The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes (35 page)

“But Castor said we're all doomed if we don't find—”

“Because the pen reflects the soul of its master,” Tedros mumbled, slumping deeper. “If it gets into Dean Sader's hands, you can bet there'll be a lot of boys dying at the end of stories. Starting with mine.”

Mine.
The word hit Sophie harder than the prospect of Woods-wide death. She had always thought of it as
her
story, with Tedros the villain in her way. But now she realized: Tedros thought it was his fairy tale—and that he deserved a happy ending just as much as she did.

“Agatha's wish for you,” Sophie said quietly. “How did you hear it?”

Tedros paused, jaw clenching. “I was nine when my mother left. It was the middle of the night, and I was asleep in the opposite wing. I remember bolting up in a pool of sweat and stumbling to the window without knowing why, my heart feeling like it was ripped open. The last thing I saw was my mother on my favorite horse, galloping into the Woods.” He traced the space between bricks with his finger. “I woke up the same way when I felt Agatha's wish. She
wanted
me to hear it, Filip.” His eyes watered. “And I believed it was true.”

Sophie fidgeted with her grubby nails. “Maybe it was true,” she said, almost to herself. “Maybe something just . . . got in the way.”

Tedros rubbed his eyes and sat up straighter. “You're a good friend, Filip. You didn't have to help me.”

Sophie shook her head. “I couldn't let you die,” she breathed, unable to look at him. “I couldn't.”

“Sophie said the same thing last year. Vowed to protect me in the Trial—then left me to die alone,” Tedros said, picking at a hole in his dirty black socks. “Suppose that's the difference between a girl and a boy.”

Sophie finally looked up, blinking wide.

Tedros nodded. “Trust me, I know, Filip. She was every bit as Evil as the storybook says.”

Sophie swallowed. “Can you . . . tell me about her?”

“She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen—blond hair just like yours . . . and now that I think about it, green eyes a lot like yours too,” Tedros said, peering at Filip. His cell mate glanced away, uncomfortable, and Tedros quickly looked down. “But there was nothing beneath it. Every time I gave her a new chance, I saw more and more deceit. It was like she wanted a prince only to have one, caring nothing about who I actually was. I never knew what Agatha saw in her worth saving.”

“Perhaps you don't know Agatha the way Sophie knows her.”

“I know Agatha used to be a Good soul who deserved happiness with a prince,” Tedros retorted. “Now she gave up true love for something masking as it. Sophie did that to her. Sophie
ruined
her.”

“Only because you made your princess
choose
,” Sophie shot back, elfish face flushing. “You're responsible for your own fate, Tedros. Not Agatha. And not Sophie.”

Tedros grimaced and said nothing.

“Why can't a girl have both?” Sophie asked softly. She looked at her boy's face reflected in the bed frame. “Why can't she have the love of her prince and the love of her best friend?”

“Because we grow up, Filip,” Tedros exhaled. “When you're young, you think your best friend is everything. But once you find real love . . . it changes. Your friendship can never be the same after that. Because no matter how much you try to keep both, your loyalty can only lie with one.” He smiled sadly at his cellmate. “That's Agatha's greatest mistake. She can't see that she and Sophie were doomed the moment she let herself love me.”

Sophie felt the wall of muscle encasing her new body slacken, as if Tedros had put words to the truth she'd been shutting out. That night, Agatha was supposed to kiss Tedros and live out her Ever After. That night, she herself was supposed to go home all alone, her only friend moved on to a boy.

But she'd rewritten their story. She'd held her best friend back.

At what cost?

“It's too late,” Tedros breathed, resting his forehead on his clasped arms. “I won't love someone again.”

“Maybe Sophie needs Agatha more than you need her,” his cell mate pressed, tears in his eyes. “Maybe Agatha is the closest to love that Sophie will ever get. Maybe Sophie did the Good thing after all!”

Tedros raised his head, glowering.

“Don't you see, Tedros? You'll find someone else,” Filip said, voice shaky. “Sophie won't.”

“You're as bad as a Reader, Filip,” said Tedros darkly. “There's only one true love. Only
one
.”

The boys gazed hard at each other before they turned away and sat in silence, two silhouettes beneath a dying torch.

Filip lurched up for the door. “Come on.”

“What?” Tedros blurted. “I'm not allowed to leave—”

“Difference between you and me.” Filip glared down at him. “You're a prince who plays by rules. And I'm not.”

Tedros stared at his new friend waiting impatiently.

“Takes quite the boy to boss me around,” Tedros muttered, pulling himself up.

Filip held the door open. “You have no idea.”

On the rehearsal stage in the Supper Hall, Pollux barked at his cast of five baffled-looking Nevergirls heaped with white clown makeup and poorly fitted cheongsams. “For the last time, you are a living
metaphor
for the Trial . . . an embodiment of eons of female submission and objectification . . . a monument to a deadly Trial that may cost us lives—”

“This play looks more deadly than a Trial,” Dot murmured, readying the burkas and swan headdresses for the next act. She eyed Hester and Anadil, whispering while they painted one of the sets, an odd gap between them that Dot surmised must be Agatha. “If I'd known this was what Book Club would turn into, I'd have tried out for chorus,” she sighed, turning a swan feather to arugula before traipsing over to join their conversation.

“What could the Dean possibly be doing with Merlin's spell?” Anadil was saying.

“Could she have used it herself?” Agatha said, slipping back her cape's hood so they could just see her big brown eyes.

“First of all, we would have noticed if the Dean had turned herself into a man,” Hester returned. “Second, either be invisible or not. Your eyes are too big and sentimental to be taken seriously.”

“Well I didn't know we were all volunteering for
stage crew
,” Agatha snapped as Anadil's rats took turns bathing in paint and rolling across the set.

“You didn't seem to have any better ideas of where we should meet—”

“Because I'm too busy trying not to
die
—”

“And you think we aren't?” Anadil shot back. “We've been killing ourselves to make the Trial team in case this all goes to hell—”

“Do you think the Dean sent a girl into the boys' castle?” Dot wondered airily, chomping salad greens.

The other girls turned to her.

“If she did, that might explain why Sophie hasn't found the Storian yet,” Dot said. “The Dean might have had one of the girls turn into a boy and hide the pen so you can't make your wish. You know—to make sure the Trial goes on as planned.”

Anadil blinked at her. “Maybe I should start eating vegetables.”

“And who would this Storian-stashing girl be?” Hester leered, looking irritated she hadn't come up with the idea.

“Beatrix,” Agatha returned, pulling the hood back to reveal her face. “This is her cape, isn't it? And she had that boys' uniform under her bed too! She loves the Dean! It has to be her!”

“Look, we'll see what we can get out of her,” Anadil said, scooting to block Agatha's face from view. “But there's only two nights left, Agatha. Sophie has to find the Storian by tomorrow. Where was her lantern tonight?”

“Can't see a thing outside tonight. Completely fogged out,” said Agatha miserably. “Left my lantern in my window, but can't see hers until it clears.”

“She has to bring that pen back, Agatha,” Hester pressured. “Or we're
all
going into that Trial.”

If Agatha wasn't scared enough, the fear in Hester's face turned her stomach to jelly.

“The Dean had a Trial map too—” Agatha stammered. “She marked the Cyan Caves—”

“Cyan Caves?” Hester scoffed, exchanging looks with Anadil. “They're just a decoration by the south gates. Caves don't go deeper than fifty feet. What could possibly be in them?”

“Well, she canceled the pre-Trial scout, so we can't even look,” Agatha griped, disappearing back under her hood—

“Unless she already gave you permission to.”

Agatha looked up at Hester, peering slyly at her invisible friend.

“As far as the Dean knows, you're in the Blue Forest with a gnome.”

As the clock tolled midnight, Agatha prowled through the foggy Blue Forest towards the south gates, invisible under her cape. She'd never seen fog like this—swirling white clouds of mist that obscured every last blade of navy grass. She squinted through the haze at the School for Boys but couldn't see a single brick.

It certainly was a coincidence, Agatha thought—that her only means of communication with Sophie had been severed by strange weather.

Lady Lesso's warning floated into Agatha's mind . . .
Evelyn's always one step ahead.

Agatha shook off the thought and snuck deeper into the Forest, moving slowly in case she collided with any trees or equally fog-blinded animals. In the eerie silence, she began to feel thoughts of Tedros rising faster than she could hold them down. The more she denied him, the stronger he seemed to become, like a monster at the door. Nerves shredding, she focused harder on the fog-covered path. As soon as she got home to the graveyard, she'd burn every last storybook she could find. Gavaldon would be a world without princes, indeed.

She felt the path begin to slope uphill, meaning she was beyond the pumpkin patch and nearing the south gates. Tomorrow night would be Trial eve, featuring Pollux's infernal play and the announcement of the team. By then, Dean Sader and Professor Manley would have laced the Forest with their traps. They'd agreed that the Cyan Caves were off-limits. . . . So what was the Dean hiding there?

A white rabbit scurried past her clumps, carrying its terrified baby in its mouth, and vanished into the white fog as if erased off a page. Agatha treaded carefully, step by step, until she glimpsed the wall of blue-green rock in front of her.

Buried high on a cliff at the southeast corner, cloaked by giant overhanging blue pines, the Cyan Caves were a bubbled arrangement of three circular, sea-green holes of different sizes. Agatha gazed up at the caves atop the ledge, unsure how to even get up to them. She couldn't Mogrify and lose her magic cape, so her only option was to climb one of the blue pines and jump onto the cliff. Luckily, the pine branches were thick and sturdy, and Agatha made her way up quickly, thankful for the prickly needles to guide her hands through the fog. At last she reached the highest bough and with a deep breath leapt down invisible onto jagged rock, with only a small stutter in her landing.

Agatha peered at the row of caves in front of her: three circles of different sizes that looked like they belonged in Goldilocks' story—the first cave too big, the second cave too small, the third just right. She could feel her neck rashing red under the invisible cape collar. Something told her that whatever was in these caves would answer her question of why Evelyn Sader was in her fairy tale—and how she planned for it to end.

Legs shaking, Agatha headed into the first giant cave, feeling her fingertip glow gold like a torch. The cavernous walls were glassy aquamarine, dimly reflecting her fingerglow and tense face. Step by step, she moved through the mirrored den, scanning every inch, seeing nothing but a few scraggly meerworms and beetles, until she reached a dead end.

Frowning, Agatha retreated to try the second cave. But with its hole no bigger than a dinner plate, Agatha couldn't fit more than her head in. Worse still, this cave was even shallower than the first, with her fingerglow illuminating only bare walls and a few patches of mold. Agatha wrenched back out, irritated.

What am I doing here
? she chastised herself as she stomped into the third cave. She should be waiting for Sophie in the castle, she thought, lighting up the midsized, deserted den. Her friend would be back with that pen any moment. . . . Last year, she herself had been the rock, the finisher, the one who would do anything to get them home. Now it was Sophie. That's why Sophie had won the challenge to be a boy instead of her. Sophie was the prince this time. Sophie wouldn't let her down. . . .

Extinguishing her glow, Agatha hurried back towards the mouth of the cave—and stopped cold. A strange hum echoed behind her, like a chorus of angry whispers.

Slowly Agatha turned around, hearing the whir grow louder and louder. She held up her lit finger, flickering with dread. . . .

A storm of blue butterflies crashed into her from darkness, swamping her invisible body like bees and ripping her invisible cape to threads. They moved with deliberate purpose and ruthless speed, eviscerating the snakeskin and bashing her back onto the cliff edge. Beneath their beating wings, Agatha could see her skin and clothes reappearing in moonlight, patch by patch, until they finally tore the last of the cape from her and swarmed away with a violent gust, blowing her off the ledge. Agatha fell down the cliff with a scream, flailing through fog, and landed on her tailbone in a tangled pine shrub. Bruised and aching, she looked up to see the cloud of butterflies vanish into fog, shedding the last black slivers of the cape over the Forest like ash.

Agatha couldn't breathe, feeling the relief of being alive give way to the panic of what had just happened.

The Dean had planted that map in her office for her to find. Which meant the Dean knew she hadn't been with Yuba in the Blue Forest the past two days . . .