of Tedros desperately reaching for Agatha as she and Sophie disappeared, three words beneath to close their story …
They were gone.
Agatha felt tears rise, soaking in all the pain and love she and Sophie had shared to get home.
“It’s the perfect fairy tale,” Sophie said, meeting Agatha’s eyes with a choked-up smile.
They turned to the teachers, who looked deathly grim. “It’s not over,” said Lady Lesso.
The girls peered down at the book, confused. Their grimy hands lifted the last page, and they saw there was something on the other side.
A painting of Tedros, back turned, walking into dark fog, all alone.
And Sophie and Agatha lived happy ever after, for girls don’t need princes for love to call …
No, they don’t need princes in their fairy tales at all.
“This one’s from Maidenvale. But you can find it anywhere, really. They’re even telling it in Netherwood.”
Sophie and Agatha raised their heads to Professor Dovey, frowning over the messy desk.
“It’s the only story anyone wants to hear.”
Now the girls saw that all the open books weren’t there by accident. Each book on the desk was spread to its last page. Some were in oil paints, some in watercolor, some in charcoal and ink; some were in a language the girls knew, others in scripts they didn’t. But all ended their version of The Tale of Sophie and Agatha the same way: Tedros alone and unneeded, slumping into darkness.
“Goodness, all this gloom because we’re popular?” Sophie said. “You can’t be surprised. Snow White and Cinderella are sweet and all. But who wants them when they can have me?”
She turned to Agatha for support, but her friend was staring out the window. “Aggie?”
Agatha didn’t answer. Slowly she approached the window, and Lady Lesso stepped aside without a word. At Sader’s desk, Professor Dovey held her breath.
From the steep window, Agatha looked down at the Blue Forest, the enchanted training ground for Good and Evil, sprawled in an array of hues behind the school. It was as it always was, quiet and thriving despite the autumn chill, neatly fenced in by spiked golden gates.
The sounds were coming from beyond the gates.
At first she thought they were dead leaves, swathing the Endless Forest in tawny brown and orange beneath stripped, crooked trees. Then she looked closer and saw they were men.
Thousands of them were crammed against the Blue Forest gates in a filthy homeless camp, hunched around fires like miserable peasants. She couldn’t see faces, but she glimpsed scraggly beards and blackened cheeks, mottled breeches and bony legs, ripped coats and sashes with gleaming …
Crests.
These weren’t peasants. They were—
“Princes,” Sophie gasped, looking out beside her.
“It’s her!” a voice screamed from the crowd. Heads swung to the tower window.
“It’s the witch!”
All at once, a savage mob rushed the Forest gates—
“Death to Sophie!”
“Kill her!”
“Kill the witch!”
The men fired arrows and catapulted stones at the tower, but the weapons instantly vanished into an enchanted shield, bubbly and violet tinged, that appeared over the school gates. As the crowd roared and swung pickets, mounted with the same WANTED signs the girls had seen in the woods, an intrepid prince leapt onto the spiked gates. The gold metal magically sizzled and he let go in shock, impaling on spikes below. Sophie spun in horror—
“How can those be princes?” she cried.
“How can those be princes?” Lady Lesso mimicked. “Those princes are there because of you.”
Agatha and Sophie gaped at each other. “We don’t understand—” Agatha spluttered.
Professor Dovey ground her teeth. The only time Agatha had seen her fairy godmother this furious was when she had disobeyed a teacher her first year and almost burned down the castle.
“Think, Agatha. Once upon a time, you believed yourself an ugly witch. But instead, your destiny was to become a princess. To find Ever After with the most coveted prince in our land. It would have been Good’s greatest victory! A restoration of all the values we’d lost! Kill the School Master, send your Evil friend home safe—and stay here with Tedros forever, as his future queen. All you had to do was take his hand before you disappeared. That would have been the correct fairy tale. But instead …”
She looked daggers at Sophie. “You chose her.”
“And rightly so,” Sophie riposted. “If you knew Agatha at all, you’d know she could never give me up for a boy.” She whirled to her friend, knowing this time Agatha would defend her. But again, Agatha didn’t. She just gulped hard and stared at her muddy clumps.
“What happened after we left?” Agatha said.
“The Eviction.”
The girls turned to Lady Lesso, who shuddered at the memory.
“After your kiss, students tried to return to their schools, but the Evil towers ejected the Nevergirls. Sixty girls flung through windows into the bay—from stairs, classrooms, beds, toilets, common rooms … They tried to go back, but the Evil gates barred their entry. All the Nevergirls fled to Good for sanctuary, and the Evergirls welcomed them, inspired by your happy ending.”
“As soon as they arrived, the Good towers evicted the Everboys just as rudely,” Professor Dovey went on. “The moment the boys were all gone, the castle magically changed to what it is now—their portraits removed, murals repainted, friezes recarved, as if mirroring your tale. The School for Good had become the School for Girls.”
And indeed, the glittering crests over her and Lady Lesso’s hearts, once silver swans, were now sparkling blue butterflies. Agatha shook her head, confused.
“But those aren’t Everboys from school!” She pointed out the window. “Those are real princes!”
“What happened here happened everywhere in the Endless Woods,” Professor Dovey said gravely. “As your story spread like a plague and princesses imagined a world without princes, the men were magically ejected from their castles and left homeless. They appealed to witches to break the curse, but they too had heard The Tale of Sophie and Agatha. Stirred by the power of your bond, witches joined forces with princesses and took control of the kingdoms.”
“Witches and princesses are friends?” Sophie said in disbelief.
“No one thought it possible until your fairy tale,” said Professor
