The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes (6 page)

She thought of innocent women burned publicly in a square, not so long ago, and her stomach turned over.
How can we ever go home?
Their future in Gavaldon was just as dark as the Woods around her now. To go home, she couldn't just rescue Sophie. She had to defeat these assassins—whoever they were—and stop their attacks once and for all.

But she had no idea how to even begin looking for her friend. For hundreds of years, the villagers had stormed
into the forest, seeking its lost children—only to come out the other side, right where they started. Like all the missing children, she and Sophie had seen what lay beyond the forest: a dangerous world of Good and Evil that had no end. They had been the lucky ones to return, sealing the gates between reality and fantasy forever . . . or so she'd thought. One wish, and the gates had reopened.

Wherever Sophie was, she was in terrible danger.

Rising from a crouch, Agatha stepped into the Endless Woods, clumps crunching on dead leaves. Inching forward, she probed blindly with her hands, feeling splintered bark, cobwebbed branches. . . . Her head smacked into a tree and a shadow flung out, spewed something wet at her face, and vanished with a hiss. In response came a chorus of grunts and groans, all through the woods, like a sleeping enemy called to arms. Dazed, Agatha scraped the goo off her face and pulled Radley's dagger from her pocket. Scuffling sounds came from beneath her feet.

Through dead leaves, she saw pupils open and shut in the undergrowth, yellow and green, glinting in one place, reappearing in another. Agatha shrank against the tree, trying not to blink. Little by little, her eyes adjusted, just in time to see eight slinky shadows unfurl from the ground in a circle around her, like coiling trails of smoke—

Snakes.

Only they were thicker than snakes, black as ash, with flattened heads and needle-sharp barbs through every
scale. They rose higher, higher around Agatha, angling towards her with long, overlapping hisses, opening their full-fanged jaws wide—

All at once, they spat.

Gobs of mucus pinned Agatha to the tree, and she dropped the dagger. She tried to wrench free, but sour film smacked into her mouth and eyes so all she could see was a ring of blurry, spiny silhouettes. They all aimed at different parts of her body, then curled their trunks around her, barbs piercing into her skin. Flailing silently, Agatha saw a last one, bigger than the rest, lower from a branch and loop its cold, black tail around her neck. As its barbs pricked her throat, she gasped for more breath, but the monster's head was slithering up her face now. It pressed its fat nose against the film over her cheeks, glaring at her with thin, acid-green pupils . . . and started to squeeze. Agatha choked and closed her eyes—

She felt no hurt, only her soul searching for a memory. . . . She was sitting on a lakeshore, head on someone's shoulder. Arm in arm, they held each other, sun drenching their skin, breaths quietly matched. Agatha listened to the silence of happiness, Ever After in a single moment. . . . Then sharp, stabbing pain flooded her body and she knew the end had come. Gripping the arm beside her, Agatha gazed into their lake's reflection, needing to see her happy ending's face, one last time—

It wasn't Sophie's.

Light speared the darkness. The snakes recoiled with
screams and skittered back into dead leaves.

Agatha opened her eyes. Dazed, she looked around for the source of light. Through the veil of goo, she saw it was her fingertip, burning gold for the first time since the wedding. She was at once relieved and sickened. Both times it'd happened thinking of
him
.

Magic follows emotion
, Yuba had warned. She'd lost control of both.

This time, however, her finger didn't dim. Agatha held it up, confused. She focused on her need to get off this tree, and suddenly the glow pulsed brighter, as if waiting for instructions. Agatha's heart pumped faster. She'd crossed into the fairy-tale world. Her magic was back.

Bursting with pain and stuck to a tree, Agatha was hardly in shape to remember spells from school. But when her breaths settled, she managed a basic melt jinx, and the mucus rinsed away with the blood, leaving her black dress sticky and soaked. Still, she was alive somehow, and with a wretched groan, Agatha picked up Radley's dagger and pried off the soggy bark.

Finger aglow, she swept it like a torch through knotted trees, searching for a path, like Yuba had taught them. Like all the group leaders at the School for Good and Evil, the old gnome had used the Blue Forest, a lush, tranquil training ground meant to mimic the Endless Woods and prepare students for what they'd face. Agatha squeezed between two rotted tree trunks, trying to ignore the
burning cuts all over her body. Now the Blue Forest seemed like the School Master's cruel joke.

Agatha wrenched between more webbed trees towards a gap in the thicket, hoping it'd be the path. She didn't dare call Sophie's name and signal the assassins she was on their trail.

With each step, Agatha felt a growing sense of doom. She'd been in the Endless Woods twice before, but this time it was different. There was no school to save her. There was no Tedros.

Her fingerglow pulsed brighter.

Tedros of Camelot.

Finally she said his name to herself, here, alone in the Woods. The last time she'd seen her prince was in the twilight of her and Sophie's kiss, a kiss he thought would be his. As he watched her disappear into thin air, he reached for her, choking a scream—
“Wait!”

She'd had the choice to take his hand. She'd had the choice to stay as his princess. She felt it as her body glowed to light, trapped between worlds.

But she chose Sophie, and then Agatha was gone.

She was so sure she'd made the right choice. It was the only ending she ever wanted. But the more she tried to forget him, the more her prince came. In dreams, day and night . . . his pained blue eyes . . . his body lunging . . . his big, strong hand, reaching for hers . . .

Until one day she reached back.

Just find Sophie
, she gritted, remembering her promise
to Stefan. All she wanted was Sophie home alive—charming, maniacal, ludicrous Sophie. She'd never doubt her happy ending again.

As she waded through a mess of fallen branches towards the gap in the trees, Agatha held up her lit finger and saw it wasn't a path at all. It was a vast cesspool of mud, rusted red, stretching east and west as far as she could see. She picked up a rock and lobbed it into the pool. The splash wasn't shallow.

Suddenly Agatha noticed two shadows down the bank, probing at the red mud with dark hooves: a horned stag with his female deer. After a few more testing prods, the stag seemed satisfied, and both slid into the mud side by side, swimming towards the distant bank. Relieved, Agatha rolled up her dress to follow them—

Something snatched the female deer and Agatha stumbled back in shock. Three long, spiny white crocodile snouts rose from the mud, thin and rectangular, with enormous round nostrils and black shark teeth, tearing into the thrashing female. They pulled her under, ignoring the bigger male completely as he flailed whimpering to the far shore.

Agatha didn't try to cross.

Tears in her eyes, she staggered back the way she came, sweeping her fingerglow across the maze of trees. Where was her friend? What had they done with her? Trying to stifle her sobs, she limped towards the forest edge, seeing nothing but the shadows of skeletal branches . . . slivers of
dark clouds . . . a hot glow of pink . . .

She stopped her finger on it, pulsing like a beacon to bad behavior. Anyone else would have mistaken it for an animal's eye. But Agatha knew.

Only one animal on earth made a pink like that.

She tore through trees, fighting her pain, following the pink glow fading weaker in the distance. As she neared, she began to see smears of blood on trees, like the trail of a wounded beast. She plowed through broken branches, ripped away vines, hair snaring on nettles, until she caught wisps of lavender perfume. Agatha jumped over a log, heart bursting from her chest, and charged into the small glade—

“Sophie!”

Sophie didn't respond. Facing away, she was slumped on her knees behind a far tree, arms over her head. The second finger on her right hand pulsed her signature pink glow a few last times and dulled to pale.

“Sophie?” Agatha said. Her own gold fingerglow went cold.

Sophie still didn't move.

Agatha approached the tree, dread rising. She could hear her friend's shallow breaths. Slowly Agatha reached out and touched bare shoulder through Sophie's torn dress.

There was blood on it.

Agatha spun her around. Sophie's hands were lashed
to a branch with braided horse reins. There were shallow knife pricks in each of her palms, from which the Elders had taken blood and smeared a scarlet message on Sophie's chest.

Frantic, Agatha cut Sophie down with her knife, trying in vain to think of a spell to wash away the blood. She scrubbed at her friend's skin with shaking palms. “I'm sorry—” she choked, severing the last rein. “I'll get us home—I promise—”

The instant she was free, Sophie covered Agatha's mouth with ice-cold hands. Agatha followed her wide, bloodshot eyes. . . .

There was something on all the trees ahead, flapping milky white in the darkness. Agatha held up her glowing finger.

Parchment scrolls crackled in the wind like dead leaves, tacked to the trunks. Each one was the same.

Underneath was a drawing of Sophie's face.

“That's impossible!” Agatha cried. “He's dea—”

She froze.

Between trees she caught glints of red. Something was coming.

Agatha grabbed Sophie's wrist and dragged her behind a trunk. Muffling Sophie's moans with her hand, Agatha slowly peeked out.

Through tangled branches, she saw men in red leather hoods, eyeholes cut away. They carried fire-tipped arrows,
which lit up their sleeveless black leather uniforms and bare, muscular arms. She tried to count how many there were—10, 15, 20, 25 . . . until she counted one whose violet eyes glared right at her. Grinning, he raised his bow—

“Down!” Agatha yelped—

The first arrow singed Sophie's neck as both girls dove into dirt. Neither spoke as they floundered through snarls of black briars, dozens of flaming arrows barely missing and igniting trees left and right. Hand in hand, the girls fled deeper into the Woods, looking for somewhere to hide, red hoods gaining, until they came to a break in the trees and finally glimpsed the forest path, serene in moonlight. Wheezing with relief, they ran for it and stopped short.

The path forked into two. Both trails were thin and sooty, crooking away in opposite directions. Neither looked more hopeful than the other, but from reading storybooks, the girls knew.

Only one was correct.

“Which way?” Sophie rasped.

Agatha could see just how weak and shaken her friend was. She had to get her to safety. Hearing the skimming of arrows again, Agatha swung her head between the paths, the heat of new trees burning close by.

“Aggie, which
way
?” Sophie pressed.

Agatha's eyes darted uselessly back and forth, waiting for a sign—

Sophie gasped. “Look!”

Agatha swiveled to the east path. A glowing blue butterfly flapped in darkness, high above the trail. It beat its wings faster and nosed forward, as if urging them to follow.

“Come on,” Sophie said, suddenly strong again, and surged forward.

“We're following a
butterfly
?” Agatha retorted as she chased Sophie past WANTED signs on trees ahead.

“Don't worry. It's leading us out of here!”

“How do you know?”

“Hurry! We'll lose it!”

“You don't know what I've been through—” Agatha heaved, puffing behind—

“Let's not play who's had it worse, shall we!”

The butterfly sped up as if nearing its destination and veered around a bend, wings brightening to blinding blue. Sophie grabbed Agatha by the wrist, dragged her faster around the curve—

Into a dead end of fallen trees.

The butterfly was gone.

“No!” Sophie squeaked. “But I thought—I thought—”

“It was a
special
butterfly?”

Sophie shook her head, eyes welling, as if her friend couldn't understand. Then, over Agatha's shoulder, she saw a torch-lit shadow inch across the trees, then two more . . .

The hoods had found their path.

“We had our happy ending—” Sophie backed against a trunk. “This is all my fault—”

“No . . . ,” Agatha said, looking down. “It's mine.”

Sophie's heart clamped. It was the same feeling she had alone in the church, thinking about how her friend had changed. A feeling that told her none of the last month was an accident.

“Agatha . . . why is this all happening?”

Agatha watched the shadows grow closer around the bend. Her eyes stung with tears. “Sophie . . . I—I—I—made a—mistake—”