The prince’s shoulders tensed.
“A boy as vulnerable as he is strong,” Agatha said, watching him.
“And yet you think I’m weak enough to hurt you,” he said quietly. “You, the only person who ever saw who I truly am.”
Tedros turned with a piercing, pleading stare.
“Feels like there’s a piece still missing, don’t you think?”
The wall of gold behind him cracked open, swallowing him with light before Agatha could reach for him. The grass suddenly colored navy blue around her, the trees turned periwinkle, the lake scorched to fire, waves rising out of flame—
Agatha shot her eyes open in the dark, head hammering. Silver stars blinked back at her in a dead clear sky. She jolted up, swaddled in puppy-patterned blankets, to the warmth of a small crackling fire beside her, two girls’ shadowy faces gaping at her in the barren, deserted Clearing.
“You’re awake,” Kiko peeped. “She’s awake!”
Reena choked on a chocolate lollipop. “I-I-I’ll go get the Dean,” she stammered, big backside wobbling into the dark.
Agatha felt words garbling and shriveling away in her dry mouth. Her limbs were ice-cold, her temples throbbing as her mind sloshed around panicked images—Tedros’ beseeching, beautiful face by a lake. . . Sophie’s petrified face as a boy . . . Evelyn’s face charging towards her . . .
“The School Master—have to tell Dovey—” Agatha rasped frantically, her last moments awake blurring back. “She’s bringing him to life—”
“Oh, dear. Dean told us you’d be a bit batty when you woke,” Kiko fussed, palm to Agatha’s forehead. “Mmm, terrible fever, like you’ve baked near a fire—”
“There’s a fire right there,” Agatha croaked—
“Dean said you had a reaction to the phantom smoke,” Kiko motormouthed obliviously. “’Cause you’re a Reader, sensitive immunity and all that. Hester, Anadil, and Dot kept raving the Dean did something to you, but everyone thinks they inhaled too much smoke too. Last I saw, Hester was waving some red lantern out a window like a loon. Only thing worse than a tattooed witch is a deranged tattooed witch. Still, to be out cold for a whole day is pathetic, Agatha, immunity or not. You missed everything: the team announcement, the big feast, the play—though it ended early because Mona’s headdress tried to eat her. I say Hester cursed it, if you ask m—”
Agatha seized her collar—“Listen, you nutbrained canary!” she barked, still ragged and slow. “The Dean’s dangerous! I have to tell Dovey and Lesso before the Trial—”
“Agatha.” Kiko’s voice was hard and firm. “The Trial started two hours ago.”
“What?” Agatha let go of her in shock. “But that’s—that’s—” Dread clamped her voice.
Slowly she looked down and pulled away the puppied blankets, revealing her body clad in a sapphire blue Trial tunic, made of thin armored mesh and a matching hooded wool cloak over it lined with silver brocade. Tucked into the cloak’s front pocket, crested with a blue butterfly, was a white silk handkerchief, glinting at the seams with enchantment.
Agatha spun to the Blue Forest gates towering over her, magically aglow with flames, sealing those inside, while a fuzzy, enchanted gray haze veiled the trees through the gates, preventing a view into the Forest. Agatha craned up to the giant wooden board over the west gate, glowing fireflies spelling out each word:
TRIAL BY TALE: GIRLS
SOPHIE
HESTER
DOT
BEATRIX
ANADIL
MONA
ARACHNE
MILLICENT
YARA
“That’s who’s in the Forest now,” said Kiko. “They’re sending pairs in every ten minutes: one girl, one boy. Nine pairs in, with one left to go. No one’s dropped their flags, so no surrenders yet—”
But Agatha was still gaping at the board. “Sophie? Sophie’s . . . inside?”
“Went in with the first pair, the Dean said. Thing is, no one saw her go in. But the fireflies lit her name up, which means she has to be in the Forest! Thank God, ’cause we can’t win without you two. Dean never doubted you’d wake up—”
“But how can Sophie be in the Trial!” Agatha sputtered, staggering back towards the gates. “When did she come back? Why didn’t she help me? I need to see Dovey or Lesso or—”
A cheer exploded above her.
“AG-A-THA! AG-A-THA! AG-A-THA!”
Agatha gawked up at the blue castle balconies, teeming with students who now had a direct view of her through the Clearing’s bare trees. They hollered her name as they rang noisemakers and rained confetti, waving colorful signs: GO GIRLS! BOYS = SLAVES! S&A SAVE THE DAY!
Agatha squinted at the highest Charity balcony, where all the teachers were cramped together, faces barely visible. But she could see Professor Dovey and Lady Lesso’s stiff silhouettes, their terrified gapes—and Pollux guarding the door behind them, head on a massive bear’s body.
“See, Bilious, I told you she’d be ready,” a voice chimed—
Agatha whirled to the Dean sweeping around the west gate corner with pockmarked, pear-headed Professor Manley, accompanied by two floating, green-haired nymphs. Professor Manley growled at Kiko, who fled like a lamb, before snarling even more menacingly at the sight of Agatha.
“Lucky you,” he sneered. “Just in time.”
“Lucky indeed,” the Dean said, with a smirk that told Agatha it wasn’t luck at all.
Manley tramped towards the east gate. “Evelyn, any more funny business and it’ll be open season on all of you,” he spat back. “Sending in our last boy in two minutes whether the Reader’s ready or not.”
As soon as he vanished, Agatha spun to the Dean, scarlet red. “How’d you get Sophie into the Trial, you witch! Did you trap her when she came back for me? Did you stun her too?”
The Dean slunk towards her, lips curling into a grin. “You see, Agatha, in your version of the story, I’m the villain. In your version, I caused Sophie’s symptoms . . . I put Sophie in the Trial . . . I can bring back a ghost . . .” she cooed. “But haven’t you learned by now?” She took Agatha’s cheeks into her sharp, gilded nails. “Your version of the story is usually wrong.”
Agatha bared teeth in her face. “Really? Pray tell, if it’s not you doing all these things, who is?”
The Dean smiled darkly. “What’s that my brother used to say? Sometimes the answer is too close to see. Sometimes the answer”—she pressed her cold lips to Agatha’s ear—“is right under your nose.”
“You’re nothing but a pack of lies,” Agatha seethed, shoving her away, but the Dean just grinned wider, as if savoring a secret.
“Take her to the gates,” she declared.
A nymph grabbed each of Agatha’s arms, and together they pulled her off the ground, floating her towards the Forest’s west gate—
“No! Sophie’s coming out alive, you hear me!” Agatha yelled back. “We’re coming out alive!”
But the Dean’s Cheshire cat smile receded as the nymphs flew Agatha around the corner, past the gate’s flaming, crisscrossed bars, the girls’ cheers amplifying above.
The nymphs dragged her towards a swarm of butterflies, hovering purposefully over a portion of the west gate beneath the girls’ scoreboard. Writhing uselessly in the nymphs’ grip, Agatha peered up at the boys’ red castle, towering over the Forest from the east. She could see boys cramming the balconies in their red-and-black leather uniforms, waving signs and bellowing faraway chants that faded into the girls’. The boys’ scoreboard angled towards their school over the east gate, lit up with fireflies. That’s where the boys must be going in, she thought—
Suddenly the moment hit her dead-on. This was it. It was really happening.
She was going into the Trial against her own prince. Outlast him and all the other bloodthirsty boys and princes, and she and Sophie might escape alive. Lose, and she and her best friend would be executed together.
There is no missing piece, she gritted, cursing he
r weak, prince-filled dreams.
It was her and Sophie against Tedros in a Trial to the death.
But when did Sophie come back? Had she found the Storian? Agatha thought frantically, looking at her friend’s name on the scoreboard. Did she fight going into the Trial?
And yet… none of the girls had seen Sophie go in, Kiko said. Agatha frowned, confused. Had the Dean not forced her friend in, after all?
“What happened to Sophie?” she appealed to the nymphs as they flew her closer to the butterflies under the girl’s scoreboard. “Did you see her—”
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, VEX’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
..................................................................
23
Death in the Forest
Every 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.
VEX, RAVAN, MONA, and ARACHNE’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.
The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes Page 29