“Maybe it was part of her plan all along,” echoed Anadil. “Get Sophie and Agatha apart, then hide the Storian so they have to go in the Trial.”
“She could have just locked them up somewhere,” Hester said, shaking her head. “Why go through all this trouble to get Sophie into the boys’ castle?” Her black eyes narrowed, clouding over. “Unless . . .”
“Did you talk to Beatrix?” Agatha pressured Anadil, seeing more butterflies fly off the Dean’s dress towards them. “She has to tell us where the pen is!”
“Don’t think she’s the one who hid it,” Dot piped up. “I pretended to be studying for Tryouts with a few Evergirls and asked her the properties of snakeskin. She hadn’t the faintest clue it makes you invisible. None of the Evers did. Whoever used that cape in your room had to be a Never!”
Hester looked up at her as if suddenly interested in what she had to say, but Agatha waved Dot off. “Beatrix is lying,” Agatha insisted. “It has to be her!”
“Well, Baldy’s not telling us anything, and tonight’s your and Sophie’s last chance to escape,” Anadil snapped.
“And you’re 100% sure it’s Evelyn who was responsible for Sophie’s symptoms?” said Hester, frowning at Agatha.
“If you saw Sophie’s face when she grew hairy legs and an Adam’s apple, you’d stop questioning whether she’s Good,” Agatha retorted.
Hester scratched her demon, grumbling.
“Look, we’re arguing for nothing,” Agatha exhaled. “Sophie was in the School Master’s tower, remember? She flashed her lantern there two nights ago! She’s probably close to finding the Storian as we speak.”
“Then why didn’t she light her lantern there last night?” Hester prodded. “Why didn’t she light her lantern at all?”
Agatha ignored her as she watched the Dean open her book for the day’s lesson. She’d barely slept a wink, asking herself the very same question.
“You’re almost Trial team leader!” Hort beamed, hurrying Filip to their first class. “So remember. I help you and you help me. Deal?”
Sophie didn’t answer, legs heavy, breath dodgy, and keenly aware of a pimple on her forehead. At sunrise, she’d wandered back to the dungeons, managing only an hour of sweaty sleep before Tedros woke her up, freshly bathed in a cut-off shirt and holding a hunk of buttered bread.
“Thought Aric would have my head for showing up at breakfast, but no one said a thing. Think they’re all afraid of Filip the Barbarian after last night,” the prince said, grinning at his cellmate. “Come on, butterfly boy, eat up.”
Eyes coated with sleep, Sophie squinted at the bread’s oily coat of butter. Her cavernous stomach was rumbling as usual, demanding anything edible, but even as a boy, she had her limits. She moaned and pulled the sheets back over her shorn, fluffy hair.
“Well don’t whine later,” Tedros said, biting into the loaf himself. “Better get moving if you want a bath, Fil. Only ten minutes before class.”
Sophie groaned like a wounded ape.
“I know I was a bit of an ass when we first met, but I’m glad we’re mates now,” she heard Tedros say across the room. “And glad you won’t be bunking my challenges anymore. Need to win today so I can get in that tower tonight. If I find the Storian myself, maybe Manley will give me a spot on the Trial team.”
Beneath the covers, Sophie felt nauseous. “So you can kill Sophie.”
“So I can protect you from her.”
Sophie sat up, eyes wide.
“Along with everyone else,” the prince said, as he slipped on his uniform shirt.
Sophie saw Tedros’ bare back to her for a moment, the skin glowing healthily again, a bit more meat on him than yesterday. Suddenly she was aware of the muscles in his shoulders . . . the unfreckled, gold tan . . . his minty bath smell. . . .
“Filip!”
Hort’s nasal voice snapped her out of her daze.
“Do we have a deal?” he goaded her as they turned towards Evil Hall.
Sophie’s cheeks burned cherry red. Agatha was waiting for her, girls’ lives were depending on her, and she was daydreaming about her would-be killer?
“Deal,” Sophie said forcefully to Hort, picking at her uniform’s itchy breeches. “You need to help me get back on Storian duty tonight.”
“That’s my Filip. Boys spreading rumors you spared Tedros from punishment last night, and I knew it couldn’t be true. Wagered all of us on this Trial, including you. Least we can do is teach Prince Handsome a lesson—”
“No. This is about my ranks, not anyone else’s. Leave him alone.”
Hort stopped dead in the hall. “You did spare him last night!”
Sophie turned to Hort, her sharp-jawed, princely face ice-cold. “Don’t think it’s any of your business, frankly.”
Hort gaped at Filip as if he’d been stabbed. Then he swallowed and forced a smile. “B-b-but—but we’re still best friends though, right, Filip?”
Sophie simpered. “Of course,” she said, not looking at him as she walked ahead.
“Good man,” Hort gushed, skipping to catch up. “Just making sure you know who your real friend is.”
Sophie nodded distractedly, trying to focus on Agatha, Agatha, Agatha, even though all she could think of was a prince.
“For our last lesson before the Trial, I thought perhaps I should give you a window into my own history,” said Evelyn Sader, her voice resounding through Good Hall.
Agatha and Hester stopped whispering and looked up at the stage, surprised. The last person they expected to shed light on the Dean’s past was the Dean herself.
“The Storian never chose to write my story, an omission it will no doubt correct in time. For it is my own survival over a savage boy that brought me back to lead all of you,” Evelyn went on, lording over her audience of girls. “Now, for the first time, history will reflect the truth.”
She ran her fingers over her textbook open on the lectern, and her sultry, disembodied voice echoed over the hall:
“‘Chapter 28: Notable Female Seers.’”
A three-dimensional, ghostly vision of the old School for Good and Evil faded in over the book page, hovering in mist.
“Guess we should have kept reading,” Hester murmured to Agatha.
The Dean smiled down at her students. “Welcome to my fairy tale.”
She blew on the phantom scene, and it burst into shimmering shards, sweeping over the girls with a crackling swish. Agatha covered her eyes from the glare and again felt herself falling through air, before her feet gently hit the floor. She opened her eyes to find herself in Good Hall again, the three witches and all the other girls of her school gone. Now the air in the cathedral hall was gauzy and thick, like a hazy film over the scene; the walls were less briny and calcified; and the pews were packed with girls in pink pinafore dresses and boys in blue Everboy uniforms.
Agatha slowly looked up to see Evelyn at the wooden lectern, ten years younger, bright faced and warm. Only instead of the twitching, fluttering butterflies on her dress being blue, now they were scarlet red.
“Once upon a time, I taught here at the School for Good, while my brother, August, taught at the School for Evil,” her present voice narrated over the scene.
Agatha furrowed, incredulous. Professor Sader had claimed exactly the opposite in his book—that Evelyn had taught in Evil, and only because he’d asked the School Master to let her.
“But my brother had long been envious of my powers,” the Dean’s voice decreed, “and plotted to take my school for himself.”
Agatha frowned deeper. This is lies, she thought. And yet, as she looked at handsome, attentive princes-to-be and smiling, fair maidens absorbed in the lesson, the moment felt so . . . true.
“Soon enough, my brother spawned his attack—”
The hall windows shattered and a hazel-green fog swept in, blasting students out of the pews. Terrified Evers fled for the doors as the fog lassoed Evelyn and evicted her through the window, her red butterflie
s flurrying after her—
“And I vowed to return upon his death,” Evelyn declared, “promising that one day girls would be safe from men’s lies and brutality—”
Agatha’s jaw tightened as screaming Good students crashed out of the hall, the scene feeling more and more visceral. She thought of the way Dovey and Lesso had each branded August Sader as delusional and dangerous during her first year at school. . . . Had he made those changes in the tortoise’s textbook to cover his own history? Had he been the one lying all along?
As green plumes filled the conjured hall, phantom Evers fleeing past her, Agatha closed her eyes, head hammering, blinded to what was real and what wasn’t anymore—
Until something very real prickled the tip of her nose.
Agatha opened her eyes to see a single white swan feather floating past her through the smoke and stampeding Evers, towards the far muraled wall of Good Hall.
Agatha followed the white feather towards the mosaic painting of the silver-masked School Master, the Storian hovering over his outstretched hand. The swan feather drifted into the wall and pinned against the painted Storian, like a quill pen waiting to be used. Agatha reached up instinctively, her fingers grazing the feather. . . . The tile beneath the feather receded sharply into the wall and vanished. All at once the tiles in the column beneath vanished too, revealing a vacant strip in the wall, just large enough for her to slip through. Heart thumping, she squeezed her way into the hole . . .
. . . only to find a dimly lit chamber with a smaller white marble door waiting for her. Agatha opened the door to see a dimmer passage and a smaller white door, then more dimmer passages and smaller doors, dimmer, smaller, smaller, dimmer . . . until at last she crawled on her knees through a tiny porthole into pitch blackness.
Agatha staggered up in cold, infinite dark, clasping her goose-pimpling arms. She focused on her rising fear and felt her fingertip heat up, flickering to light.
“Where am I?” she gasped.
“In the part of her memory Evelyn wants no one to see,” replied a voice she knew.
Slowly Agatha held up her fingerglow like a spotlight.
Professor August Sader smiled back at her.
With her last chance to find the Storian at stake, Sophie knew she’d have to win most of the day’s five challenges.
She felt palpable relief after she won the first two, with Hort magically brittling her opponent’s blade in Weapons’ axe-chopping contest, then distracting people away from Sophie’s hiding spot in Survival’s massive game of hide-and-seek. But even with Hort’s help, she’d barely beaten Tedros, who back at full strength managed the second rank in both.
As Sophie entered Professor Manley’s charred classroom, focused on the next challenge, she felt the prince sidle up to her.
“Cheating again, I see?”
“Perhaps if I find the Storian, it’ll stop your stupid Trial,” Sophie shot back.
“You sure did a good job of finding the Storian last night,” Tedros puffed.
“Kept you alive, didn’t I?” Sophie retorted—
“Tedros, Filip, stop your flirting,” Manley growled, entering behind them.
All the boys looked at Tedros and Filip, who stiffened awkwardly and separated.
Flustered, Sophie placed behind Tedros in the next two challenges, distracted by thoughts as to whether the prince was, in fact, flirting with her—
Of course he wasn’t flirting with me, she harangued herself. I’m a boy, you idiot. A boy!
“He’s taking your top ranks, Filip,” Hort grouched as they headed to last class. “Whoever wins last Tryout wins the day. You might lose your team leader spot, Filip! We have to sabotage him—”
“I said no,” Sophie growled so sharply Hort jumped.
With the Blue Forest off-limits until the Trial the next night, the 80 boys in Forest Fitness converged inside Evil Hall and found Albemarle perched atop a rotting chandelier.
“A simple race around the castle,” the woodpecker directed, peering down at them over his spectacles.
Sophie watched a fluorescent yellow line magically shoot across the stone floor, between her legs, out the hall, and down the stairs.
“First one to follow the yellow course all the way back to this hall wins first rank.” Albemarle rustled a small ledger from under his wing and squinted hard at it. “Based on the tally, Filip has a slim lead on Aric and Chaddick for the team leader spot and the right to choose the tenth member of the Trial team. But it’s still anyone’s race.”
Sophie eyed Aric, Chaddick, and the fleet of snarling boys, all crouched to a runner’s lunge.
“Ready . . . ,” Albemarle chirped. “Set . . .”
Sophie felt Hort grip’s on her bicep and his wet breath in her ear. “Run, Filip. Run for your life—”
“Go!”
Seventy-nine boys thundered like bulls towards the door—
Filip, however, remained in place, buffing his ragged nails until he heard the deafening crash. Nonchalant, he crawled over the mass of moaning bodies at the door, wondering how boys had ever survived this long in nature if they didn’t even have the common sense to take turns going down stairs. By the time the first boys recovered, Filip had already returned to the finish line, barely breaking a sweat.
“Seems Filip really wants Storian duty, doesn’t he?” smirked Castor, tramping in behind the last groaning boy.
Sophie sighed with relief. Somehow she’d find that pen tonight. She’d unearth each and every brick if she had to—
“And yet Filip didn’t show up for his duties last night,” the dog sneered rabidly. “If you think something else matters more than finding the pen that keeps our world alive, Filip, by all means, hop to it.”
Sophie straightened. “No—I just—”
“Vex, you were closest to the door. You’ll take Storian duty instead,” Castor snapped.
“No, no, no!” Sophie cried, aghast. “I’ll do it!”
“See Filip will do it,” Vex piped, clearly unenthusiastic about a sleepless night of searching –
“Not if Filip’s Trial team leader, he won’t,” Castor grouched, peering at Albemarle’s ledger. “Even more reason Filip needs his rest tonight, if we don’t want this lot to be slaves.” He glowered menacingly at his new, elf-faced team leader. “Try to leave your bed tonight, and I’ll chain you to it.”
Sophie stifled a scream, heart imploding. The Storian! She’d just lost her chance at the Storian!
She spun away from the dog, hyperventilating. How can we go home?
Adrenaline blasted through her veins. She had to call Agatha. Light a red lantern in her window and Agatha would know to get here now. Sophie wheezed for breath, sweat pouring down her ribs. Don’t panic! Agatha would find a way. Agatha always saved her. They’d flee this castle together and hide in the Woods until it was safe to return—safe to find the Storian and get home—
“One more thing, Filip,” said Castor. “As official Trial team leader, you earned the right to choose a friend to join you in fighting Sophie’s team…”
Sophie couldn’t hear the dog anymore—just her pummeling heart, pleading for Agatha—
“All those boys who think they’ve been a good enough friend to Filip to deserve a spot in the Trial, step forward now,” growled Castor.
Everboys, Neverboys, and foreign princes burbled and buzzed to each other, but only one boy stepped out from the mass.
Sophie ricocheted to attention, seeing Hort’s stupid grin.
Of course. This was the deal he’d wanted.
Sophie inhaled, trying to slow her heartbeat. Let the cretin in, for all she cared. She’d never go into that Trial. One red lantern and Agatha would be here to get them home. She started to nod at Hort, desperate to get out of this hall and light the alarm—
Until another boy stepped forward.
“I’d like to be considered too,” said Tedros.
“Professor Sader?” Agatha rasped, finger glowing brighter as she steppe
d towards him in the pitch-black void.
Wearing his usual shamrock suit, her silver-maned, hazel-eyed history teacher gazed back at her as if he was still alive. “We only have a few minutes, Agatha, and I have much to show you.”
“But how—how are you here—” Agatha breathed—
“Evelyn made the mistake of letting you into her tampered memories,” said Professor Sader, seemingly floating in the darkness. “As soon as you doubted their truth, you opened the door to what lay behind them.”
“So what I saw in the tortoise’s book was right?”
“No history is the complete truth, Agatha. And after your time at this school, you should know far better than to trust what you find in any book. Even mine.”
“But why did you make the School Master bring your sister to teach here ten years ago? And why did he banish her—”
“We don’t have time for questions, Agatha,” her teacher said sternly. “What you are about to see are Evelyn’s own memories, untampered, undiluted, and buried so deep that she will surely know when they are accessed. But we must take that risk. For this is your only way to understand why she is in your fairy tale. And the only way to understand the truth about the enemy you face.”
Agatha couldn’t get words out; tears burning her eyes. She didn’t want to see anything. She just wanted to stay here in darkness with him, where she felt so safe—
“I must leave you now, Agatha,” said her teacher gently. “But know I am watching you, every step of your story. And there is a long way left before you find its end.”
“No, please—” Agatha choked. “Don’t leave!”
Professor Sader flashed to light in a silent blast, and Agatha shielded her face . . . before feeling herself tumbling through blinding white space until her feet touched ground.
Agatha opened her eyes to find herself facing a shelf crammed with books, the air clearer than in Evelyn’s corrupted stories, the hues richer and more vibrant, as if the haze had finally been lifted from the truth. She peered at the colorful spines on the shelf—Hansel and Gretel, The Princess and the Pea, The Juniper Tree—and knew instantly where she was.
Agatha whirled to see the School Master hunched over the Storian as it magically painted the last page in a storybook atop the white stone table. Agatha watched the School Master frown deeper and deeper as the enchanted pen finished its ending, his billowing blue robes draped over his body, his gleaming silver mask covering all of his face except his shiny blue eyes, full lips, and thick, ghostly white hair. The sight of him so present, so alive, made the hair stand up on the back of Agatha’s neck, but she knew he couldn’t see her.