Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)

Chapter 26

Sophie came to stand beside Agatha. "Where will you take her?"

"It's been arranged," the Eldest said, replacing his hat as he walked towards the door. "We'll return this evening."

"But the attacks!" Agatha cried. "How will you stop them?"

"Arranged," said the middle, following the Eldest out.

"Eight o'clock," said the youngest, trailing behind him. "Only Y/n."

"How do you know she'll be safe!" Agatha panicked—

"All arranged," the Eldest called, and locked the door behind him.

The three of us stood in dumb silence before Sophie let out a squeal. "See? I told you!" She smushed Agatha in a hug. "Nothing can ruin our happy ending." Humming with relief, she packed her creams and cucumbers in her pretty pink suitcase. She glanced back at Agatha's big dark eyes fixed out the window.

"Don't fret, Aggie. It's all arranged."

I watched the villagers sift through ruins, glowering bloodshot at the church, remembering the last time Callis said the Elders "arranged" things . . . and hoped this time they'd have better results.

***

As eight o'clock approached, I sat high in the wooden rafters above the pews.

Alone.

When the church darkened, Agatha had resisted leaving, but Sophie forced her. The Elders had been very clear—"Only Y/n"—and now was not the time to disobey their orders.

These past few months I had spent solitary. And I had been fine. I survived. But now that Agatha and I had begun speaking again. . . now that we truly felt like sisters once more. . .

I missed her.

The church doors creaked open.

I peered down from my position up high to see shadows waiting in their gray cloaks, black hats in hand.

Only the Eldest was holding something else.

Something sharper.

***

Agatha heard the men's shouts recede with the light of their torches. Kneeling against a wet, crumbly tree trunk in darkness, she folded her shivering arms into her black dress.

The Elders weren't going to save Y/n.

They were going to kill her.

All this time she had focused on rescuing her sister and going back. Back to what? Murderous Elders? More assassin attacks? A village that wanted Y/n gone?

"I'm sure she's fine," a voice whispered.

Agatha turned to see Sophie rubbing her ankle, wincing.

"She's a tough girl. We should head back. My shoes are getting dirty and glass slippers aren't really ideal to trek in—"

"What is wrong with you?" Agatha hissed. "Y/n is going to die and all you can think about are your shoes?"

"Y/n won't die," Sophie huffed. "You've seen how she is. She survived one—no, two battles with Hester's demon. And she came second in the Trial By Tale."

"No thanks to you," Agatha muttered.

Agatha thought of innocent women burnt publicly in a square, not so long ago, and her stomach turned over. Their future in Gavaldon was just as dark as the Woods around her now.

To go home, she couldn't just rescue Y/n. She had to defeat these assassins—whoever they were—and stop their attacks once and for all.

But she had no idea how to even begin looking for her sister. For hundreds of years, the villagers had stormed into the forest, seeking its lost children—only to come out the other side, right where they started. Like all the missing children, she had seen what lay beyond the forest: a dangerous world of Good and Evil that had no end.