"See? I outsmarted them," Sophie beamed.
A stymph bit her leg.
"Ayyyiiieee!" Sophie ran for the nearest tree. Only she couldn't climb trees, so she hurled mashed gooseberries at the bird's eye, but the bird had no eye, so the berries went right through bony socket and plopped to the ground.
Agatha and I watched stone-faced.
"Aggie, it's coming!"
The stymph charged for Sophie, only to stop short and find Agatha and I perched on its back.
"Get on, you dimwit!" she shouted at Sophie.
"Without a saddle?" Sophie scoffed. "It'll leave chafe marks."
The stymph lunged for her—Agatha walloped its head and slung Sophie by the waist onto the bird's spine.
"Hang on tight!" Agatha yelled as the bird thrashed up to flight, somersaulting over the bay to get us off its back. Four more stymphs exploded from blue trees in murderous pursuit; Agatha kicked at the bird's thighbones, Sophie holding on to her for dear life—"This is the worst plan evveerrr!" Hearing squawks and screams, the fairy and wolf guards squinted into the sky, only to see the intruders vanish into fog.
"There's the tower!" Agatha cried, spotting the silver spire through the mist. A wolf's arrow whizzed between the stymph's ribs, almost slicing Sophie in half. Fairies stormed out of the fog, shooting golden webs from their mouths, and the stymph dove to avoid them, spinning to elude a new hail of wolf arrows. This time none of us could hold on and tumbled off its back.
"No!" screamed Agatha—
Sophie caught the last bone of the stymph's tail. Agatha caught the last bit of Sophie's glass shoe and I held onto Agatha's leg for dear life.
"We're going to die!" Sophie howled.
"Just hold on!" bellowed Agatha.
"My hands are sweaty!"
"We're going to die!"
The stymph zoomed for the tower wall. But just as it whipped its tail to smash them, Agatha saw a window glint through fog.
"Now!" screamed Agatha.
Golden nets shot from every direction and the stymph let out a helpless screech. But as fairies watched it plunge to its death, they looked at each other curiously.
There were no riders on its back.
***
The crash landing through the window left my entire right side bruised. But pain meant I was still alive. Pain meant we still had hope for getting home. With a chorus of groans, the three of us staggered to our feet.
"My shoe!" Sophie shrieked. She held up her glass heel, snapped to a serrated stump. "They were one of a kind," she mourned. I ignored her and limped ahead into the murky gray chamber, barely lit by the window's dawn glow.
"Hello?" I called. Echoes died unanswered.
We inched farther into the shadowy room. Stone bookcases cloaked gray brick walls, packed top to bottom with colorful bindings. Sophie dusted off a shelf and read the elegant silver letters on the wooden spines: Rapunzel, The Singing Bone, Thumbelina, The Frog King, Cap O'Rushes, The Six Swans . . . All the stories the children of Gavaldon used to drink up. She looked over at Agatha and I, who had made the same discovery across the room. We were standing in a library of every fairy tale ever told.
I opened up Beauty and the Beast to find it written in the same elegant script as the spine, illustrated with vivid paintings like the ones in the foyers of both schools. Then I opened up The Red Shoes, Donkeyskin, and The Snow Queen and found that they too were written in the same regal hand.
YOU ARE READING
Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)
FanfictionBOOK 1 OF SGE x READER SERIES *** "Is there a reason you're talking to me right now?" he asked. "Or are you just trying to get me out of the way?" I scowled, all nervousness falling away. "If I wanted to do that, you would have been long gone by now...
Chapter 8
Start from the beginning
