A World Without Princes

  At first Sophie saw no reason to panic. The townspeople brought her food (taking heed of her “fatal allergies” to wheat, sugar, dairy, and red meat), Agatha brought her the herbs and roots she needed to make her creams, and Stefan brought assurances he wouldn’t rewed until his daughter was brought home safe. With the townsmen uselessly combing the forest for the assassins, the town scroll branded Sophie “the Brave Little Princess” for taking the burden of yet another curse, while the Elders ordered her statue be given a fresh coat of paint. Soon children clamored once more for autographs, the village anthem was amended to “Blessed Is Our Sophie,” and townsmen took turns keeping watch over the church. There was even talk of a permanent one-woman show in the theater once she was out of danger.

  “La Reine Sophie, an epic three-hour celebration of my achievements,” Sophie raptured, smelling the sympathy bouquets that filled the aisle. “A bit of cabaret to stir the blood, a circus intermezzo with wild lions and trapeze, and a rousing rendition of ‘I Am but a Simple Woman’ to close. Oh, Agatha, how I’ve longed to find my place in this stagnant, monotonous town! All I needed was a part big enough to hold me!” Suddenly she looked worried. “You don’t think they’ll stop trying to kill me, do you? This is the best thing that’s ever happened!”

  But then the attacks got worse.

  The first night, firebombs launched from the Woods and annihilated Belle’s house, leaving her whole family homeless. On the second night, boiling oil flooded from the trees, immolating an entire cottage lane. In smoldering ruins, the assassins left the same message, burned into the ground.

  GIVE US

  SOPHIE

  By the next morning, when the Elders took to the square to calm rioting villagers, Stefan had already made it to the church.

  “It’s the only way the Elders and I can protect you,” he told his daughter, bearing a hammer and padlocks.

  Agatha wouldn’t leave, so he locked her in too.

  “I thought our story was over!” Sophie cried, listening to a mob of villagers outside chanting, “Send her back! Send her back!” She slumped in her seat. “Why don’t they want you? Why am I always the villain? And why am I always locked in?”

  Next to her, Agatha gazed at a marble saint in a frieze above the altar, lunging for an angel. He stretched his strong arm, torqued his chest, as if he’d follow the angel wherever it went—

  “Aggie?”

  Agatha broke from her trance and turned. “You do have a way of making enemies.”

  “I tried to be Good!” Sophie said. “I tried to be just like you!”

  Agatha felt that sick feeling again. The one she’d been trying to keep down.

  “Aggie, do something!” Sophie grabbed her arm. “You always fix things!”

  “Maybe I’m not as Good as you think,” Agatha murmured, and pulled away, pretending to polish her clump. In the silence, she could feel Sophie watching her.

  “Aggie.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did your finger glow?”

  Agatha’s muscles clenched. “What?”

  “I saw it,” said Sophie softly. “At the wedding.”

  Agatha threw her a glance. “Probably a trick of light. Magic doesn’t work here.”

  “Right.”

  Agatha held her breath. She could feel Sophie thinking.

  “But the teachers never relocked our fingers, did they?” her friend said. “And magic follows emotion. That’s what they told us.”

  Agatha shifted. “So?”

  “You didn’t look happy at the wedding,” Sophie said. “Are you sure something didn’t make you upset? Upset enough to do magic?”

  Agatha met her eyes. Sophie searched her face, seeing right through her.

  “I know you, Agatha.”

  Agatha gripped the pew.

  “I know why you were sad.”

  “Sophie, I didn’t mean it!” Agatha blurted—

  “You were upset with my father,” said Sophie. “For all he put me through.”

  Agatha goggled at her. She recovered and nodded. “Right. Uh-huh. You got me.”

  “At first I thought you’d done the spell to stop his wedding. But that doesn’t make any sense now, does it?” Sophie said with a snort. “That would mean you sent the arrows for me.”

  Agatha croaked a laugh, trying not to look at her.

  “Just a trick of light,” Sophie sighed. “Like you said.”

  They sat in silence and listened to the chants.

  “Don’t worry about my father. He and I’ll be fine,” Sophie said. “The witch won’t come back, Aggie. Not as long as we’re friends.”

  Her voice was more naked than Agatha had ever heard it. Agatha looked up, surprised.

  “You make me happy, Agatha,” said Sophie. “It just took me too long to see it.”

  Agatha tried to hold her gaze, but all she could see was the saint above the altar, hand lunging towards her, like a prince reaching for his princess.

  “You’ll see. We’ll come up with a plan, like always,” Sophie said, reapplying pink lipstick between yawns. “But maybe a little beauty nap first . . .”

  As she curled up on the pew like a cat, pillow to her stomach, Agatha saw it was her friend’s favorite, stitched with a blond princess and her prince, embraced beneath the words “Ever After.” But Sophie had revised the prince with her sewing kit. Now he had boxy dark hair, goonish bug eyes . . .

  And a black dress.

  Agatha watched her best friend fall into sleep a few breaths later, free from nightmares for the first time in weeks.

  As the chants outside the church grew louder—“Send her back! Send her back!”—Agatha stared at Sophie’s pillow, and her stomach wrenched with that sick feeling.

  The same feeling she felt looking at the storybook prince in her kitchen. The same feeling she felt watching a man and wife exchange vows. The same feeling she felt as she held Sophie’s hand, growing stronger, stronger, until her finger had glowed with a secret. A secret so terrible, so unforgivable, that she’d ruined a fairy tale.

  For in that single moment, watching the wedding she’d never have, Agatha had wished for something she never thought possible.

  She wished for a different ending to her story.

  An ending with someone else.

  That’s when the arrows came for Sophie.

  The arrows that wouldn’t stop, no matter how much she tried to take her wish back.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  3

  Breadcrumbs

  That night they flattened Radley’s house first with a boulder lobbed over the trees, then the crooked clock tower, which tolled broken moans as screaming villagers fled through the square. Soon whole lanes went up in splinters as parents clung to their children in wells and ditches, watching rocks fly across the moon like meteors. When the blitz ended at four in the morning, only half the town remained. The trembling villagers looked out at the theater, illuminated in the distance, the lights on its red curtain rearranged:

  SOPHIE OR DIE.

  While Sophie slept calmly through all this, Agatha sat trapped in the church, listening to the screams and thumps. Give them Sophie, and her best friend would die. Don’t give them Sophie, and her whole town would die. Shame burnt her throat. Somehow she’d reopened the gates between the worlds. But to who? Who wanted Sophie dead?

  There had to be a way to fix this. If she’d reopened the gates, surely she could close them!

  First she tried to make her finger glow again, focusing on her anger until her cheeks puffed—anger at the assassins, anger at herself, anger at her stupid, unlit finger that looked even paler than before. Then she tried doing spells anyway to repel the raiders, which went about as well as expected. She tried praying to stained glass saints, wishing on a star, rubbing every lamp in the church for a genie, and when it all failed miserably, she pr
ied Sophie’s pink lipstick from her fist and scratched “TAKE ME INSTEAD” on the dawnlit window. To her surprise, she got an answer.

  “NO,” flames spelled across the forest fringe.

  For a moment, through trees, Agatha glimpsed a glint of red. Then it was gone.

  “WHO ARE YOU?” she wrote.

  ““GIVE US SOPHIE,” the flames answered.

  “SHOW YOURSELF,” she demanded.

  “GIVE US SOPHIE.”

  “YOU CAN’T HAVE HER,” Agatha scrawled.

  A cannonball smashed through Sophie’s statue in reply.

  Sophie stirred behind her, mumbling about the connection between poor sleep and pimples. Banging around in the dark, she lit a candle that streaked the hemlock rafters with tawny glow. Then she did a few bumbling yoga moves, nibbled on an almond, rubbed her face with grapefruit seeds, trout scales, and cacao cream, and twirled to Agatha with a sleepy smile. “Morning, darling, what’s our plan?”

  But hunched in the windowsill, Agatha just stared out the broken glass, and then Sophie did too, at the leveled town, the homeless masses picking through rubble, and her severed statue head gaping at her from the church steps. Sophie’s smile slowly vanished.

  “There’s no plan, is there?”

  CRACK!

  The oak doors shivered as a hammer bashed away a padlock.

  CRACK! CRACK!

  “Assassins!” Sophie cried—

  Agatha leapt up in horror. “The church is hallowed ground!”

  Boards snapped; screws loosened and clinked to the floor.

  The girls backed against the altar. “Hide!” Agatha gasped, and Sophie ran around the lectern like a headless chicken—

  Something metal slipped into the door.

  “A key!” Agatha squeaked. “They have a key!”

  She heard the lock catch. Behind her, Sophie fluttered uselessly between curtains.

  “Hide now!” cried Agatha—

  The doors crashed open, and she spun to its dark threshold. Through weak candlelight, into the church slunk a hunched black shadow.

  Agatha’s heart stopped.

  No . . .

  The crooked shadow glided down the aisle, flickering in flamelight. Agatha dropped to her knees against the altar. Her heart was rattling so hard she couldn’t breathe.

  He’s dead! Ripped to pieces by a white swan and thrown to the wind! His black swan feathers rained over a school far, far away! But now the School Master was creeping towards her, very much alive, and Agatha cowered against the lectern with a shriek—

  “The situation has become untenable,” said a voice.

  Not the School Master’s.

  Agatha peeked through fingers at the Elder with the longest beard, standing over her.

  “Sophie must be moved to safety,” said the younger Elder behind him, removing his black top hat.

  “And she must be moved tonight,” said the youngest at the rear, stroking his meager beard.

  “Where?” a voice breathed.

  The Elders looked up to see Sophie in the marble frieze over the altar, pressed against a naked saint.

  “THAT’S where you hid?” barked Agatha.

  “Where will you take me?” Sophie asked the Eldest, trying in vain to extricate herself from the nude statue.

  “It’s been arranged,” he said, replacing his hat as he walked towards the door. “We’ll return this evening.”

  “But the attacks!” Agatha cried. “How will you stop them?”

  “Arranged,” said the middle, following the Eldest out.

  “Eight o’clock,” said the youngest, trailing behind him. “Only Sophie.”

  “How do you know she’ll be safe!” Agatha panicked—

  “All arranged,” the Eldest called back, and locked the door behind him.

  The two girls stood in dumb silence before Sophie let out a squeal.

  “See? I told you!” She slid down the frieze and smushed Agatha in a hug. “Nothing can ruin our happy ending.” Humming with relief, she packed her creams and cucumbers in her pretty pink suitcase, for who knew how long it’d be before they’d let her friend visit with more. She glanced back at Agatha’s big dark eyes fixed out the window.

  “Don’t fret, Aggie. It’s all arranged.”

  But as Agatha watched the villagers sift through ruins, glowering bloodshot at the church, she remembered the last time her mother said the Elders “arranged” things . . . and hoped this time they’d have better results.

  Before sunset, the Elders allowed Stefan to come, who Sophie hadn’t seen since he locked her in. He didn’t look the same. His beard was overgrown, his clothes filthy, his body sallow and malnourished. Two of his teeth were missing, and his left eye socket was bruised blue. With his daughter protected by the Elders, the villagers had clearly expelled their frustrations on him.

  Sophie forced a sympathetic look, but her heart twinged with glee. No matter how Good she tried to be, the witch inside still wanted her father to suffer. She looked over at Agatha, chewing on her nails in a corner, pretending not to listen.

  “Elders said it won’t be long,” Stefan said. “Once those cowards in the forest realize you’ve been hidden, sooner or later they’ll come looking. And I’ll be ready.” He scratched at his blackened pores and noticed his daughter wincing. “I know I’m a sight.”

  “What you need is a good honeycream scrub,” Sophie said, digging through her bag of beauty products until she found its snakeskin pouch. But her father was just staring out at the demolished town, eyes wet.

  “Father?”

  “The village wants to give you up. But the Elders will do anything to protect you—even with Christmas coming. They’re better men than any of us,” he said softly. “No one in town will sell to me now. How we’re going to survive . . .” He wiped his eyes.

  Sophie had never seen her father cry. “Well it’s not my fault,” she blurted.

  Stefan exhaled. “Sophie, all that matters is you get home safe.”

  Sophie fiddled with her pouch of honeycream. “Where are you staying?”

  “Another reason I’m unpopular,” her father said, rubbing his black eye. “Whoever’s after you blasted the other houses in our lane, but left ours alone. Our food store’s all gone, but Honora still finds a way to feed us every night.”

  Sophie gripped the pouch tighter. “Us?”

  “Boys moved to your room until all’s safe and we can finish the wedding.”

  Sophie spurted him with white gobs. Stefan smelled it and instantly started scrounging through her bag—“Anything here the boys can eat?”

  Agatha could see Sophie about to faint and stepped in. “Stefan, do you know where the Elders will hide her?”

  He shook his head. “But they assure me the villagers won’t find her either,” he said, watching Sophie whisk her bag as far across the church from him as she could. Stefan waited until she was out of earshot. “It’s not just the assassins we have to keep her safe from,” he whispered.

  “But she can’t last long alone,” Agatha pressed him.

  Stefan looked through the window at the woods shutting Gavaldon in, dark and endless in the fading light. “What happened when you were out there, Agatha? Who wants my daughter dead?”

  Agatha still had no answer. “Suppose the plan doesn’t work?” she asked.

  “We have to trust the Elders,” Stefan said, averting his eyes. “They know what’s best.”

  Agatha saw pain cloud his face. “Stefan suffered worst of all.” That’s what her mother had said.

  “I’ll fix this somehow,” Agatha said, guilt squeezing her voice. “I’ll keep her safe. I promise.”

  Stefan leaned in and took her face into his hands. “And it’s a promise I need you to keep.”

  Agatha looked into his scared eyes.

  “Oh good grief.”

  They turned to see Sophie at the altar, bag clenched to her chest.

  “I’ll be home by the weekend,” she frowned. “And my
bed better have clean sheets.”

  As eight o’clock approached, Sophie sat on the altar table, surrounded by dripping candles, listening to her stomach rumble. She’d let her father take the last of her butterless bran oat crackers for the boys, because Agatha had practically forced her. The boys would gag on them, surely. That made her feel better.

  Sophie sighed. The School Master was right. I am Evil.

  Yet for all his powers and sorcery, he hadn’t known there was a cure. A friend who made her Good. As long as she had Agatha, she’d never be that ugly, horrible witch again.

  When the church darkened, Agatha had resisted leaving her alone, but Stefan forced her. The Elders had been clear—“Only Sophie”—and now was not the time to disobey their orders. Not when they were about to save her life.

  Without Agatha there now, Sophie suddenly felt anxious. Was this how Agatha used to feel about her? Sophie had treated her so callously back then, lost in her princess fantasies. Now she couldn’t imagine a future without her. No matter how hard it was, she’d endure the days ahead in hiding—but only because she knew she’d have her friend at the end of it. Her friend who had become her real family.

  But then why had Agatha been acting so strange lately?

  The past month, Sophie had noticed a growing distance. Agatha didn’t laugh as much on their walks, was often cold to the touch, and seemed preoccupied with her thoughts. For the first time since they met, Sophie had started to feel she had more invested in this friendship.

  Then came the wedding. She had pretended not to notice Agatha’s hand, dripping, trembling in hers as if wanting to slip out. As if gripping a terrible secret.

  “Maybe I’m not as Good as you think.”

  Sophie’s pulse hammered in her ears. Agatha’s finger couldn’t have glowed that day.

  Could it?

  She thought of her mother, who too had beauty, wit, and charm . . . who too had a friend she had long trusted . . . only to be betrayed by her and die broken and alone.