The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes (40 page)

Her voice dropped off. Because now she could read the names on the boys' scoreboard across the Forest.

TEDROS

ARIC

PRINCE OF AVONLEA

PRINCE OF GINNYMILL

RAVAN

NICHOLAS

PRINCE OF SHAZABAH DESERT

PRINCE OF FOXWOOD

Only there was one more name, glowing at the top.

FILIP.

Agatha held in a scream.

FILIP.

FILIP.

FILIP.

Sophie was in the Trial as a boy.

Sophie was in the Trial fighting with the same boys who wanted to kill her.

Agatha's horror abated, all questions of how it had happened fading away. If Sophie was a boy, she'd be
safe
from Tedros, wouldn't she?
As long as Sophie stays Filip, Tedros can't find her
, Agatha thought, heartbeat slowing as the nymphs set her down in front of the circling butterflies.
And if he can't find her, he can't kill her.
Perhaps her friend had made an ingenious move after all. . . .

Agatha's stomach took a sharp twist.

Three days.
Yuba had said Merlin's spell would only last three days . . . until the start of the Trial.

Sophie would revert back to a girl any second.

Right in a pack of boys that would kill her on the spot.

Blood shot through Agatha's legs, priming her to run.

She had to find Sophie
now
.

From the boys' and girls' scoreboards came a detonation of red and blue flares into the sky. Agatha's name sparked in firefly glow onto the girls' board as their last combatant, V
EX
's onto the boys'—

The blue butterflies zoomed towards the gate, outlining a shape of a door against its flaming bars. Through this door, the flames instantly melted to water, opening a small rain-curtain into the Forest. Agatha squinted through the blurring downpour at a slim dirt path ahead, snaking through shimmering blue ferns.

A year ago, she and Sophie had fought this Trial together and come out alive.

This year, they'd have to find each other.

All Agatha could hope was that Tedros hadn't found Sophie first.

I'm coming, Sophie.

The nymphs shoved her through the gates and she felt a warm, embracing rain. Then Agatha heard the roar of flames behind her and she knew she was inside.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

E
very muscle in Sophie's boy body froze as she watched Agatha's name light up on the girls' board over the Blue Forest.

Art to come

She's inside.

Agatha's inside.

All the fear and self-loathing she'd bottled up for the past day, since she'd seen her friend's red lantern blazing, since she'd trapped herself in this execrable Trial, rushed out of her like a wind, and she nearly buckled to her knees. Whatever she'd done to bring them both here, at least they were both alive and in the same place.

How could I pick Tedros! she abused herself. In that dundering moment of absolute stupidity, thinking he might actually like her again, she'd forgotten two things. First, Tedros wanted to kill her and her best friend. And second . . . he thinks I'm a boy. A BOY!

Sophie looked out at the dense Forest in front of her, lit up for the Trial with a snowy white-blue glow, like a psychotic winter wonderland. Everything in her wanted to scream out for Agatha, to run and hide with her—

“Hurry up, Filip,” Tedros frowned, glancing back as he waded off the path through the tangled Turquoise Thicket, round steel shield and sword Excalibur in hand, the sewn T on his black-and-red cloak collar spotted with blood. “You've almost killed us both already. Try to keep up.”

Sophie rushed to follow him, sheathed sword banging against her hulking thigh, the F initial on her boys' uniform stained with even more blood. Twenty minutes into the Trial, they'd come across a wounded stymph, its fleshless body lying in the Blueberry Fields, one of its bony wings smashed. Tedros said to leave it be, for stymphs attacked Nevers, not princes—only to see it lunge screeching at Filip and swallow his shield whole. Tedros leapt to his friend's defense while Filip howled and bandied about like an idiot, the stymph nearly eating both of them before Tedros finally beheaded it. He'd been giving his friend wary looks ever since.

“Not my fault the bird's demented,” Sophie insisted for the fourth time, trying to sound as princely as she could.

The last day in the School for Boys had barreled by in a blur of panic. Desperate to answer Agatha's alarm, Sophie waited until nightfall, hoping to abscond to the girls' castle, but Castor slept right outside the Doom Room to ensure the boys' team leader stayed in his cell and got his rest. Not that Sophie could rest if she wanted—Tedros spent the entire night drawing detailed maps of the Blue Forest, sharpening his father's sword, which Manley had grudgingly returned, and blustering strategy like he once had as Good's army captain.

“We'll be our own group, Fil. Let Aric and the princes take on the other girls while we go straight for Sophie and Agatha. No doubt they're fighting together, just like me and you,” he said. “We have to slay them on the spot, or they'll kill us first.”

“Can't we just hide under the Blue Brook bridge until sunrise?” Sophie moaned, pillow over her floppy prince hair.

“That's what I'd expect a girl to say,” Tedros scoffed.

Now that girl, trapped in a boy's body, followed her would-be assassin through a tangled blue thicket. Tedros peered up at each turquoise oak appraisingly before jumping onto the tallest trunk in the batch.

“What are you doing?” Sophie hissed.

“Agatha just entered at the west gate,” Tedros whispered, monkeying up the tree. “First thing she'll do is cross the Fernfield and find Sophie. Come on, we'll have a good view of the ferns up here.”

Sophie had never climbed a tree before (“Only boys could enjoy such a low form of entertainment,” she'd said), but the thought of seeing Agatha sent her bounding up the oak even faster than Tedros. She found her footing on the highest bough, icy breeze numbing her face, and tried to squint over the dense treetop as the prince climbed up next to her—

“Can't see anything,” she grouched.

“Here, take my hand.”

Sophie stared at Tedros' open palm.

“Relax, mate, I won't let you fall,” he said.

Sophie put her big hand in his firm grip as he inched forward towards thinner foliage, pulling his roommate behind him. Sophie's stubbled face blushed red-hot, remembering the feeling of Tedros holding her hand, the way he had a year ago when they were first in love . . . when he asked her to the Ball right here in the Forest . . . leaning forward in moonlight just like this . . . lips reaching for hers. . . .

“You sweat like a hog, Filip,” Tedros snorted, letting go of her clammy palm.

Sophie jolted from her trance, silently screaming at herself, and grabbed on to a branch, off-balance.

“Can't see any of the girls,” Tedros said. “Can you?”

Sophie peered through leaves at a wide view of the north Forest. The Fernfield, Pine Shrubs, and Turquoise Thicket were amply lit with the same wintry glow, but she couldn't see any of the girls' sapphire uniforms—just a few shadowy boy cloaks prowling through the shrubs. She felt a sharp sadness at not seeing Agatha, then relief that Tedros couldn't either.

“She and Sophie must be hiding scared,” Tedros said. “We'll wait here until one of them moves—”

A blast of white fireworks shot up into the sky from the south Forest, signaling the first surrender. Tedros and Filip swiveled, almost careening off their branch, and saw treetops rustling faraway, near the pumpkin patch. Screams echoed, boy and girl, along with a monster's shrieks, as blue pumpkins flew over the trees like kicked balls, followed by a flurry of red and white fireworks in one long, frightening detonation.

Then it went quiet.

“What happened?” Sophie gasped.

“One of the teacher's traps,” said Tedros. “Only it got kids from both sides, whatever it was.”

Sophie whirled to the scoreboards. Please. Not Agatha.

V
EX
, R
AVAN
, M
ONA
, and A
RACHNE'S
fireflies all went dark.

Sophie sighed with relief—then tightened. “Didn't kill any of them, did it?”

Tedros shook his head. “Fireworks are different if you die instead of surrender. I asked Manley.”

Sophie felt a sharp wave of nausea. The idea that Tedros would actually kill her had never quite sunk in. But him asking Manley that simple question suddenly made it real.

Footsteps crunched in the thicket below, and the two boys looked down to see a pair of princes, one burly, one whippet thin, lurking down the path, both armed with battle-axes.

“Nevers are crap at fighting monsters—used to having 'em on their side,” the burly prince said. “Even with our help, those two Neverboys dropped their flags like ninnies.”

“Ah well, more chance at the treasure for us,” said the thinner one, gritting his teeth from the cold. “No sign of those Reader girls, though, and we've combed the whole south Forest.”

“Probably hiding under the brook bridge like cowards. Come on.”

Sophie watched them leave, heart sinking deeper.

“Filip?” Tedros said, seeing his friend's face.

“Turning princes into assassins? Wagering treasure on two girls' lives?” Sophie turned, pallid and scared. “This isn't you, Tedros. No matter what you think's happened,” she said, voice breaking. “You're not a villain.”

Slowly the prince's face weakened, as if finally seeing himself through his friend's eyes. “You don't know me,” he said quietly.

Sophie could feel the branch wobbling, then realized it was her own shaking legs. “What if this is all a mistake?” she rasped. “What if Sophie just wants to go home with her friend?”

Tedros' jaw clamped as he looked away, fighting himself.

“What if she just wants their happy ending back?” Sophie said.

Tedros' body slacked deeper, like a shell about to crack—

Then his face hardened again like a mask.

Sophie followed his eyes past her, to the top of a girls' tower looming over the Blue Forest, directly in line with their tree. Tedros squinted at Honor's open-air rooftop, lit up by torches and dissipating fireworks in the sky.

“Come on, let's go,” Sophie said quickly, knowing what was on the Honor roof—

But Tedros didn't move, peering at a menagerie of hedges once dedicated to the father he revered . . . now remade in the image of the mother who'd abandoned him.

“Tedros, whatever it is, it isn't worth looking at,” Sophie hassled—

Tedros tore a big blue leaf off the tree and turned it to ice with his gold fingerglow. Holding it up to his eye, he magically melted the ice's edges until it curved like a binocular lens, magnifying his view.

“Tedros, please,” Sophie entreated.

But he'd already found the last sculpture near the balcony, framed by a wall of purple thorns. The vision of his mother drowning her baby prince with inexorable hate. A mother who wanted her only son dead.

“It's not true,” spoke Sophie softly, seeing through his lens. “You know it's not.”

Tedros said nothing, staring at the scene, shallow breath fogging the air.

“You want to know why those girls have to die?” he said. “For the same reason my father left a price on my mother's head.”

He turned to his friend, eyes wet. “Because it's the only happy ending left.”

The hope drained from Sophie's face like a dimming light. “Now you really sound like a villain,” she breathed.

The two boys glared at each other, chests touching on the branch, tears in both their eyes.

Tedros shoved by Filip and started climbing down the tree.

“Go hide if you want,” he said. “But I'm finding those girls.”

Sophie watched him stiffly, sweat chilling as it dripped down her back. Everything in her wanted to run and cower under the bridge until sunrise, to save her own life.

But she couldn't let him find Agatha.

Legs shaking, she followed the prince.

Agatha knew many things about Sophie, from her favorite color (primrose pink) to the strawberry birthmark on her ankle to the way she always blushed red before she laughed. But most of all, Agatha knew Sophie would have one and only one tactic to survive this Trial.

Hide under the bridge.

Knowing Tedros would be hunting her from the moment she entered the Forest—even spying from a tree, for all she knew—Agatha mogrified into a black lynx cat and carried her clothes in her mouth as she slunk through the Fernfield. As she reached the Blue Brook, waters babbling quietly beneath the gray stone bridge, she reverted back to human and dressed in the blue mint bushes before sneaking onto the brook's shadowy banks. The waters were pitch dark under the bridge, but she couldn't light her fingerglow for fear of attracting boys.

“Sophie?” Agatha whispered, wading into the frigid knee-high water, fish flurrying away from her. For all she knew, Sophie had turned herself into a stingray. “Sophie, it's m-m-me,” she hissed, teeth chattering —

An ice-cold hand grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her down into the water. Gasping to the surface, Agatha opened her mouth to scream for help—and saw Hester, Anadil, and Dot gaping back at her, faces camouflaged with mud, hidden waist high in water beneath a hollowed-out part of the bank. Agatha could have collapsed in relief.

“Told you she'd come here,” Dot humphed to the witches before offering Agatha two handfuls of sardines turned to spinach and Swiss chard. Agatha tended to think of vegetables as rabbit food, but she was too hungry to care. “Where's Sophie?” she snarfled, mouth full of spinach—