The Last Ever After (47 page)

Agatha followed his eyes to the Dark Army, teeth gnashed, impatient for their Master's signal. She thought of Reena, Chaddick, Ravan, and all the other students she'd come to know, trapped in the School for Evil. One day, Rafal would ensure they ended up as dark-hearted and ruthless as these undead killers hungry for war.

But then Agatha remembered Kiko . . . lovely, sweet-faced Kiko, who just wanted everyone to find happiness and love . . . who could never be Evil no matter what anyone did to her.

“Evil will never have a future,” said Agatha, thinking of her kind Evergirl friend. “Not when there are those who want to be Good.”

“And no one wanted to be more Good than me, Aggie,” said Sophie. “But no matter how hard you try to make an Evil heart Good, it won't take.
You
know that, or you'd never have given me a chance with your precious prince. You knew full well that I'd make a fool of myself.” Sophie's pupils gleamed. “But to make a Good heart Evil . . . oh that's child's play, Aggie. Because Good hearts are like the softest underbelly, ripe for Evil to rip through. Just ask your friend, Kiko, who I heard crying last night, wishing she still had her ‘best friend' Agatha to talk to. Quite popular, weren't you, in your time at school, darling? Too bad your ‘best friend' won't be able to talk much longer. She'll end up making a nice wicked goose, when her Evil education resumes and her mogrification is complete.”

“You know what they say,” Rafal said, smirking. “Even the
purest Good excels at Evil when it might end up as Christmas dinner.”

The two of them burst into snickers.

Agatha tensed, thrown by the glee in their laughter. With their ghostly skin, ice-blue veins, and sharp cheekbones, they looked so much alike now.

“Well, there'll be no goose and there'll be no Christmas dinner,” Tedros blustered. “Because we're winning this war.”

“Are you?” Rafal said bitingly. “With your formidable League of . . .
Nineteen
? Seems you lost your wizard, though there's so
many
rallying to your cause that it's hard to keep up. My, my, how will I ever kill the
one
hero I need to break the shield?” He scanned the meager group huddled against the trees: eight famous old heroes quailing in fear, four young Never turncoats, a languid white rabbit, a potbellied green fairy, an animal-language teacher, and a feeble old gnome . . . before his eyes fell on Lancelot, sword in hand, watching the conversation between this young foursome with a confused look on his face.

Rafal's smile darkened. “A
complication
.”

“Who the devil are you?” Lancelot blustered, squinting at the snow-haired boy. “And when does the School Master get here?”

“That
is
the School Master!” Hort hissed. “I told you he turned young!”

Lancelot's eyes bulged in shock. “Good God, why didn't anyone say so?”

In a split second, he launched forward, with a running
start, and hurled his sword like a tomahawk at Rafal's head. Caught off guard, the young School Master raised his hand too late. Sophie let out a cry of surprise—

The sword blade smashed into Rafal's forehead, cleaving right through his skull.

Villains froze. Heroes held their breath.

The Stymph Forest was as silent as a corpse.

Lancelot scratched his ear, stunned by how easy it all was, before he flashed a boastful smile. “Hooah! See that, boy? One shot and the cad goes down! School Master dead. Storybook closed. Now where's our bright sunshine—”

His smile eroded.

Rafal was still standing there, a sword in his head, a cheeky grin on his face. Slowly the blood seeped back into the wound around the sword before the young School Master reached up, took a hold of the hilt, and drew the blade out of his skull. The hole in his head sealed up, smoothing to fresh, young skin, as Rafal wiped the blood off the steel edge with his bare palm, his eyes never leaving Lancelot.

Sophie too was grinning now, stroking the gold ring on her finger, which had kept her true love alive.

“Our friend seems to have misplaced his sword,” the young School Master said to her.

“Tends to have a habit of meddling in other people's business, if I remember,” said Sophie. “Especially mine.”

“Then perhaps you'd like to be the one to return his weapon?” Rafal asked.

Sophie gripped the sword by the hilt. “Would be my honor.”

Slowly she lifted cold eyes to Lancelot, her fingertip glowing pink. “Never liked him much anyway.”

She fired her glow to the knight's blade and shot it like a bullet across the Forest—

Lancelot didn't even have time to breathe. His own sword rammed into his shoulder, cutting clean through skin and tissue before spearing into the tree trunk. The knight let out a lion's roar of pain, pinned to the elm like a piece of meat.

Sophie cozied up to Rafal. “Complication
solved
.”

Agatha and Tedros were white as death. All the other heroes cowered against the trees, watching their greatest warrior whimper and flail, immobilized by his own weapon.

Rafal caressed Sophie's cheek. “Like I said, my queen makes me look
soft.
”

Agatha could see the dark pleasure in Sophie's face and the yellow, catlike glow in her pupils. Suddenly her hope to make her friend destroy her ring seemed numbskulled and naive. Merlin had warned her: there would be no easy path to Ever After. Because there was nothing she could say to make Sophie destroy that ring now . . . nothing she could say to bring her back to Good. . . .

Because there was no Good in Sophie anymore.

“Help me, boy,” Lancelot cried out to Tedros. “Help me loose!”

Tedros didn't budge.

Agatha could see him watching Lancelot on the tree. The sword was buried at the top of the knight's shoulder, away from vital organs and clotting the wound from bleeding out. As long
as Lancelot stayed there, he'd be in excruciating pain . . . but safe. Because the second Tedros helped Lancelot off that tree, Lance would make another charge for Rafal and end up dead on the spot. Villains didn't offer mercy more than once. And whatever happened to Tedros from here, whatever he had to sacrifice to help Good win—even his own self—he'd make damned well sure of one thing: Lancelot would go back to his mother
alive
.

The knight saw the change in Tedros' face. “Tedros,
no
! Don't fight them alone!”

But the prince was looking at Agatha, who'd taken Tedros' hand, her teeth gritted, silently telling him he wouldn't fight Evil alone.

He would fight it with her.

“Tedros . . . please!” Lancelot begged.

The prince's fear hardened to steel. Hand in hand with Agatha, he turned back to Sophie and Rafal, the scared and tremulous boy gone.

Rafal looked thoroughly entertained. “They think this is one of their old storybooks, my queen. Join hands, fight for love, and everything will go Good's way . . .”

“At least Evil does love with dignity,” Sophie scoffed, studying their joined hands. “You two are like one of those cakes drowned in frosting so no one will notice it's spoiled.”

Agatha lost her poise. “A cake you did everything possible to get for
yourself
, remember?”

“And I did, thanks to you,” Sophie replied coolly. She smiled at Tedros. “It just didn't taste very good.”

“You're a witch,” Tedros hissed. “A witch who's even uglier than the warty, bald-headed one you were before. Lucky that you found a freak as empty as you. Another black hole of a soul.”

The venom in his voice took Sophie by surprise. Her cheeks blushed, before they paled again. “And yet we love each other just like you and your princess, Tedros. Nothing you say can make my love with Rafal mean any less. Nothing you say can take away our happy ending.”

She pulled in tight to Rafal, who kissed her gently on the head.

“Unless it's hate, not love, that keeps you together,” said Agatha, watching them. “And hate can never win.”

“Never
win
?” Rafal arched a brow. “Your steadfast wizard flees like a child the moment he sees our army. Your trusty knight proved even less useful . . . and yet still you're pretending as if you have a chance?”

Sophie glared at Agatha, fury building. “That's the problem with Good, isn't it? It tells you to believe in hope and faith, when those are just
phantoms
. Evil tells you to believe in the truth—the truth that's staring at you in the face, no matter how scared you are of it. And here's some truths for you. I was dreaming about Rafal all along. I was in the right school all along. I could have been happy being myself, instead of trying to be something I wasn't. And if I'd just accepted that, I'd never have tried to be your friend in the first place. Because the only reason I knocked on your door with my big smile and my basket of cookies was so that a School Master would think I was
Good
. I was using you, Agatha. You were my Good Deed to get what I wanted. The same way you've used me to get closer to your prince. So don't stand here and tell me what Rafal and I have isn't love. What you and
I
had wasn't love. Because that was a lie from the beginning.”

All Agatha could hear was the sound of her own breaths, for Sophie's eyes were like fireballs, scorching through hers.

“But then again, you have hope and faith on your side, those never-failing weapons,” Sophie said cuttingly, “when all we have are axes, armies, and youth on ours.”

“Is that all we have, my queen?” Rafal asked playfully.

Sophie read his face. “How could I forget?”

Fingertip searing pink, she thrust it skywards, directing the cloud of fairies higher into the trees and lighting up the Forest overhead.

Thousands of bony, fleshless stymphs snarled down from the branches with their eyeless sockets, cawing with high-pitched screams at the sight of their Master and his new queen.

Agatha and the heroes shielded their ears from the terrible shrieks, but Rafal just hummed along, as if listening to beautiful music.

“They can scream all they like,” Tedros growled, trying to endure the sounds. “Stymphs won't attack the Good. You only trained them to attack the Evil.”

Rafal tried not to laugh. “What I admired most about your father when he was a student was that he never thought he was more than he was. He knew he was about as sharp as a
flint stone, so he kept his mouth shut and made up for it with a pretty face.”

Tedros reddened, looking unnerved.

“You, on the other hand, despite having even less brains than Arthur, have somehow convinced yourself that you have something going on in that exquisite little head of yours,” Rafal cooed. “Must have your mother's blood. Always thought she was quite the know-it-all.”

“Whoever birthed you would slay herself on the spot if she knew you had
her
blood!” Tedros spat. “I'm proud to be my mother's son.”

Rafal's stare chilled him to the bone. “Well, she won't have a son after tonight.”

Agatha felt Tedros tense against her.

“And as for those
stymphs
. . . they are indeed trained only to attack the Evil,” Rafal said, leering at the prince. “But the Woods are no longer the Woods you once knew, little prince. Good used to be the side with happy endings. Good used to be the side with true love's kiss. Good used to be the side with Evers fighting for it. But Evil has all those things now. Evil has become the
new
Good.”

He raised his arms to the stymphs with a malevolent smile. “Which means to them . . .
Good
is the new Evil.”

The young School Master bared his teeth.
“KILL THEM!”

The Dark Army roared with bloodlust and charged for the heroes—

Rafal held his hand up and they skidded to a stop.

He was still staring at the stymphs, who hadn't moved from their posts. They weren't screeching anymore either.

“I said . . .
kill them
,” Rafal bellowed.

The birds didn't flinch.

The Forest was quiet.

“Yoo-hoo! Over here!” a voice pipped.

Slowly Rafal raised eyes to Merlin, high in an elm tree, astride a stymph. “You see, I'm afraid Evil isn't the new Good, my dear boy. Not if your Evers
and
Nevers are both on Good's side.”

At the top of every tree in the forest, shadows toting bows and arrows slid out onto the branches from behind the tree trunks. With a swish of his hand, Merlin magically lit all their arrow tips on fire, illuminating the archers' faces.

Agatha and Tedros blanched at the sight of her classmates—Chaddick, Mona, Arachne, Vex, Reena, Millicent, Ravan, and Kiko, beaming despite her goose-feathered limbs—along with nearly two hundred other Evers and Nevers, their flaming arrows pointed at the Dark Army.

“I peed again,” Hansel said, alongside his fellow gaping League Members.

Sophie was the color of ash. She looked at Rafal, who was just as dumbstruck. “Impossible . . . ,” he breathed.

“They were at s-s-school—with the teachers—” stuttered Sophie. “Lady Lesso barricaded them inside—”

“Just like she did inside her classroom every session this past week, preparing her students to fight for Good,” said Merlin cheerfully. “I should know, my dear. I was there, teaching the
class with Lady Lesso while the old villains were asleep. The sleeping spell was my work, of course; as your friends will tell you, I have a specialty in putting things to sleep, whether the thorned trees outside the school gates, visitors to my Celestium, or a sadistic fleet of zombies. And here you thought Lady Lesso was teaching them black magic tricks for your idiotic training fights! (That was Beatrix by the way, who found the spells in her old library books, while supervising the infirmary.) But it proved a useful smokescreen for what Lady Lesso was really up to, once you became suspicious and visited the Dean's room. Not that Lesso lied to you—she
was
helping the young students fight the old villains . . . just for a much bigger fight than your pointless classroom brawls. I was hiding under her desk the whole time you were there by the way, trying to disguise my sniffles. Terrible allergies to sour plums.”