Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)

Chapter 46

I stared at him for a long time.

"Okay," I whispered.

"Your responsibilities are here," he continued, "ensuring your young colleagues adjust to their new school. With the volatility of the past year, all students will be held to—how should I put it—a higher standard than before."

I nodded.

He kissed my forehead swiftly before letting me go.

My gaze slipped past him to the foyer's wall murals, all featuring me and Rafal kissing against celestial night skies. We were both in black leather, wearing jagged metal crowns, as fiery stars cast halos over our heads. In each mural, a single green letter was superimposed on our embracing bodies. Once spelling out G-O-O-D, the wall paintings now spelled . . . E-V-I-L.

As students kept filing past, I turned full circle, soaking in my painted image on every wall: my (h/c) hair fanned beneath a spiked queen's crown; my lips pressed against Rafal's, a boy so smoldering, so intense, so unnerving that he'd have made Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty dump their princes at first sight.

It was now I'd realized I'd won. I was the face of a school. The face of a generation. The face of the future.

"For hundreds of years, everyone wanted to be Good because Good always wins. But our story will change all that," said Rafal, pulling me into him. "Evil is the new Good."

I felt so safe in his arms that his words washed over me. "Evil is the new Good," I repeated, nestling into him.

I looked purposely away when I spotted cherubic Kiko in line, sniffing back tears.

Then I tensed.

A raven-haired boy was standing ahead, at the edge of the foyer. Tight chest and stomach muscles pressed against his black uniform shirt, and his breeches revealed smooth, chiseled calves. His dark bangs draped over his forehead and his long nose was the only feature out of proportion on his small, heart-shaped face. His stance was erect, cool. He was young, clearly a student. But I didn't recognize him from either school—

But then I saw his eyes.

Scorching with hate.

His beady, weaselly eyes.

"Shouldn't you be somewhere, Hort?" the School Master said, glowering at him.

Hort's fiery glare honed in on my hand in Rafal's, before he finally glanced up. "I was throwing hammers in the gym, Master," he said, flat and hard. "Earned extra time."

"Right. You've been racking up the first ranks, I hear," said the School Master, pulling me tighter against him and making sure Hort saw it. "Keep up the good work, Captain."

Hort gave me one last deadly glare before he walked into the wings.

I didn't move. First ranks? . . . gym? . . . Captain? Hort?

Rafal held his hand out, . "Shall we?"

I looked at him. Then I took his hand and let him pull me along.

"I don't want you to miss your first class," he said, slipping a small scroll of paper into my hand, before he glided up the stairs.

"My first what?"

***

"Class?" I fluttered after the School Master, scanning the parchment. "Advanced Uglification . . . Advanced Henchmen Training— this is a schedule! A student's schedule!"

"A queen has responsibilities," Rafal retorted.

I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped short when I noticed my surroundings. The entrance hallway to sea-themed Honor Tower, whose walls and ceiling once mimicked a princely blue tidal wave, now had its surging waters painted the same slime green as the fog tipping the two castles. For a moment, I was confused by the change, until I looked out a porthole window and saw Halfway Bay in the melted sunlight. For the first time in years, there was no dividing line between the waters, no halves to the bay at all. Its entire body was the same slime green as the painted tides on the walls.

"One dip and it'll rip the flesh right off your bones," said Rafal, posed against a column. "Good deterrent against anyone who might try to swim into the school or swim . . . out."

I followed Rafal across the seashell floor, now artistically smattered with bloody splashes, while an old statue of a smiling, barechested merman, trident on his lap, had been rechiseled with a gnashed scowl, curled fists, and a trident poised to kill. Turning the corner, I took in epic murals along the walls, once visions of Good's most honorable victories, now flaunting different endings: a wolf biting into Red Riding Hood's neck . . . a giant atop a beanstalk snapping Jack like a twig . . . Snow White and her dwarves facedown in blood . . .

I knew I should have been sickened by what I was seeing, but instead I felt a mutinous thrill at the sight of Evil winning so defiantly, so matter-of-factly, as if Good was never supposed to win at all. How could I not take secret pleasure in the thought? Soaking in the last mural—Sleeping Beauty and her prince, lashed to a spinning wheel, set aflame by a black-caped witch—I started to feel disoriented, as if I couldn't remember the real endings anymore.

What if I'd learned these stories as a child? Would I have ever felt the pull to be Good?

Would I have ever resisted the pull to do Evil?

"These paintings are glorious," I said. "But it doesn't make it true."

"Says who?" he called back.

I frowned. "Says the storybooks. These murals. . .all of them are fantasies. They don't mean anything. The real endings already happened."

Rafal turned. "Endings can change, my queen."

He gazed out a window at the School for Old. "And change they must."

I could have sworn I heard a roar from deep within the Old castle, like a monster breaking out of its cage.

"The Deans are eager to meet you," he said, heading towards the rear staircase. "They'll take you to your class."

I didn't move. "You said it yourself. Agatha and Tedros are on their way to kill you. I can't be in class! I have to fight with you, protect you—"

"And who do you think will be your army against Agatha and Tedros, if not your class?" he said, not looking back.

"What?" It took a moment to grasp what he was suggesting. I glanced at my schedule.

Underneath Advanced Curses and Death Traps, my name was listed.

As a teacher.