AGATHA
Fatima Finds a Friend
Two kings, ordered to kill her.
That’s what the pearl had unleashed.
A victory she thought she’d claimed for her prince.
Instead, a death sentence. For her.
But before the pearl had spoken to the boys, it had spoken to Agatha first.
She’d hurled into the night without thinking, streaking past friends and foe hunting an answer and swallowing it herself. The cold glass caught on her tongue, sliding down her throat with ease. Instantly, it dissolved, spewing harsh, stinging vapors that surged to the roof of her mouth, through her nostrils, and behind the eyes.
Looking inwards, she watched it take shape, this silvery mist, congealing into a ghost . . .
The Snake, in his green mask and suit of scims.
Only then he wasn’t the Snake anymore. His muscles swelled, his mask shedding, Agatha faced with the Green Knight instead.
Then he became the Snake again.
Back and forth, the phantoms went, Snake, Knight, Snake, Knight, faster, faster, until they morphed into a third ghost—
Evelyn Sader.
Smiling at Agatha.
As if she, Evelyn, was the link between Snake and Knight.
A hidden secret for the winner to find.
But the mist was changing again . . . now the ghost of Arthur, the Lion of Camelot, her true love’s father, glowering at Agatha—she, the wrong winner; she, a mistake—the once-king rearing high inside her like a dragon . . .
Then she breathed him out like fire.
WHEN AGATHA WOKE up, she was in her old room at school.
It hadn’t changed a bit, Purity 51, as if she’d fallen back in time: jeweled mirrors on pink walls . . . murals flaunting princesses kissing princes . . . a fresco of clouds across the ceiling with cupids shooting love arrows. Over the bed was a white silk canopy shaped like a royal carriage, and at the end of the mattress a glass tray with milk-soaked oats, two hard-boiled eggs, and a chopped banana dusted with sugar. A card propped up against the tray had Sophie’s handwriting:
Clearing
Agatha glanced across the room, the middle bed unmade, topped with a bowl of uneaten cucumber salad and a basket of beauty creams and potions. Agatha smelled the cloud of lavender left behind. There was a book open on the bed table: Black Magic Healing, Level 2, spread to a page about repairing broken limbs—
She threw aside the sheets, revealing her right leg, shattered badly only a few hours ago.
No longer.
She stood, gently putting weight on it.
Aside from a dull ache within the bone, the leg seemed healed.
Last she remembered, she was nestled into Sophie aboard a stymph, her best friend whispering, “It’s okay, Aggie; it’s going to be okay,” as Agatha lay shell-shocked, unable to speak. In her haze, she must have fainted or fallen asleep. She didn’t remember getting to school or making it to this room. She certainly didn’t recall her leg being subject to witchcraft.
Agatha mustered a deep breath. She was awake. She could walk. It was time to face what was coming. But she couldn’t. Instead, she ate the food Sophie left her, taking the time to watch the violet sunrise and lick her fingers of every last grain of sugar. After noticing a spare Evergirl uniform in the closet, Agatha ambled to the toilet down the hall, disposing of her torn, filthy gown and stepping into the bath. Scalding water hit her skin, fogging her in with pleasure and silence. She pretended that she could hide away here, closed off from the world, like she once did in a graveyard long ago . . .
But then the dread came, the panic and regret, all the feelings she was trying to keep down.
This whole time they’d been fighting for the Storian.
Fighting for the Pen and the fate of its tales.
Tedros’ tale, above all.
The story of a boy trying to prove himself king.
And here she’d gone and hijacked it.
Swallowed it whole, like a whale inhaling the sea.
She wished she could say it was an accident.
But it wasn’t.
She saw a way out and took it . . . and lost sight of whose test it was.
And now the price.
For Tedros to become king, she’d have to die.
Not just die. He’d have to kill her.
Chills stung her skin, as if the bathwater had turned cold.
For her true love to defeat Japeth and keep his life—for all her friends to keep their lives—she’d have to give hers up.
The same sacrifice her mother made to save her.
Palms sweaty, nausea rising, she armored herself in the sleek pink uniform, the putrid color offset by the illusion that she was just an ordinary first year again, about to go to class. But there were no other students as she made her way through the halls. No teachers, fairies, wolves. Only a lone nymph, sweeping up candy dust that had shed off the walls of Hansel’s Haven, delicate piles of jellybean and gumdrop shavings that Agatha had just tramped through . . .
Once upon a time, she’d been the villain of a fairy tale. The sure pick for the School for Evil, while Sophie was destined for Good. But then came the Great Mistake. Two friends switched into the wrong schools. Only it wasn’t a mistake, the Pen said then. Agatha was the princess. Sophie the witch.
But now Agatha was the Evil one.
The witch who ruined a prince’s fairy tale.
And the strange thing was: it felt expected. As if she never fully believed herself a princess. Not the way Professor Dovey had, who’d insisted she was 100% Good. Not the way everyone else did, either, always trusting her to do the right thing. Deep down, Agatha never felt as Good as people thought her to be. And now, the truth would be clear for everyone to see. The Great Mistake was real—she belonged in Evil after all.
It was only when Agatha was halfway through one of the glass breezeways, still thinking of her old Dean, that she had a thought. That vision in the pearl . . . the riddle Arthur had hidden inside . . . What if she figured it out? The link between the Snake and the Green Knight . . . between two Japeths and Evelyn Sader . . . Then maybe she could expose who the Snake was! Maybe she could fix all this!
Her shoulders slumped, hope fading as quickly as it came.
Who Japeth was didn’t matter.
Not when she’d bound her prince to an impossible test.
Kill his princess or hand his throne to a Snake.
That was the trap she’d made for him.
He would protect her, of course.
He would give up Camelot for love.
But the second test wasn’t Tedros’ alone.
That’s why Japeth had smiled so wickedly as the prince flew away.
Because he knew Tedros would never finish the job.
The Snake would, though.
He’d hunt Agatha until it was done, putting him a single test from Excalibur killing Tedros.
Two birds with one swallow.
Agatha had put her and her prince in a death knot.
She was the true Witch of Woods Beyond now.
Even Professor Dovey would have seen that.
Through the glass passage, she gazed out at the School for Good and Evil, connected by Halfway Bridge, the sky over the castles crystal blue—
Agatha’s heart jammed.
A new message from Lionsmane glowed to the west.
Tedros uses his princess to
cheat the first test.
Now he’ll pay the price.
His Agatha is the second test.
Help me, my Woods.
Wherever she runs . . .
Bring her to me. Alive.