The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes (43 page)

Filip fell back a step. He stared at Agatha, cut to the core.

“I really don't understand what's happening,” Tedros croaked, eyes wide.

“You'd choose him over me?” Filip rasped to Agatha, his dimpled chin quivering. “After I risked my life to save us?”

“Is that what kissing him was?” Agatha mocked. “An attempt to
save
us?”

“He kissed me!” Filip screamed—

“H-h-hold on—it was a bad moment—” the prince fumbled. “We're friends—like you and S-S-Sophie—”

“Some friend,” said Agatha, glowering at Filip.

“You have to believe me, Aggie,” Filip stressed. “I chose you, even if Tedros could want me, even if I could be his forever—”

“It was so dark—and his face looked different—” Tedros moaned, slumping onto a rock. “Any boy would make the same mistake—”

“You said you wanted to forget this place,” defended Filip. “You said you wanted our happy ending back!”

“
Happy!
Because of you, a boy is
dead
!” Agatha yelled. “Because of you, we could both still die!”

“I just wanted us to go back to the way we were. Before we ever came here. Before we ever met a prince!” Filip implored. “I just wanted us back to real friends—”

“Real friends let each other grow up,” Agatha seethed, neck searing red. “Real friends don't hold each other back from love. Real friends don't
lie
.”

Tedros launched off his rock. “That's it!” he spat at Agatha. “I don't care how you two know each other, whether you're long-lost cousins, secret pen pals, or hiking buddies in Mount Honora, but Filip isn't your concern anymore, all right?” he snarled. “So go find your treasured Sophie before I change my mind about killing you.”

Agatha goggled at him before spurting a laugh.

“What's so funny!” Tedros barked.

“You really don't see it, do you?” Agatha marveled. “You still think he's your friend.”

“My
best
friend,” retorted the prince. “And for the first time, I finally understand why you'd choose Sophie instead of me. Because Filip
knows
me. He backs me up and fights for me in a way no girl ever could. I always thought love was about a girl—but a friend like Filip is deeper than love. Because I'd choose as Good a friend as him over you again and again and again.”

“Let me tell you about
Filip
,” said Agatha witheringly. “Filip's about as Good a friend as Lancelot was to your father.”

Tedros bared teeth and drew his sword. “
What
did you say?”

Agatha searched his face, softening. “Never could tell between Good and Evil, could you?”

Tedros' whole body stiffened, dread slithering through him. He turned to see Filip backing past Agatha, out of shadowed grass and against the shimmering willow tree. Now, in the frosty, spangling light, Tedros could finally see his best friend's face, terrified, trembling. . . .

Only it was no longer a face he knew.

Each new second, every pore of Filip's features shape-shifted with the tiniest changes, like a sand sculpture burnishing, grain by grain. Filip's sloped nose softened and rounded to a button, his eyelashes thickened and grew out luxuriously, his elfish ears shrank and pinned back, his eyebrows arched like delicate brushstrokes. Changes spread down his body, faster and faster, a spell unraveling at the seams. Filip's thick, veiny muscles sleeked to creamy skin, his floppy hair flowed out in cascading blond ringlets, his hulking legs thinned and smoothed, his hips regained their curves . . . until there, in icy moonlight, a beautiful blond girl cowered and shook in a boy's black-and-red cloak, gaping plaintively like a scared cat.

Tedros collapsed against a tree. “Why does everyone lie to me?” he gasped softly. “Why is everything always a lie?”

“Not everything,” Agatha said quietly.

Sophie backed up from Tedros, trying to smile.

“Don't kill m-m-me, Tedros,” she stuttered. “See? Still Filip, still your friend . . . just different . . .”

She saw Tedros staring at her, blue eyes glazed and frozen over, as if reliving every moment of the scene that just happened, parsing every word. Little by little, a golden glow dawned over him, like a warmth awakened inside, softening the darkness and edges.

Sophie slouched with relief—

But then she saw Tedros wasn't looking at her at all.

He was looking at his ghostly, dark-haired princess, standing beneath a sparkling willow.

“Y-y-you . . . you loved me the whole time?” he said softly.

Agatha nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“And everything you said in the tower was true?” said Tedros, eyes wet.

Agatha nodded, crying harder.

“Why didn't I kiss you?” Tedros said, voice cracking. “Why didn't I trust you?”

“You're . . . so stupid,” Agatha wept, shaking her head. “Why are boys so stupid?”

Tedros smiled through tears. “Maybe a world without princes is a good idea after all.”

Agatha choked a laugh, finally letting her heart flutter unashamed.

Standing between them, Sophie stood helpless, watching true loves reunited—more invisible than she'd ever been.

A blast of purple light flew past Tedros like a warning shot—

Lady Lesso stormed out of the trees, smoking finger raised menacingly at Tedros. “Agatha, Sophie, get away from him now!” she hissed, backing towards the south gate. “I'll hide you in the Woods until it's safe—”

Neither girls nor boy moved.

“What are you doing!” she spat at Sophie and Agatha. “The other boys will be here any sec—”

But now Lady Lesso's eyes widened, for Agatha was backing away from Sophie towards the prince, who took her protectively into his arms. Clutching each other, Tedros and Agatha glared at Sophie in her boy's uniform, standing in tree shadow, all alone.

“What's—what's happening—” Lady Lesso said, head whipping between the two girls—

“I thought stopping your wish was Good, Aggie,” Sophie wept, voice faltering. “I thought I was doing Good.”

Sophie saw even Lady Lesso retreat from her now, violet eyes chilling with understanding. “A boy killed . . . students hurt . . . a Trial to the death . . . because of . . .
you
?”

“Come on,” said Tedros, taking his princess's arm. “Let her fend for herself.”

“I didn't want to be like my mother. I didn't want to end all alone,” Sophie begged Agatha, cheeks wet. “I never meant to hurt anyone—”

“Let's go, Agatha,” Tedros said harder.

Agatha looked up at her prince, as pure and devoted as he was in her dream . . . then at Sophie, sobbing repentantly across the willow glen.

No tricks. No more secrets.

This time the choice was for real.

A jet of red fire rocketed into the middle of the glen, sending Agatha and Tedros reeling back in a cloud of red smoke. Dazed, they swiveled to see red and white fireworks blast through the sky from every direction, ricocheting and out of control, like a raining meteor shower. Instantly, the fireflies on the boy's scoreboard combusted to flames, scorching all the remaining names, Tedros' and Filip's included. . . . With a deafening crack, the board erupted in a blinding fireball. Across the forest, the girls' scoreboard detonated in another shattering explosion, billowing black plumes of smoke over the west gate.

“What's happening?” Agatha breathed, ears ringing—

She and Tedros sensed a low, dull rumble behind them, growing louder . . . louder. . . .

Faces draining blood, they slowly looked up.

The enchanted haze over the castles broke like mist, revealing the boys' and girls' schools overrun with roaring, descending bodies like swarming ants. Charging girls leapt onto broken Halfway Bridge from the balconies, wielding weapons and glowing fingertips, clamoring at the edge of the broken gap. Across the bay, hundreds of rabid boys and mercenary princes thundered onto the bridge from the other side, lethally armed and bellowing for blood.

“They know I'm here.”

Agatha looked up at Lady Lesso behind them, her violet gaze fixed on the castles.

“Trial's over,” her teacher rasped.

Agatha swallowed. “What does that mean?”

They peered up at four hundred boys and girls raring to kill each other, separated only by a gap in a bridge.

“War,” said Tedros. “It means war.”

Over their heads, the willow branches began to shimmer brighter like blue tinsel until the shimmer detonated like a storm cloud, sweeping down over the trees. In the moon's glow, they saw the sparkles were butterflies, thousands of blue butterflies, that had given the willows their neon glow. Like locusts, they swarmed through the glen in a violent gale – Agatha shielded her face, while Tedros hacked uselessly at them with his sword and stumbled to the ground –

A loud gasp suddenly flew behind them, and Agatha spun to see Lady Lesso pulled off the ground by a cloud of butterflies.

“Evelyn—” Lady Lesso gasped, horror-struck. “She heard everything—”

“Wait!” Agatha cried, trying to hold on to her—

Panicked, Lady Lesso pressed her lips to Agatha's ear as the butterflies dragged her off. “Kiss him, Agatha!” she whispered. “Kiss him when the time comes—”

And then she was ripped away, as butterflies kidnapped her back to school, her last pleas to Agatha drowned out by the roars of war.

Agatha froze in the moonlit glen, gulping shallow breaths.

“What did she say?”

She looked down at Tedros staggering up, golden hair mussed.

“Agatha?” said another voice.

Agatha turned to see the last of the hellish red smoke dissipating through the trees, Sophie revealed behind it.

“What did she say?” her friend asked, face tense.

Agatha stared at Sophie across the willow glen, a moonlit stage, boys' and girls' war cries echoing faraway like a chorus.

Overhead, the treetops suddenly began to rustle and sway, a heavy, crackling sound tearing towards them—

Agatha recoiled in shock as the School Master's silver tower crashed through into the willows. The moving tower glided into the moonlight and skidded to a stop, rupturing the ground with its force – splitting Tedros on one side, Sophie on the other, across a long, ragged crack in the ground, with Agatha straddling the fault line between them.

From the tower's window, a last throng of butterflies fluttered down behind the three students, magically congealing into form as they touched ground. Like an actress on cue, Evelyn Sader stepped into the clearing's spotlight, her long nails clutching a red cherrywood storybook that Agatha knew.

It was her and Sophie's fairy tale.

“‘Trial,'” the Dean cooed. “Such a delicious word. So many relevant meanings. An experiment in service of a conclusion, for instance. Or a test of faith and stamina. Or a difficult moment in one's own life. And yet . . . I prefer the more formal definition.” She paused dramatically, taking in Sophie and Tedros on opposite sides, dark brows knitted over her forest-green eyes. “A formal court before witnesses to determine
guilt
.”

Her eyes moved to Agatha in the middle. The Dean smiled cryptically.

“Now the
real
Trial begins.”

With her sharp nail, Evelyn slit open the sewn binding atop the book's spine. The gleaming Storian ripped through, glowing furious red, as
The Tale of Sophie and Agatha
magically floated out of the Dean's hands and into the moonlight. The pen flung the book open with its razor-steel nib, spilling ink across pages as colorful scenes filled in the gaps in the story. At last the pen slowed on a final page, taking its time as it painted Agatha between Tedros and Sophie. . . .

Only Sophie didn't look like the Sophie in front of Agatha now.

The Sophie on the page was a bald, warted old witch.

Beneath the witch, the pen wrote a single line:

“The villain had been hidden all this time.”

Agatha and Tedros slowly looked up at Sophie, milky beautiful in the moonlit glen.

“You see, Agatha, you thought I conjured Sophie's symptoms. That
I
was the villain.” Evelyn sat on a stump at the glen's dark fringe. “When it wasn't me at all, was it?”

“Agatha, I'm not a witch—you know I'm not a witch—” Sophie scoffed—

But Agatha took a step back from her friend, crossing into Tedros' side of the glen. Sophie's face reddened with surprise.

“You think I can still be Evil?” Sophie breathed. “That I could hurt you?”

Agatha's hands were shaking. “Witches ruin fairy tales, Sophie. Witches lie to get their endings.”

Sophie appealed to Tedros. “I was a good friend to you, wasn't I? A friend like that could never be a witch! Tell her!”

“A friend built on a lie isn't a friend,” Tedros blazed across the divide. “The School Master went to the ends of the earth to find someone as Evil as him. Now we see why he picked you, Sophie. You'll
always
be Evil as long as you live.”

“I'm not E-E-Evil! I'm trying to be Good! Can't you see? I'm
trying
!” Sophie cried. “The School Master was wrong! He was wrong about me!”

Agatha stared at the terrifying hag in the storybook, as she backed farther towards Tedros. “The Storian doesn't lie, Sophie. . . .”

“No—Aggie, please—” Sophie said. “You know the truth—”

Devastated, she ran to Agatha across the cracked glen—but a blistering pain in her neck made her cry out, before more pain seared through her wrist and forearm.

Agatha and Tedros cowered from her, eyes wide, and Sophie's stomach went ice-cold. Slowly she raised her arm and saw it marred with two gruesome black warts. More warts sizzled through as her skin started to wrinkle like curdling milk, mottling with liver spots.