Could it?
She thought of her mother, who too had beauty, wit, and charm . . . who too had a friend she had long trusted . . . only to be betrayed by her and die broken and alone.
Sophie shook off the thought. Agatha had given up a prince for her. Almost given her life for her. Agatha had found them a happy ending against all odds.
In the cold, dark church, Sophie’s heart skittered out of sync.
So why would she ruin our fairy tale?
Behind her, the church doors creaked open. Sophie turned with relief and saw the shadows waiting in their gray cloaks, black hats in hand.
Only the Eldest was holding something else.
Something sharper.
The problem with living in a graveyard is the dead have no need for light. Besides the flittering torches over the gates, the cemetery was pitch-black at midnight, and anything beyond just an inky shadow. Peering through her window’s broken shutters, Agatha caught the sheen of white tents down the hill, pitched to house those left homeless by the attacks. Somewhere out there, the Elders were about to move Sophie to safety. All she could do was wait.
“I should have hidden near the church,” she said, and licked a fresh scratch from Reaper, who still acted like she was a stranger.
“You can’t disobey the Elders,” said her mother, sitting stiffly on her bed, eyes on a mantle clock with hands made of bones. “They’ve been civil since you stopped the kidnappings. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Oh please,” Agatha scoffed. “What could three old men possibly do to me?”
“What all men do in times of fear.” Callis’ eyes stayed on the clock. “Blame the witch.”
“Mmhmm. Burn us at the stake too,” Agatha snorted, flopping into her bed.
Tension thickened the silence. She sat up and saw her mother’s strained face, still staring ahead.
“You’re not serious, Mother.”
Sweat beaded on Callis’ lip. “They needed a scapegoat when the kidnappings wouldn’t stop.”
“They burnt women?” Agatha said in shock.
“Unless we married. That’s what the storybooks taught them to do.”
“But you never married—” Agatha sputtered. “How did you survive—”
“Because I had someone stand up for me,” her mother said, watching the bones strike eight. “And he paid the price.”
“My father?” Agatha said. “You said he was a rotten two-timer who died in a mill accident.”
Callis didn’t answer, gazing ahead.
A chill prickled up Agatha’s spine. She looked at her mother. “What did you mean when you said Stefan suffered worst of all? When the Elders arranged his marriage?”
Callis’ eyes stayed on the clock. “The problem with Stefan is he trusts those he shouldn’t. He always believes people are Good.” The long bone ticked past eight. Her shoulders slumped with relief. “But no one is as Good as they seem, dear,” her mother said softly, turning to her daughter. “Surely you know that.”
For the first time, Agatha saw her mother’s eyes. There were tears in them.
“No—” Agatha gasped, a red rash searing her neck—
“They’ll say it was her choice,” Callis rasped.
“You knew—” Agatha choked, lurching for the door. “You knew they weren’t moving her—”
Her mother intercepted her. “They knew you’d bring her back! They promised to spare you if I kept you here until—”
Agatha shoved her into the wall—her mother lunged for her and missed. “They’ll kill you!” Callis screamed out the window, but darkness had swallowed her daughter up.
Without a torch, Agatha stumbled and tripped down the hill, rolling through cold, wet grass until she barreled into a tent at the bottom. Mumbling frantic apology to the family who thought her a cannonball, she dashed for the church between homeless dozens stewing beetles and lizards over fires, wrapping their children in mangy blankets, bracing for the next attack that would never come. Tomorrow the Elders would mourn Sophie’s valiant “sacrifice,” her statue would be rebuilt, the villagers would go on to a new Christmas, relieved of another curse. . . .
With a cry, Agatha threw the oak doors open.
The church was empty. Long, deep scratches ripped down the aisle.
Sophie had dragged her glass slippers all the way.
Agatha sank to her knees in mud.
Stefan.
She had promised him. She had promised to keep his daughter safe.
Agatha hunched over, face in her hands. This was her fault. This would always be her fault. She had everything she wanted. She had a friend, she had love, she had Sophie. And she had traded her for a wish. She was Evil. Worse than Evil. She was the one who deserved to die.
“Please—I’ll bring her home—” she heaved. “Please—I promise—I’ll do anything—”
But there was nothing to do. Sophie was gone. Delivered to invisible killers as a ransom for peace.
“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean it . . .” Agatha wept, spit dripping. How could she tell a father his daughter was dead? How could either of them live with her broken promise? Her sobs slowly receded, curdling to terror. She didn’t move for a long time.
At last Agatha slumped up in a nauseous daze and staggered east towards Stefan’s house. Every step away from the church made her feel sicker. Limping down the dirt lane, she vaguely felt her knees sticky and wet. Without thinking, she wiped a gob off a knee with her finger and smelled it.
Honeycream.
Agatha froze, heart pounding. There was more cream on the ground ahead, spurted in a desperate trail towards the lake. Adrenaline blasted through her blood.
Nibbling his toenails in his tent, Radley heard crackles behind him and turned just in time to see a shadow swipe his dagger and torch.
“Assassin!” he squeaked—
Agatha swung her head back to see men explode out of tents and chase her as she tracked the honeycream like breadcrumbs towards the lake. She ran faster, following the trail, but soon the globs turned smaller and smaller and then sprayed to specks in every direction. As Agatha hesitated, searching for another sign to guide her, the men reached the lake, racing east around the shore towards her. But there were three figures across the lake, hunting her from the west. In their torchlight, she saw the shadows of three long cloaks and beards—
Elders.
They’d kill her.
Agatha spun, waving her torch in front of her, as both sides converged. Sophie, where are you—
“Kill him!” she heard a man’s voice cry from the mob.
Agatha swiveled in shock. She knew his voice.
“Kill the assassin!” the man screamed again as his mob ran towards her.
Panicked, Agatha stuttered forward, swinging the torch at the trees. Something heavy whizzed past her ear, another past her ribs—
A sparkle flared ahead and she froze her flame on it.
The empty honeycream pouch lay at the forest edge, snakeskin scales glinting.
A hard, cold blow smashed her back. Agatha buckled to her knees and saw a jagged rock on the ground beside her. She turned to see more men aiming stones at her head, less than fifty feet away from the east. Rushing in from the west, the Elders held up their torches, about to glimpse her face—
Agatha hurled her torch in the lake, plunging her into pitch darkness.
With confused cries, the men whisked torches wildly to find the assassin. They saw a shadow sprint past them for the trees. Like lions to a kill, they charged in a grunting, vengeful mob, chasing faster, faster, one breaking from the pack, and just as the man who screamed for blood caught the assassin by the neck, the shadow whirled to face him—
Stefan gasped in shock, long enough for Agatha to press her lips to his ear.
“I promise.”
Then she was gone into the labyrinth, like a white rose into a grave.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
4
Red Hoods Ride
Agatha heard the men’s shouts recede with the light of their torches. Kneeling against a wet, crumbly tree trunk in darkness, she folded her shivering arms into her black dress.
A few distant hoots and skitters muffled to silence. Agatha didn’t move, her spine throbbing where the rock hit her. All this time she had focused on rescuing her best friend and going back. Back to what? Murderous Elders? More assassin attacks? A village that wanted Sophie gone?
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 mist
aken 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.
TAKE ME
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—”
The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes Page 4
