“It’s like Everboys never existed!” whispered Agatha.
“Maybe the School Master killed them all!” whispered Sophie.
She suddenly heard soft tinkling and twirled to see three glowing blue butterflies peeking from behind a wall. They caught her looking and with a high-pitched meep! ducked and disappeared.
“What is it?” Agatha said, glancing back—
“Hurry!” Professor Dovey scolded, and the two girls scampered to follow, stooping past the Laundry, where two seven-foot, floating nymphs scrubbed sudsy blue bodices, through the Supper Hall, where enchanted pots stewed saffron rice and lentil soup, and past the Valor Common Room to the rear stairwell. Exhausted and aching from their torments in the Woods, Sophie and Agatha tried to keep up, but Professor Dovey was sprier than she looked.
“Where are we going?” Agatha panted.
“To the only other person who can keep you alive,” her fairy godmother shot back, bustling up the stairs.
Sophie and Agatha instantly ran faster, up five long flights to the lone white door on the sixth floor—
“Professor Sader’s office?” Agatha puffed. “But he’s dead—”
Professor Dovey ran her fingers over the raised blue dots on the former History teacher’s door. It swung open without a sound, and Sophie and Agatha scrambled in behind her.
A thin woman stood at the window, long black braid dangling over the back of her pointy-shouldered purple gown. “Did anyone see you?”
“No,” said Professor Dovey.
Lady Lesso spun to Sophie and Agatha, violet eyes flashing.
“Then it’s time they learned what they’ve done.”
“We did this?” Agatha blurted.
“But we weren’t even here!” said Sophie, turning between the Dean of Evil at the window and the Dean of Good at Professor Sader’s old desk, overflowing with open books.
Lady Lesso glowered at their dirt-smudged faces. “In this world, actions have consequences. Endings have consequences.”
“But our fairy tale ended happily!” Sophie said.
Professor Dovey let out a groan.
“Why don’t you tell us how it ended?” Lady Lesso sneered, blue veins throbbing.
“We killed the School Master and solved his riddle!” Sophie said.
“That’s how Sophie and I went home!” said Agatha.
“Clarissa, show them how it really ends,” Lady Lesso growled.
Professor Dovey flung a book across the desk. It was heavy and thick, bound with brown sheepskin and spattered with mud. Agatha opened to the first soggy page. Black calligraphy, slightly smeared, spilled across fresh parchment.
The Tale of Sophie & Agatha
Sophie turned the page to a richly colored painting of her and Agatha, standing before the School Master.
Once upon a time, the script below read, there were two girls.
Agatha remembered the line. The Storian had written it to start their fairy tale when they broke into the School Master’s tower. Flipping the book’s pages, Agatha saw her and Sophie’s story unfold in a brilliant sweep of paintings: Sophie trying to win Tedros’ kiss . . . Agatha saving Tedros’ life in a brutal attack . . . Agatha and Tedros falling in love . . . Sophie transforming into a vengeful witch . . . the School Master stabbing Sophie . . . Agatha reviving her with love’s kiss . . . and then the very last page . . . a dazzling vision of Tedros desperately reaching for Agatha as she and Sophie disappeared, three words beneath to close their story. . . .
They were gone.
Agatha felt tears rise, soaking in all the pain and love she and Sophie had shared to get home.
“It’s the perfect fairy tale,” Sophie said, meeting Agatha’s eyes with a choked-up smile.
They turned to the teachers, who looked deathly grim. “It’s not over,” said Lady Lesso.
The girls peered down at the book, confused. Their grimy hands lifted the last page, and they saw there was something on the other side.
A painting of Tedros, back turned, walking into dark fog, all alone.
And Sophie and Agatha lived happy ever after, for girls don’t need princes for love to call. . . .
No, they don’t need princes in their fairy tales at all.
“This one’s from Maidenvale. But you can find it anywhere, really. They’re even telling it in Netherwood.”
Sophie and Agatha raised their heads to Professor Dovey, frowning over the messy desk.
“It’s the only story anyone wants to hear.”
Now the girls saw that all the open books weren’t there by accident. Each book on the desk was spread to its last page. Some were in oil paints, some in watercolor, some in charcoal and ink; some were in a language the girls knew, others in scripts they didn’t. But all ended their version of The Tale of Sophie and Agatha the same way: Tedros alone and unneeded, slumping into darkness.
“Goodness, all this gloom because we’re popular?” Sophie said. “You can’t be surprised. Snow White and Cinderella are sweet and all. But who wants them when they can have me?”
She turned to Agatha for support, but her friend was staring out the window. “Aggie?”
Agatha didn’t answer. Slowly she approached the window, and Lady Lesso stepped aside without a word. At Sader’s desk, Professor Dovey held her breath.
From the steep window, Agatha looked down at the Blue Forest, the enchanted training ground for Good and Evil, sprawled in an array of hues behind the school. It was as it always was, quiet and thriving despite the autumn chill, neatly fenced in by spiked golden gates.
The sounds were coming from beyond the gates.
At first she thought they were dead leaves, swathing the Endless Forest in rusted brown and orange beneath stripped, crooked trees. Then she looked closer and saw they were men.
Thousands of them were crammed against the Blue Forest gates in a filthy homeless camp, hunched around fires like gaunt, miserable peasants. She couldn’t see faces, but she glimpsed scraggly beards and blackened cheeks, mottled breeches and bony legs, ripped coats and sashes with gleaming . . .
Crests.
These weren’t peasants. They were—
“Princes,” Sophie gasped, looking out beside her.
“It’s her!” a voice screamed from the crowd. Heads swung to the tower window.
“It’s the witch!”
All at once, a savage mob rushed the Forest gates—