Sophie and Agatha were both very confused.
She didn’t look like any girl they’d ever seen, and yet she seemed almost familiar. She had a long, pointy nose, a strong jaw, and close-set blue eyes. Her neck was strangely long, and her cropped blouse revealed perfect stomach muscles that rippled beneath her pale, freckled skin. The girl smiled ethereally, looked into their eyes, and unleashed a low squawk that made Sophie and Agatha jump. Then she blew them a kiss, replaced her veil, and shuffled out of the hall.
All the girls watched her in dumb silence until the mob started pushing towards Sophie and Agatha again and Beatrix blew her whistle.
“What was that?” Agatha said to Kiko as she crankily signed an autograph.
“Her name is Yara,” Kiko whispered. “No one knows how she got in! Doesn’t speak, doesn’t eat, far as we can tell, and disappears all the time. Probably has nowhere to live, poor thing. But the Dean lets her stay out of the goodness of her heart. Some people think she’s half stymph.”
Agatha frowned, thinking of the bony, carnivorous birds that hated Nevers. “How can someone be half stym—”
She lost her train of thought, because Sophie had culled the girls all to herself, smiling imperiously, signing autographs, and kissing cheeks, as if she’d finally found her way home.
“Can I help you fight boys?” Arachne hollered.
“Can I be your Vice Captain?” yelled Giselle.
“Can I be your Vice-Vice Captain?” echoed Flavia.
“Sit with my group for lunch!” Millicent called.
“No, sit with us!” Mona countered—
“How glorious it is to have fans again,” Sophie said, ignoring Agatha’s horrified look and dotting an autograph with hearts. “Here I am trying to get home where no one wants me, and instead stumble upon paradise, where everyone does.”
“If you’re miserable with Beatrix, don’t worry,” Kiko said, noticing Agatha’s glum face. “You can always stay with me.”
Agatha turned to her, and Kiko suddenly understood. “You aren’t staying, are you?” Kiko rasped.
The crowd went silent around her.
“Now tell me about this school play,” Sophie said loudly to Reena. “Have you cast the lead par—”
She stopped, for all the students had followed Agatha’s gaze out the window. Across the bay, fog brewed thicker around the grisly red castle.
“If we stay, we’re starting war,” Agatha said to the girls. “All of you would be in danger.”
She turned to Sophie. “You heard the professors. We can fix what I’ve done without anyone dying. Not you. Not Tedros. Not anyone here. We wish for each other, and we can forget this school ever happened.” She touched her friend’s shoulder. “It’s Evil if we stay, Sophie. And you’re not Evil.”
Sophie slowly gazed up at a sea of blameless girls, who would no doubt die at the hands of Tedros and his red hoods. Only Agatha had forgotten the Dean’s warning. They could go home as long as both of them meant their wish. But Sophie knew Agatha couldn’t mean a wish for her friend. Agatha couldn’t forget this school.
Because a friend wasn’t enough for Agatha anymore.
Agatha wanted a prince.
“We’ll hide in the Blue Forest and come up with a plan,” Agatha said to her quietly, anxious to escape before the Dean returned. “Maybe we can mogrify into the Boys’ school.”
Crestfallen, Sophie said nothing—
Until she met her own eyes in the painting on the wall.
Atop the castle in her crystal crown, she looked just like someone she knew, with the same goldspun blond hair, emerald eyes, and ivory skin. Someone who too had lost her happy ending to a boy. Someone who had died all alone because of it.
“You are too beautiful for this world, Sophie.”
It was the last thing her mother had ever said.
She wanted me to find it, Sophie thought, this world where she wouldn’t end like her mother.
A world where she and Agatha would be happy forever.
A world where a boy could never come between them.
A world without princes.
And only one prince stood in her way, Sophie gritted, tears glistening.
A prince that Agatha would surely forget once he was dead.
“It isn’t Evil, Aggie,” Sophie vowed. “This school is our only hope.”
Agatha tightened. “Sophie, what are you—”
“He says he wants me?” Sophie bellowed to her waiting army. She bared teeth at Tedros’ castle.
“Then let him come for me.”
The girls let out a raucous cheer and mobbed their new leader.
“Death to Tedros!”
“Death to Boys!”
Agatha drained of color as Sophie met her eyes and vanished into the swarm.
One wish, and she’d set a war in motion. A war between two sides fighting for her heart. A war between two people she loved. A war between her best friend and a prince.
Agatha’s soul scorched with guilt, a promise to a father gone up in flames.
I need help, she prayed, watching Sophie blow kisses to her soldiers. Someone who could see through all this. Someone to tell her who was Good this time and who was Evil.
As she retreated from the horde, she noticed an odd glint from the corner, hovering near the floor in Sader’s dark nook of paintings. Slowly two tiny yellow eyes floated towards her, like suspended marbles. Two more suddenly glowed next to them, then two more, as hunched shadows pattered from behind a marble column.
The three black rats glowered at Agatha as if she’d said the magic words. Then they skittered through the back doors to lead her to their master.
“So let me get this straight,” Hester glared, straddling a gilded sink next to Anadil, both in their saggy black Nevers’ tunics. “Tedros wants to kill Sophie. Sophie wants to kill Tedros. And unless you find an ending with one of them now, everyone in this school dies.”
Agatha nodded weakly, leaning against one of Honor Tower’s ivory bathroom stalls, fitted with a sapphire toilet and tub. She never thought she’d be so happy to see two witches in her life. Unlike the rest of the girls, neither of them had changed. Hester’s red-and-black-streaked hair was greasier than ever, and the buckhorned red demon tattoo around her neck back to full color after a failed spell had weakened it the year before. Anadil, meanwhile, looked even paler than she did before, if that was possible for an albino with ghostly white skin and hair. Straddling the sink next to Hester, she dangled a live lizard to her three black rats that looked just like the ones slain in last year’s Good-Evil war.
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