The Last Ever After

  Tedros was a mess of tears. “You were my mother. . . . You were my whole life. . . . I wanted to die when you left—”

  “But you didn’t,” said Guinevere. “And I didn’t either, even if I thought I would. For months, I pounded at the moors and screamed at the sky, begging the Lady of the Lake to take me back to you. But Merlin had forbidden her. He came every Sunday that first year to soothe me and tell me stories of what you were up to: how you’d sit in on the advisers’ meetings and ask them questions about the kingdom; how you’d hide your vegetables under your rice so the nursemaid wouldn’t notice; how you’d sit with Arthur every night after I’d left, even if he wouldn’t say a word to you . . . and how you cursed me for days and weeks after he died. I’d make Merlin tell me every detail again and again until I cried myself to sleep.”

  She smiled wistfully. “He came less and less as the years went on and soon only on Christmas. But on that one day, I’d feel like a child again, listening to the tale of my own son growing bolder and stronger, his mother’s absence fueling his desire to make something of himself. And soon I began to feel bold and strong too, knowing I finally had an honest love instead of a love forced by duty. It didn’t matter if Lancelot and I would be alone for the rest of our lives; it didn’t matter if we were cast out in disgrace . . . because we’d found real Good, instead of a lie, and honored the truth of our stories. Listening to Merlin speak of you, year after year, I started to feel I was living with you, even if I wasn’t there, growing younger and younger in spirit while you grew older and older—until here we are, humbled by the blessings of Good, our two stories connected once more. Only now I see Merlin was right. Just as your father made you strong and responsible, my leaving Camelot also made you the man you are. It made you sensitive, independent, and resilient and led you to your perfect queen. Naturally, it also made you a bit raw and bullheaded—”

  “Like Father,” Tedros sniffled.

  “No,” said Guinevere sharply. “Your father would never be sitting here with me the way you are right now. Your father could never see that deep down, everything I did was to give all of us a chance to find real happiness. He believed happiness meant something very different. He was a different kind of man . . . a different kind of king. But you can see what he can’t, Tedros. That even though your father and I are flawed to our very core, we came together by the grace of our stories to make the most perfect child in the world. And for that, all of our pain is worth it.”

  Tedros couldn’t speak anymore. His mother clasped him to her chest, letting him cry, his muscles fighting and fighting her until at last they surrendered and he curled against her like a little boy. They stayed that way a long time, until his heaving breaths calmed.

  “Does that ogre treat you well?” he croaked, nose running.

  Guinevere laughed. “As well as an ogre can treat a lady.”

  “’Cause if he doesn’t, I’ll gouge out his eye,” Tedros puffed.

  “I appreciate your chivalry—”

  “If he so much as looks at you the wrong way—”

  “How many times you gonna threaten to kill me before you cock up and do it, boy,” a voice growled.

  Tedros whirled to see Lancelot approaching, while the rest of the Ever-Never army were gathered in the distance outside the house.

  “Though you might want to wait a bit,” said the knight, “considering Merlin just paired the old and young ones up and chose me as your training leader.”

  Tedros frowned.

  “Come on, lad,” Lancelot smirked, beckoning him towards the others. “Time to show us what you learned at that godforsaken school.”

  Guinevere smiled. “Be gentle with him, Lance.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Lancelot said with a wink.

  Tedros stayed by his mother’s side, watching the knight catch up with the others.

  “Go on, now,” Guinevere urged. “You and your queen have a war to win. Can’t be wasting time with an old housewife.”

  Tedros turned. “You’ll be home when I get back?”

  The question was so silly and obvious . . . and yet his mother knew what he meant.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she answered flatly.

  Tedros nodded, averting his eyes. He rose and started to jog after Lancelot before he stopped and looked at her one last time.

  “I love you, Mother.”

  He sprinted ahead, ensuring Guinevere didn’t have time to say it back.

  She didn’t need to.

  Him saying it was enough for the both of them.

  It wasn’t long before the first death.

  Lady Lesso had been warning from the start that having New students fight Old, bloodthirsty zombies was recklessly stupid, but Sophie felt like the young students had been pampered enough. First, Rafal had protected them from the front line of the coming war. Then, he’d moved war preparations to the School for New, since the old Good castle was warmer and better lit. Then he’d abolished the Doom Room, allowed open access to the Groom Room, and even halted further tracking, ensuring half-mogrified dimwits like Kiko wouldn’t be fully turned into animals and plants until after the war.

  Enough was enough, Sophie scowled. She was Training Leader and the training fights would continue as scheduled, no matter what anyone said. It didn’t matter if the old villains were injuring and torturing the new students. Evil had a war to win, and Evil only learned to be Evil through suffering and pain.

  That’s how she’d learned, after all. And now her classmates would too.

  She’d planned the entire training schedule herself. For the next six days, four hundred villains, Old and New, would be divided amongst the various Evil teachers and rooms. During each class, there were no lectures, no tests, no challenges. Instead, teachers would supervise one-on-one fights between an old zombie and a young student in accordance with a class theme. Each student’s schedule consisted of the following sessions:

  EVIL ARMY TRAINING

  Session

  Faculty

  1: WEAPONS FIGHTING

  Castor

  2: SPELLS FIGHTING

  Prof. Bilious Manley

  3: TALENT FIGHTING

  Prof. Sheeba Sheeks

  4: DEVIOUS FIGHTING

  Pollux

  5: LUNCH

  6: MENTAL FIGHTING

  Lady Lesso

  7: HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT

  Lord Aric

  From the very first class, screams of young Evers and Nevers rang through the hall. An ogre chased Reena with an axe during Weapons, a witch burned a hole in Vex’s thigh during Spells, Jack’s giant threw Chaddick down the stairs in Talents, and Red Riding Hood’s wolf ate half-feathered Kiko before Pollux made him choke her out. Meanwhile, Aric’s Hand-to-Hand Combat sessions produced so many gashes and concussions and broken bones that the fairies set up a makeshift infirmary in the foyer, supervised by Beatrix, who scurried about in a panic, dispensing healing elixirs and spells out of old library books.

  As the days went on, Sophie began to relish the students’ misery and the growing number of bodies in the infirmary, as if her heart, once fueled by love and hope, was now only fueled by other people’s pain. She woke up craving the first screams of the morning and felt forlorn when the day’s training ended and the students limped back to their rooms. By the third night, she was staying up late to make her own draws of who would fight each other the next day.

  “Think I’ll put Beatrix against Hook,” she said, perched in the windowsill, as she scribbled onto a piece of parchment.

  Rafal eyed her across his chamber as he changed shirts. “The point of training is to prepare the Dark Army for war. Not batter young students, who won’t be on the front line.”

  “That wasn’t my decision,” Sophie murmured.

  “Our students are Evil’s future, Sophie. We have to protect them until they’re fully trained—”

  “And that’s what I’m doing. I’m training them.”

  “By breaking thei
r bones and spirits? I’m not sure they see it that way.”

  “I’m not sure I care,” Sophie murmured.

  “Says the girl who used to care desperately what other people thought of her.”

  Sophie looked up. “I care what you think.”

  The young School Master smiled. “I think you’re forgetting that once upon a time, you were in their shoes.”

  Sophie frowned and went back to her list. “Actually, I don’t care what you think.”

  Rafal was about to say something, but Sophie preempted him. “You put me in charge, didn’t you?” she clipped, without looking up. “If you have doubts, then replace me.”

  She heard the young School Master sigh, but he spoke nothing more.

  The truth was, deep down, Sophie wished she could feel bad for her fellow classmates. But she felt nothing. It was as if a part of her heart had simply switched off. She didn’t know when it had happened. When Tedros’ kiss turned rotten? When she learned Agatha had used her to get closer to her prince? Or was it when she finally looked at herself in Evil’s crown and felt strong and in control for the first time in her life? Perhaps it was all of these and more . . . a lifetime of rejections by Good, casing her heart inch by inch until it sealed to stone.

  And indeed, with each passing day, she noticed her skin was paler, her voice steelier, her muscles harder, with her ice-blue veins almost translucent through her skin, matching the chill inside of her. Though still in her young body, she felt like one of the old, dead-eyed zombies, drained of humanity. Even her kisses with Rafal had changed. His lips no longer felt cold.

  By the fifth day, Sophie had disbanded the infirmary, since students had started faking injuries to avoid having to fight. Even the most intrepid Nevers trudged into the ring with their hands up, offering no resistance before their zombie opponent punched them, slashed them, or blasted them across the castle. Sophie was furious at first, but she knew the young students would eventually pay the price for such cowardice.

  And indeed, when Beatrix accosted her in the hall after lunch, face shining with tears, screaming that a student had been killed, Sophie couldn’t help but feel whoever it was had deserved it.

  “Saw it from our window—it was an ogre . . . threw someone off the belfry . . . into the bay—” Beatrix gasped.

  “It’s what happens when you don’t fight back,” said Sophie, without stopping.

  Beatrix grabbed her arm. “But aren’t you going to see whose body it is? It must have come from Castor’s class—”

  “There won’t be a body if it was thrown into the bay. Slime would eat it right up,” said Sophie airily. “I suppose it erases the need for a funeral.”

  Beatrix gaped at her, trembling. “All you ever wanted was to be Good. And now . . . you’re as bad as him.”

  Sophie pulled Beatrix’s hand off her arm and walked away. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  It turned out the student thrown off the belfry wasn’t a student at all, but Beezle, who’d been cheering for an ogre in his fight against Ravan, only to stumble into the middle of the ogre’s charge and end up head butted over the railing. (Castor led a short memorial before first session the next day in which no one shed a tear.)

  By the afternoon, Sophie was making her rounds as usual and noticed for the first time that the New students were actually performing better. Whether Beezle’s death had scared them into action or they’d had enough of losing or their survival instincts had finally kicked in, the young Evers and Nevers fought back with a vengeance against the old villains, using an array of black magic that Sophie had never seen. Vex cast himself into a noxious wind to beat off the wolf, Kiko turned part of the floor to acid, burning a hole in a witch’s feet, while Chaddick morphed into a deadly germ and infected his troll opponent. All three of them still lost in the end, but by the morning of the sixth day, the School for New had their first victory, when Beatrix summoned crows that pecked out Cinderella’s stepsisters’ eyes. The zombie-girls managed to recover them from the pesky birds, so they’d no doubt have their revenge on Beatrix later . . . and yet, Sophie wondered. Where had the students learned such black magic? Certainly not from the School Master, who’d restricted the teaching of sorcery at the School for New, either because he didn’t trust the young Evers and Nevers with it or because he viewed such sorcery as a direct threat to his own.

  So it had to be a teacher, Sophie thought. And yet, none of them took credit for the rise in the students’ performance. Instead, they thought she was responsible for it. Once doubtful of her training methods, now all the teachers gave Sophie approving looks.

  All the teachers, that is, except for one.

  Sophie waited until a break between sessions to knock on the door of Professor Dovey’s old room. When the locked door magically opened, the pumpkin treacle walls were still intact from the Good old days, but now they were cracked from end to end, like a mirror that might shatter at any moment.

  Lady Lesso was poring over a scroll at Professor Dovey’s old sour-plum desk, the plums all rotted to black pulp.

  “Interesting choice of rooms,” said Sophie, sitting on one of the students’ desks and glancing around.

  She heard sniffling, oddly guttural, and looked up to see Lady Lesso hastily wipe her nose and adjust herself at the desk.

  “I didn’t choose it,” she said, eyes still on her scroll. “As the senior faculty member, I let the others pick their rooms first. Professor Dovey’s was the only one left.”

  “You must miss her,” said Sophie smoothly. “Clarissa was your best friend.”

  Lady Lesso raised her violet eyes. “I’m not sure you’ve earned the right to call a Dean by her first name.”

  “A former Dean,” Sophie said. “And I am her superior as I am yours, so I can call anyone what I like. I’d call you by your first name too if I knew it, Lady Lesso. You aren’t a teacher to me anymore. You’re an employee.”

  “My, my.” Lady Lesso grinned at Sophie’s pale face and stone-mouthed expression. “It’s like looking in a mirror at my younger self. Even sound like me.”

  She went back to her scroll, producing another strange sniffle that made her readjust her chair. “Regardless, since no one knows my first name and Professor Dovey is frozen at the bottom of a dungeon, I suppose this is all rather irrelevant. Though I’m quite envious of Clarissa, given she doesn’t have four hundred students to supervise now, with Young, Old, Ever, and Never all attending class in one castle. So if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to my lesson plan before next session starts—”

  “Speaking of your lesson plan, what is it you’re teaching them exactly?” Sophie asked. “You’re the only teacher who locks her door during training so that I can’t stop by.”

  “Nor can my son, and given the School Master has made it abundantly clear he’ll let Aric kill me, locking my door seems the least I can do. As for what I teach them, I’m preparing them for war, just as you instructed, my queen.”

  “Is that so? I’ve stood outside your door after class ends and never once has a young student come out looking like they’ve been in a fight.”

  “Because teaching them to fight means teaching them to protect themselves,” Lady Lesso glared. “Particularly when the fight is an unfair one.”

  Sophie smiled wryly at the Dean. “It was you, then, wasn’t it? You taught them black magic to fight against the old villains.” She paused, confused. “And yet the old villains were still in the classroom the whole time.”

  “I put them to sleep while I taught the others,” said Lady Lesso. “A simple mist of Sleeping Willow. When they woke up, it was as if they were never in class at all. Surely you remember the effects of it from your first-year Trial.”

  Sophie’s jaw clenched. “You had no right to disobey orders!”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” Lady Lesso replied swiftly. “The young students are brimming with confidence. The old villains have been forced to raise their level, since the new students are giving them a f
ight. The teachers now fully support you as their leader. Even Rafal no longer looks as if he’d made a mistake in letting love guide him.”

  Sophie said nothing.

  Lady Lesso let out a long sigh. “Sophie, my dear. You think I’m working against you, when helping Evil to win has been my life’s work. After all, I was the one who told you there were spies for Good plotting against you within this very school. But ever since you returned, I’ve feared that your emotions are too volatile to lead our army. I could feel the young students resisting you instead of respecting you. You cannot beat young souls down into believing in Evil. You yourself only gave Evil a chance when it gave you something to fight for. By helping the students fight back, I empowered them for the first time since they stepped foot in their new school. I helped them see that, Ever or Never, trusting in Evil is their only hope to survive.”

  Sophie looked skeptical. “So why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”

  Lady Lesso leaned in. “Because I wanted Rafal and the teachers to credit the reversal in their performance entirely to you.”