“Agatha, I don’t have clothes.”
“At least call to him so he know—” Agatha stopped.
On the ground, a demon arm hadn’t fully vanished. It was flickering in midair, willing itself to stay.
Then it slunk over the grass and picked a knife off the ground.
“Sophie—Sophie, go—”
“Sun will be up any minute—”
“Sophie, go!”
Sophie’s shrub swiveled and saw the knife rise over Tedros’ shoulder. She gasped and hid her eyes—
The blade plunged. Tedros saw it hit his heart too late.
A shield suddenly smashed the arm down. With a screech, the demon limb shriveled and disappeared.
Dazed, Tedros stared at the shallow wound in his chest muscle, the bloody knife on his sternum. He looked up at Agatha, covering her body with his shield.
“Still haven’t figured out the clothes bit,” she mumbled.
Tedros leapt to his feet in shock. “But … you’re not even in … what are you …”
He saw a shrub quivering behind her. Tedros stabbed his glowing gold fingertip—“Corpadora volvera!” Sophie fell forward and hid her body behind a shrub—
“Agatha, I need clothes! Teddy, could you turn around?”
Tedros shook his head. “But the library—that book … You did cheat!”
“Teddy, we had to. … Agatha, help!”
Agatha pointed her seared, glowing finger at Sophie to wrap her in vines but Tedros stayed her hand.
“You said you’d fight with me!” he cried, eyes locked on Sophie behind the shrub. “You said you’d have my back!”
“I knew you’d be fine—Agatha, please—”
“You lied!” he said, voice breaking. “Everything you said was a lie! You were using me!”
“That’s not true, Tedros! No princess would risk her own life! Even your truest love—”
Tedros glowered, red hot. “Then why did she?”
Sophie followed the prince’s eyes to Agatha, raw with burns.
Agatha saw Sophie’s eyes slowly widen, as if discovering a knife stabbed into her back. But just as Agatha tried to defend herself, sunlight exploded into the glen and washed her body in gold.
Wolves howled at the gates. Sounds of children and footsteps thundered through the Forest.
“They did it!”
“They won!”
“Sophie and Tedros won!”
Bodies burst into the glen. Panicked, Agatha lit up her finger and her dove flew away just as students flooded into view—
“Ever and Never!” shouted one.
“Witch and prince!” shouted another.
“All hail Sophie and Ted—”
The Forest went quiet.
From a tree, Agatha looked down at the unchosen Evers and Nevers surge in, then the fallen competitors, healed and cleaned by magic—all frozen as they took in the scene.
Sophie cowering behind a bush. Tedros glaring down at her, eyes on fire.
And they knew there would never be peace.
Evers and Nevers shifted apart, enemies eternal.
Neither side could hear the laughter from the tower, half shadowed, lording over them all.
Swaddled in his tattered bedsheets, Sophie stared at a window she’d sealed dark with a black blanket.
“My father made them for me,” Hort sniffled. “I can’t sleep without them.”
But Sophie just gazed at the blackened window, as if there was something in the darkness only she could see.
Hort brought up barley gruel, boiled eggs, browning vegetables from the Supper Hall, but she didn’t answer his knocks. For days, Sophie just lay still as a corpse, waiting for her prince to come. Soon her eyes dulled. She didn’t know what day it was. She didn’t know if it was morning or night. She didn’t know if she was asleep or awake.
Somewhere in this grim fog the first dream came.
Streaks of black and white, then she tasted blood. She gazed up into a storm of boiling red rain. She tried to hide, but she was strapped to a white stone table by violet thorns, her body tattooed in a strange script she’d seen before but couldn’t remember where. Three old hags appeared beside her, chanting and tracing the script on her skin with crooked fingers. Faster and faster the hags chanted until a steel knife, long and thin as a knitting needle, appeared in the air over her body. She tried to wrest free, but it was too late. The knife fell with vengeance, pain flooded her stomach, and something inside her was born. A pure white seed, then a milky mass, bigger, bigger, until she saw what it was. … A face … a face too blurry to see. …
“Kill me now,” said the voice.
Sophie jolted awake.
Agatha sat on the edge of her bed, wrapped in Hort’s stained sheets.
“I mean, I don’t even want to know what’s on these.”
Sophie didn’t look at her.
“Come on. You can borrow my nose clips for Yuba’s class.” Agatha stood, lit by a small tear in the window. “Day three of ‘Know Your Animal Dung!’”
Strained silence ticked by.
Agatha slumped to the bed. “What should I have done, Sophie? I couldn’t let him die.”
“It’s not right,” Sophie said, almost to herself. “You and me … it’s not right.”
Agatha scooted closer. “I only want the best for you—”
“No,” said Sophie so sharply Agatha lurched back.
“I just wanted to get us home!”
“We’re not going home. You’ve seen to that.”
“You think I wanted this?” Agatha said, exasperated.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I wanted to see how you were. I was worried about you!”
“No. Why are you here,” Sophie said, looking at the window. “In my school. In my fairy tale.”
“Because I tried to save you, Sophie! I tried to save you from the curse!”
“Then why do you keep cursing me and my prince?”
Agatha scowled. “That’s not my fault.”
“I think it’s because deep down you don’t want me to find love, Agatha,” Sophie said, voice calm.
“What? Of cour—”
“I think you want me for yourself.”
Agatha’s whole body went rigid.