noticed Vanessa’s empty grave again and her heart seized. “Wait—Sophie’s mother … body missing … means she’s … she’s—”
“She wasn’t buried here, remember?” Uma said, cutting her off. “We don’t even know if her body was buried at all. And yet, the Crypt Keeper saved this grave for Sophie’s mother amongst the famous Nevers—the Crypt Keeper, who answers to no one but the Storian itself. Why he saved a villain’s grave for her could be our greatest clue to understanding how the School Master came to choose his new queen.”
Agatha felt a cold darkness rip through her stomach. She had a thousand questions: about her mother and her best friend’s mother, about letters and Leagues, about empty graves and undead villains … but only one mattered.
“Queen?” she whispered, slowly looking up. “Who?”
Uma met her eyes. “Sophie took the School Master’s ring. She is his true love.”
Agatha couldn’t speak.
“But … but we came to rescue her from him,” Tedros said, stunned.
“And you must. But it will not be an easy task,” said Uma. “Sophie’s kiss may have brought him back to life—but it is his ring on her finger that makes the power of that kiss last. As long as Sophie wears his ring, the School Master remains immortal. And yet, there is a way to undo the kiss, children. A way to destroy the School Master once and for all. And it is our one and only hope.” Her voice was fiery, urgent. “You must convince Sophie to destroy the School Master’s ring by her own hand. Convince Sophie to destroy his ring and the School Master will be destroyed with it forever.”
Agatha was still lost in a fog.
“But beware,” Uma added. “While you seek your true ending to The Tale of Sophie and Agatha, the School Master seeks his too.”
Tedros could see Agatha staring into space, no longer listening. “And what ending is that?” he asked.
Uma leaned in, her soft features hardening. “The wolf and giant were no accident. War is coming, Son of Arthur. As long as Sophie wears the School Master’s ring, all of Good is in terrible danger, past and present, young and old. Either you and your princess bring Sophie back to Good … or Good as we know it will be wiped out forever. That is the ending he seeks.”
Agatha’s heartbeat swirled in her ears.
Once upon a time, she and Sophie had slain a deadly villain who’d torn them apart.
Now her best friend had given her heart to that villain.
“But he’s Evil. She knows he’s Evil … and Sophie isn’t Evil anymore,” Agatha breathed, looking up. “Why would she want to be with him?”
“For the same reason you and your prince want to be with each other.” Uma gave her a wistful smile. “To be happy.”
Agatha and Tedros watched the Princess circle her finger, extinguishing the fireflies, and hasten towards the dark Woods beyond the hills. “Quickly, Evers,” she said, snatching a few more meerworms off a grave. “It’s a two-day journey to school and we must get to Sophie before they find you.”
Tedros frowned, lagging behind. “Before who finds us?”
“Who?” Uma glared back, incredulous. “Whoever else was in those graves.”
(#ulink_89769759-bfff-5263-9dd6-97a119c07b54)
afal never slept in his chamber, so when the pen finally began to write, in the first hours of dawn, it was Sophie who was there to see it.
She’d been ill for six nights, ever since she took his ring—so ill, with a scorching fever and bone-numbing chills that she’d yet to leave her bed. Curled up in blankets, she imagined Tedros and Agatha gallivanting about town, snacking on Battersby’s cupcakes (maybe he’ll get fat, she hoped) and watching the sunset by the lake (maybe he’ll drown), while here she was cooped in a sooty tower, sniffling and shivering like a snotty Rapunzel, and no one liked Rapunzel because she was boring.
“You said—I could—see the school,” she’d babbled to Rafal in a sweaty fit this morning. “I want to see—Hester—Anadil—”
“And infect them with whatever plague you’re carrying?” he teased, wrapping her in a fresh blanket.
She’d have pressed her case, if only he hadn’t been taking such good care of her. He barely left her side during the day: sponging her forehead, feeding her bone-marrow soup, bringing her baggy, black nightdresses that she could hibernate inside, and enduring her inane blathering about Tedros and Agatha and how little or much fun they must be having, depending on whether her jealousy was at a peak or a valley in any given moment. Soon Sophie began to dread the nights, when Rafal would go away, just as she once dreaded those first mornings when she was afraid he’d come. In her delirious haze, she began to crave the marble cradle of his arms … his fresh, teenage scent … his cold touch on her burning skin … his silvery voice pulling her out of nightmares …
“I bet you … made me sick … so I’d need you …,” Sophie slurred as he’d left.
The young School Master looked back and smiled.
As her fever deepened, Sophie’s nightmares grew clearer. Tonight she’d been dreaming of a pitch-black tunnel with a halo of light at its end. Floating in the dark tunnel was a giant gold ring, lined with razor-sharp teeth, spinning in midair and blocking her path. As she moved towards it, the ring spun faster, until she could see her reflection in the mirrored blur of teeth. Only, as she drew towards the ring, Sophie realized the reflection wasn’t hers at all. It was a face she’d never seen before—a strange man’s, with wild brown hair, dark, leathery skin, and a fat, hooked nose. Confused, Sophie leaned in to see him … closer … closer … until the man lifted black, bloodshot eyes, with a dangerous grin—
Then he stabbed out his hands and slammed Sophie into the guillotine of teeth.
Sophie gasped awake, scared out of her wits—
She froze dead still. Someone was in the chamber. Scratching and rustling, like a black cat sharpening its nails.
Chest hammering, she squinted into the early morning. No one there. Slowly she turned her head and to her relief, saw it wasn’t a person making the sounds, but a whirring gleam of steel. Still half-asleep, she first thought it a spindle, before she remembered spindles were for Sleeping Beauty, the lamest princess of all time and surely dead by now since she was old and old people die and Sophie wasn’t old or dead … and well, that finally got her out of bed.
She had to blink a few times to make sure what she was seeing was indeed there: the Storian itself doing all that scratching and rustling—the pen that had dimmed the Endless Woods by refusing to write, now … writing.
But how? she thought. The Storian had been stalled over the last page of her and Agatha’s storybook for weeks. It hadn’t moved an inch when she took the School Master’s ring. Which meant it wasn’t her ending the pen had been doubting, but rather—
Sophie’s heart skittered. Impossible …
Pulling her blankets around her, she tiptoed forward in her saggy black nightdress, afraid the slightest sound might disrupt it. But as Sophie grew closer, she saw the pen wasn’t writing at all, but chipping at her storybook like a bricklayer removing bricks, scraping off the last line, letter by letter, until “THE END” was fully gone. With a red-hot glow, the Storian twirled into the air, like a butterfly freed from its cocoon, and dove back down to the book, continuing the story right where it left off. The steel nib spilled ink onto brand-new pages, filled by dozens of flurried paintings Sophie could hardly follow: walls of emerald flames … guards in black masks … swan-marked tombs … a cadaverous wolf and giant … until swirls of forest green streaked across a blank sheet.
Two lean bodies came into view, framed by the high, twisting trees of the Woods. Sophie watched the pen fill in the blankness of their faces … a boy’s slate-blue eyes and juicy lips … a girl’s flat brows and sunken cheeks … It can’t be, she thought, waiting for the Storian to slash an errant line. But every stroke made the scene more and more real, as if birthed from her own memory, until Sophie was sure this was all still a dream, for the pen was drawing two people in the Woods—two people who couldn’t be in the Woods, because they’d found a happy ending somewhere else. She pinched her arm hard, expecting to wake up in bed, but they only grew clearer: Agatha and Tedros, alive on the page, gazing at her with wide eyes, inviting her in.
They’re … back? Sophie gasped, heart swelling. Jealousy and betrayal and pain broke away like a soft eggshell and a warm wave of hope flooded through her before she could keep it down. She caressed her two best friends, looking out of her storybook, and let herself feel what she’d been ashamed of all this time.
I miss you, Aggie.
I miss you, Teddy.
Tears rising, she imagined herself in the empty space on the page between them—
Until the Storian drew Agatha and Tedros’ hands intertwined across the gap, the two Evers following a shadow into the darkness of the Woods.
Sophie studied their clasped fingers, no longer any room for her.
“They’re coming for you,” said a voice behind her.
Sophie turned to Rafal, gorgeously posed against the window like a teen rebel, clad in a lace-up black shirt and black leather pants. His ice-blue stare lingered on the storybook, but carried no surprise, as if he’d been waiting for the prince and princess to return.
“I told you it wasn’t our ending the Storian questioned,” he said. “Turns out your friends aren’t happy without you. They think you need to be rescued from me. That your ending is with them.”
Sophie looked back at the Storian, writing beneath the painting of Agatha and Tedros in fresh ink:
“Love wasn’t enough for them anymore. They needed their best friend.”
Sophie gaped at the storybook. Here she’d been, berating herself for thinking of Aggie and Tedros every spare second … when they’d been thinking of her too? She smiled at the thought, touched. Then her smile evaporated.
“How can three people have a happy ending?” Sophie asked.
Rafal watched her carefully. “If one person is happy alone, of course.”
“While two get each other?” Sophie asked, frowning.
“Oh you’d get used to it. Watching them kiss by the fireplace … sitting alone during supper while they nuzzle each other … trailing behind them on garden strolls like a puppy on a leash … settling year by year into your role as the third wheel …” Rafal glided towards her, half of his face still in shadow. “Then again, you could always meet a boy in Camelot. Not much of a kingdom anymore, but plenty of peasant boys to choose from. Sunburnt cheeks, yellow teeth, chubby backsides, not a coin in their pockets. But a nice, normal boy and isn’t that what matters?” He drew her into his arms. “A boy who lives with his old, wrinkled mother in her ramshackle house, raising goats and pigs. A boy who will give you an ordinary life, where you fry his meat and bathe old Mummy and raise sunburnt, chubby little sons …”
Sophie was tensing so much she couldn’t breathe. “That will never happen,” she whispered and her muscles relaxed in his grip.
“Didn’t think so,” Rafal whispered back. He touched her shoulder, his long, milky fingers tracing up her neck. Sophie’s skin quivered. She’d never had a boy hold her that she hadn’t manipulated. She’d never had a boy touch her that didn’t mind the storms and rages of her heart. She’d never had a boy love her for everything she was, warts and all.
Sophie looked up and saw him in the light—pearly, angelic skin, powder-blue eyes, luscious pink mouth, like a young Jack Frost—so white-hot and handsome that she suddenly felt the uglier of the two. “You might like me now, but what happens when I get old?” she asked. “Will you still want me then?”
Rafal smiled. “My brother and I stayed young as long as we loved each other. When I broke our bond, I was destined to age and die like every other villain who proved they couldn’t love. But your kiss restored my youth, Sophie. Your love will let me live forever, just like my brother’s love once did. Just like my love once kept him alive too. Which means as long as you wear my ring, neither you nor I will ever grow old.”
Sophie turned to him. “I’ll live forever?”
Rafal pulled her in once more. “We will. Together.”
Live forever? Sophie thought in a fog. Old but young … young but old … just like the beautiful boy holding her. What would it be like to love someone forever? Could love even last that long? She thought of Agatha on the lakeshore, vowing to be her friend forever … Tedros on a moonlit bridge, promising to be her prince forever … Agatha and Tedros kissing, swearing to each other … “Forever …”
Only Forever never seemed to last.
Sophie lay against Rafal’s firm chest, studying the gold ring on his finger, matching the one on hers. All this time she’d been so hurt by her two best friends who deserted her, so sure they’d forgotten her and gone on to perfect happiness. Instead they’d come back to redo their Ever After, wanting her, needing her to be happy. Sophie waited to feel the same feeling, to choose her best friends even it meant she ended up alone …
But all Sophie could feel were the arms of a boy who’d stayed loyal to her from the beginning, a Forever that finally sounded like the truth.
She spun and kissed Rafal, his mouth cold against hers, holding it long and slow, waiting for something in her heart to stop her. Nothing did. As their lips parted, she saw the Storian conjure a new page, capturing their kiss in brilliant colors, before adding a closing line:
“But friendship wasn’t enough for Sophie anymore. She needed love.”
Sophie looked up at Rafal, her forehead beaded with sweat. He put his hand to it.
“Look at that. Fever’s broken.”
Together, they watched the sun slide out from behind a cloud, Sophie expecting its return to brilliant life … only to see the sun still yolky and anemic against a cold blue morning, even weaker than before. Only it wasn’t just weaker, it was leaking small gobs of yellow light into the sky, drip, drip, drip, like an icicle in summer. Sophie stepped closer to the window ledge, eyes wide. There was no question about it.
The sun was melting.
She whirled to the School Master. “But you said if the Storian wrote—”
“A new story. And ours still needs an end,” said Rafal soberly. “Our storybook can’t close now that your friends have come back. Not as long as they have a new ending in mind. An ending where Good wins and Evil dies …”
He paused, locking into her emerald eyes.
“They’re coming to kill me, Sophie.”
Sophie held his stare, stunned, and looked down at Agatha and Tedros, on their way through the Woods to rescue her. In their version of the story, they would save her from an Evil School Master. But to Sophie, her Good friends were about to slay the only boy who’d ever loved her, so she could be a sidekick to someone else’s Ever After.
Sidekick. That’s the ending they thought she deserved.
Sophie burned, glaring at her gold ring. She was a queen.
“I won’t let them hurt you,” she seethed.
“You’d do that for me?” The School Master’s boyish face contorted with emotion. “You’d fight your own friends?”
Sophie tensed. “F-f-fight Agatha and Ted—? But I thought—”
“That they’ll leave us in peace and go on their way if you tell them to?” Rafal asked sweetly.
“But I can’t fight her. Surely there’s another way—” Sophie pressed.
His eyes hardened. “War is the only way.”
Sophie bristled at the change in his tone. But she knew he was right. After the young School Master nearly killed Tedros with Tedros’ own sword, the prince was coming for his blood, and Agatha would be behind him. War was on the horizon and Sophie had to take a side.
Sophie thought of all the times Agatha had allied with Tedros against her: during the Circus of Talents and Evil Ball, then in her secret plan to kiss Tedros and banish her home during the Boy-Girl War. Sophie’s blood simmered to a boil. Agatha had even believed she was turning into a witch in the Blue Forest, believing Tedros over her, when it was Dean Sader’s magic all along. “I’m not this!” she’d cried, begging her friend to see the truth. But Agatha had stayed firmly by her prince’s side.
Sophie too had a side to take—even if it meant fighting her best friend. Just like Agatha would protect her prince, she would protect her one true love.
“This is it, isn’t it?” she whispered, watching the melting sun. “Either they die … or we do. Good versus Evil. That’s the way all fairy tales end.”
She saw Rafal’s chest rise on a breath, as if at last they were on the same page. “Your friends think they can stop our book from closing, my love,” he said, sweet once again. “They think they can stop the future. But they’re too late.”
He watched the fading sun, as if studying an hourglass. “The war against Good has already begun.”
Sophie saw him look back at her with a snakelike grin and she began to sense there was more to his return than kisses and rings. “But Good always wins in the end—” she started, only to see the School Master grinning wider.
“You’ve forgotten the one thing I have on my side that they no longer do.” Rafal moved towards her, slowly, smoothly …
“You.”
Sophie met his gaze, breathless.
“Come my queen,” he said, fingers slipping into hers. “Your kingdom awaits.”
Sophie’s heart pumped faster. Kingdom … Once upon a time, there was a beautiful little girl in a pink princess dress, waiting by her window to be kidnapped, convinced that one day she’d be the ruler of a faraway land …
She looked up at Rafal, the old glint back in her eye. “So much for Camelot.”
Sophie smiled, her ring brushing his, and she followed her love hand in hand to fight for their happy ending—just like a prince and princess on the page she’d left behind.
“Shouldn’t I change first? I can’t go gadding about in this,” Sophie huffed, trying to pin down her nightdress, battered by the wind.
Her glass slippers wobbled on the window ledge, sending silver pebbles cascading into the abyss of green fog. She wrenched back against the tower wall, clutching Rafal’s bicep. They were so high in the sky she couldn’t see the ground. “Surely there are stairs we can take. Only a half-wit would build a tower without stairs or a rope or a suitable fire escape—”
“Do you trust me?”
Sophie looked into Rafal’s eyes, hot with adrenaline, not a trace of fear in them.
“Yes,” Sophie whispered.
“Then don’t let go.” He seized her by the waist and dove off the tower.
Green mist gobbled them as they plunged at bullet speed into arctic cold. Any instinct for Sophie to scream vanished because of how tightly Rafal held her, muscles sealing her to his chest. Safe in his arms, she let herself go, gasping as Rafal slip-turned like a hawk with dangerous speed, their entwined limbs spinning towards earth. With a full somersault, he rocketed back up and Sophie howled with abandon, closing her eyes and holding out her arms against him like wings. They soared in and out of shadows, amber sunrays flickering on her eyelids, the taste of clouds in her mouth. If only Agatha could see her now, she thought—happy, in love, and recklessly alive, like a princess riding a dragon instead of fighting it. Rafal shot across the bay like a fireball and she pressed her cheek into his neck, electrified by his skin on hers, his steaming breaths faster and faster, his hands tighter and tighter … until his feet gently touched down without a sound and Sophie felt herself suspended in space like the Storian over her book.
She nestled into him, scarlet and hot.
“Do it again,” she whispered.
Rafal chuckled, touching her face, and slowly Sophie opened her eyes to the world.
The first thing she noticed is that the Blue Forest was no longer blue.
She pulled away from Rafal, windswept and dizzy, and staggered forward from the tower, anchored in the middle of the forest.
The Blue Willows had rotted to black husks. The once-weatherproof blue grass was now urine yellow, cracking and breaking under her feet. Bracing from the wintry breeze, Sophie crawled through diseased, fallen trunks in the Turquoise Thicket, her nightgown catching on cancerous fungus and mold. Worst of all was the stench: an acrid, acid reek that made her eyes water and grew stronger the deeper she went into the Forest. By the time she reached the Tulip Garden, a stinking ashpit of amber and brown, she’d covered her face with both hands, barely able to stand straight. She looked back for Rafal, but couldn’t see him.
Sophie gasped a shallow breath and plowed forward. She had to get out of here.
She shambled into the Fernfield, desperate to find the North Gates and stopped short. The ferns, once thigh-high with lush, cobalt fronds, was a wasteland of dead animals, swarming with roaches and flies. Under the jaundiced sun, carcasses of emaciated rabbits, storks, squirrels, and deer littered the dirt in front of the sealed gates, as if they’d all tried to flee and failed.
Then she heard a familiar hissing.
She raised her eyes to dozens of black spiricks, coiled around the gates, flicking red tongues. Sophie shrank from the flat-headed snakes with deadly barbs through every scale, that once prevented anything from getting into the School for Boys, and now prevented all the animals from getting out. Sophie slowly looked up at the School Master’s tower in the distance, looming over the Blue Forest like a landmark in a demented park.
Sophie’s heart sagged. The Blue Forest had once been the school’s kitschy backyard, a safeguarded replica of the deadly Woods. She smiled, reliving her liveliest moments here: running circles around a rabid stymph in the Blueberry Fields while Agatha berated her; seducing Tedros in the Thicket with couture Evil uniforms; her heart pattering as the prince leaned in to kiss her over the Blue Brook … Then her smile slowly dissipated as other moments from the Forest came back too. Tedros rejecting her in the Shrubs when she didn’t save him in a Trial; Tedros in the Blue Willows, looking so betrayed as she reverted from Filip’s body; Agatha and Tedros recoiling from her in the Pine Glen, before they’d tried to send her home … Soon the bad memories overwhelmed the good and as Sophie looked up at the Forest, it turned a shade blacker and bleaker before her eyes.
“It likes you,” Rafal drolled, coming up behind her.
Sophie spun. “What? I did that?”
“You did all of this,” he said, scanning the whole dead Forest. “You and me together.”
“I-I-I don’t understand,” Sophie stammered. “I don’t want the Forest like this—”
“It doesn’t matter what you think you want. It only matters what’s truly inside you,” said Rafal. “The Schools mirror back their Masters’ souls, as does the Storian they both protect. When my brother ruled with me, the castles reflected the balance between us: one light for Good, one dark for Evil. Last year, with Evelyn Sader and Tedros at war, the castles reflected the balance between Boys and Girls.” He caressed Sophie’s ring. “But now with you by my side, there’s a new balance … beyond Good and Evil … beyond Boys and Girls …”
Sophie tracked his gaze up to the two black castles lording over the Forest, tipped with alien-green fog. At first glance, both castles appeared indistinguishable … but then Sophie peered closer. The old Evil castle had turned to jagged stone, resembling the jaws of a monster, while the once bloodred creepers coiling its three towers were the same eerie green as the fog. The old Good castle was black too, circled with the same green mist, but its four towers had sharpened turrets and smooth, shiny walls that looked wet, as if the entire school was made out of polished obsidian. Linked by the foggy bridge in the distance, the two schools seemed like a Before and After: one castle a fiendish, saw-toothed crumble; one castle a cold, sleek fortress.
Confused, Sophie inched closer towards the Forest gates, trying to get a better view of the schools … when the spiricks’ eyes all darted to her. Sophie stumbled back, expecting them to spit their noxious poison—instead, they all bowed their heads like slaves and the golden gates parted, offering a clear path into the Clearing.
Spooked, Sophie scampered out of the Forest. Thankfully there were no surprises in the Clearing. Just as before, there were two Tunnels of Trees diverging out of the field, one into each castle. During the war between Boys and Girls, the tunnels had been sealed with giant rocks, but now they were wide open like they were first year. Only as Sophie drew closer, she saw that both tunnels were labeled with wooden boards, nailed over the entrances. Crooked black letters slashed across each one.
The tunnel leading into the jagged, pockmarked castle said:
The tunnel leading into the smooth, shiny castle said:
A hand took hers and Sophie jumped. She looked up at Rafal, grinning sharp teeth.
“A time-tested Master. A fresh, young queen,” he said. “And a School for Evil reborn.”
Sophie smiled weakly, shoving down the sinking feeling in her stomach.
He led her into the tunnel marked NEW and Sophie hurried to catch up, reminding herself that she’d finally found love, real love, and it was worth anything she had to do to keep it.
(#ulink_73bf0f6a-7220-5df8-8b33-3d0749a14952)
he Tunnel of Trees led straight to the Good castle doors, lit by candles usually visible by now through the branches. But the deeper Sophie went, the darker the tunnel became, a sharp clacking sound amplifying ahead, like an aggressive clock. Uneasy, she took Rafal’s hand.
“I didn’t expect Dean Sader to make a holy mess of things,” he sighed. “I thought that by putting a piece of my soul into Evelyn, I’d have some control over her in the event of my death—”
Sophie could hear the sounds growing louder. Click clack. Click clack. Click clack.
“From within Evelyn’s body, I had enough control to ensure she brought you back to school … and, one day, to me,” he continued. “And yet, I couldn’t control all of her. That crude business of slaveboys and worlds without princes, and girls good, boys bad … She was always resentful of her brother’s gifts and I’m afraid my students had to suffer for it.”
Sophie could hardly hear him over the clacking, as she glimpsed frosted doors ahead, black instead of the old white, the once blue torch flames above it now green.
“She left behind an ugly war, with Boys and Girls hell-bent on destroying each other,” he was saying, “but in the end, it wasn’t hard to make them lay down their arms. After all, no matter how divided they’d become, now they have something even stronger uniting them …”
He stopped at the doors with a dashing grin. “Me.”
Sophie stared at him. Confused, she flung open the doors—
A crush of bodies nearly flattened her and she hugged a wall for dear life.
“Welcome to the School for New Evil,” said Rafal.
In a black-marble foyer, boys and girls in crisp black uniforms and black berets marched by in perfect lines. Chins up, chests out, they stomped with steely stares, right-left, right-left, past the four glass staircases, now hued green. The boys were in belted leather breeches, half-sleeved black shirts with starched collars, narrow green ties, and thick-heeled boots, while the girls wore skin-hugging black pinafores over plunging green blouses, knee-high socks, and flat black slippers. Two of the girls marched in front of Sophie: green-skinned Mona and one-eyed, bald Arachne, tight lipped and eyes fixed ahead. Ravan was right behind them, his oily face scrubbed clean, his once long, matted hair clipped short and neat. Impish Vex tramped next to him, head shaved, spine straight, subtly picking at breeches wedged up his bottom.
Sophie stiffened in shock. Nevers chic … clean … in straight lines? She’d once despised the villains for their poor appearance, but now it was Sophie who felt embarrassed by her own unwashed cheeks and dumpy black nightgown. She tried to catch more Nevers’ faces beneath their berets, but the foyer was dark, holding them in shadow. The only lights seemed to come from fleeting flashes of green glow, dispersed over the army in sync with the march, as if there was an invisible swarm of fireflies keeping time.
Then Sophie noticed another haze of green light over the Legends Obelisk, centered between the four staircases, crammed with student portraits. Looking for the source, she scanned up the high stained glass windows (once haloed visions of a white swan, now replaced with a glaring black swan) to the domed sunroof, sealed over with deadly stalactites, glowing snake-green like a malevolent chandelier. As Sophie’s gaze roamed to the buffed staircases, shiny onyx arches, and ruthless marchers, she saw that Good’s home and all that came with it—elegance, discipline, style—had been usurped entirely by Evil.
And yet, watching this parade, Sophie felt her stomach relax, for there wasn’t anything the least bit sinister about Evil wanting to be “New” or adding a dash of color or showing off a bit of thigh. Indeed, she’d held lunchtime rallies her first year, pleading for all three—
Suddenly, beneath the stalactites, she caught sight of another face in the Never army: a scared-looking boy with a big chest and hairy arms. Chaddick’s gray eyes met Sophie’s, just as shocked to see her as she was to see him. Out of the corner of his lips he mouthed the word “Help”—before a burst of green firefly lights detonated near him, and he whipped his gaze forward, wincing with pain.
Flummoxed, Sophie slid along the wall, trying to catch a last look as he vanished into the wings. Chaddick? Good’s most loyal sidekick? Why was he with Nevers?
But from her new vantage point, Sophie saw more Evers in black uniforms spliced into the march: luscious, caramel-skinned Reena … tall, willowy Giselle … sleek dark-skinned Nicholas … redheaded, freckled Millicent … baby-faced Hiro … all trembly and tense as fireflies popped off around them like warning shots.
Dread rising, Sophie turned back to the Legends Obelisk. The Evers’ portraits, once smiling and kind, were painted with baleful scowls and sneers, matching the Nevers’ frames, now jammed onto the same column.
“Evers learning … Evil?” Sophie breathed, looking up at Rafal.
“Evers and Nevers both,” the young School Master corrected. “After two years of war, a unified school, protecting the future of Evil.” He surveyed his troops. “The students had to adjust to all being in the same castle, of course. More of them per room, more competition in classes … but if anyone has any complaints, I haven’t heard them.”
Sophie squinted out the window, remembering the other tree tunnel. “But what’s in the ‘Old’ school?”
Rafal eyed the rotted towers across Halfway Bridge. “If the School for New will write Evil’s future, then the School for Old rewrites its past …” His pupils shot to Sophie lizard quick. “But you are not to step foot in the School for Old. It is forbidden to all students and to you. Understand?” He stared her down, looking like a headmaster despite his youth.
Sophie nodded, startled.
“Your responsibilities are here and only here,” he commanded, “ensuring your young colleagues adjust to their new school. With the volatility of the past two years, all students will be held to—how should I put it—a higher standard than before.”
“But you told us all souls are born Good or Evil,” Sophie prodded, “that they can’t be changed—”
“And yet, a wise girl taught me it isn’t who you are that matters, it’s what you do. And now all of them will do Evil.” His gaze slid past her. “Just like their new queen.”
Sophie followed his sightline to the foyer’s wall murals, all featuring her and the young School Master kissing against celestial night skies. They were both in black leather, wearing jagged metal crowns, as fiery stars cast halos over their heads. In each mural, a single green letter was superimposed on their embracing bodies. Once spelling out G-O-O-D, the wall paintings now spelled … E-V-I-L.
As students kept filing past, Sophie turned full circle, soaking in her painted image on every wall: her golden hair fanned beneath a spiked queen’s crown; her lips pressed against her true love’s, a boy so smoldering, so intense, so unnerving that he’d have made Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty dump their princes at first sight. All her life, she’d devoured storybooks, desperate to have her own face big enough someday for the world to worship … to have an Ever After that would make girls writhe with jealousy … And now Sophie realized she’d won. She was the face of a school. The face of a generation. The face of the future. Sophie couldn’t stop an imperious grin, feeling more and more like her old self.
“For hundreds of years, Readers like you wanted to be Good because Good always wins. But our story will change all that,” said Rafal, pulling her into him. “Evil is the new Good.”
Sophie felt so safe in his arms that his words washed over her. “Evil is the new Good,” she burbled, cuddling into him … until she saw sweet, cherubic Kiko in line, sniffling back tears, an elaborate black veil over her face, as if on her way to a funeral. “But suppose they can’t be Evil?” Sophie said guiltily, pulling away.
“Every student has a choice: join Evil or die,” he snarled, simmering with hot-blooded youth. “And it is not enough to join Evil. They must excel at it.”
He was looking at the green glass staircases at the corners of the room, the banisters no longer carved with the four values of Good. Instead each staircase had a new inscription:
LEADERS
HENCHMEN
ANIMALS
PLANTS
“Third year is tracking year,” Rafal said. “We’ll house students by rankings, as they prepare to enter their new lives beyond graduation. And if that isn’t enough incentive to perform … let’s just say I do better than butterflies.”
With a swish of his finger, he brightened the glow of the chandelier and now Sophie saw the fireflies weren’t fireflies at all. Floating over the students was a cloud of black-winged fairies, armed with whippy green stingers and jaws of black shark teeth. If any Ever or Never lagged in line or glanced in Sophie’s direction, the fairies stung them with a blast of angry light, jabbing and biting them on until the last of the terrified students disappeared into the wings. As the fairies whizzed after them, Sophie caught a glimpse of their faces—hideously peeling skin, serrated stitches, and eyes cloud-white like zombies. Sophie recoiled in surprise, only to see one fairy in the group stop and peer straight at her: a boy fairy she knew with sunken cheeks and short, wispy wings.
Bane. The Good fairy she’d killed first year.
Except now Bane was right here in front of her, zombified and Evil, glowering back at his killer.
Sophie plastered against the wall, looking for somewhere to hide, but it was too late. Bane ripped towards her with a violent hiss, his knife-edged teeth gleaming—
The School Master shot him with white sparks, sending Bane sputtering out of the foyer like a popped balloon.
Cowering with relief, Sophie looked up at Rafal. “Dead f-f-fairies … undead?”
“Once upon a time, Nevers who failed at being Evil were turned into slaves for Good. Now they have a second chance to prove their love of Evil and their loyalty to me.” His eyes seared into hers. “Just like you.” He walked away, humming a soft tune. “Come, my love. There’s more to see.”
Sophie didn’t follow, her breath stoppered.
Don’t go, whispered a soft voice inside her.
Agatha’s voice.
This isn’t you, Sophie.
This isn’t real love.
Sophie felt her back sweating, the gold ring on her finger suddenly scalding hot.
He’s using you.
Light flooded through her and Sophie couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes, the ring boiling on her skin as if about to eat through her—as if she had to destroy it right now—
“Sophie.”
Her lids opened.
“No one loves you but me,” said Rafal, his voice like a dagger. “No one will ever love you but me.”
Sophie stared into his pupils and saw her own reflection. The ring went cold on her finger. Agatha’s voice quieted inside of her.
Rafal took her by the waist and this time, Sophie didn’t resist. As he guided her ahead towards the Leaders staircase, she heard his voice echoing inside her … No one but me … echoing deeper, echoing deeper, like a pebble down a well until it settled at the bottom, an undeniable truth. Looking up at Rafal, she nestled tighter into his side, afraid to let him go—
She stopped cold.
A raven-haired boy was standing ahead, at the edge of the foyer. Tight chest and stomach muscles pressed against his black uniform shirt, and his breeches revealed smooth, chiseled calves. His dark bangs draped over his forehead and his long nose was the only feature out of proportion on his small, heart-shaped face. Sophie drew a breath, taken by his cool, erect stance, and for a moment she thought him the strange man from her dream. But he was too young, clearly a student. Only she didn’t recognize him from either school—
But then Sophie saw his eyes.
Scorching her with hate.
His beady, weaselly eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be somewhere, Hort?” the School Master said, glowering at him.
Hort’s glare slashed deeper into Sophie, honing in on her hand in Rafal’s, before he finally glanced up. “I was throwing hammers in the gym, Master,” he said, flat and hard. “Earned extra time.”
“Right. You’ve been racking up the first ranks, I hear,” said the School Master, pulling Sophie tighter and making sure Hort saw it. “Keep up the good work, Captain.”
Hort gave Sophie a last deadly look before he walked into the wings.
Sophie didn’t move, her heart thundering. First ranks? … gym? … Captain? Hort?
“Shall we?”
She looked up at Rafal, who was staring blackly at where Hort had just been.
“I don’t want you to miss your first class,” he said, slipping a small scroll of paper into her hand, before he glided up the stairs in front of her.
Sophie lagged behind, still dazed by Hort’s reappearance and the weird looks between him and Rafal—
Then her eyes bulged wide.
“My first what?”
“Class?” Sophie fluttered after the School Master, frantically scanning the parchment. “Advanced Uglification … Advanced Henchmen Training—this is a schedule! You said I was a queen! A queen doesn’t go to class—”
“A queen has responsibilities,” said Rafal, calmly stepping off the first-floor landing.
“Oh I’m sorry, did Cinderella go to class for her happy ending? Did Snow White find true love and then go do homework?” Sophie squawked. “A queen’s life should be a cornucopia of servant briefings, bodice fittings, court meetings, caviar tastings, attaché dinners, ball planning, and sea-salt massages by scantily clad boys. Not a return to plebeian students and insipid class—”
Sophie stopped short, noticing her surroundings. The entrance hallway to sea-themed Honor Tower, whose walls and ceiling once mimicked a princely blue tidal wave, now had its surging waters painted the same slime green as the fog tipping the two castles. For a moment, she was confused by the change, until she looked out a porthole window and saw Halfway Bay in the melted sunlight. For the first time in two years, there was no dividing line between the waters, no halves to the bay at all. Its entire body was the same slime green as the painted tides on the walls around her.
“One dip and it’ll rip the flesh right off your bones,” said Rafal, posed against a column. “Good deterrent against anyone who might try to swim into the school or swim … out.”
Sophie heard the warning in his voice, for she’d tried to escape through the bay each of the past two years. Clearly Rafal was still testing her new allegiance to him. Where had the crogs gone? she distracted herself, searching for the stymph-eating white crocodiles that once protected the moat. Then she glimpsed a flesh-eaten, disembodied snout floating along the bright green surface. The crogs had lasted about as long as the stymphs.
Sophie followed Rafal across the seashell floor, now artistically smattered with bloody splashes, while an old statue of a smiling, barechested merman, trident on his lap, had been rechiseled with a gnashed scowl, curled fists, and a trident poised to kill. Turning the corner, Sophie took in epic murals along the walls, once visions of Good’s most honorable victories, now flaunting different endings: a wolf biting into Red Riding Hood’s neck … a giant atop a beanstalk snapping Jack like a twig … Snow White and her dwarves facedown in blood … Captain Hook plunging his hook into Peter Pan’s heart …
Sophie knew she should be sickened by what she was seeing, but instead felt a mutinous thrill at the sight of Evil winning so defiantly, so matter-of-factly, as if Good was never supposed to win at all. How could she not take secret pleasure in the thought? Her whole life she’d tried to be Good. She’d tried to join their school where she thought she belonged. Only Good had rejected her, again and again until here she was, Queen of Evil … queen of the same school she once thought a mistake. Soaking in the last mural—Sleeping Beauty and her prince, lashed to a spinning wheel, set aflame by a black-caped witch—Sophie started to feel disoriented, as if she couldn’t remember the real endings anymore.
What if I’d learned these stories as a child? Would I have ever wanted to be Good?
Doesn’t matter, Sophie thought, breaking from her trance. “An inspired bit of redecorating, Rafal. But it still doesn’t make any of it true.”
“Says who?” he called back.
Sophie frowned at the murals. “Says the storybooks, obviously. I can paint an ending where I bask on a tropical island, serviced by well-muscled slaves. But it’s just a fantasy. All of these are fantasies. They don’t mean anything. The real endings already happened.”
Rafal turned. “And what about your kiss with Agatha? Or Agatha’s kiss with Tedros? Weren’t those real endings too? And yet here we are, back in your story, as if those endings never happened. Endings can change, my queen.”
He gazed out a window at the School for Old. “And change they must.”
Sophie could have sworn she heard a roar from deep within the Old castle, like a monster breaking out of its cage.
“The Deans are eager to meet you,” he said, heading towards the rear staircase. “They’ll take you to your class.”
Sophie didn’t move, hands on hips. “You said it yourself. Agatha and Tedros are on their way to kill you. I can’t be in class! I have to protect you … I’ll fight with you—”
“And who do you think will be your army against Agatha and Tedros, if not your class?” he said, not looking back.
“What? No one at this school even likes me—they’ll never listen to me—”
“On the contrary, they have to listen to you,” Rafal said, fading up the stairs.
Standing alone in the hallway, Sophie watched his shadow spiral up the banister. She groaned, glancing quickly at her schedule.
Sophie snorted, confused. “There’s a mistake on here—has my name for—”
“Your class.”
Your class.
No.
Not possible.
Sophie dropped the schedule like a stone.
“I’m a teacher?”
(#ulink_80ca3dab-51e4-5220-926c-21e33db4e801)
he path through webbed trees was so narrow and dark that the three Evers had to travel one behind the other, like ducks out of a pond. While Tedros fixed his gold fingerglow on Princess Uma ahead, he kept peeking back at Agatha, whose gold fingerglow was pinned on him.
“Stop checking on me,” Agatha finally snapped.
“Oh, no, it’s just … I didn’t remember our glows matching so much,” Tedros fumbled and quickly turned around.
Agatha didn’t answer. For one thing, she was sick of his worried glances and sugar-sweet conversation, as if she was about to have a nervous breakdown or drown herself in the nearest pond. For another, she didn’t feel like talking to anyone (least of all about inane color symmetries), anxious the conversation might drift back to her mother. But most of all, she was preoccupied with wresting Sophie away from the School Master, rehearsing again and again what she’d say to her best friend when they finally made it to school.
Tell her how much you miss her … or should I apologize first? … How do you apologize for ruining someone’s life? “Sorry I tried to banish you forever” … “Sorry I thought you were a witch” … “Sorry I never asked your mother’s name and I’m a crap friend …”
Agatha gulped. Oh, why drudge up the past? Just get her to destroy the ring and then focus on the future. The three of us at Camelot—a clean slate—
Agatha smiled, trying to be confident … and slowly deflated.
Apologize first.
Agatha tensed again. But suppose she won’t destroy the ring? she thought, remembering how handsome the young School Master was. She thinks he’s her true love, Uma had said, and Agatha knew from experience that Sophie wasn’t one to give up on love once she thought she’d found it. What if she’s happy without me? What if she doesn’t want me anymore?
“I’ll rescue Sophie when we find her,” Tedros broke in, as if he’d decoded her silence. “Not sure she’ll want you there, to be honest. Let me talk to her alone.”
Agatha looked up, aghast.
“For one thing, you’ve been through enough already, my love,” her prince added, hopping over a log. “Second, you tend to faint at crucial moments. And third, Sophie and I have our own special bond.”
Agatha followed him, stumbling over the log. “First of all, I’m fine. Second, I fainted once—”
“Twice: waltz class and by the lake—”
“And third, she’s my best friend—I’ll rescue her—”
“Look, it’s best if I do it,” Tedros said, walking faster. “You two seem to have serious communication issues.”
“And you two don’t?” Agatha said, chasing him.
“All you and Sophie ever do is fight—”
“Because it always involves you!”
“Well, without you, she and I get along just swell,” puffed Tedros.
“When have you two even had a conversation?” said Agatha.
“We were roommates last year—”
“When she was a boy!”
“What does that have to do with anything—”
“A boy you tried to kiss!”
Tedros whirled, beet red. “So? You’re allowed to kiss her and I’m not?”
“Not when she’s a boy!” Agatha barked.
“You kissed her when she was a girl!” roared Tedros—
“I like you two better when you’re quiet,” Princess Uma hissed, glaring from the path.
Tedros mumbled something about “females” and “hypocrites” and stamped ahead, no longer checking back on his princess.
For the next three hours, Uma, Tedros, and Agatha slogged and shivered single file through the Endless Woods, stopping only when Agatha collided with a tree (often) or Tedros needed to pee (even more often). (“What’s wrong with you?!” Agatha growled. “It’s cold!” Tedros yelled.) Agatha tried to ask her teacher about her mother’s past—had Callis been in a storybook? How did she end up in Gavaldon?—but Uma said there’d be time for questions once they made it to League Headquarters.
“League Headquarters?” frowned Tedros. “I thought we were going to school—”
“And who do you think will get you into school?” said Uma. “The School Master has turned the castles into a fortress of Evil. Try and enter alone and you will be dead before you breach the gates. Your mother knew the League of Thirteen is your only hope to get to Sophie alive.” Uma glanced worriedly at the sun. “Besides, you’ll be safe at Headquarters tonight. Won’t last a minute in the Woods after dark on your own.”
“Have you seen any other undead villains? Besides the wolf and giant?” Agatha said, trying to keep their teacher talking.
“Not yet.” Uma looked back at her. “Another reason to be quiet.”
Dawn blossomed to a crisp, windy morning, and the students no longer needed their fingerglows to see. As Agatha and Tedros moved deeper into the Woods, huddled in their cloaks, Agatha noticed an eerie green haze thicken the air, sour smelling and cold. It reminded her of the jellied mildew on her front porch, where Reaper collected his headless birds. Her stomach turned, thinking of her bald little cat, all alone in her house. She wrenched her focus back to the present, to the tree branches passing over her head, spindly and jointed … like a skeleton’s hands … ticking on her mother’s clock …
Agatha’s gut twisted deeper.
“When will it w-w-warm up?” Tedros asked, teeth chattering. “Sun’s acting like it’s half asleep.”
Indeed, Agatha had been waiting for the sun to brighten too, but with each hour, it stayed sickly pale, even as it rose higher in the sky. She began to notice cankered tree trunks and fragile ferns, a skeletal chipmunk quailed in mulch, and the corpses of a few malnourished crows. Agatha fingered a single flowering plum, quivering on a bare tree; it withered under her fingers and rotted to black.
“Agatha, look,” Tedros said.
She followed his eyes to a titanic wreckage of vines, trees, and glass thirty yards off the path, glittering in sun mist like an imploded greenhouse. Tedros deviated off the trail to get a closer look, Agatha tailing behind him. As she neared the colossal ruins, at least fifteen feet high, she glimpsed petals and leaves flaking off the tree trunks, catching the light like new blossoms in spring. But drawing closer, Agatha saw all these petals and leaves were dead, sprinkling the dirt between decaying blue frogs. Agatha ran her hands along one of the fallen trunks, her fingers tracing letters etched into the wood: HIBISCUS LINE.
“It’s a Flowerground train,” said Tedros, inspecting a dead vine. “Whole Forest seems to be dying. Maybe the sun’s too weak to keep any of the plants alive?”
Agatha didn’t answer, still riled up from their earlier spat.
“But why would the sun be any weaker than before?” Tedros prodded.
Silence hung awkwardly.
They both mumbled about getting on and spun from each other, as if to follow Princess Uma, but she was far ahead on the path, a miniature shadow, and they had to run after her when they realized she wasn’t going to stop.
They followed her through Willow Walk, Thicket Tumble, and Pumpkin Point, as rickety wooden signs named these parts, which all mirrored portions of the Blue Forest back at school, only bigger and drearier. Occasionally Uma stopped to let them eat a few sludgy meerworms from her pockets (Uma herself abstained, saying it’d be rude to eat her “friends”) or to ask a sparrow or chipmunk to guide them to the nearest pond, where they’d inhale palmfuls of brackish water. Still, for all the menace of the Woods, they didn’t come across anything that resembled a human being, let alone a zombie villain, and Agatha started to wonder if she’d imagined everything that had happened on Necro Ridge.
As if reflecting her easing mind, the tangled forest opened up the farther they went, with more air between trees and the thorny brush turning into a green carpet of grass, though Agatha could see slivers of yellow starting to creep in. When they passed a gilded plaque that said FOXWOOD, Uma’s shoulders noticeably relaxed, and soon the dirt path widened so that they could all walk together, breathing in clearer air and a tangibly safe feeling, as if they’d entered a protected realm.
“The oldest Ever kingdom,” Uma said, finally at ease.
Over the trees to the west, Agatha could see the thin spires of a golden castle shimmering like organ pipes, but her teacher was already steering them to the east, down denser paths.
“We’ll avoid the thoroughfares and go through the glens. Best to avoid you meeting any Evers for the time being.”
“Why’s that?” Agatha asked, but Uma was too busy gibbering to a passing bee.
By the late afternoon, they came upon a large stone well, its wooden roof draped in browning white roses, while a dove pecked at the dry bucket. Agatha brushed away the roses to read white words painted on the roof:
“League Headquarters is only an hour’s walk from here, so we’ll easily make it by sunset,” said Princess Uma, slipping a meerworm in front of the dove. The dove perked up at the sight of Uma and chirped back brightly. “He says that with the School Master’s return, Evers have been keeping out of the Woods. But he knew I’d still come to check on my friends.”
The dove peered at Agatha and Tedros and let out a few inquisitive tweets.
“Yes, sweetie, they’re the ones,” nodded Uma, stroking the dove, and the bird gave the young couple nervous glances, adding a few whispered peeps. “He hears you’re the Evers destined to vanquish the School Master.” Uma held in a grin. “And he thinks your children will look very … interesting.”
Tedros laughed. Agatha didn’t.
“Might as well show you Snow’s house along the way,” Uma said, forging up the trail. “Princes occupied it after the Boy Eviction, until the School Master returned and the girls begged all the boys to come back and help protect the kingdoms. Turns out all it takes to bring enemies to peace is a bigger enemy. Probably hasn’t been anyone here in weeks, then. I used to have sooo many friends at Cottage White, you know—sheep, pigs, even horses! Always wanted to bring my classes here to talk to them, but Clarissa said the animals in the Blue Forest were perfectly adequate for lessons. She’s never liked field trips. Thinks the students spend all their time kissing behind trees.” Uma fluttered ahead. “A bit true, I suppose.”
As Agatha watched her go, Tedros slid next to his princess. “Just hear me out. I don’t mean to say you’re not as good friends with Sophie as I am—”
“You barely know her,” Agatha fired.
“Can you listen for two seconds without trying to eat me?” Tedros shot back.
Agatha fumed quietly.
“Look, both of us know you’re her best friend. That you’re the one who’s spent the most time with her,” said Tedros. “But you don’t understand why Sophie took his ring in the first place. Sophie just wants to be loved, okay? She’s willing to embrace the darkest Evil, all so that she doesn’t end up alone. I know how much pain is inside her, because she told me. Pain she would never confess to you, because she doesn’t want you to see it.”
“You think Sophie’s more honest with you than with me?” asked Agatha.
“It’s more complicated than that. Sophie thought I loved her once, Agatha. She thought I was her prince. You told me yourself: all Sophie ever wanted was a happy ending that looked just like ours. If you talk to her, she’ll never destroy that ring. She’ll compare herself to you and all those feelings will come up. She’ll feel like a third wheel to you and me. She’ll feel alone.”
“And let me guess: only you can make her destroy his ring,” Agatha needled.
“Yes,” Tedros said fervently. “Because I can make her see that if she comes with us, she’ll still have a chance at true love one day, even if it isn’t with him. I can make her see how beautiful and vibrant and alive she is … how soft and clever and fun and …” He smiled, lost in his memory of her. “I can make her feel loved in a way you can’t.”
Agatha took in her prince’s glazed smile as he stared off in space. He used to look at her the same way once. Now he was talking about another girl with that very same look.
Tedros blinked out of his trance and saw Agatha burning pink.
“I rescue her alone. Got it?” she said, shoving past him and trundling up the path, before she stopped and glowered back. “And if you ever dare faint anywhere near me, I’m not catching you!”
Tedros snorted. “Princes don’t faint!”
Agatha gritted her teeth and stormed ahead, until she caught up with her teacher.
Princess Uma gave her a look and glanced at Tedros, muttering to himself a ways behind. “Ever Afters always look so easy in storybooks, don’t they?”
“Sometimes I feel like he needs a real princess,” murmured Agatha.
“Have you been a ghost all this time and I haven’t known it?”
“You know what I mean. I feel like deep down, he wants someone pretty and bubbly and who treats him like a prince.” Agatha peeked up at her teacher. “Someone whose kids won’t look so interesting.”
“I had a prince with shiny hair and a small nose like me and who I always put first,” Uma replied. “Ever After wasn’t any easier.”
“You had a prince?”
“Kaveen, Prince of Shazabah. Aladdin’s great-grandson. Saved me from a hive of bloodsucking bees during the Trial by Tale my first year. The bees nearly killed him and Kaveen lost his chance to win Captain … but in the end, he’d won me. Clarissa used to catch us hiding in the library after curfew. That tortoise was always asleep and there’s this cushy little nook behind the Love Spells shelf. Our initials are still carved into the wood.” She smiled, reminiscing. “After we were married, I was kidnapped by a warlock from Netherwood, intent on ransoming me back to my prince. Part of me knew I should wait for Kaveen to come and rescue me. But I couldn’t risk my prince’s life! Suppose Kaveen got hurt? Suppose the warlock killed him?” Uma’s caramel eyes glistened. “A white stag from the Woods answered my call for help. He ripped the warlock through his heart with his horns and battled his henchmen while I escaped. By the time Kaveen arrived, I was already free.”
“I remember seeing it in a painting,” Agatha said, for Uma had presented her storybook the first day of school. “It was your happy ending.”
“Looks like it on a page, doesn’t it?” her teacher said softly. “The Storian wrote the triumph of Princess Uma for all to hear—only my prince wasn’t a part of it. I became legendary for my deep friendship with the animals, while Kaveen was endlessly taunted for arriving to save his princess too late. A princess famous for all time and her prince, a failure. No one sees that in a storybook, do they?” She paused. “He never said he blamed me, of course. But the stress slowly takes its toll, day after day, until one day you realize you’re always fighting or ignoring each other and you can’t go back to the way it was before. Your happy ending no longer feels happy at all.”
A hot rash rose on Agatha’s neck. “What happens then?”
“Then you’re both better off with someone else, aren’t you? Or even alone …” Uma’s voice cracked. “Like me.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “Once happiness is gone between two people, I don’t think it ever comes back.”
“But … but it has to come back!” Agatha fought. “That’s why Tedros and I came back—to be happy together—”
Uma smiled sadly. “Then you’ll have to prove me wrong, won’t you?”
Agatha shook her head. “But you’re a real princess! If you couldn’t keep your prince, then how can—”
“Does Snow White still live in the cottage?” Tedros piped, busting in between them.
Agatha cleared her throat. Uma dabbed at her eyes with her pink sleeve. “A queen in a cottage? Don’t be silly,” she pooh-poohed, walking quicker. “Snow lives in the king’s castle, the one you saw before. She’s on her own now, since the king died of a snakebite five years back and her dwarf friends are scattered in other kingdoms, rich and well taken care of. When the School Master returned, the League offered to shelter Snow at Headquarters, but she said she was quite happy in her new life and had no intention of revisiting the old.”
“What does the League have to do with Snow White’s old life?” asked Agatha.
“And why would the League protect someone whose story is over?” Tedros scoffed—
A chilling, high-pitched scream tore through the Woods.
The three Evers stopped dead, looking up at a long, eight-foot-high wall of wilting lilacs, stretching out at the end of the path.
The scream came from behind it.
“We’ll take another route!” Uma panicked. “Let’s use the— Tedros! What are you doing?!”
Tedros hustled towards the hedge. “Sounded like a girl’s cry for help.”
Speechless, Uma whirled to Agatha. “Come, follow m— Agatha!”
“If he’s going to rescue a random girl, I should keep my eye on him, don’t you think?” said Agatha.
Uma was about to level them both with a stun spell, but it was too late; they were already clawing through the lilacs. “‘Rescue them from a grave’—those were my orders,” Uma puffed as she smushed through the flower wall after them. “Not ‘chase grandstanding princes’ or ‘manage jealous girlfrien—’”
She came through and froze. Agatha and Tedros stood rigid next to her.
Nestled into the back of a clearing, Cottage White lay ahead, half in shadow, two stories of lumpy wood, with a coned, pink roof shaped like a princess’s cap. An explosion of colorful shrubs and flowers had grown untended on the roof and first-story eaves, and rain had bled the colors into the wood, so that the house had the tint of a rainbow on all its sides. In the front garden, amidst the unkempt blooms and a meeting post for tours, there were seven pairs of brass shoes laid out in a row, tarnished and dented, a tribute to seven old dwarves who’d gone on to new lives. Only now, as the three Evers stared out at fourteen shoes that were supposed to be empty, they saw they weren’t empty at all.
Before each brass pair lay a dwarf’s body, facedown in a puddle of blood. Each was dressed in a tunic of a solid color from head to toe, with matching velvet nightcaps, their tiny feet perfectly fitted into the sculpted shoes.
From the pallor of their hands and the stiffness of their legs, it was clear at once they were all dead.
“No … not … not possible—” Uma gasped, stumbling back.
“You said they were g-g-gone from here!” Agatha stuttered, recoiling against the hedge.
“For decades!” Uma choked out. “Someone must have—someone must have brought them back—”
“What monster would bring dwarves back just to kill them?” said Agatha.
Uma looked at her, blank.
“Well, whoever did it is gone,” rasped Tedros, scanning the Woods around them. He bucked up, struggling to act the prince. “I’ll, um, check if any of them are still alive.”
Uma rushed after him. “If so, we must bring them back to the League!”
Agatha stayed behind, gaping at the bodies and bright red puddles. Death everywhere: dwarves … Crypt Keeper … her mother … She spun away, bursting into chills, trying not to connect them. Heaving tight breaths, she focused on the grass under her feet, on her chapped, tingling fingers, until her mind slowed enough for her to think. Who would take all the trouble to bring seven dwarves from different places back to their old home? Who would kill them in cold blood and organize their bodies so precisely? Agatha shook her head, thinking of that horrible scream for help. Who could be so grotesque … so Evil—
Agatha’s heart stopped.
That scream.
High-pitched. Female.
It hadn’t been a dwarf’s.
Slowly Agatha lifted her eyes to Snow White’s cottage, like a moth finding a flame.
Neither her prince nor her teacher noticed her move from the hedges, nor the door creaking in the wind, as they went on from dwarf to dwarf, listening to each small heart.
By the time Tedros heard the silence of the last, Agatha was already inside.
(#ulink_af67b346-682f-5e41-bd71-12424afdc427)
he first thing Agatha noticed about Snow White’s house is that it smelled like Sophie. Standing in the shadowed doorway, she closed her eyes and inhaled the scent … lavender cotton candy … vanilla-coated fog …
The pink front door shivered and groaned behind her. She’d left it open and she could hear Tedros and Uma in the garden, debating what to do with the bodies. She didn’t know why she hadn’t made Tedros check the house with her; perhaps after their argument in the Woods, she wanted to do something without him … or perhaps she wanted to test if he’d even notice her gone … or perhaps she’d spent so much of the journey acting touchy and weak that she wanted to make up for it … Whatever the reason, here she was, all alone, looking for whoever made that scream.
Agatha opened her eyes. On a breath, she forged deeper into the house.
The living room had a snuggly feel to it, with a sooty fireplace facing big-armed calico chairs, a fluffy red-brown rug made out of hawk feathers, a shelf of gemstones, seashells, and animal eggs beneath a shut, slatted window, and a steep, stumpy wooden staircase in the back corner, barricaded with red velvet rope. Agatha peered at a brass plaque on the wall:
Behind the den, the kitchen was roped off, just like the staircase, but Agatha peeked in to see a dusty, deserted nook, no footprints on the floor or signs of life, except for a few flies milling around a leaky faucet.
“Agatha?” Tedros called outside. “Where are you?”
Agatha sighed, stomach relaxing. The scream must have been one of the dwarves’ after all. She shuddered at such a morbid thought and hustled towards the front door, determined to get to League Headquarters. Whoever this League was, her mother had trusted them to help her. “You must save Sophie as Stefan saved you,” Callis’ voice echoed—
Agatha stopped cold in the foyer.
A creak echoed somewhere upstairs …
Then it went quiet.
Slowly she raised her eyes to the ceiling.
She knew a sensible princess would have called her prince, but instead, she was moving into the den again, slipping off her clumps one by one before she left them on the lambskin chair. She felt her bare toes rake through the feathers of the rug, her eyes pinned on the ceiling until she squeezed under the rope at the rear of the room. She slid up the stairs on her hands and knees like a cat, taking time between steps, so the cricks and cracks of the stairs were camouflaged by the swinging squeaks of the front door.
At the top of the stairs was a narrow hallway with two rooms. Agatha rose up carefully and peeked into the first. Seven small beds lay in a cramped row, as if in an orphanage hall, each neatly made with different colored sheets, matching the tunics of the seven dead bodies outside.
Agatha felt a rush of sadness. Death had been rare to her before last night and now it followed her like a shroud. What was it like to be alive one moment—like her mother, like the Crypt Keeper, like these seven helpers of Good—and then be gone the next? What happens to all your thoughts, your fears, your dreams? What happens to all the love you’ve yet to give? Her body quivered, as if she’d gone too deep, and she was suddenly aware of the stillness around her. Why am I still here? she berated herself, turning around. Tedros would be worried sick by now. Quickly she stepped out of the dwarves’ quarters and leaned over to check the next room—
Agatha grabbed the wall in shock.
In a frost-white bedroom, a frail female’s body lay facedown on the wood floor, her head hidden under the canopied bed. A crystal crown gleamed on its side nearby, as if it’d tumbled off her when she fell. But the dead woman wasn’t what made Agatha gape in horror.
An old crone in black was kneeling next to the body. She had red eyes and a pig nose, a patchwork of stitches, and brown, shriveled flesh flaking off her, just like Red Riding Hood’s wolf and Jack’s giant in the Woods. In her clawlike hand, she clutched a musty storybook, pulled open to its last page: a painting of a prince kissing Snow White back to life, while seven dwarves smiled on blissfully, a dead witch on the ground behind them.
A dead witch that looked just like the old crone holding the storybook.
“That was the old,” the witch purred, leering at the book’s last page …
Before Agatha’s eyes, the painting magically redrew, until the old witch now crouched over Snow White’s dead body instead, the dwarves behind her all slain.
“And this is the new,” the witch grinned.
Agatha’s focus swung back to the corpse half-hidden under the bed … to the royal crown askew … and a deep dread snaked up her spine, remembering something Jack’s giant had said on Necro Ridge …
“Should be out fixin’ our stories like the others.”
“He’ll give us a turn at our stories soon enough,” Red Riding Hood’s wolf had answered.
The witch snapped the storybook shut with a triumphant cackle, jolting Agatha out of her thoughts. She glanced up to see the hag rearing to her feet, her back angled to the door—
“Agatha!” Tedros’ voice yelled outside.
The witch dropped the book to the floor. Before Agatha could move, she spun and met her eyes with a lethal stare.
Agatha shrank into the hall’s corner, flattening against the wall.
The witch drew a thin, jewel-handled dagger from her cloak, caked with dried blood.
Agatha whirled towards the staircase. Too far to run. She spun back to see the witch prowl towards her, trapping her in the corner. Agatha’s finger glowed gold with terror, the witch ten feet away, but she couldn’t remember a single spell from class. Agatha opened her mouth to scream for her prince. The witch was too fast. She hurled the knife for Agatha’s throat like a bullet—
With a cry, Agatha shot a ray of gold light from her finger and the knife turned into a peach-petaled daisy, floating to the floor.
Gulping breaths, Agatha stared at the flower, thankful Sophie had used the hex against her first year. It was the only spell she’d never forget.
“Agatha!” Tedros shouted again.
Agatha looked up urgently, but it was too late. The witch slammed her against the wall, appallingly powerful, reeking of decay, and held her up by the throat with her liver-spotted hand. Breath choked, Agatha glimpsed the charred scars across the witch’s ankles and legs. “Ordered to dance … until she fell dead …,” Agatha remembered, struggling to stay conscious as the witch squeezed her neck harder. She and Sophie once danced in red-hot shoes too … a first-year punishment from Yuba … Or was it second year? … Agatha could feel her mind fading, the witch’s thumb crushing her windpipe. She tried to think of Sophie’s face as they danced … her helpless face, those suffering eyes … Darkness strangled her, pulling her under. No … please … not yet … Sophie—I’ll save—you—
A bolt of will flashed through her and she sank her teeth into the witch’s bony arm and bit as hard as she could. The old crone shrieked and let go. Agatha doubled over, gagging and wheezing, the witch still gaping at her, as if biting wasn’t part of a Good girl’s playbook, as if this greasy-haired, bug-eyed punk might be one of Evil’s after all—
Agatha kneed her in the gut and dove for the stairs, about to reach the first step, only to feel the witch’s boot crush the back of her leg. Agatha buckled to the floor, slamming her nose into the wood. She felt the hot blood seeping out of it and staunched it with her hand as she twirled around to defend against the witch—
But the hallway was empty, the witch gone.
Agatha hobbled to the edge of the stairs. The den was as quiet as when she came in, the slatted window over the bookshelf wide open and blowing in the breeze.
Tedros burst through the front door, his face cherry red. “Agatha, where are—” He saw her on the staircase and flushed two shades redder. “DO YOU WANT ME TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK! I’M SCREAMING LIKE A FOOL, NOT KNOWING IF YOU’RE ALIVE OR DEAD, AND HERE YOU ARE PLAYING HIDE-AND-SEEK LIKE A CHILD ON A PLAYGROUND, LOOKING A HOLY BLOODY MESS AND—”
Tedros’ face changed.
“Agatha,” he whispered, looking very scared. “Why are you bleeding?”
Agatha shook her head, tears welling, hyperventilating too fast to talk—
A cry came from outside.
Agatha and Tedros went rigid with twin gasps. “Uma.”
Instantly, the prince dashed out the door, Agatha racing behind him—
Princess Uma sat against a tree, near the dwarves’ corpses, her eyes spooked wide and legs out straight like a porcelain doll’s.
Tedros skidded to his knees in front of her, jostling her by the shoulders. Uma didn’t move. “What’s wrong with her!” he cried.
Agatha landed next to him and touched Uma’s face. Her fingers made a hollow sound on her teacher’s ashen skin. “Petrification,” she said, remembering the curse once used against the teachers.
“What’s the counterspell?” her prince pushed.
Agatha paled. “Only the one who casts the spell can reverse it.” She looked at Tedros. “That witch … that witch did it—”
“What witch?” Tedros pressed, but Agatha was frantically scouring the deserted glen … She slumped. They’d never find that old hag. Princess Uma was as good as dead.
Not her too. Not our only hope. Agatha tuned out a bird’s loud chirps and sank her face in her hands. How do we get to Sophie now?
“Agatha …”
“Not now,” she whispered, head throbbing with fear, grief, and strident birdcalls.
“Agatha, look …”
Agatha spun. “I said not no—”
She frowned.
The dove from the well was in the prince’s lap tweeting angrily at both of them.
“What’s it saying?” Tedros asked her.
“How should I know?”
“You’re the one who took Animal Communication!”
“And burned down the school in the process—”
Agatha stopped because the dove was drawing in the dirt with its wing. “Why is he drawing an elephant?”
The dove let out a torrent of chirps, furiously modifying his picture.
“It’s a weasel,” Tedros guessed. “Look at the ears.”
“No, it’s a moose—”
“Or a raccoon.”
The dove was apoplectic now, slashing more lines.
“Oh. A rabbit,” said Agatha.
“Definitely a rabbit,” Tedros agreed.
He looked at Agatha. “Why’s he drawing a rabbit?”
The dove rolled his eyes and stabbed his wing ahead.
Tedros and Agatha turned and saw a fat, balding white rabbit glaring at them from behind a tree, wearing a dirty blue waistcoat with a silver swan crest over the heart, a hideous white cravat, and crooked spectacles low on his nose. The rabbit yanked a pocketwatch out of his coat, pointed crabbily at it, and scampered down a dirt path out of the glen.
“Um. I think he wants us to follow him,” said Agatha.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” said Tedros, slinging Uma over his shoulder and lumbering ahead. “Stay any longer and we might end up as dead as those dwarves.”
“But shouldn’t we know where he’s taking us?” Agatha called out. “We can’t just follow a strange animal in a scarf—”
“Sooner we follow him, sooner we find someone who knows how to unpetrify a teacher,” her prince called back.
They followed the rabbit through inky trees as blackness swept over the Woods like a plague, the sun offering no resistance against the night. Soon they could barely see at all, and if it wasn’t for the rabbit’s corpulent pace, they’d have lost him in the dark. Ominous howls and low screams crackled ahead of them and Agatha tried to ignore the skitters and slithers in the underbrush lining the path. Yellow and red eyes peeped overhead like malevolent stars, warning her that danger was coming and coming fast. If only we knew where League Headquarters was, Agatha thought miserably. Her mother had sacrificed her life to make sure they reached the League … and I didn’t bother to ask Uma where it was? Why didn’t I have a backup plan in case something happened? Why can’t I think straight? Now instead of finding the one place where they’d be safe tonight, they were on some wild-goose chase, carrying a petrified teacher and chasing a time-obsessed bunny to who knows where. With Tedros lagging under Uma’s weight, Agatha kept pace with the rabbit for more than an hour, silently punishing herself for their predicament, until she finally glimpsed a wisp of white smoke emanating through pine trees ahead.
Drawing closer, Agatha began to smell a faint tinge of sandalwood mixed with a familiar scent she couldn’t quite place, and as they moved into a tiny clearing, she saw that the smoke plumes were coming from a hole in the dirt, half-covered with dead fern fronds. The rabbit kicked the ferns aside and disappeared down the burrow, before peeking his face through the gap impatiently.
Agatha paused, reluctant to follow a stranger into a hole—
Tedros barreled right by her. “Nothin’ to lose,” he mumbled.
Before Agatha could argue, her prince lowered Uma into the hole and slid in behind her. Irritated, Agatha lowered herself down after him, landing awkwardly in darkness before Tedros caught her into his chest, soaking her with sweat. He smells good, Agatha noticed, inhaling his minty fresh scent. How could a boy possibly smell like spring fields after everything they’d just been through? She suddenly thought of Sophie, who’d smelled of honeycream even after traipsing up Graves Hill in the worst heat. Maybe that’s why Tedros missed Sophie, Agatha thought bitterly … they could lie around all day sniffing each other, flawless gold-haired idols, while here she was, a “holy bloody mess,” reeking of stress, dirt, and undead witch—
“Anyone here?” Tedros called.
Agatha snapped to attention, embarrassed by her thoughts. It was pitch-black in the hole, the rabbit nowhere to be seen.
“Hello?” Tedros echoed.
Nothing answered him.
The prince held out his hand and felt a wall of solid earth in front of him. “Why do we always end up in dirt?”
Agatha’s stomach rumbled. “Maybe the dove was telling us to eat the rabbit instead of follow him.”
“Or maybe the rabbit was telling us to leave Uma here, while we go look for League Headquarters.”
“You want us to dump a petrified teacher in a hole and leave?” said Agatha, flabbergasted.
“It’s not like she’s going anywhere.”
“Suppose you’ll dump me in a hole the moment I’m inconvenient too,” Agatha murmured, strangely confessional in the dark.
“Huh?”
“Then you can go get your sweet-smelling, beautiful, vibrant Sophie all alone,” Agatha vented, unable to stop herself.
“You didn’t happen to eat any strange mushrooms on the way, did you?”
“Go ahead, laugh. You can name your children Blond and Blonder.”
“Never pegged you as a jealous type,” Tedros marveled.
“Jealous? Why? Because you almost kissed her as a boy and a girl? Because you can make her feel loved in a way that I can’t? Me? Jealous?” Agatha ranted, thoroughly ashamed of herself now.
“Isn’t Sophie supposed to be the crazy one?”
“Bet you wouldn’t leave her in a dark pit—”
“And we thought Tweedledee and Tweedledum were hopeless,” said a hoary voice.
Agatha and Tedros choked, recognizing it at once, and twirled to see a torch spark to flame in the grip of a white-bearded gnome wearing a belted green coat with a silver swan over the heart and a pointy orange hat. A gnome Agatha thought had been killed in a fire, but now here he was, alive in a secret den. She burst into a smile, glowing with relief—
Yuba didn’t smile back. “First you lose a teacher because you fail to protect each other in the face of mortal danger. Then you fight so often and loudly that you’ve alerted the entire Woods as to your whereabouts. Now you’re so busy insulting each other that you forget to use a simple glow spell to illuminate your surroundings in the time that a Cave Troll could have bashed both your heads to smithereens. If it wasn’t for a rabbit rescuing you from yourselves, you two nincompoops would be dead before dawn,” he lashed, fingers twitching on his white staff as if he wanted to beat them with it. “A Bad Group is one thing. But you two Evers might just be the Worst Evers … Ever.”
Agatha and Tedros looked down, humiliated.
Yuba sighed. “Lucky for you, the League needs you as much as you need it.”
Torches roared to flame, lighting up a squad of strangers behind him in a giant cave headquarters the size of a small house.
“Presenting the honorable League of Thirteen, legendary legion of Good and Enlightenment,” Yuba proclaimed with an imperious smile, clearly expecting the Evers to look impressed, awed, or at least grateful for the glorious platoon that they had come all this way to see.
Agatha and Tedros blanched in horror instead.
Because the League of Thirteen that was their only hope to save Sophie, the League of Thirteen that was their only hope to stay alive … were all very, very old.
(#ulink_a0d702b6-dd8f-5686-9066-37b687d73236)
ou’ve got to be kidding,” Tedros cracked, as he and Agatha goggled at the saggy, ancient crew.
Agatha counted four men and four women—a geriatric gang of liver spots, turkey necks, hairy ears, foggy eyes, yellowed teeth, beady grins, bony limbs, and heads of sparse, colorless, or poorly dyed hair. Two of the eight were in rickety wheelchairs, three had walking canes, two were hunched and bandy-legged, and one was a morbidly obese woman in a muumuu, slathering on makeup at a mirror.
All of them had silver swan crests over their hearts, like Uma, Yuba, and the White Rabbit, badges of membership to a League her mother had trusted with her daughter’s life.
She sent us here for a reason, thought Agatha desperately. Would they rip off masks, revealing invincible warriors? Would they magically turn young like the School Master? Agatha held her breath, waiting and praying for something to happen …
The League blinked back, like fish in an aquarium, waiting for something to happen too.
“Told ya they wouldn’t recognize us,” grumped the fat woman at the mirror.
“Recognize you?” In the reflection, Agatha glimpsed the woman’s pink, hoggish pallor, squinty green eyes, wide jowls, hideously rouged cheeks, and nest of flat curls that she’d tried to dye brown and had turned blue instead. She looked like a doll salvaged from the bottom of a swimming pool. “I’m quite sure I’ve never seen you—or any of you—in my life,” Agatha said, scanning the group. She turned to Tedros, hoping he’d seen something in them she hadn’t, but her prince was red as a fire ant, about to explode.
“This is who’s supposed to get us to Sophie?” he barked, blue eyes raking the puke-colored carpet, flower-patterned sofas, moth-eaten curtains, and thirteen hard, thin mattresses split into two rows. “A retirement home for the about-to-be dead?”
Yuba yanked him to the corner. “How dare you speak that way to the League!” he hissed, peeking to make sure the others couldn’t hear. “You know the lengths I’ve gone to find them? To bring them here? And here you act as if they have to introduce themselves to you like common folk—you, a boy who has no accomplishments to his name—”
“Tell that to a king in a few weeks!” Tedros bellowed.
“You arrogant prat! The way you’ve bungled things, you won’t make it a few days, let alone to a coronation!” Yuba shot back.
“First thing I’ll do is outlaw old gnomes!”
“Listen, my mother knew the League would help us,” Agatha broke in, giving Tedros a “calm-down” look. “That’s why she wrote them. So clearly we’re missing something—”
“Yeah, like people who aren’t a thousand years old!” Tedros lashed, earning another miffed look from his princess. “What,” he said, turning his fury on her. “We barely escape our own execution, then we learn our best friend loves an Evil sorcerer, then we travel night and day, surviving zombies and witches and graves, all to find a League your mother promised would get us to Sophie and this is it? Bollocks. Let’s go. Better chance of breaking into the school ourselves—”
“She was my mother, Tedros,” Agatha said. “And I trust her more than anyone in this world to know what’s best for us. Even you.”
Tedros fell quiet.
Agatha glanced back and saw the old, swan-crested strangers completely ignoring them now, knitting, reading, napping, card playing, and pulling out false teeth to eat their gruel. Her faith in her mother suddenly wavered.
“Listen to me, both of you,” said Yuba. “When our thirteenth member returns, your questions will be answered. Until then, you both need some strong turnip tea and a bowl of oat porridge. Having survived in the Woods these last few months after 115 years of sanctuary at school, I know firsthand how intense your journey must have been—”
“Thirteenth member?” Agatha skimmed the room. “I only count eight.” Then she noticed the White Rabbit in the corner, slicing a carrot into fifths on a plate, the silver swan over his heart glimmering in torchlight. “Um, nine.”
“Ten, actually,” said Tedros, and Agatha followed his eyes to the silver swan on Yuba’s green coat.
“A founding member of the League,” the gnome puffed proudly. “And Uma makes eleven, of course, and—” Yuba flushed. “Uma! Goodness me!” He whirled to the Princess petrified in the corner. “Leaving her there like a house cat! Tink! Tink, where are you!”
Something snored loudly behind Agatha and she turned to see a pear-shaped fairy the size of a fist bolt awake and fall off a dirty ottoman. The fairy craned up groggily, with poufy gray hair, a green dress eight sizes too small, ragged gold wings, and garish red lipstick. Eyes darting right and left as if she knew she was supposed to be awake but had no idea why, she spotted Uma frozen in the corner and yelped, flapping and sputtering towards her like a dying bee. Then she slipped her hand into her dress, snatched a handful of what looked like moldy soot, and dumped it goonishly over Uma’s head.
Nothing happened.
“Dad took me to Ali Baba’s harem for my birthday once. This is so much more embarrassing,” Tedros mumbled, stomping towards the entrance hole to leave—
Uma coughed behind him. Tedros swiveled to see the princess levitating three feet off the ground, her skin filling out from pasty white to its usual rich olive color. Uma stretched her smooth, lithe arms into the air with a yawn, smiled at the fairy glassily … and collapsed to the ground, asleep once more.
“Here you were worried about your fairy dust being too old, Tink,” Yuba chuckled, patting the fairy’s head.
The fairy still looked gloomy and spurted squeaky gibberish.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Tink. You can’t expect to have the same stamina as when you were sixteen. Besides, we didn’t need Uma to fly from here to Shazabah; we just needed your dust to unpetrify her. A few sound hours of sleep and she’ll be good as new. Now where were we,” the gnome mulled, turning back to the Evers. “Oh yes, rabbit makes nine, Uma makes ten, I make eleven, and Tinkerbell makes twelve, so that just leaves—”
“Tinkerbell?” Agatha blurted.
“The real Tinkerbell?” asked Tedros, staring at the fairy’s mottled face, potbelly, and ash-colored hair. “But she’s so … so …”
Agatha gave him a lethal look, but it was too late. Tinkerbell burst into sobs and hid under an ottoman.
“He didn’t mean it, Tink,” Yuba huffed and smacked Tedros in the backside with his staff.
“I don’t understand,” Agatha said, bewildered. “What is Tinkerbell doing here?”
“Really found yourselves some smarties, didn’t you, Yuba,” said a bald, skinny man in a green vest with elfish ears and delicate features, knitting a lime-green sock. “Still can’t see who we are.”
“Maybe we need to count your rings like a tree,” Tedros muttered, rubbing his behind.
“Go ahead, make all the old jokes you want, pretty boy,” the bald man fired. “As if you won’t get to our age yourself someday.”
“Well, it seems our two amateurs need introductions after all,” Yuba scolded, giving Tedros and Agatha furious scowls before shoving them into two of the rocking chairs. He turned back to his League. “Who wants to go first?”
“Don’t see why we should introduce ourselves,” the sock-knitting man crabbed. “Don’t see why we should let these two stay here at all.”
Yuba exhaled impatiently. “Because these two Evers are our only hope to—”
“What’s the point? You heard the boy. We’re on death’s door anyway,” the bald man pouted.
“Oh come now,” Yuba said, softening. “What’d you say when I came to fetch you from Neverland? Holed up in your tree house all alone, refusing to join the League, even when I told you your life was in terrible danger. But then I told you about these two young Evers and you lit up like a little boy. Told me you’d do anything to be around young people again … that they were the only ones who ever truly understood you, Peter …”
Peter looked up at Yuba, blue eyes glistening. Then he looked back down. “Tink made me come,” he muttered. The fairy squealed in protest and pelted him with a lump of gruel.
Agatha and Tedros gawped at each other. Peter? Peter Pan?
“I’m with Peter,” boomed the huge, blue-haired woman, spinning from the mirror. “Not even out of school, these little brats. Should be lickin’ our feet and beggin’ for autographs! Instead they somehow get their own fairy tale—students! a fairy tale!—and now that tale’s got its panties in a knot, wakin’ our old villains from the dead and draggin’ us straight out of our Ever Afters—”
“Ever Afters! Ha!” chimed a gangly, high-voiced man in suspenders and beige breeches, with big, twinkly eyes, a long nose, and a full head of white hair. Tiny round scars marked all the joints of his long, tanned limbs, as if he’d once been screwed together. “First of all, Peter can barely leave his house he’s so depressed at growing up. Second, I’d never have wished to be a real boy if the Blue Fairy told me real boys end up with arthritis and bad eyes and permanent constipation. And third, Ella told me herself she preferred sweeping cinders to being a queen.”
“When did I ever say that?” the fat woman squawked.
“Last night,” the long-nosed man replied, looking surprised by her question. “You drank a barrel of wine and told me you miss cleaning for your stepsisters, because at least you felt useful and stayed fit and now you’re old and bored and big as a house—”
“WHO ASKED YOU?” thundered the woman. “YOU SPENT HALF YOUR LIFE AS A PUPPET!”
“First they get mad at me for lying. Now they get mad at me for telling the truth,” moped the long-nosed man, curling into a sofa.
Agatha’s and Tedros’ eyes bulged even wider. “Pinocchio?” said Tedros.
“Cinderella?” said Agatha.
“Don’t give me that face,” Cinderella sneered back at her. “For bein’ Camelot’s supposed future queen, you ain’t much to look at yourself.” Her hawkish green eyes shot down to Agatha’s clumps. “Bet no one wants to see those feet in glass slippers.”
“Hey now! She’s my princess!” Tedros jumped in.
“I don’t blame you, handsome,” Cinderella smirked, voice smooth as an eel. “Your daddy didn’t have good taste in girls either.”
Tedros looked like he’d been kicked in the pants.
Yuba sighed. “Professor Dovey had just as much faith in Agatha as she did in you, Ella. So I suggest you treat our guests with respect—”
“We have the respect when these two studenten fix the mess!” croaked a wild-haired, hunchbacked man in a wheelchair with owlish gray eyes and a harsh foreign accent. “Think they’re special because Storian writes their story? Well, at least our stories have end, yes? But these two change ending again and again—‘Are we heppy yet?’ ‘Are we heppy yet?’ Bah. Fools! Now see! School Master young, Evil redoing stories, and dead witch hunting me I have to kill all over again—”
“I killed her, Hansel and I am not killing smelly witch again,” said a wild-haired woman in a wheelchair next to him with the same accent, her big gray eyes flaying Agatha and Tedros. “Your story bringing villains out of graves, your responsibility put them back.” She smiled phonily. “And I’m Gretel, since the bossy little gnome said we must introduce ourselves.”
“Which leaves me and Briar Rose (or Sleeping Beauty for the uneducated Reader), who were planning our fairy-tale wedding until you came along,” said a freckle-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a brown tunic and white lederhosen. He was holding hands with an elegant, white-haired woman in a revealing puce gown. “Now we’re hiding from my man-eating giant and Rose’s curse-obsessed fairy—”
“When Jack and I should be picking out a cake,” Briar Rose glared.
“That makes seven of us who think these young twerps should sleep in the Woods,” trumped Cinderella.
Tink squeaked.
“Eight,” said Cinderella.
Tedros and Agatha gawked at the gang of famous old fairy-tale heroes who just voted them out of their cave.
“It’s why I tried to avoid you meeting Evers on the trails …” Uma yawned in the corner. “Everyone blames you for messing up the Woods.” She fell back asleep.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think they’re adorable,” chirped a short, big-bottomed old woman with a dyed brown bob and a red-hooded cape. “Isn’t that what being old is for? Mentoring younger folk to get through their stories?”
“Oh go back to granny’s, you blithering ass,” growled Cinderella.
Red Riding Hood shut up.
“You all act as if we don’t need our young guests,” Yuba’s voice slashed through the cave.
Everyone twirled to see the old gnome standing in front of the moth-holed curtain hanging across the cave wall, the White Rabbit standing at his side like a magician’s assistant. “Let me remind you that one week ago, the School Master placed his ring on his queen’s finger, earning her vow of true love. That same night, the villains rose from their graves on Necro Ridge and the Crypt Keeper was killed.”
On Yuba’s cue, the rabbit drew the curtain back, revealing dozens of storybooks spread open to their last pages, tacked to the wall with sharpened sticks.
“Two days later, Rapunzel and her prince were kidnapped by Mother Gothel and hurled from her tower to their deaths,” the gnome declared, illuminating one of the storybooks with his staff and its gruesome new ending to Rapunzel’s story. “Then yesterday Tom Thumb was eaten alive by a giant, while Rumpelstiltskin killed the miller’s daughter who’d once guessed his name,” Yuba went on, lighting up two more storybooks with revised endings. “And today, Snow White and her seven dwarves have been murdered at Cottage White, where they once lived happily.” He snapped his staff like a whip, lighting up a last storybook with a loud crack. “All of these victims refused to leave their homes and join our League in hiding, as did many others who may soon suffer the same fate.”
A tense silence filled the cave as Agatha took in the painting of a dead maiden and her seven dwarves—the same scene the witch had presided over as it transformed. Agatha rubbed unconsciously at the deep bruises on her forearm and wrist.
“S-S-Snow is dead?” Pinocchio whispered.
“Pretty, sweet Snow?” echoed Peter Pan.
(“Wasn’t that pretty,” Cinderella mumbled.)
The League members all gazed at Snow White’s terrible new ending, their eyes wet and scared, as if her death suddenly made the others real.
“I saw who killed her.”
Agatha’s voice came out before she even knew it.
The whole League slowly looked up at her.
Agatha slid her focus to the floor, palms clammy as she relived the scene in the glen. “It was the wicked queen in an old woman’s disguise, her ankles and legs burnt up, just like the fairy tale said. Her skin was peeling off like a corpse and she smelled like decaying flesh. And her eyes … they were bloodshot and dead, like there was no soul inside of her.” Agatha shook her head, trying to understand. “She could have killed me or Uma or Tedros, but she didn’t. As if she’d already done what she came to do.” She looked up at the League. “The wolf and Jack’s giant talked about it on Necro Ridge too … getting a turn at changing their stories … we didn’t know what they meant—”
“Wolf on Necro Ridge?” Red Riding Hood cut in. “My wolf?”
“And my giant?” echoed Jack, clutching Briar Rose.
“They’re all out there, then,” Agatha said anxiously. “Dead villains. Waiting for their turn to rewrite their fairy tales. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t make a shred of sense,” said Tedros, turning to Yuba. “Why would the School Master’s army waste time rewriting a bunch of old stories? Why kill old heroes who aren’t a threat to anyone? Why not attack the Ever kingdoms instead?”
Even Yuba was tight-lipped, fingers fidgeting on his staff, as if he’d pondered the question and had no answer.
The old heroes blinked at the gnome, fear filling their faces.
“We are heroes, yes?” Hansel challenged. “We must fight back!”
“Against two hundred dead witches, monsters, and who-knows-what running around the Woods? Don’t be an imbecile,” Gretel snapped. “Why do you think we’re here in stinky cave hiding?”
“Can’t hide for long. They’ll find us all eventually, no matter how often we move Headquarters,” soured Cinderella. “School Master’s got love on his side now. He’s invincible. What do we got except age spots and cricked necks?”
“Ella’s right,” Jack sighed. “As long as the School Master’s got a queen who loves him, all of us are gonna end up dead as Snow.”
“Then what do we do?” mewled Red Riding Hood.
“The only thing we can do,” said Yuba, eyes shifting to Agatha and Tedros. “Convince his queen to destroy that love.”
The League went quiet.
“The crackpot plan again,” Cinderella murmured.
“You really think you can do it? You really think you can make your friend destroy the School Master’s ring?” Peter Pan asked, peering at the two young Evers.
“Why would she give up true love for you?” Pinocchio prodded.
Agatha felt emotion rising into her throat. “I wish there was a way to explain me and Sophie. We’re different—very different—and still the same. Sure, we fought and pushed each other’s buttons and we’re terrible at listening to each other, but we shared the same heart. Saw life through each other’s eyes. I never thought I could live without her.” She paused, tangled in memories. “Somehow things changed. Maybe that’s growing up, I don’t know. Every time we tried to hold on to each other, we hurt each other instead. It was both our faults, but mine most of all. I stopped telling her the truth. I stopped trusting the one person who taught me how to trust in the first place. I thought I’d lost her forever, that it was too late to ever make things the way they were before … but deep down I still feel like there’s a way. There has to be a way.” Agatha managed a sad smile. “Because if anyone can make Sophie see what love really is … it’s her best friend, isn’t it?”
The League’s old faces melted to childlike stares, as if finally seeing the young girl with hope instead of disdain.
Tedros stepped next his princess, chest proud. “Exactly. Leave Sophie to me.”
Agatha’s smile vanished.
The League looked between them, thoroughly confused who Sophie’s best friend was.
“All that matters now is that we get to Sophie—” Tedros started.
“Right,” Agatha interjected. “And we know she’s somewhere in the School for Good and Evi—”
“Which means getting in and finding her without being caught,” Tedros spoke over her.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Gretel shot back. “School Master is young and strong, School Master has both castles, School Master has army of dead … and you think you can get into his school?”
Agatha frowned. “Um, that’s the whole reason we came to you, obviously. Because we need your help breaking into—”
“Help? Your mother’s message said ‘hide you,’” Hansel jeered from his wheelchair. “Does it look like we can help?”
“We can barely can get to the toilet these days, let alone lead a raid on a castle,” cracked Cinderella, expelling a loud fart.
The League members burst into laughter. Even the White Rabbit.
“Some sneak attack! With my joints, they’ll hear us five miles away!” Pinocchio quipped.
“Don’t worry, P! We can beat them with our canes!” said Peter.
“Or my basket of goodies! Hard and crusty by now!” giggled Red Riding Hood.
Gretel shrieked a snort and the others howled so loudly, doubled over with tears, that even Uma jolted awake at the noise.
Agatha glanced at Tedros, who scowled at her venomously for trying to make him believe in these useless old fogies. She swiveled back to the heroes. “But t-t-that’s why we came all this way! That’s why we trusted in you! My mother wrote the League to protect us—my mother told us you’d help—”
“Because your mother knew that the League of Thirteen had a thirteenth member,” said a deep voice.
Agatha and Tedros turned to see a tall shadow standing at the cave entrance.
“She knew these twelve would keep you safe. But help?” the voice said, as the shadow slid into the light. “I’m afraid that’s only me.”
“Ah, just in time …,” smiled Yuba.
Agatha stared at a long, gangly nut-brown old man with a thick white beard and twisty white moustache. He wore a sweeping violet cape lined with fur tippets and stitched with the signs of the zodiac, a droopy, dented cone hat patterned with stars, large horn-rimmed spectacles, and a pair of plushy violet slippers.
I’ve seen him before, Agatha thought, too tired to think clearly. In the Woods? No … it was a storybook, wasn’t it? … a storybook that Dean Sader had taken her whole class inside.This old man was there, inside a dusty cave, filled with burbling laboratory vessels and shelves of grubby vials and jars … arguing with a king about a spell … a king that looked a lot like …
Agatha’s heart seized, her eyes shooting open, and she spun to Tedros behind her—
But her prince was already pale as a ghost.
“Merlin,” he gasped.
His legs crumpled and he fell all at once like a tree in a forest, his princess right there to catch him.
(#ulink_475d3cfc-f4ff-50fe-82fe-c61dbb3d10e2)
s midnight came and went, Sophie sat calmly in the School Master’s window, her hair wet, her ebony dress bunched at the knees as she pressed bare toes against the wall. She looked out at the fluorescent green bay, reflecting the shadows of two black castles, both dark and quiet.
Just this morning, she’d been reeling with doubts: from a school that turned Evers into Nevers … from Agatha’s voice, impelling her to destroy Rafal’s ring … from a schedule that called her a teacher of Evil when she still didn’t feel Evil at all.
She turned to the Storian over her storybook, painting a scene of Agatha and Tedros following a white rabbit through the Woods. With every minute, her friends were getting closer to school, closer to seeing her again, closer to convincing her to leave Evil behind forever …
Sophie smiled, feeling the gold ring lock tight on her finger.
Or so they think.
How quickly things changed in a fairy tale.
Twelve hours earlier, Sophie had been chasing after the School Master, as he crossed a green breezeway tunnel into the old Valor tower.
“Teach Evil? Teach Curses and Death Traps?” Sophie yelped, gripping her schedule as she floundered after him in her black nightgown and glass heels. “Have you lost your mind!”
“It was the Dean’s suggestion. Wish I’d come up with it myself, if only to prevent her the satisfaction of a good idea,” Rafal groused, ascending the staircase carved HENCHMEN. “Now that I’m young, she’s been treating me like I’m incapable of running my own school. Even had the gall to tell me that my flights over the bay are disruptive since students keep peeking out the window during challenges. I am the School Master, thank you. If I want to go for a spin, I’m perfectly welcome to—”
“Rafal.”
Sophie’s voice was so sharp that he stopped and stared down at her through the gap in the black staircase.
“I wish we had time for adolescent rants, but whoever this Dean is, she expects me to be a teacher at this school, when a) all the students are my age, b) none of them like me, and c) I don’t know the first thing about teaching!”
“Really?” He resumed his ascent. “I distinctly remember you hosting Lunchtime Lectures for the entire school.”
“Teaching kids how to cure dandruff is different than teaching them how to be Evil!” Sophie said, chasing him towards the top floor. “Let me get this straight. Agatha and Tedros are coming to kill you and here I am in a nightgown, expected to give homework and grade papers—”
But Rafal was already at the lone black-marble door atop the staircase.
“Professor Dovey’s office?” Sophie asked, accosting him. “She’s who wanted me to be a teacher? She’s Dean of Evil?”
But then Sophie saw that the door once inlaid with a glittering green beetle was now inlaid with two violet, intertwined snakes. Beneath the snakes, letters cut from amethysts spelled out a single word:
“Deans?” Sophie wrinkled her nose. “There’s more than one? But who are—”
The door swung open magically, revealing a thin, tight-jawed woman with a long black braid and a sharp-shouldered purple gown, studying a scrap of parchment at Professor Dovey’s old desk.
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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: Can Agatha and Sophie find the perfect ending to their story in this epic third instalment to this bestselling series.Once best friends, Agatha and Sophie were pulled apart like strangers, each in the arms of a boy, Good with Good, Evil with Evil… is their friendship lost forever after…But as they settle into their new lives, their story begs to be re-written, and this time, theirs isn’t the only one. With the girls apart, Evil has taken over and the villains of the past have come back to change their tales and turn the world of Good and Evil upside down.With Evers being murdered and Nevers reigning supreme, the girls need to restore the balance, find the end to their story, and—hopefully—become friends again