Students falling in love with Rafal wasn't uncommon. Over the span of a hundred years, the tall and handsome, polished Evil School Master had unintentionally lured even some of the most upright Evergirls like moths to a flame. The signs were clear to someone as alert and hawk-eyed as him: the blush that spotted cheeks, the quickening breaths, the lingering stares behind his back, the averted gazes when he turned. Never had Rafal engaged them. Even though they were eighteen years old, they were students. He was a School Master. And love was a weapon of Good.
But one Evergirl's stare continued to linger at the Welcoming. She had light-brown skin and short, wavy dark hair with bangs. She didn't seem intimidated by the Evil School Master, even as he pierced her with his green gaze, warning her to look away. She almost seemed to be challenging him, as if her thick-lashed brown eyes were saying:
Make me.
Rafal ignored her, shifting his focus to the magic lamp that Rhian had taken from Aladdin.
The boy who had caused a rift in their relationship, the thief that the Storian had placed in Good instead of Evil.
And Rhian, the brother who was supposed to be Good, was willing to go so far as to cheat to prove that the Storian's judgment was correct. Had he not interfered in the boy's Wish Fish challenge, Aladdin would have surely failed.
That night, needing time to consider his next move alone, Rafal took a stroll through the courtyard. No students were allowed out of their dorms past curfew, but one was sitting on the bench, appearing to be smoking a cigarette.
A familiar Evergirl. The one who'd been staring at him during the Welcoming.
She smiled as he approached.
"Hello, School Master," she said. "Lovely night, isn't it?"
Unlike his brother, Rafal didn't care whether a student was choosing to rot their lungs, as long as the lung-rotting wasn't taking place inside, but an Ever partaking in a Never activity was quite unusual.
"What are you doing out here?" Rafal demanded, and pointed at her cigarette. "And where did you get that?"
Clara shrugged, taking another drag. She turned her head away from him momentarily and blew smoke into the air.
"Are you going to do the Good thing and tell your brother?" she asked, teasing. "Or are you going to do the Evil thing and join me?" She offered him the pack of cigarettes. "I'm Clara, by the way. Clara of Foxwood."
Rafal glared at her. "Alternatively, I could do the Evil thing and turn you into a fairy, trap you in a jar, and leave you at my brother's bedside with a note."
Clara laughed.
"Are you always this creative?" she said. "I suppose Evil has to be when Good is so boring." She scooted over and tapped the seat next to her. "Come on, sit. You seem tense about something."
Rafal didn't move, keeping his eyes locked on her. Did she really need to be reminded that he was the Evil School Master?
"Go back to your dorm," Rafal ordered. "And leave the cigarettes so I may discard them."
"It's that Aladdin boy, isn't it?" Clara said, and Rafal's heart jumped into his throat. "Your brother and you seem oddly fixated on him, almost as if you're fighting over him."
How does she know? Rafal thought. Yes, Rafal had taken the magic lamp from Rhian at the Welcoming and given it to his dean to "hide," and Clara had been present for the Wish Fish challenge, but she hadn't followed Aladdin when Rafal had guided him to the lamp's hiding place from the shadows... had she?
Evers didn't have magic. Their fingerglows hadn't even been unlocked yet. But this one had something.
Clara smiled. "Did I get it right?"
"No," Rafal said. "Get back to your dorm. I will not tell you again."
Clara stood, leaving the pack of cigarettes on the bench. She took one last puff before giving Rafal her cigarette, holding his gaze, eyes dark and tempting. She brushed past him, returning to the school. He watched her until she disappeared through the doors, a strange, forbidden feeling stirring inside him.
With magic, he burned the cigarette and the pack up to nothing but ash simultaneously.
Six months later, after having abandoned Rhian and the school, Rafal returned. He had been humiliated in Aladdin's tale, having failed to prove the boy Evil, and he had searched far and wide for answers to the Storian's sudden favoring of Good. He had managed to reach a family of seers in the underwater prison called Monrovia, and they had foretold that betrayal, war, and death awaited the twin School Masters' cursed souls.
Rafal had intended to fix things between his brother and him, but then he discovered what Rhian, who always fell for the wrong boys, had done in his absence. He had hired an Evil substitute who had taken over, and the school was no longer a chateau, but two separate castles, one sparkling glass, the other polished black.
Exiled from their school that was now under the rule of Vulcan, a man from Netherwood that Rafal had once almost hired as dean, the twin School Masters devised a plan to reclaim their positions. It had nearly worked until Rafal had been captured and brought to a stage in the Evil castle, where Vulcan and Monrovia Prison's owner had arranged a test with the students. For each student that was called up to the stage, they were to confess that Vulcan was School Master, or be imprisoned for life. Not a single Ever or Never spoke Rafal's name—except one. Loudly and clearly.
Clara of Foxwood.
She gave Rafal a coy smile as the guards took her away.
After Rafal and his brother had won back their school, the twin School Masters kept to their separate castles. He remembered the names of every student who had betrayed him, during Vulcan's test and the battle in which he'd taken a Storian to the heart for Rhian.
Rhian, who seemed as appreciative of him as their ungrateful students.
Rhian, who refused to punish his Evers as Rafal was punishing his Nevers.
But Rafal remembered her.
Why had Clara been the only student to have spoken his name, and without any fear?
Rafal's heart stung when he looked out at the lake that he'd had built, the lake that divided the schools. Good with Good, Evil with Evil, he'd told Rhian. There was no bridge in the future. There was no need for one.
He could fly to the Good castle—just to find Clara and thank her.
After curfew, Rafal scanned the Good school grounds from above. He didn't find the Evergirl he was looking for until the third night. She was sitting at the edge where land met water, smoking another cigarette. He crossed into her line of sight, lifting her attention, and he dove and landed next to her.
"Here to send me back to my dorm again?" Clara teased.
"On the contrary," Rafal said, "I wanted to thank you for not being a coward, unlike your peers."
Clara nodded, smiling. "Funny that, isn't it? Good seemed to have the honor and valor beaten out of them."
"Indeed," Rafal said, studying her. "Somehow, they weren't beaten out of you."
Clara inhaled cigarette smoke and blew. "Nope. I just told the Nevers to hit me harder."
She smirked up at Rafal, rousing a heat within him. He swallowed, willing it down, keeping himself and his blasted hormones that occasionally surfaced under control.
"Speaking of hitting," he said, "I should be returning to my castle. The man-wolf I hired to punish my disloyal students has been doing an excellent job."
Clara held out a pack of cigarettes to him. "Stay—just a little longer?"
Rafal glanced at the packaged cigarettes. He couldn't remember the last time he'd smoked, as he was too proud to allow himself to become dependent on anything. He wanted to reject her offer and fly back to his castle, but instead he found himself reaching for the pack and removing a cigarette.
He summoned his fingerglow and lit the cigarette's tip, and he sat down beside Clara.
They smoked in silence, student and School Master, watching the moonlight shimmer across calm waters. Rafal almost didn't want this moment to end. He hadn't felt so at peace in a long time. He was constantly busy with school-related matters, overseeing the Storian, and ensuring his brother wasn't making a royal mess of things. An opportunity to simply be in the present seemed alien to him.
What was more, he'd never bonded with a student, let alone anyone other than Rhian. His heart cracked with guilt as he remembered James Hook, the pirate boy he'd left to die in the sea. But guilt was another weapon of Good, a poison to which Evil souls like himself should've been immune. What was happening to him?
"Are you okay?" Clara asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
Rafal looked at her, and he took a long drag on his cigarette. "Fine."
Clara didn't press him, instead taking her turn to inhale, looking out at the lake.
"I was twelve when I had my first cigarette," she said. "I won't bore you with the details, but my mother almost sent me to the Foxwood School for Girls. She told me to never smoke again, or I wouldn't live long enough to find my Happily Ever After. Not that I want one." She turned to Rafal. "It's kind of unfair how Evers and Nevers have limited options for their endings, don't you think? The Storian writes our fates, boxing us in with the same old choices. Same shit, different story."
A chuckle failed to reach Rafal's throat. He stared at Clara as if she were a puzzle he couldn't solve. Despite having sworn the oath with his brother, Rafal had grown more suspicious of the Storian over the years, questioning its judgment and true purpose in the Woods. Now, an Evergirl had just articulated some of his inner feelings about the Pen, about Man and Pen, free will and fate. Not even one of Rafal's Nevers, past or present, had expressed skepticism toward the way things worked.
"What do you think?" Clara asked.
"I... understand what you mean," Rafal said. "Sometimes I think Man would be better ruling the Woods."
"Do you think it's possible?"
"What?"
"For Man to rule instead?"
Rafal wasn't sure how to answer. Technically, it was possible, for the Storian's power was tied to one hundred rings that each belonged to a major kingdom. But, if the Storian died, the Woods would follow, and there was no other Pen that could inherit its powers under the word of Man.
Unless a new Pen could be forged...
"I don't know," Rafal said.
Rafal reflected on his conversation with Clara later that night in bed. First Aladdin, a proven Everboy, and now Clara, an Evergirl who seemed more like a Nevergirl. Was it possible that she, too, would switch schools, thus restoring the balance between Good and Evil?
Maybe instead of searching the Woods for a new Never to replace Marielana, the seer who'd been expelled for having assisted Vulcan, he should focus on nourishing the darkness in Clara...
A deep, primal part of him rose at the thought, burning hotter than dragon flame.
No, he thought, flinching back the heat.
For the first time as School Master, Rafal couldn't trust himself with a student. Clara had awakened certain emotions in him, emotions that should have been unnatural to his Evil soul. He knew not to act on them. He wouldn't dare. But the idea of turning Clara into a Never was out of the question.
The next day, he set out to find a new student. He stopped in Akgul, where he happened to meet Adela Sader, Marialena's mother, who gave him a cryptic hint that later revealed itself in the School Masters' tower. Rafal caught the Storian rounding up storybooks and sending them away, and he followed them to a faraway land called Woods Beyond, or Gavaldon—according to Marialena, who was there, still in her punishment-given fairy form.
Gavaldon was a disenchanted little village that was oblivious to the fairy-tale world around it, but "Readers" read the mysterious storybooks that gave them a reason to believe. Rafal knew exactly which potential student he wanted to whisk away to his castle. He snuck into the girl's home and introduced himself to her, and she demanded to be taken, but Rafal couldn't bring himself to do so. He vanished and returned to the school.
It was night when he arrived, and he found that Rhian had hired James Hook as dean. The pirate boy was clearly alive, but after Rafal, disguised as a new student, Fala, learned what they had planned together, he almost wished he hadn't survived at all.
Rafal took it upon himself to prepare his Nevers without revealing his true identity, showing them a more caring, supportive side of him that he'd never shown any of his past students.
Vulcan had created the Trial by Tale. Hook had created the Circus of Talents, where the Evers were cheating their way to winning with magic, terrorizing the Nevers. Only two Evergirls played fair—Kyma, who refused to light her fingerglow, and Clara, who conjured a shower of red roses over Fala's head and blew a kiss to him.
The color of Rafal's face matched the roses. Did she know it was him?
He pushed her out of his mind as his Nevers were next. They demonstrated scenes where Evil was Good and Good was Evil, revealing the ugliness in the Evers, except for the two aforementioned Evergirls. Rafal, as Fala, ended the show with his own act that he hoped would change his brother for the better, an act not of revenge, but of love.
Rafal thought he'd reminded his brother of the love they'd once shared. After the show, Rafal found that nothing had changed, when Rhian breathed his soul into Hook. The pirate boy had promised that he'd find and rid of Fala, but instead, he created a bridge later that night to steal their best Evers and Nevers.
The School Masters needed new blood. Rafal was considering revisiting Gavaldon, but he didn't want to give his twin another advantage. He'd had enough, especially with the Storian still favoring Good.
But there was a problem that Rafal had never encountered in one hundred years.
The gash on his arm—from when he'd lashed out at the Pen and attempted to grab it—hadn't healed.
He kept the wound covered. He knew why it wasn't healing.
Rhian.
The restless soul who craved to grow beyond their brotherly love for each other, the love they'd sworn to the Storian. The Evil twin. Not the Good twin. Never the Good twin.
There'd been signs all along. Rafal's demand for order and loyalty, honor and valor. They'd chosen the wrong sides. They'd been teaching the wrong students.
Yet Rafal still felt his soul called to Evil. He'd been Evil for so long that he doubted he had a shred of Good left.
But the Saders' prophecy suggested that one of the twins was fated to kill the other.
Not me, Rafal thought.
He wasn't going to be the dead one. He needed someone who would fight for him. Kill, even, if the dreaded moment were to arise. A loyal soldier.
Each night, he searched the Good school grounds for Clara, and when he found her, he asked to speak with her somewhere more private. She agreed, and Rafal took her in his arms and flew her to the balcony of room sixty-six, Malice Tower. There, he put her down carefully and led her inside the empty dorm, conjuring the chandelier's flames.
He told her almost everything: the prophecy, the explanation for his brother's recent behavior, and his need for protection from his own blood.
Rafal stepped closer to her, gazing into her eyes, and he stroked her cheek.
"Would you be my protector?" he asked. "My faithful soldier?"
He expected her to give him an enthusiastic "yes," but Clara hesitated.
"Faithful soldier?" she repeated. "Is that all I am to you?"
Rafal blinked, hand falling from her face.
Clara brought her hand up to the back of his head, combing her fingers through his thick and white, spiky hair. Rafal couldn't move, frozen by her touch and the darkness in her eyes. She stood taller and pressed their lips together.
A wave of heat spread throughout Rafal's body, burning away any intentions he had to pull back. He let the kiss linger, his mind fogged with desire, his ice-cold will melting.
Clara's lips moved from his mouth to his ear, the warmth of her breath sending a delightful shiver down his spine.
"Yes," she said, voice low. "I would protect you at any costs, but I'm not disposable."
She drew back and looked at him, her gaze dark and all-consuming like a black hole, pulling Rafal in.
Rafal grabbed her and held her close, resuming the kiss with a fire that she returned in equal passion.
He had never allowed himself to kiss anyone, not in the way that he was kissing Clara. It was against the nature of Evil to kiss someone with anything but self-serving motives, to love someone as truly and deeply as he was, and he couldn't stop, overcome with a whirlwind of new sensations. Clara jumped and secured her legs around his waist, and he instinctively held her up. Rafal carried her to the bed and laid her down.
Clara ran her hands through his hair and arched her back, desperate for him. Rafal trailed kisses down her neck and over her collarbone, lost in the sound of her breathless moans and the softness of her heated skin. He pulled away for a moment, observing her under him. Her face was flushed, eyes half-lidded and full lips slightly parted. So beautiful, so needy...
What was he doing?
She was a student.
He was a School Master.
"What's wrong?" Clara asked.
Rafal shook his head. "No."
He pushed himself off of Clara, and she sat up with a puzzled look.
"What is it?" she asked.
Rafal sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I can't do this."
"Why not?"
"What we were doing crosses certain boundaries that can't be crossed," Rafal said, adjusting his tie. "As School Masters, we take an oath to protect our students."
Clara snorted a laugh. "What are you protecting me from? Consensual sex between two adults?"
"I am an immortal School Master," Rafal said coolly. "You are a student, mortal and freshly eighteen. There's a world of a difference between us."
Clara smiled, shaking her head in disbelief. "So, you're saying I have to wait until after graduation, after being your faithful soldier, if I'm even alive by then?"
Rafal looked away. "No, I have someone else who can protect me in mind." He started toward the balcony doors and turned to her. "Come. I'm taking you back to your school."
Clara didn't move. She was glowering at him.
"Now," Rafal said.
For a tense moment, Rafal thought he would be forced to conjure a portal to the Good castle and push her through, but then Clara obliged, leaving the bed and joining him. She let him carry her in his arms and fly her back, but she wouldn't spare him another glance.
As he watched her return inside the glass castle, Rafal scolded himself. He scolded himself for kissing a student, and for wanting to kiss and touch and hold her again. He could never love anyone but his brother, his family. The only person with whom he was allowed to spend eternity.
But Rhian could no longer be trusted, and he especially proved his disloyalty, once again, when he found his own Reader in Gavaldon.
Rafal had failed to collect his potential student, the person who would've had been his faithful soldier. She'd betrayed him, having turned him over to the Elders to be burned at the stake. The twin School Masters had barely escaped Gavaldon together, and they'd brought with them the Reader that they both wanted.
Midas, the boy was named. He was not the puppet that Rhian thought he was, and he ended up making a deal with Rafal to take him home if he spied on his brother.
But Rhian knew, and then came Peter Pan and the war over the school.
Rhian had armies. Rafal had students and man-wolves.
The once Evil brother had proven himself Good when he'd returned a boy to flesh, a boy he'd previously turned gold with Midas's enchanted touch to win over the man-wolves. Everyone cheered and chanted Rafal's name, except one.
Clara looked at him as if what he'd done with Midas wasn't Good at all.
But his actions, however harsh they seemed, were only done in the name of Good. He was deserving of this, students wearing his gold armor, the natural color of his soul, fighting for him and for the future of the Woods.
Rafal tried to reach out to his brother, to reconcile, but Rhian was too far gone in his wickedness. Sometime into the battle, a wave of gold swept through the land, turning everyone and everything in its path, and when it receded, Peter Pan was gone.
The twin School Masters had been given a second chance. They visited the Storian together, to see whom it would deem the One.
It painted Rafal.
The Good brother tried to comfort Rhian, but the Evil brother grabbed the Storian.
Just before he could wield it like a weapon, a blast of gold light sent him flying.
Clara was standing in the entryway, fingerglow blazing.
The moment his brother rebounded, launching at Clara, Rafal snatched the Storian and pierced Rhian through the chest, a dragon slain. But the death of his twin didn't feel like a victory at all. His own chest stung with a pain greater than anything he'd ever known, as if he'd severed a part of himself. Tears filled Rafal's eyes as the life left his brother's blue stare.
"I'm sorry," Rafal said. "Forgive me, Rhian."
The Storian spoke, calling Rafal to seal the oath. At the white stone table, he raised his hand, and the tale ended with a splatter of blood across the last pages.
A year later, Rafal stood in his tower, looking out through the window at his two castles that were linked by a bridge. He was alone, but it was peaceful like this. No distractions, no stresses beyond school-related matters. Total privacy and independence. The Pen was his only company, scrawling away in its new storybook. A part of Rafal still longed for his other half. A part of him still questioned whether he'd done the right thing, the only thing he could have done to have defended himself. Clara had followed them that night. She'd known Rhian would've murdered him if he hadn't been named the One. The Storian would have been corrupted. Perhaps Evil would have won indefinitely—or Good. The balance would have suffered.
Now, Good and Evil were balanced in a single leader, and it showed in the tales that the Storian had been telling since the One had risen. Both sides humbled and improved each other, two opposites always at war, yet inseparable.
Footsteps sounded up the stairs, light footsteps that belonged to an Evergirl. She emerged into the tower and met Rafal halfway before she stopped.
"You wished to speak with me?" Rafal said, still facing the window.
"What happened to you?" Clara asked, her tone somewhat demanding.
Rafal turned around. "What do you mean?"
"I thought you would make a difference," Clara said. "I thought you would want to have more control over the Storian, over fate, instead of simply leaving things the way they are."
"I have taken control of fate," Rafal said. "If I hadn't, I wouldn't be standing here. I wouldn't be the One School Master."
"I interfered in your fate," Clara said. "I helped you kill your brother before he could kill you. I trusted my judgment over the Storian's, unlike you."
Rafal bristled. He drew closer to her, shrinking the distance between them. He towered over her like a god, intending to remind her that he was the one immortal and powerful and robed in gold, but she held his gaze, unflinching.
"Why did you really wish to see me, Clara?" Rafal asked. "Surely you didn't just come here to insult me. I do have more important business to be tending to."
Clara swallowed, her glistening eyes telling him that she was trying to keep her emotions down.
"Don't you see the problem?" she said, her voice quieter, yet urgent. "The Pen still decides our fates. It still plays with us, regardless of whether we want to be in its tales or not. The only choices we have are the choices it gives us depending on the story it wants to tell. Good and Evil—they feed the Pen. It keeps the two sides in a forever war that ultimately means nothing—because it's all an illusion, an illusion crafted by a Pen that writes our world according to its own selfish whims. It doesn't truly serve anyone but itself."
Rafal hesitated, her words shattering his once certain reality, unearthing thoughts he hadn't had since he'd become the One, as if the Pen had written away all his doubts. The unfamiliar sensation of dread prickled up his spine. He attempted to remember when exactly he'd changed. Was it the Pen, or was it when his soul had shed all its Evil, the moment he'd become Good—the moment he'd become like his brother had once been, unquestioning and obedient?
"Do you see now?" Clara said. "Do you see what's wrong with all of this?"
Rafal cast the Storian a sideways glance. Its writing pace had slowed, as though it were listening.
He shoved aside doubts and suspicions and locked them away once more. He was the One, chosen by the Storian to be its protector. Death was the price of betrayal. He wouldn't join his twin. Even if what Clara said were true, the Pen was keeping the Woods alive and in perfect harmony. Centuries of peace lied ahead. Rafal could feel it in his soul, a soul that the Pen reflected in its tales.
"No," Rafal said. "Good and Evil have always been the foundation of the Woods. There is nothing wrong. You will come to understand that in time."
Clara stared at him, intense, dark eyes trying to bear the weight of tears. Her mouth twitched. She turned, but midway toward the stairs, she stopped and gave him one last look.
"I liked you better when you were Evil," she said. "Less complacent. Less of a puppet."
Rafal glared at her, tempted to lash back, but Clara was already leaving the tower.
He didn't hear from her again. Not until three years after graduation.
Three years in which his soul had grown restless.
Good and Evil. It was all the same. Kings, princesses, witches. Ever Afters and Nevermores. There was nothing new. There had been nothing new in the truest sense of the word for thousands of years. The Storian wrote more-or-less the same tales over and over, keeping the Woods locked in what could've been the past today. This was all there was, a war with no end, a wasteland of Good and Evil victories that would stretch on for eternity.
Same shit, different story.
Clara had been captured by Camelot's knights on behalf of the king and was sentenced to public execution, but Rafal had intervened and ordered her to be sent to his tower, unharmed. Her hands were tied behind her back and gloved with anti-magic material, preventing her from casting any spells. She was as beautiful as Rafal had remembered her, but her eyes blazed with a fire that threatened to burn him, even without magic.
"You've persuaded half of the kingdoms to burn their rings," Rafal said, pacing in a casual manner. "You've even managed to have a new Pen forged. I must say, I'm impressed. Things I would have never thought possible. I always knew you were an exceptional student who would go far, though you've certainly gone further than I expected." He stopped and looked at her. "Unfortunately, I can't let you outside these walls, otherwise you'll be burning before all of Camelot."
"Then let me burn," Clara lashed out. "Immortalize my message."
"You know as well as I do that I could erase all traces of you across the Woods," Rafal said. "Nothing about you or what you've done will be immortalized."
Clara's eyes dotted with tears that she struggled to hold back.
"You only care about power," she said. "You've only ever cared about power. It's more important than the truth to you."
Rafal stepped toward her, closing the gap between them.
"No," he said, lifting her chin gently. "There's something more important to me than both of those things."
Clara looked up at him, blinking tears away, and Rafal leaned in and touched their lips.
Clara froze, but gradually, she melted into the moment. Rafal brushed her hair away from her face, and his fingers found their way to the back of her neck, clasping, deepening the kiss. He wanted to slash through her bounds and feel her hands in his hair. He wanted to carry her to the bed and finish what they couldn't several years ago.
They broke the kiss at the same time, needing air, foreheads resting against each other as breaths mingled.
"Please, Clara," Rafal said. "Become immortal with me."
Clara huffed a laugh. "I love you, Rafal, but I'm not signing my soul away to that devil."
Rafal smiled against her lips. "You won't have to."
The Storian tried to protect itself. It sensed the change in Rafal's soul, just as it had once sensed a similar restlessness—a hunger for more—in his twin's. It didn't attempt to kill Rafal until its efforts to thwart his plans with the power of storytelling failed, but there was a force even greater than the Storian itself, a force that granted life in the face of death.
Love.
A love as true and deep as it was cold and calculating. A love that destroyed and rebuilt. A love that transcended Good and Evil.
Together, Rafal and Clara chained the weakening Storian to its table.
Burn your rings, Rafal had ordered in his letters to all major kingdoms.
Not long after, the Storian clattered to the floor, lifeless steel, and the new Pen rose, as gold and luminous as Rafal's soul.
Finally, Man was free.