“You mean, aboard a smelly camel to nowhere, with your prince ordered to kill you, the Woods stalking you, and a baby wizard on your back?”
The camel spat a gob of fire past Sophie’s ear.
“Must everything in our story be twisted and barbarous?” Sophie moaned.
She peeked back at Agatha, expecting the usual wry response. But instead, Aggie looked afraid. More than afraid. She looked lost.
“No, I mean, how did we get here?” Agatha said. “So far from a happy ending?”
“We were meant for a bigger life, Agatha,” Sophie reminded. “From the beginning. August Sader told the School Master that a Reader would be his true love . . . the Evil soul Rafal had been waiting for. That’s why Rafal kidnapped Readers like us to this world. To find his true love. But Sader lied to him: because he knew that you and I would kill Rafal. That our love would destroy him. After Rafal died, we thought the story was over. We assumed our happy ending would last forever. Because that’s what storybooks taught us. That Good always wins. That Ever After is Ever After. But our fairy tale changed the rules. We punched holes in the old ways of Good and Evil. And now we’re in a new tale where it’s no longer enough to be Good. The Storian wants more from us. Enough to risk its own destruction. To win, we have to follow our story wherever it leads. Beyond Ever and Never. Beyond Man and Pen. To the End of Ends.”
Agatha went quiet behind her, her body no longer rigid, a calm settling into her breath. She touched Sophie’s shoulder.
“To the End of Ends,” said Agatha.
The words echoed in the dark forest.
Wisps of blue smoke floated down and curdled in front of Sophie, a message in Hort’s scraggly glow: “Tell Agatha to switch with me.”
Sophie waved away the smoke. “You know, for a boy with a girlfriend, he certainly doesn’t act like it.”
“Which makes me wonder why Nicola is with him at all,” said Agatha, her tone lighter, as if gossiping about someone else’s love life was a tonic for doom. “Nicola’s as sharp as they come. She’s read our fairy tale and knows every detail. She must know Hort can’t let go of you.”
“And having read our story, she also thinks Hort’s too good for me, which is why she continues to date him,” said Sophie. “Nic’s a Reader like us. She grew up reading tales where witches don’t have boyfriends. To her, Hort liking me is unnatural. She truly believes he deserves someone better. Someone like her. And that if she stays with him, Hort will eventually see the light. But that implies love is rational. That when backed into a corner, the heart does the sensible thing. But that’s where Hort and I are the same. Neither of us has the least control over our heart.”
“Hmm. Interesting,” Agatha said.
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Our third year, Hort saw a vision in the Wish Fish lake. When we were at Guinevere’s safe house. The fish told him that you and him would be married in the end. And we’re not yet at The End . . .”
“I know this will surprise you, but I’ve considered it, Aggie,” said Sophie. “Especially after Hort tried to rescue me from Rhian. For the briefest of moments, I saw him as my prince . . . I saw what our story together could be . . . And there are moments, now more than ever, where I think: Take a chance. Date the weasel. Go for the doting, soft boy instead of the sultry hunk who ends up wanting to kill me. At least I’ll be loved. At least I’ll have kisses without a knife in my back.” Sophie paused. “But then I think . . . where’s the challenge in that?” She grinned back at her friend.
“And you wonder why witches don’t have boyfriends,” said Agatha.
NEVER ENTER THE Woods at night.
That had been one of the first rules Sophie had learned at the School for Good and Evil. And with good reason. After sunset, the forest turned into a haunting ground. Red and yellow eyes twinkled like jewels in the underbrush, followed by the gleam of sharp teeth. Dark outlines flitted across trees: snouts, claws, wings. The night came with its own sounds, too, a steady roll of growls and skitters and shrieks. The deeper you prowled into the Woods, the more it prowled back, tickling the crooks of your legs, breathing at your neck. But safe atop the camel, Sophie took in the night with new eyes. Fluorescing green spores on poisonous ivy. Black scorpions, shiny like obsidian. Red and blue snakes twined around a tree. There was beauty in the danger, if you let yourself see it.
The thoughts were fleeting. Sophie knew it was only a matter of time before they ran into someone after Agatha. A few hours into their trek and they’d already caught glimpse of two teenage boys, a lone dwarf, a witch wheeling a cart . . . but all bustled by with hardly a glance, as if using the dark to hide from something themselves.
“That age potion must be working,” Agatha said. “Merlin’s getting heavier.”
Sophie studied the child strapped to her friend, his body bigger, his hair bushier than when they’d left school, the once baby-sized robes seeming to magically grow with him. Merlin eagerly sucked milk from his blue hat, leaking all over Agatha.
“Make Mama wet!” the wizard chimed, rubbing milk into her hair.
“Now I see why you hate children,” said Agatha.
“He’s in the terrible twos. For the night anyway,” Sophie noted. “Hester said to feed him the next dose of potion. That’ll grow him to three by tomorrow.”
“Already heavy on my back at two.”
“Let me hold him, then. At least for a little while.”
“He’s due for a poo.”
“Give him to me, Aggie.”
Agatha unhooked Merlin with a sigh and handed him to Sophie, who used her good hand to secure him in her lap—
The Woods vanished.
Sophie was high on a cloud, silver stars winking against a purple sky.
The Celestium.
Someone was sitting next to her.
Tedros.
Tedros, who had no head.
His neck a bloody stump.
“Peekaboo!” a voice said.
She turned and saw Tedros’ decapitated head floating in the air behind her.
“Peekaboo!”
Sophie screamed—
But now she was back in the forest, so jolted with shock that she was about to fall off the camel, the baby with her, before Agatha lunged and saved them both.
“Have you lost your mind!” she berated Sophie.
Sophie gaped at Merlin, the child grinning at her. The wizard had done it. Was it a prank? More terrible twos? And yet, the way Merlin was smiling, so calm and assured . . .
“Wait. Did something happen?” Agatha asked suddenly, her expression changing, as if she’d had her own bout with Merlin’s tricks. “Sophie, what did you see?”
Your boyfriend in two pieces.
“Nothing,” Sophie said out loud. “Just got dizzy.”
Hort’s glow-smoke drifted in front of her again, a new message: “Saw you fall. I’m coming down.”
Sophie scrawled back in pink glow—“Come down and I’ll give you a slap”—swatting the message up to him.
Hort stayed where he was.
They rode on. Freed from carrying Merlin, Agatha promptly fell asleep against Sophie’s shoulder. The wizard poked at the vial sticking out of Sophie’s dress pocket.