The Last Ever After (25 page)

No wonder we didn't see more of them in the Woods
, Agatha thought. The villains had all been at their old school.

But doing what?

At the front of the classroom was a slender, ferocious-looking woman in a tattered silver gown, with a full face of makeup, a coiled bun of white hair, and skin stitched up like the rest.

“A month since the School Master brought us back to school and what do we have to show for it? Five old stories turned Evil. FIVE! We'll never make it to Woods Beyond with
five
stories. You heard the School Master. Every story changed brings us one step closer to the Reader World.”

Agatha's heart stopped. Reader World? Woods Beyond? Was she talking about . . .
Gavaldon
?

“I have my own work to do, it seems,” the old woman's voice harrumphed. “Cinderella is alive, out there in the Woods, and my worthless daughters have yet to locate her. Can't have another turn at a fairy tale unless you
find
your old Nemesis
first, can you?” She glowered at two hideous undead girls in the corner. “Now, for homework the School Master asked each of you to pinpoint the mistake that made you lose your story the first time. Giant, let's start with you.”

Jack's giant held up a storybook, open to a painting of him sleeping in his castle as Jack sneaked past him. “Nappin' on the job,” he sulked.

“Is that what got you beat by Princess Uma and a buncha animals too? ‘
Nappin' on the job'?
” Rumpelstiltskin snorted.

“Just 'cause you redone your story already don't mean you can be rude,” the giant fired.

“Who's next?” Cinderella's stepmother snapped.

As the old villains continued presenting their worst moments, Agatha crept ahead to the grating over the next classroom.

Dozens of undead villains milled between corkboards blanketed in hand-drawn maps of the Woods, covered with red and blue pins and scraps of multicolored notes. At first, Agatha didn't recognize many of these witches and monsters . . .

Then her stomach plunged.

Near the far wall, Snow White's rotted old witch and Red Riding Hood's wolf, nursing a black eye and bandaged leg, were both having an intense conversation with a third villain Agatha had never met before: a man, tall and darkly handsome, despite his zombified skin, with curly black hair, a pirate's hat, and instead of a right hand, a gleaming silver
hook
.

“Wolf found them on Necro Ridge and I saw them here at Cottage White,” grunted Snow White's witch, tapping a yellowed fingernail on a map.

“Which means League Headquarters must be north of Maidenvale,” Captain Hook surmised in a deep, silken voice. “I'm guessing within a mile of Knobble Hill . . .” He smiled thinly, stroking his hook. “Mmm, thirteen heroes at once. Wouldn't that be
dandy
?”

Agatha's heart was in her throat. A mile from Knobble Hill? That's precisely where League Headquarters was! She had to warn Merlin as soon as she got back. But first things first; she had a sword to find—

Suddenly ogre howls rang through the castle like a fire alarm. The door burst open and a troll guard crashed in.

“
INTRUDER! Intruder in the castle!
Double meals to whoever finds it!”

Villains raucously stampeded out of the room after the troll, leaving Agatha petrified. She skirted to the wall and skittered through the vent like a cockroach, stopping at each grating, catching glimpses of five classrooms of undead Nevers emptying into the hall with bloodthirsty whoops . . . until she saw Captain Hook again right under her, speaking to a tall, shirtless boy, gorgeous and lean with spiked white hair and alabaster skin.

Agatha froze.

Him
.

And he was holding her clump.

“Troll found this,” the young School Master snarled. “Agatha's inside this castle. And either that mincing prince is with her or he'll come to us once we capture her. I need you to command the rest and—”

He stopped cold. His eyes rose to the ceiling and Agatha dove away from the grating just in time. Hidden in shadow, she held her breath.
Keep talking . . . keep talking . . . please, please, please—

“Search the dungeons and the belfry,” the School Master's voice continued. “Leave no stone unturned.”

Agatha almost fainted in relief. As long as he was here, away from the Storian, he couldn't know she was hiding right over his head.

“But I want Agatha
alive
. It's time I had a little talk with our dear princess,” said the School Master. “Now marshal the men while I secure the museum. Understood?”

“Yes, Master,” Hook said.

Agatha peeked through the grate and watched them part ways. Captain Hook,
the
Captain Hook, was looking for
her
? And not only him, hundreds of villains, just as famous and deadly? She was dead . . . more than dead . . . she was horse meat—

And yet, as she watched the mob of hooting villains combing the castle, something the School Master said was still gnawing at her.

Secure the museum.

He had the chance to find and kill her and he was worried about the museum? Of all the things in the castle, why would an invincible sorcerer possibly need to secure a muse—

Agatha choked and bolted upright, smacking her head into the vent. Scrambling onto her hands and knees, she started down the air shaft in the direction he went.

There was only one thing in the world the Woods' greatest villain needed to secure.

The one weapon that could destroy him and his minions forever.

A holy sword Agatha never thought she could find.

And now the School Master was surely taking her right to it.

Tedros used magic to whisk away Sophie's gag, because he was afraid she'd bite his face if he got too close.

“Better pray I
never
get out of these,” Sophie spat, flailing against the velvet sheets binding her to the bedpost.

“Now hold your horses,” Tedros growled, trying to salvage what was left of his shirt.

“Rafal will be here any moment, so I suggest you take your horses and scat if you don't want to end up dissected for Evil research. Where's Agatha?”

“Getting my sword from the School for Evil. You'll need it to destroy your ring—” Tedros started, only to instantly regret it when he saw Sophie's face.

“My
ring
? My
Queen's
ring?” Sophie shot back. “That's why you were ogling it on the shore? Because you want me to
destroy
it?”

“Uh, it's how we k-k-kill the School Master,” Tedros stammered, knowing he was talking too much. “It's how you'll be free—look, we can discuss this later, once we get out of—”

“Free?”
Sophie hissed, shielding her ring. “By killing the boy who
loves me
? By taking me away from the one place
where I might finally be happy? So I can live Ever After following you and your princess like a dog?”

“Be reasonable, Sophie. You can't stay with the School Master! He's a monster!”

“His name is Rafal, he's different now, and for your information, we were supposed to have our first date tonight—”

“Where you'd probably end up drinking the blood of little children together,” Tedros retorted. “Now hear me out before I gag you again—”

“Don't you dare threaten me,” Sophie scorched. “You can't hurt me more than you already have, Tedros. You made Agatha pick you over me. You made her believe she couldn't have her best friend
and
her prince. You tried to send me back home alone to no mother, a rotten father, a haggish stepmother, stepbrothers who've already moved into my room, and a town where no one—
no one—
cares about me. You and your princess sent me to hell with a kiss, and just when I found my way to a boy who truly cares about me, to a happy ending that might finally be real . . . here you are riding in on your white horse again to take it all away.”

Tedros gazed at his once-princess tied up on the bed. “Sophie, don't you get it? He isn't what he looks like. He isn't your true love. He's
Evil
. And if you stay with him, that makes you Evil too. There'll be no way back to Good this time.”

Sophie's eyes sparkled. “Do you know why I wanted a fairy tale my whole life? Because a fairy tale means love that never ends. I thought that love was you, Tedros. Then I thought it was Agatha. But it's
him
. It has to be him.”

Tedros stood up from the table. Sophie watched the prince move towards the bed, his hair haloed in torchlight, as he slipped onto the sheets next to her. Their legs touched as they sat in silence.

“You think we'd come all this way if we didn't love you?” he said softly. “We're your best friends.”

Sophie turned away. “No,
Agatha
was my best friend. My only friend. I needed
her
, Tedros. More than I needed anyone. But you made Agatha choose between a boy and her friend. And now you're trying to make me choose too.” Sophie shook her head, letting tears fall. “How could she do it? How could she just throw me away?”

“She made a mistake, Sophie,” Tedros said. “When you fight for love, sometimes you think it's you against the world. You become scared. You see what isn't there. It happened to Agatha. It happened to me. And now it's happening to you.”

She felt him reach up behind her, undoing her first bind.

“But there's nothing holding us back anymore,” he said. “We can all be together now.”

“Even fairy tales have limits,” said Sophie. “Three people can't have an Ever After. Not without me being alone.”

“You won't be alone, Sophie.” She could feel his forearm caress her neck as it reached for the other bind. “You'll have two people who want to see you happy. And until we have you in our lives again, we can't be happy either.”

“You and Agatha have each other. You don't need me.”

“She and I could barely be in the same room together until we came to find you. We should never have left you behind.” She felt his skin on her wrist, the loosening of a knot. “This journey to find you and fix our past mistakes ended up making Agatha and I closer.
You
brought Agatha and I together, like you always have before.”

The velvet cuff fell away, setting Sophie free. She stared into his eyes, his last words stinging her.

“Come with us, Sophie,” Tedros said, tilting her chin up, the way he once asked her to a Ball. “Come with Agatha and me to Camelot.”

Sophie curled into his chest, making him hold her. “Maybe you can't see it. But now you brought me and Rafal closer too,” she whispered, almost to herself.

“What?”

“If I go with you, I won't find love again,” Sophie said, nuzzling Tedros tighter. “My story proves it. I'm unlovable by anyone else. My best friend. My father. My prince. Not even Hort wants me anymore.”

“Because you've forgotten what love really is. Good is the path to love, Sophie. Not Evil.”

“Rafal is my only path now,” she said, remembering what it was like to be this close to a prince . . .

“There has to be a way,” Tedros pressed. “There has to be a way to make you come with us.”

“No, it's too late . . .” Sophie inhaled his scent, trying to wrest herself away, trying to let him go. “Take Agatha and leave.”

“Not without you,” he said, his lips at her ear.

“I won't leave him . . . I won't leave my true love,” Sophie
fought, looking to Rafal's ring for strength.

Only now she saw something else on her finger . . . rubbed raw by the binds . . . her heart's only answer all along . . .

“Unless . . . ,” she whispered.

“Unless . . . ?” Tedros breathed.

Sophie clasped his hand.

Tedros looked down and stiffened.

Because now he saw his name on her flesh too.

“Unless I had you back,” Sophie said.

20
Last Stop on the Fairy Dust Express

A
clock struck somewhere across the bay. 11:30.

Thirty minutes to find Excalibur.
What happens if I'm not at the gates by midnight?
Agatha thought, scuttling through the air shaft to follow the School Master.
Will Tedros come looking for me? Will he try to get into the castle?
She couldn't let that happen. He'd be walking into a death trap—

She stopped short.

Agatha stared at a wall of black rock sealing off the vent, as the sound of the School Master's footsteps receded into the buzz of villains hunting her.

Alarmed, she was about to turn back and search for another route to the museum, when she noticed there was a small gap in the vent before the
dead end. Agatha crept to the edge of the gap and looked down.

A black void.

Either she backtracked to the last crossroads in the vent and risked losing the School Master . . . or she took a stupidly lethal chance.

Agatha slid her legs over the edge of the gap.

She let go.

Gravity blasted her into free fall—then her backside clamped onto a smooth stone slide, rocketing her through darkness. Without warning, the slide swerved left and Agatha was thrown onto her side with no idea where she was going. There were no more gratings, no more rays of light, just merciless black, with the odd green flicker of a dead fairy, caught in the sealed-off maze. Crossing her arms over her chest, Agatha let go like a swimmer in a riptide as she veered at the sharpest, scariest angles, convinced this would all end in a gruesome death, before she shot off the slide like shrapnel, skidded onto a smooth metal surface, and halted face-first over a steel grating.

Ow
.

Agatha pried off the slats, rubbing the welts on her cheeks. Through the grate, she could see an empty room underneath her, lit by a weak green torch. No one inside it, nothing on the walls, nothing on the sooty black floor. And yet, something about the place seemed familiar. Bending closer to the grate, she squinted across the room, until she made out an ash-spattered door and its simmering red letters:

THE EXHIBITION OF EVIL

Evil's museum.

Agatha bobbed to her knees. Given how quickly she crossed the castle, there was no way the School Master could have gotten here already, which meant . . .

I made it before him
.

Sweating in the shadows, Agatha waited for him to come and lead her to the weapon that could kill him.

She waited.

And waited.

And waited.

A clock in the castle tolled once.

11:45.

Something stopped him on the way
, she thought. But there was no more time to wait. In fifteen minutes, Merlin would be at the gates.

She grabbed hold of the steel grating, which dislodged easily from stone. She left her remaining clump behind and lowered down through the hole, hanging on to the sides of the shaft. Arms stretched, she kicked the air as if to dismount a swing and landed on her soles without a sound.

Agatha scanned the museum, once filled with relics of Evil's scant victories and now wiped clean. True, she hadn't expected Excalibur to be waiting on a table for her, but there was nowhere in this room that Tedros' sword could possibly be hidden. The floor was a single slab of stone, every case and frame was gone, every wall bare—

Not every wall
, Agatha realized, moving towards the corner.

For on the far wall, hidden in shadows, there was one painting left.

Agatha stalked closer, her eyes adjusting to the dark, until she realized it was a painting she knew well.

In a village square, raging children heaved storybooks into a bonfire and watched them burn. Behind the village, a dark forest went up in flames, blanketing the sky with red and black smoke.

The colors were gauzy and impressionistic, the style unmistakable. It was the work of Professor August Sader, a blind seer who once taught History before he sacrificed his life fighting the School Master. Agatha recognized the scene as the last in his Reader Prophecy, a series of paintings once mounted in the Gallery of Good. As part of the Prophecy, Sader had predicted pairs of Readers kidnapped to the School for Good and Evil, leading up to her and Sophie. But there had been no more Readers predicted after them . . . instead, only this scene of Gavaldon's children burning its fairy tales as smoke clouds closed in.

And yet they weren't smoke clouds, Agatha remembered now from her first year, focusing harder on them. They were shadows, hulking and monstrous, invading the town . . . and as Agatha leaned closer, her nose to the canvas, she began to see familiar shapes in the smoke . . .

A giant's bald head . . . a wolf's toothy snout . . . a stepmother's coiled bun . . . a captain's round hook . . .

These weren't just shadows.

These were villains. Real villains.

All coming to Gavaldon.

Agatha backed up, hearing the stepmother's ominous warning: “
Every story changed brings us one step closer to the Reader World
. . .”

Before his death, Sader had seen this too: the School Master's Dark Army crossing into her village.

But why?
What could the School Master possibly want in Gavaldon?

Terrified, Agatha studied the shadows harder, trying to understand . . .

But something else caught her attention in the painting now.

Behind the bonfire, in the recesses of the square, there was a tiny slash of gold beneath the canopy of Mr. Deauville's hollowed-out book shop. Agatha made out a pattern of diamonds on a golden hilt and the start of a wide silver sword, buried blade-first in an anvil. She rubbed her eyes.

No doubt about it.

Excalibur was
inside
the picture.

Flummoxed, Agatha ran her hand along the surface of the oil-painted canvas, hard and stubbly . . . until her fingers touched the sword hilt. All of a sudden, the texture was different: warm, smooth, and metallic. She pushed harder against the canvas and watched her nails slowly penetrate the tight, viscous surface, a strange wetness soaking her fingertips. Further and further her hand sucked in, all the way to the wrist, before Agatha began to see her fingers appear within the painting itself, reaching for the hilt of the sword. Eyes widening, she grasped Excalibur's handle from inside the picture, her
knuckles locking a firm grip, and pulled as hard as she could. The sword flew out of the anvil like a flower out of water—Agatha reeled as hand and sword ejected from the frame, and the weight of the blade sent her toppling to the floor.

Slowly, Agatha raised her head and looked at Excalibur, still clenched in her fist. Then she looked up at the painting, where an empty anvil posed in front of Mr. Deauville's.

Oh my God.

She launched to her feet, thrusting her prince's sword into the torchlight.

I did it.

I really did it!

Mission complete.

With ten minutes to spare.

A beam of pride and relief ripped across her face and she whirled to the door, sword in hand, ready to mogrify out of this depraved castle —

Agatha dropped the sword.

“I never underestimate you, Agatha,” the young School Master said, leaning against a wall, barechested in black breeches. “And yet you underestimate me. A sorcerer who defeats death, returns to youth, takes your best friend as my queen, and here you think that I can't hear your breath in a vent ten feet over my head . . . that I'd randomly announce my need to secure a museum . . . that I'd willfully leave the search for an intruder in my castle . . . all for no good reason . . .” The beautiful boy arched a brow. “Unless, of course, I knew you'd overhear it.”

Agatha's heart imploded. “Then w-w-why didn't you just kill me in the hall?”

“For one thing, I've been suspecting for a while that a pesky old wizard has been advising you and your prince as to how to defeat me, and now I have proof my suspicions are correct. For another, I was curious as to whether Excalibur is really as powerful as Merlin believes. So I put a charm on the sword when I hid it in the painting, so that no one except me could retrieve it. Which means that if
you
pulled it out, Excalibur's magic indeed exceeds mine, at once able to recognize its allies and surely powerful enough to destroy the ring that keeps me alive. But I suppose there's also a third reason I haven't killed you just yet, Agatha. I thought you should meet the boy who's claimed your best friend's heart, up close and personal. You may call me, Rafal, by the way.” He smiled, striding towards her. “Sophie does.”

Agatha snatched the sword and flung it out at him, halting his advance. “Why did Sader paint the villains in Gavaldon? What's the painting mean?”

Rafal eyed the sword blade, bemused. “Agatha, can you recall what I told you when you and Sophie visited my tower first year? I gave you a riddle to solve and sent you back to your schools, but you were angry with me. You said I should prey on other villages and leave yours alone. Do you remember what I answered?”

Agatha could feel herself transported back to that very moment, his reply vivid in her memory . . . the old masked School Master, so different from this young boy in front of her,
leaving her with a single question as she and Sophie free-fell into a sea of white . . .

A question that had tormented her for two years.

A question that never made any sense.

“What other villages?”
she whispered.

“That's the one,” Rafal grinned. “You see, Agatha, all this time you thought the Reader World was the ‘real world' far away from the realm of magic . . . when, in fact, your world is
part
of the Endless Woods. For how can a land of stories exist without Readers to believe in them?”

Agatha paled. “Gavaldon is
in
the Woods?”

“Why do you think Readers from your village are the only ones kidnapped? Why do you think any attempt to escape your village leads right back to it?” said Rafal. “Yours is the one unenchanted kingdom of our world, but still
part
of the fairy-tale world—as much a part of fairy tales as Camelot, or Netherwood, or this school itself. It is why no class here is ever complete without two Readers: one who believes in Good and one who believes in Evil.”

Agatha felt her brain whirring, trying to grasp the enormity of his words.

“Actually, the only access I have to Readers is to make sure they are fairly and safely represented at my school, like every other realm of the Woods,” Rafal went on. “Our world needs new Readers to survive just as much as it needs new stories. That is why there are magic gates that protect Gavaldon from the rest of our world. That is why we call it the Woods Beyond. Because Readers keep our stories alive, long after the people in
them are dead and gone. You could even say that Readers are the one force in our world more powerful than me. Because as long as there are Readers who
believe
in Good's power over Evil, Good will still win, even if I obliterate every Ever kingdom in the Woods. Because there will always be Readers, no matter what I do. Readers who put their faith in the Old stories, passing them down, forever and ever, keeping Good alive beyond my control . . .”