Then something flashed in her head. Something Sader said in class.
If you do have questions …
Breathless, Agatha emptied her basket of schoolbooks.
A gray wolf, stoic and efficient, tugged Sophie by a long chain fixed to a tight iron collar around her neck. Skirting the dank sewer walls, she couldn’t fight her leash; one wrong step and she’d slip off the narrow path into roaring sludge. Across the rotted black river, she saw two wolves drag moaning Vex from the direction in which she was headed. His eyes met hers, red-rimmed, hateful. Whatever happened to him in the Doom Room had left him more a villain than when he entered.
Agatha, Sophie told herself. Agatha will get us home.
She bit back tears. Stay alive for Agatha.
As she approached the sewer’s halfway point, where sludge turned to clear lake water, she felt the wall’s solid stone become rusty grating. The wolf kicked the door open and shoved her in.
Sophie lifted her head to a dark dungeon, lit by a single torch. Everywhere she looked were tools of punishment: breaking wheel, rack, stocks, nooses, hooks, garrote, iron maiden, thumbscrews, and a terrifying collection of spears, clubs, rods, whips, and knives. Her heart stopped. She turned away—
Two red eyes glowed from the corner.
Slowly a big black wolf rose from shadows, twice the size of all the other wolves. But this one had a human’s body with a thick, hairy chest, sinewy arms, bulging calves, and massive feet. The Beast cracked open a scroll of parchment and read in a deep growl.
“You, Sophie of Woods Beyond, have hereby been summoned to the Doom Room for the following sins: Conspiracy to Commit Untruth, Disruption of Assembly, Attempted Murder of a Faculty Member—”
“Murder!” Sophie gasped—
“Incitement of Public Riots, Crossing of Boundary Lines During Assembly, Destruction of School Property, Harassment of Fellow Students, and Crimes Against Humanity.”
“I plead not guilty to all charges,” Sophie scowled. “Especially the last.”
The Beast seized her face in his claws. “Guilty until proven innocent!”
“Let go!” Sophie screamed.
He sniffed her neck. “Aren’t you a luscious peach.”
“You’ll leave marks!”
To her surprise the Beast released her. “It usually takes beating to find the weak spot.”
Sophie looked at the Beast, confused. He licked his lips and grinned.
With a cry, she lunged for the door—he slammed her to the wall and cuffed her arms to hooks above her head.
“Let me go!”
The Beast slunk along the wall, hunting for just the right punishment.
“Please, whatever I did, I’m sorry!” Sophie wailed.
“Villains don’t learn from apologies,” the Beast said. He considered a cudgel for a moment, then moved on. “Villains learn from pain.”
“Please! Someone help me!”
“Pain makes you stronger,” said the Beast.
He caressed the tip of a rusty spear, then hung it back up.
“Help!” Sophie shrieked.
“Pain makes you grow.”
The Beast picked out an axe. Sophie’s face went ghost white.
He walked up to her, axe handle in his meaty claw.
“Pain makes you Evil.”
He took her hair in his hands.
“No!” Sophie choked.
The Beast raised the axe—
“Please!”
The blade slashed through her hair.
Sophie stared at her long, beautiful gold locks on the black dungeon floor, mouth frozen open in silence. Slowly she raised her terrorized face to meet the big black Beast’s. Then her lips quivered, her body hung from its chains, and the tears came. She buried her shorn, jagged head in her chest and cried. She cried until her nose stuffed up and she couldn’t breathe, spit caking her black tunic, wrists bleeding against her cuffs—
A lock snapped. Sophie lifted her raw, red eyes to see the Beast unhook her from the wall.
“Get out,” he growled, and hung the axe up.
When he turned, Sophie was gone.
The Beast lumbered out of the cell and knelt at the midpoint between roiling muck and clean water. As he dipped the bloody chains in, currents smashed from both directions, rinsing them clean. Scrubbing the last spots of blood away, he caught his reflection in the sludge—
Only it wasn’t his.
The Beast spun—
Sophie shoved him in.
The Beast thrashed in water and slime, grunting and flailing for the wall. The tides were too strong. She watched him gurgle his last breaths and sink like a stone.
Sophie smoothed her hair and walked towards the light, swallowing the sickness in her throat.
The Good forgive, said the rules.
But the rules were wrong. They had to be.
Because she hadn’t forgiven.
She hadn’t forgiven at all.
A Student’s History of the Woods
AUGUST A. SADER
Agatha opened to the first page.
“This book reflects the views of its author ONLY. Professor Sader’s interpretation of history is his alone and the faculty does not share it. Sincerely, Clarissa Dovey & Lady Lesso, Deans of the School for Good and Evil.”
Agatha felt encouraged the faculty disapproved of the book in her hands. It gave her more hope that somewhere in these pages was the answer to the riddle. The difference between a princess and a witch … the proof Good and Evil were balanced. … Could they be the same?
She flipped the page to start, but it didn’t have words. Splashed across it were patterns of embossed dots in a rainbow of colors, small as pinheads. Agatha turned the page. More dots. She tore through fistfuls of pages. No words at all. She dumped her face to the book in frustration. Sader’s voice boomed:
“Chapter Fourteen: The Great War.”
Agatha lurched up. Before her eyes, a ghostly three-dimensional scene melted into view atop the book page—a living diorama, colors gauzy like Sader’s paintings in the gallery. She crouched to watch a silent vision unfold of three wizened old men, beards to the floor, standing in the School Master’s tower with hands united. As the old men opened their hands, the gleaming Storian levitated out of them and over a familiar white stone table. Sader’s disembodied voice continued:
“Now remember from Chapter One, the Storian was placed at the School for Good and Evil by the Three Seers of the Endless Woods, who believed it the only place it could be protected from