The Last Ever After

by Soman Chainani

  “He used to love me,” Agatha said, watching her cat gnaw the head off a dead canary.

  “Agatha, look at me.”

  “Tedros, you don’t even have your sword, let alone a plan. We’re going to die.”

  “Agatha, please look at me.”

  She did, with folded arms.

  “You can’t plan your story any more than you can plan who you’re going to fall in love with. That’s the point of a story,” said Tedros. “And even if you could, what’s the fun of living through it if you know what’s going to happen? All we know is that Good always wins, right? So if Good hasn’t beaten Evil yet, our fairy tale can’t be over. As soon as we make our wish, we’ll be back where we belong, chasing our happy ending. Trust our story, Agatha. We’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

  “And what about Sophie?” Agatha asked. “What if she hasn’t forgiven us?”

  Tedros thought for a moment. “Everything Sophie did, she did to get closer to you or me. We’ve all made mistakes, that’s for sure. But Good or Evil, Boy or Girl, the three of us are in this tale together.” He leveled eyes with her. “So how can Sophie be happy until we are?”

  Agatha fell quiet, aware of the dark room hemming her in with her prince and yet keeping them apart.

  Long before she ever met her best friend, she’d secretly read storybooks from Mr. Deauville’s, buying them right after the shop opened, when no one else was inside, and paying for them with the coins her mother had given her for sweets. She drank in the lesson of those fairy-tale books more than any hot cream or fudge, that same lesson told and retold: you didn’t need a hundred true loves to find Ever After . . . you just needed one. It didn’t matter if an entire town called her a freak or a witch or a vampire. If she could just find that one person who loved her—one measly soul—then she’d have everything a princess did, minus the horrific pink dress, obnoxious blond hair, and moony-eyed face.

  From the moment she met Sophie, Sophie was that soul: the friend who made her feel normal, who made her feel needed, who so clearly cared about her, despite all her efforts to disguise it. Back then, Agatha had done everything she could to ensure they’d end up together forever, rather than let her best friend be stolen away by a boy . . . until Agatha somehow fell in love with that boy herself. And so the story had turned on its head, this time Sophie doing everything she could to keep a boy and her best friend apart. It was a wicked love triangle, with Sophie the point that had to be removed, until finally Agatha and Tedros had rid themselves of her, turning that triangle into a straight line between them—prince and princess united at last, just like in the storybooks buried under her bed. But now, as Agatha sat in darkness, feeling more and more like the graveyard girl of old, she wondered if the reason she missed her best friend was the simplest of all. What if Sophie wasn’t the force that kept her and Tedros apart? What if Sophie was the force that brought them together?

  Without Sophie, she never could have opened up her heart.

  Without Sophie, she never could have learned to love.

  Without Sophie, there never could have been a Tedros and Agatha.

  “Princess? What is it?”

  Agatha slowly looked up at her prince, new life in her eyes. “Let’s go find our best friend.”

  Tedros blinked at her, stunned. His cheeked pinked and his Adam’s apple bobbed, words swallowed by emotion. He placed his hand behind his back. “Wish to reopen our story, then?”

  Agatha smiled and hid her hand. “Wish to reopen our story.”

  Tedros closed his eyes. “One . . .”

  “Two . . . ,” said Agatha, closing hers.

  They took a joint breath and thrust out their fingers. “Three—”

  The door slammed open to a sharp heel-crack of boots. Agatha lurched to her feet.

  There was an Elderguard in the doorway, the outlines of a black cloak and slatted iron mask blending into the night.

  Tedros instantly clasped Agatha and yanked her to the kitchen wall. He grabbed a meat knife from the sink and brandished it at the guard, blocking his princess’s body with his. “Move another inch and I’ll cut your throat!” Tedros spat.

  The guard threw the door shut and hissed back at them. “Hide! Both of you!”

  Agatha squinted at the big brown eyes glinting through the guard’s mask. “Mother?”

  “Hide now!” Callis shrieked, shoring her body against the door.

  Agatha couldn’t move, trying to process what was happening, gaping at her mother in the same uniform as the town guards ordered to execute her. “I d-d-don’t under—”

  But then Agatha heard them coming . . . footsteps . . . voices . . .

  She tackled Tedros to the ground. Stunned, the prince lost his grip on the knife and flailed to reach it as Agatha yanked him by the belt buckle under the bed. Tedros lunged over her and snatched the knife—

  The door flung open and Agatha spun to see Callis seized from behind and shoved to the wall by two guards.

  “No!” Agatha gasped, leaping out, but Tedros pulled her down under the bed, fumbling his knife at the same time. He stabbed his hand for it, only to see Agatha’s hip knock it away. In horror, they both watched the blade skid across the floor and halt beneath the heel of a muddy leather boot. Slowly their eyes traced up.

  A tall guard prowled into the house, teeth bared through his mask. From his pocket, he pulled a fistful of eggs, rolling them around in his big hand like marbles.

  “First time I saw her stealing them, I thought maybe she can’t afford to pay. Second time, I thought maybe she’s gone hungry. But the third time . . .” He let the eggs drop and splatter at Callis’ feet. “I wonder who’s she stealing ’em for.”

  He spun and kicked aside the bed, revealing Tedros, unarmed and fists up. The guard’s brutal blue eyes honed in on the prince.

  “You and I can duel like men,” Tedros threatened. “But leave my princess alone.”

  The guard stared at him strangely . . . then lifted his gaze. His pupils froze, reflecting Agatha behind Tedros, prostrate on the floor.

  In a flash, he threw Tedros aside, knocking the prince to the floorboards. But the guard’s eyes stayed on Agatha.

  She trembled as his boots crackled through the bleeding eggs, step by step, until he placed his sharp, filthy shoe tip upon her neck.

  He took off his mask.

  “So much for promises,” Stefan snarled.

  The cage was meant for only one prisoner, not three, so Agatha had to stand with her mother, Reaper curled in Callis’ arms, while Tedros crouched in a daze, clutching his black eye. Back at the house, Agatha told him not to resist, but Tedros assured her Camelot’s future king could flatten six armed guards with his bare hands.

  He’d been wrong.

  Agatha held on to the rusty bars, tottering for balance, as the horse dragged the cage through the darkened cemetery, Stefan at the reins. She could see a crowd forming in front of the torchlit pyre, watching the guards march down the hill ahead of the prisoners.

  “That was your punishment for letting me escape, wasn’t it? The Elders made you a guard,” Agatha said, turning to her mother. “That’s why they never searched the house. Because you were with them, protecting the town from your own daughter.”

  Callis paled as she saw the distant pyre, two fiery torches hanging from its scaffolding. “When the people blamed you and Sophie for the attacks, the Elders named me and Stefan leaders of a new patrol, responsible for catching you two if you ever dared return. It was a test of our loyalty, of course. Either we saw our own children as traitors and vowed to make them burn or we’d be burned as traitors ourselves.” She looked at Agatha. “The difference between Stefan and me is that he took the vow seriously.”

  “How could Stefan betray his own daughter? It was the Elders who gave Sophie to the attackers. They’re the Evil ones! Why would he obey them—”

  But as the cage creaked into the moonlit square, Agatha saw the answer to her question. The widow Honor
a and her two young boys, Jacob and Adam, huddled near the back of the growing crowd, watching Stefan lead in the prisoners. Agatha knew how much the two boys meant to Sophie’s father, who seemed to love them far more than his own daughter. But it wasn’t the boys that Agatha fixed on. It was the gold band, gleaming on the ring finger of Honora’s left hand.

  “He had to obey them,” Callis said quietly. “Because the Elders made Stefan choose between his old and new family.”

  Agatha looked at her, stunned.

  “Leave it to me,” a voice groused under them.

  Tedros careened to his feet between Agatha and her mother, knocking both of them against the bars. “They’ve woken the beast,” he boiled, struggling to blink his swollen eye. “No one’s laying a hand on us.”

  The cage door swung open behind him and two guards gagged Tedros with a mucky cloth and hoisted him out by his armpits, before roughly nabbing Callis too. Before Agatha could react, Stefan leapt into the cage and took her for himself.

  “Stefan, listen to me—Sophie needs our help—” Agatha appealed as he pulled her through the crowd, who was abusing her with cries of “witch” and “traitor” along with chunks of spoiled food. “I know you have a new family, but you can’t give up on her—”

  “Give up? You think I gave up? On my own child?” he seethed, pulling her up the stairs to the pyre behind Tedros, who kicked at his guards with muffled yells. “You promised me, Agatha. You promised you’d save her. And instead you left her there to die. Now you’ll see how it feels.”

  “Stefan, we can still save her!” sputtered Agatha. “Tedros and me!”

  “I always thought one day my daughter would abandon you for a boy,” said Stefan. “Turns out I had the story all wrong.”

  He bound her to the pyre with a long rope around her belly, as two guards shoved Tedros in next to her. Agatha could feel the heat of the flaming torches above her.

  “Stefan, you have to believe me! We’re Sophie’s only hope—”

  He gagged her with a black cloth, but just as he cinched it, Agatha managed one last breath—

  “The School Master has her!”

  Stefan’s hands froze and his blue eyes met hers, big and wide. Then a hush swept over the crowd and Agatha knew her time was up.

  The Elders had come.

  4

  Death at an Execution

  “I’m afraid we only have room for two on the pyre,” said the gray-cloaked Elder with the longest beard, grinning at Agatha and Tedros as he paced the stage, top hat in hand. He leered down at Callis at the front of the massive crowd, her hands tied, standing between the two younger Elders, both in gray cloaks and tall black hats. “We’ll let mother watch before her turn,” he mused, as the two Elders dragged Callis into the mob.

  Agatha spotted Reaper’s shadow sprinting away from her mother and towards Graves Hill, a scrap of what looked like parchment between his teeth. Trapped on the pyre, she wrestled hopelessly against her binds, sweating from the heat of the torches above her. If her mother had entered the house one second later, she and Tedros would have had their magic back—they’d be far into the Woods by now, her mother no longer in danger. Stifling tears, Agatha searched for her again, but darkness rendered the crowd a sea of shadows. They’d called her a witch from the day she was born, destined to burn on a stake, and now they’d made their tales come true. In the front row, a few rosy-faced children gawked at Tedros, clinging storybooks to their chests, like talismans against the boy from inside of them.

  “But we are not savages, of course,” said the Elder, turning to the captives. “Justice is only delivered when there is a crime.”

  The crowd buzzed impatiently, eager to see the show and get to bed.

  “Let us meet our guest from the Woods,” the Elder proclaimed. His shiny eyes flicked to Tedros. “What is your name, boy?”

  A guard ripped out Tedros’ gag. “Touch her and I kill you,” the prince lashed.

  The Elder raised his brows. “Ah, I see,” he said, peering between Tedros and Agatha. “For two hundred years, those from the Woods have kidnapped our young, ripped apart our families, and attacked our homes. For two hundred years, those from the Woods have brought our children nothing but terror, pain, and suffering. And here you are, the first to ever stand before us, claiming to protect one? An improbable twist . . .” He studied the way Tedros looked at Agatha, his tone easing. “But if it’s true, perhaps mercy is in the cards after all. Only the hardest of hearts can resist young love.”

  The crowd rumbled, as if they’d cast their own hearts in stone to see vengeance for all the curses of the Woods. But as Agatha searched the Elder’s face, the old man’s smile was almost friendly now.

  “You’ll let us live?” Tedros insisted.

  Agatha’s heart hammered, praying her prince had just saved them.

  The Elder touched Tedros’ chest with a shriveled hand. Tedros winced, his wound still tender. “You’re young and handsome, with your whole life ahead of you,” the Elder cooed. “Tell us what you know about those that attacked us and I promise we won’t hurt you.”

  Agatha’s stomach sank. That tone. She’d heard it before. It was the same way he’d told Sophie she’d be sheltered from her assassins . . .

  Before he left her to die.

  Agatha pressed her fist into Tedros’ ribs. Whatever he did, he couldn’t play this game—

  “Tedros,” the prince proclaimed to the Elder. “Tedros is my name.”

  Agatha bristled, shoving him harder.

  “And how do you know our beloved Agatha, Tedros?” coaxed the Elder, leaning closer.

  “She’s my princess,” Tedros declared, gently clasping Agatha’s fist. “Soon to be Queen of Camelot and bloodline to King Arthur, so I suggest you unhand us at once.”

  The mob quieted in disbelief, children clutching their storybooks tighter. (Red-haired Radley gaped goonishly at Agatha. “Must be slim pickings in the Woods,” he murmured.)

  “A real-life prince!” The Elder stepped back. For the first time, he looked unsettled by Tedros, as if forced to acknowledge the possibility of a world bigger than his own. “And to what do we owe this honor?”

  Agatha squirmed against her binds, trying to get Tedros to look at her.

  “I’m taking her to my castle in the Woods,” Tedros testified, eyes fixed on the Elder. “We pose absolutely no threat to you.”

  “And yet we were attacked only months ago by assassins from the Woods,” the Elder said, masses clamoring behind him. “Attacks from which we are still rebuilding.”

  “Well, the attacks are over,” retorted Tedros. “Your town is safe.”

  Agatha dug her heel into his foot. Tedros shook her off.

  “Oh really? Do your princely powers come with foresight?” the Elder scoffed, the audience echoing his laughter. “How would you know anything about the fate of our town, let alone the attacks?”

  Agatha shouted into her gag to stop him—

  “Because I ordered them,” Tedros fired.

  The crowd went still. Agatha slumped against the rope.

  The Elder stared at Tedros . . . then broke into a slow grin, color growing in his cheeks. “Well. We’ve learned all we need to know about our dear guest, haven’t we?” He smiled wolfishly at the prince and walked off the stage, passing Stefan with a glare. “Do the witch first.”

  Roars detonated from the mob, flocking closer to the pyre.

  Tedros spun to Agatha and saw her face. “But he promised us!” he cried.

  The Elder glanced back as he descended the steps. “Every story has a lesson doesn’t it, young prince? Perhaps yours is that you’re too old to believe in fairy tales.”

  Agatha felt Tedros gush into a sweat as the guards regagged him. Frantic, the prince thrashed at the rope, trying to free his princess, but his flailing only made the rope cut tighter. Choking for breath, Agatha hunted wildly for her mother, but still couldn’t find her. She whirled to Stefan, knowing she was about to die—<
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  But Stefan hadn’t moved from the side of the stage, his gaze fixed on her.

  “Is there a problem, Stefan?” the Elder said, now at the front of the mass.

  Stefan kept staring at Agatha.

  “Or should we replace our prisoners with your new family?” the Elder said.

  Stefan turned sharply. Guards held Honora, Jacob, and Adam in the crowd.

  Stefan’s teeth bit the inside of his cheeks. Then his expression darkened. He moved towards Agatha, no longer able to look at her. Body close to hers, he reached up and took a flaming torch from the scaffolding. Agatha cowered from the wrath of the flame as he drew it down, blinding her with smoke. She could hear Tedros’ muffled yells, the echoes of the shouting hordes, but they were drowned out by the raging torch fire, hissing like a demon snake. Eyes watering, she caught flashes of Stefan’s heaving chest, his quivering grasp on the torch, the red splotches across his cheeks . . .

  “Please—” Agatha gasped into her gag.

  Stefan still couldn’t look at her, the torch shaking so much that embers scattered onto Agatha’s dress, burning tiny holes.

  “Stefan . . . ,” the Elder warned in a menacing voice.

  Stefan nodded, tears and sweat mixing. The crowd went dead quiet, seeing him bend towards the stake. He raised the torch to the sticks over Agatha’s head, the flames about to lick onto the wood—

  “Take me!” Callis’ anguished voice pierced the silence. “Please, Stefan! Let me die with her!”

  Stefan froze, his flame so close to Agatha it scorched the gag in her mouth. Heart stopped, Agatha watched him deliberate a moment, his face calcifying into a mask . . .

  Then he backed away and turned to the Elder.

  “It is a mother’s last request,” said Stefan, adding a snort. “Shove her in with her traitor daughter and watch the flesh melt off ’em. They deserve to writhe together, don’t they?”

  Even the most bloodthirsty spectators looked flummoxed, deferring to the Elder.

  The Elder’s pupils raked Stefan over, before his lips pursed in a flat line.