As midnight came and went, I sat calmly in the School Master's window. I looked out at the fluorescent green bay, reflecting the shadows of two black castles, both dark and quiet.
How quickly things changed in a fairy tale.
Rafal hadn't been too upset, thank goodness—he'd barely been at lunch himself, he said, and told me he had important business in the School for Old that would keep him there until the morning. With a kiss, he left me on my own and off the hook (except for a stern visit from Lady Lesso, who'd chastised me for being no closer to finding the spy).
I curled my knees to my chest and glanced at the Storian, paused over a blank page. It hadn't drawn a new scene since early in the evening, when it painted Agatha and Tedros disappearing into a rabbit hole and Tedros fainting at the sight of a bearded old man. I'd tried to flip back in the storybook to see who this old man was and where Agatha and her prince were in the Woods, but the Storian had stabbed me when she'd tried to turn pages, nearly impaling my hand. Once a story was unfolding, it seemed you couldn't go back.
Somewhere out there my best friends were writing their own side of the story. Somewhere out there they were coming to rescue me from a school I would have once done anything to be rescued from . . . coming to convince me to leave Evil and its Master behind forever . . .
Or so they think.
Because now I felt at home here in Evil. Sure, there were a few pitfalls my first day, but I was still a teacher and queen, superior to all the other students. More importantly, I was about to win Evil's first fairy tale in two hundred years. I was about to be a legend for all time, more famous than Snow White, Cinderella, and every other old, blank-eyed, pink princess who never had a mind of her own . . .
And to think, I used to be like those fools.
But now I was ready to fight for Evil.
Kill, even.
Because unlike all Evil that came before me, I had someone to fight for.
A scratching noise drew me from my thoughts.
The Storian was writing a new page.
I crossed the bedroom to the pedestal, watching as ink spilled over the page. First it drew Agatha, wrapped in Tedros' arms. They were looking down at something. . .
Sophie.
In a glass casket.
I gasped and put my hand to my mouth in shock.
Sophie. . . was dead?
My eyes flicked back to my sister and her prince.
Those murderers. They killed Sophie. Most likely in cold blood, because they knew I'd see it. They wanted me to know that it was a message from them. A way of discouraging me.
Little did they know it had the opposite effect.
Now I wanted to slit their throats even more.
***
When I dreamt that night, it was of Sophie.
The details were hazy, but I distinctly remember me finding her casket in a cave, only she was awake inside. Pounding on the glass, crying for me to help her, until her body began to freeze from the inside out—her lashes frosting, lips turning blue, veins crackling with ice—
I jolted awake. I couldn't breathe. My throat was closing up, cutting off oxygen. I tried to gasp—
Then Rafal was there, cupping my face. "I'm here. Breathe, Y/n."
His icy skin shocked me out of whatever panic had seized me and I inhaled, taking a staggering breath.
"That's it," he soothed, pulling me into his arms. He stroked my hair and held me until my breaths slowed, evened out.
Then I began to cry.
So far, throughout the entirety of this, I hadn't let myself shed a single tear. But now, it was all too much at once—my friends' absence, losing Sophie, coming to terms with my mission.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed into his chest.
"For what, darling?" He said, pulling me back and tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.
"I—"
"Don't ever apologize for feeling something," he said, firmly but gently.
I swallowed. More tears fell past my lashes. "I can't do this," I said weakly, ducking my head. "It's too much."
"Look at me, Y/n."
I did.
He cupped my face. "You," he said, "are the strongest person I know. If anyone can defeat Good, it's you."
I stared up at Rafal. His frosty hair, marble skin. His eyes, so full of compassion and concern for me. So full of love.
"I—" My voice caught. I tried again. "I love you," I whispered.
Rafal smiled as if he had been waiting for me to say those words. He leaned in. "I love you," he said back, then pressed his lips to mine softly. "I love you."
He kissed me, again and again, each time whispering an I love you in between. My heart swelled.
When he was done, he wiped the moisture from my cheeks with his thumbs and kissed my forehead.
"Get some sleep," he said gently, rising from the bed.
"Wait—" I said, panicked, latching onto his wrist.
He paused.
"Will you. . ." I looked down, suddenly embarrassed. "Will you stay with me tonight? Please?"
He stared at me for a moment, as if he expected me to take back my request, before his face relaxed. "Sure."
Rafal climbed under the blood red covers beside me, wrapping me in his arms and pulling me to his chest.
I sighed in relief and lay my head against him, safe in the arms of the man I loved.
***
When I woke, Rafal was sitting at the edge of the bed, staring at the Storian.
I sat up behind him, resting my chin on his shoulder. "Good morning."
He didn't say anything. His focus was still forward.
I turned my head and began placing feather-light kisses along the curve of his neck. "Come back to sleep," I said against his skin.
He stood and padded over to the Storian, not acknowledging my affections. It was then I realized he was dressed for the day, shoes and all.
"Before you woke, the Storian drew Tedros and his princess only a few miles away and hasn't moved since," Rafal mulled, black boots clacking on stone as he circled the table. "It's like there's a glitch in the story, preventing the pen from telling us where they've gone."
"That proves further that it's on Good's side," I sighed.
"Or the Storian just can't find them yet. . ." He glanced back, unruffled. "But it doesn't matter, my love. As long as my name is the one written in your heart, their days are numbered."
I peered out at the iron-spiked school gates . . . the monstrous shadows guarding the School for Old . . . the pestilent green bay . . . all barriers to Tedros and Agatha finding me. And yet, there was still a spy amidst the students, planning to break them in somehow. I needed to catch the mole before Agatha and Tedros breached the castle.
Before those murderers breached the castle.
But who is it? I pictured my crowded classroom of Evers and Nevers, trying to recall if there were any clues . . .
But there were none.
***
As we flew over the bay, I noticed the air was chillier than usual for a cloudless March day, the dappled sun streaking empty blue with copper and gold. I noticed a rawboned raven flapping and panting behind me; with the Woods decaying and its body weak, it was no doubt hunting in vain for a new home. Loud shouts echoed below and I spotted a Woods Training class in the rotting Blue Forest, with Evers and Nevers, boys and girls, each spearing a stuffed effigy of Agatha, as Aric barked out a succession of swordplay moves.
I took in this dying forest filled with Agathas, feeling like I'd wandered into a surreal dream.
My feet skidded into stone and I braced to see a black balcony off the old Honor Tower and students stampeding by to get to their next sessions on time.
"See you at lunch," Rafal said, kissing me on the forehead.
Sifting into the crowd of students, I veered towards the lollipop room, determined to catch the spy for Good before they could break Agatha and Tedros into school.
I froze still.
A white mouse was motoring past my shoe tip, a wooden stick in its mouth. There was something odd about the rodent, frantically weaving and skidding between boots, as if racing against a clock—and something even odder about the stick between its teeth, knobby, aged, and tapering to the top, as if it wasn't a stick at all, but some kind of wand . . .
I gasped.
Like a runaway bull, I barreled headfirst into the crush of bodies, chasing after the mouse. Wherever this little vermin was headed, toting Professor Clarissa Dovey's wand, it was surely leading me right to the spy. Was Professor Dovey somehow involved with the spy, or possibly even the spy herself? But how, given Dovey was locked up somewhere with the Good teachers? I didn't have time to think—
Bucking and flinging kids aside, I tracked the mouse down dark spiral stairs, almost losing sight of it, before my clomping boots woke a few sleeping fairies on the banister, who glowed angry green and lit up the mouse as it skittered into the foyer. I sprinted after it through the Supper Hall kitchen, where enchanted pots stewed sardines and cold cabbage; past the Laundry, where Beezle, the red-skinned dwarf, was singlehandedly trying to wash 240 uniforms; and into the enormous Gallery of Good, refurbished black and green, which instead of reflecting all of Good's great victories, now depicted something else . . .
I slowed my pace, taking in the museum cases around me. The glass boxes, once filled with hero's triumphant weapons and proof of dead villains flaunted new exhibits: Rapunzel's severed hair, Tom Thumb's clothes, Snow White's crown, and seven dwarf-sized pairs of shoes . . . all splattered with blood.
These weren't trophies of obscure Evil victories from hundreds of years ago.
These weren't Finola the Fairy Eater, Children Noodle Soup, and Rabid Bear Rex.
These were stories every Reader knew, only with the villains winning instead of the heroes.
"Endings can change, my queen. And change, they must."
The way he'd grinned out at the School for Old . . . the strange roar from inside . . . the dark shadows on the rooftop . ..
Had Rafal found a way to change the old fairy-tale endings?
And was that way hidden in the other school?
My stomach dropped like a stone.
I'd lost the mouse.
"Shit," I muttered.
Panicked, I ransacked every corner of the Gallery. No sign of it. I groaned, furious with myself. My one chance to catch the spy and I'd been an idiot andwas distracted by a few glass cases.
I tromped out of the museum, late to my own class, spy still unfound—
Something caught my eye down the hall.
A flit of white scampering towards the castle doors.
Got you.
Hurtling after the rodent like a castaway after a boat, I blasted out of the Gallery, through the black-marble foyer, into the mirrored entrance hall (every mirror now cracked), and out the swan-frosted doors onto the Great Lawn—
A wall of green smoke blinded me.
I shielded my eyes, but wind was blowing more green mist towards me, off the surface of the steaming, corrosive bay. Determined not to lose the mouse again, I hobbled down the hill, scanning the ground, hoping the mouse had snagged somewhere in the muddy grass. But every time I thought I found it, it turned out to be a stray crog bone, until I skirted the shore of the lethal moat, looking left, then right, no mouse in sight.
I grit my teeth and whirled around, heading back into the school.