“Quickly then.”
“No!” Agatha shrieked, her gag breaking away.
Guards wrenched Callis from the crowd onto the stage and shoved her next to Agatha, binding her waist to the pyre. Helpless, Tedros ripped at the rope, his bicep veins about to burst.
“This is my fault . . . ,” Agatha sobbed. “This is all my fault—”
“Close your eyes, dear,” said Callis, trying not to cry. “It will all go fast from here.”
Agatha looked up and saw Stefan’s hand wasn’t shaking on the torch anymore. With an eerie calm, he advanced towards her and her mother, the dancing flame reaching for the wood sticks between them. He finally met Agatha’s eyes, a strange sadness in his face.
“If you ever see my daughter again, beyond this world . . . tell her I love her.”
“Now, Stefan,” the Elder commanded.
Petrified, Agatha seized Tedros’ hand as she leaned into her mother’s shoulder. She saw Stefan looking at Callis, his lips trembling.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” he whispered.
“You saved me once upon a time, Stefan.” Callis smiled mournfully at him. “I owe you a debt.”
“I c-c-can’t,” Stefan faltered.
“You must,” said Callis, hard as steel.
“NOW!” the Elder thundered.
With a pained cry, Stefan plunged the torch at Callis. Agatha screamed—
Callis thrust out her finger from beneath the binds and shot a blast of green light at the torch. The fire turned green and ricocheted off the pyre like a comet, blasting Stefan off the platform, before circling the stage in a wall of green flames, sealing the captives in.
Before Agatha could suck in a breath, her mother cut her and Tedros loose from the rope with her glowing fingertip. She grabbed Agatha and spoke over the villagers’ cries beyond the firewall—
“The spell won’t last, so listen carefully. Stefan knew what I was, Agatha. From the night you went after Sophie, we had a plan to save you girls from the Elders if you ever returned. Stefan would do anything to keep his daughter safe. But when you came back without Sophie, Stefan had no reason to keep to the plan and endanger his new family . . . unless he believes his daughter still needs you. You must repay my old debt to him, Agatha. You must save Sophie as Stefan saved you. You hear me? Do not fail. Now run for Graves Hill as fast as you can—”
“You’re a w-w-witch—” Agatha spluttered, trying to find air. “You were a witch all along—”
“The grave between the two swans. Help will be there, waiting for you,” her mother cut in. “You must find the grave before it’s too late.”
Dazed, Tedros turned to Agatha, expecting her to know what her mother was talking about. But Agatha was paralyzed, staring ahead. Tedros spun back to Callis. “Who? Who will be waiting for u—”
Only now Tedros saw what his princess was looking at . . . the circle of fire falling around the stage, Callis’ spell about to end. In the green firelight, Agatha glimpsed Stefan, stunned on the ground but unharmed, before a fleet of shadows jumped over him, throttling towards the stage. Tedros and Agatha raised their eyes at the same time to see the guards charging through the crowd with spears, dashing right for them.
Callis took Agatha’s face in her hands. “Don’t look back, Agatha.” She kissed her daughter’s forehead hard. “Whatever you do, promise me you won’t look back.”
With a scared cry, Agatha grabbed her mother’s hand, but her prince was already dragging her towards the edge of the stage away from the sprinting guards. Tedros hooked his arm over Agatha and flung the both of them off the platform in a flying leap. Spinning around, Agatha pulled her mother with them, holding on to her hand with every ounce of strength—
Callis smiled at Agatha in the fading firelight and let her daughter go.
Agatha crashed in dirt, twisting her ankle, before Tedros lifted her up in darkness, towing her towards the town gates. “No—I can’t leave her—” she croaked, resisting him.
“‘Don’t look back.’ That’s what she said,” Tedros fought, goading her ahead. “Trust your mother, Agatha. She’s a witch. A powerful witch. We’re the ones who need saving now.”
Hearing the guards’ shouts, Agatha let Tedros shove her forward. She pinned her eyes on Graves Hill ahead, hobbling beside him. Don’t look back, she begged herself, Tedros clenching her like a vise. Don’t look back . . .
Agatha looked back to see three guards hurdle the sinking firewall towards Callis, spears about to impale her. Her mother held her ground.
“What is she doing?” Agatha choked, freezing in horror.
“Agatha, don’t!” cried Tedros—
Agatha broke free of him and started running back. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING—”
“Kill her!” the Elder’s voice shouted faraway.
Callis raised her arms, welcoming the guards.
They charged and Agatha’s mother fell.
“NO!” Agatha screamed, voice tearing out of her throat. She sank to her knees at the foot of Graves Hill. Her eyes fogged. Her heart deadened. All she saw was a blur of shadows swarming her mother as the shallow fires extinguished, an army of darkness overwhelming the last ashes of light.
“She let them . . . ,” Agatha whispered. “She let them kill her.”
Little by little, she felt the dirt wet on her knees, the numbness wearing off to an onslaught of pain—the dagger-edged thoughts that she had no family anymore . . . that her only parent had deserted her . . . that her mother had given her nothing to come home to ever again. She curled into herself, sobbing with fury. Men were no match for a witch. She could have done another spell! She could have ripped them all to shreds! Agatha cried and cried until she heard a strange echo between shuddering breaths . . . the whispered sound of her name . . .
Agatha lifted her eyes to a swollen-eyed boy standing over her, beautiful and scared, and for a moment, she saw nothing but a stranger. It was only when Agatha saw his legs unsteady, that she knew her prince was trying to tell her something. Slowly Tedros pointed a shaky finger over her head. Agatha turned.
Six guards raced towards them from the square, armed with torches and spears.
“We have to run, Agatha,” Tedros rasped. “We have to run right now.”
Agatha didn’t move, still nauseous. “How could she let them . . .”
“To save you, Agatha,” her prince implored, watching the guards gain ground. “And everything she did, everything your mother and Sophie’s father did to keep us alive will be in vain if we don’t go now.”
Agatha gazed into the wet pools of his eyes and suddenly she understood. Her mother didn’t want her to stay with her. Her mother didn’t want her to come back to Gavaldon. She wanted Agatha to save her best friend . . . to find happiness with her prince . . . to abandon this world for a better one, far far away . . .
Because her happy ending wasn’t here. It was never here.
Her mother had died to set her free.
Do not fail.
She had to find her real ending.
She had to run.
Agatha looked up at the guards bolting towards them, spears gleaming in torchlight. Rage blasted through her blood and scorched through her muscles, nothing holding her back anymore. Lunging to her feet, she hurtled up the slope of Graves Hill.
“Come on! We’ll lose them in the graves!”
Together, they ripped through the rusted graveyard gates into the dark expanse of graves. Even in pitch black, Agatha knew every step, navigating the headstones like a wily squirrel, while Tedros collided with them, cursing so barbarically even the grave worms fled.
Panting fire, his princess led him into the thick of the cemetery. The Elders had taken her family from her. They wouldn’t take her prince too.
“The grave between the swans,” Tedros called out behind her. “She said help would be waiting there—”
“Swans?” Agatha blurted. “There are no swans in Gavaldon!”
Tedros looked back down the hill
and saw the guards barreling up, carrying torches. “Thirty seconds, Agatha! We have thirty seconds!”
Agatha scoured stones and plaques and obelisks for evidence of a swan. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for!”
“Twenty seconds!” Tedros voice rang out.
She couldn’t see her prince anymore. Agatha whirled desperately, trying to steady her mind. The only birds she’d ever seen in Gavaldon were smog-colored ducks and obese pigeons. She’d never even seen a real swan, especially not on Graves Hill—
Agatha’s heart pattered faster.
But she had seen swans before, hadn’t she? Swans were the symbols of the School for Good and Evil: one black, one white . . . representing two School Masters in balance . . . one brother Good, one brother Evil . . .
If Callis was a witch, she’d have known the Good and Evil swans. That’s how she knew so much about the school, Agatha thought. Her mother must have seen it for herself . . .
“Ten seconds!” Tedros shouted—
Agatha closed her eyes and tried to focus, her temples throbbing.
Swans . . . school . . . Stefan . . .
“You saved me,” Callis had whispered to him.
What had she meant? If Callis and Stefan had a history, maybe the swans involved something that connected her mother and Sophie’s father . . . something that both of them had in common . . . or someone . . .
Agatha’s heart stopped. Her eyes shot open.
She was already running.
“What is it?” Tedros yelled, seeing her shadow dart deeper into the cemetery, towards the house on Graves Hill.
“Here! It’s over here!”
Tedros chased her, squinting at her outline fading into the dark. He looked back and saw the army of shadows smash through the graveyard gates, spears glinting. Tedros dove to the ground behind a domed stone. He peeked over it and saw the guards sweeping torches over the rows of graves. Tedros ducked down. “This is worse than the Woods,” he wheezed, crawling through stones to follow Agatha. “Sooooo much worse—”
Then he saw her, crouched in the final row of headstones, only a short distance from her house. Tedros skidded into dirt beside her. “They’re coming, Agatha!”
“Sophie’s mother. That’s what connected them,” Agatha said, gripping a tablet gravestone knifing out of the ground, engraved with the words “Loving Wife and Mother.” Two smaller dirt-caked graves, one lighter, one darker, flanked it on either side like wings. “Before Sophie, she couldn’t have a child. Two boys, both born dead.”
She ran her hand over the lighter of the two boys’ graves, pulling away the grime. Tedros’ eyes bulged as Agatha’s fingers cleared the headstone, revealing a small black swan carved into the unmarked grave. Tedros tore away the moss from the darker grave, revealing a white swan set in the stone. He and Agatha both turned to the larger grave in the middle, towering between the two swans.
“When she couldn’t have a child, Sophie’s mother went to see mine as a patient. That’s what Sophie told me,” Agatha pressed. “Somehow it’s all connected. Sophie’s mother . . . my mother being a witch . . . the debt she owed Stefan . . . I don’t know how it’s connected, but it has to be—”
Firelight swept over the both of them.
Agatha and Tedros flattened to the ground and swiveled to see the guards five rows back.
“We found the swans—we found the grave—” Tedros panicked, gaping at the bigger headstone. “Where’s the help?”
Agatha shook her head. “We can’t fight the guards without magic, Tedros! We need to make our wish!”
The prince swallowed. “Wish to reopen our story on three, okay? Hands behind our back—” He stopped.
His right fingertip was already glowing gold.
Agatha looked down at hers, glowing almost an identical shade.
“Did you make the wish?” Tedros asked.
Agatha shook her head.
“Neither did I,” Tedros said, confused. “How could our fingers be glowing, then?”
Torchlight shined in their faces.
“They’re here!” a guard cried. “They’re over here!”
Agatha spun to see shadows vaulting over the last rows of graves. “Unless my mother didn’t interrupt our wish in the house. Unless our wish worked when we made it the first time. Unless our fairy tale was open all along.”
Agatha looked at her prince, deathly white. “We’re already back in our story, Tedros. We’ve been in our story from the moment the guards found us . . .”
Tedros looked up at the spears slashing towards their hearts. “Which means we die at The End, Agatha!”
Terrified, she and Tedros clasped hands, each backing away from the spears into one of the swans—
Just in time to see a pale hand reach out of the grave between them and pull them both in.
5
A Princess Returns
Graves are meant for dead people, who have no reason to see, breathe, or use the toilet. Unfortunately for Agatha, she needed to do all three. Trapped underground in darkness, she and Tedros inhaled mouthfuls of soil while tangled in each other’s sweaty limbs. Agatha couldn’t make out her prince’s face, but heard him hyperventilating with panic.
“You’re using up all our air!” Agatha hissed.
“Graves have b-b-bodies—d-d-dead bodies—”
Agatha blanched with understanding and gripped on to any of Tedros’ flesh she could find. “Sophie’s mother . . . she p-p-pulled us in?”
“C-c-can’t see a thing. For all we know she’s right next to us!”
“Magic,” Agatha wheezed. “Use magic!”
Tedros gulped a breath and focused on his fear, until his finger flickered gold like a candle, lighting up a wide, shallow grave the size of a large bed. Shivering on top of each other, Tedros and Agatha slowly turned to their right.
Dirt.
No body. No bones.
Just dirt.
“Where is she?” Agatha choked, rolling off Tedros, who groaned and rubbed his chest. She snatched her prince’s wrist and swept his fingerglow over the right half of the grave, spotting only a pair of dung beetles fighting over a dirt ball in the corner. She shook her head, baffled, and swung Tedros’ hand to the left—
Both of them froze.
Two sparkling brown eyes glared at them through a black ninja mask.
Agatha and Tedros opened their mouths to scream, but the figure gagged them with slender hands.
“Shhhh! They’ll hear you!” the stranger whispered in a low, breathy voice.
Tedros gaped at the ninja in the grave with them, wrapped in draping black robes. “Are you . . . are you Sophie’s mother . . .”
The ninja let out a giggly squeak. “Oh how absurd. Now shhhh!”
Agatha tensed. That squeak. Where had she heard it before? She tried to catch Tedros’ eye, hoping he’d heard it too, but her prince was smothering the stranger in a hug.
“Oh thank God! We’ve been trapped for a month in the smallest, foulest house you can imagine, almost burned at the stake, almost skewered by an army, and then you pulled us in, whoever you are, which means you have to get us out! We need to get to the School for Good and Evil and rescue our best friend. Surely you know it. It’s halfway between the Murmuring Mountains and—”
The ninja gagged him with a fist. “I know cats that listen better than you.”
“You have no idea,” Agatha murmured, punchy from the lack of air.
A sharp crackle ripped above their heads, like a sword splitting earth, and the grave tremored, caving clumps of dirt into their faces.
“Check ’em all,” someone growled gruffly, followed by more sharp tremors. “Intercepted a message from the League of Thirteen. Said they’d be comin’ through a grave.”
Agatha’s stomach plunged. The voice didn’t sound like an Elder’s.
“Coulda been more specific. Thousands of ’em and I’m starvin’,” a thick, oafish voice added. “Besides, should be out fixin’ our storie
s like the others, not diggin’ around in graves. What’s so important about these two anyway?”
“School Master wants ’em. Reason enough for you,” said the gruff one, punctuated by another violent crackle. “He’ll give us a turn at our stories soon enough.”
Agatha and Tedros swiveled to each other. The School Master’s men in Gavaldon? How had they gotten past the guards? The ceiling shook harder, showering clumps of earth.
“Think he’ll let us eat an Everboy as a reward?” asked the oafish one.
“Might even let us eat two,” the gruff voice chortled—
A black furry claw smashed through the ceiling into the grave, with five knife-edged talons snatching right and left. Agatha and Tedros choked back screams as the ninja flattened them against the dirt wall, the hooked talons swiping at air, missing the inseam of Tedros’ breeches by a whisker. It slashed in vain a few more times and then curled into a fist.
“Nothin’ here,” the gruff voice growled. “Come on, let’s eat. Maybe we’ll find a juicy little boy in the Oakwood.”
The claw withdrew empty-handed and vanished, followed by loud, thudding stomps.
A terrorized silence passed . . . then Tedros and Agatha shoved mouths to a hole in the ceiling and sucked down air. Agatha glanced at Tedros to make sure he was okay, expecting he’d be doing the same for her. Instead, her prince was pulling at his breeches, looking down his own pants. Tedros smiled, relieved . . . then saw Agatha frowning.
“What?” Tedros said.
Agatha was about to question his priorities, then noticed the footsteps had stopped. The voices too. Agatha’s eyes shot wide open and she dove for her prince—“Tedros, watch out!”
The black claw crashed through the ceiling and grabbed Agatha off her prince, dragging her out of the grave. Tedros leapt to clasp her leg too late. He craned up in horror to see the claw pull his princess into the night sky, dangling her like a caught mouse.
Agatha stared into the bloodshot yellow eyes of a tall, bony brown wolf on two legs, fur and flesh flaking off his face, leaving gaping holes over pieces of his skull.
“Lookie here. A princess returns,” the wolf snarled gruffly, cheekbones poking through one of these holes.