yes,” said Sophie, all business. “While I have the floor, here’s a bit of a brainteaser. It’s quite important that I solve it, so any help would be deeply appreciated. What does a villain never have that a princess can’t do without? Any ideas? Feel free to shout them out. Merci, darlings.”
“I have an idea,” said Lady Lesso.
“I knew you would.” Sophie smiled. “What is it? What do I have that you don’t?”
Lady Lesso thrust her face in hers. “Nothing. Which is what we’ll be hearing from you the rest of class.”
Sophie had an appeal, but it never made it out of her mouth. Her lips were sealed shut.
“Much better,” Lady Lesso said, and blessed Sophie with a wart between the eyes.
As Sophie pried at her lips, Lady Lesso stood calmly and smoothed her purple gown, ignoring the petrified students around her.
“Now, Hort, tell me a villain who employed a Raven Death Trap.”
Wheezing through her nose, Sophie wrenched at her mouth with a pen, hair clip, and icicle, which pierced her lips. Gasp, wail, scream, she tried it all, but all she found was silence, panic, blood—
And Hester glowering from the front row.
“Good as solved, eh?”
Lunch took place in the Clearing, an intimate picnic field outside the Blue Forest gates. To get to the Clearing, students had to journey through twisty tunnels of trees that grew narrower and narrower, until one by one the children spat through a hollowed trunk onto emerald grass. As soon as Agatha came through the Good tunnel, she followed the line of Evers receiving picnic baskets from nymphs in red hoods, while Nevers from the Evil tunnel took rusty pails from red-suited wolves.
Agatha found a shady patch of grass and reached into her willow basket to find a lunch of smoked trout sandwiches, rampion salad, strawberry soufflé, and a vial of sparkling lemon water. She let thoughts of riddles and dead ends fall away as she opened her watering mouth to the sandwich—
Sophie swiped it. “You don’t know what I’ve been through,” she sobbed, scarfing it whole. “Here’s yours.” She plunked down a pail of gruel.
Agatha stared at her.
“Look, I asked,” Sophie garbled between bites. “Apparently Nevers need to learn deprivation. Part of your training. This is lovely, by the way.”
Agatha was still staring.
“What?” Sophie said. “Do I have blood on my teeth? Because I thought I got it al—”
Over Agatha’s shoulder, she saw Tedros and his friends pointing and snickering.
“Oh no,” Sophie groaned. “What’d you do now?”
Agatha kept gaping at her.
“If you’re going to be a brat about it, you can have the soufflé.” Sophie frowned. “Why is that strange imp waving at me?”
Agatha turned and saw Kiko across the Clearing, waving and flaunting newly red hair. It was the exact same color as Tristan’s. Agatha’s face went white.
“Um, you know her?” Sophie said, watching Kiko giddily approach Tristan.
“We’re friends,” Agatha said, waving Kiko away from him.
“You have a friend?” Sophie said.
Agatha turned to her.
“Why do you keep looking at me like that!” Sophie yelled.
“You haven’t been eating candy, have you?”
“Huh?” Sophie shrieked, realizing—her hand flew up and ripped Lesso’s wart off her face—“Why didn’t you tell me!” she cried, as Tedros and boys exploded into whoops.
“Ohhh, it can’t get any worse,” Sophie moaned.
Hort picked up her discarded wart and ran away with it.
Sophie looked at Agatha. Agatha cracked a smile.
“It’s not funny!” Sophie wailed.
But Agatha was laughing and so was Sophie.
“What do you think he’ll do with it?” Agatha sniggered.
Sophie stopped laughing. “We need to get home. Now.”
Agatha told Sophie about all her frustrations solving the riddle, including her dead end with Professor Sader. Before she could even try to ask about his paintings, Sader had taken off to meet his Evil students, leaving three geriatric pigs to lecture about the importance of fortifying one’s houses.
“He’s the only one who can help us,” said Agatha.
“Better hurry. My days are numbered,” Sophie said glumly and recounted everything that had happened with her roommates, including their prediction of Sophie’s doom.
“You die? That doesn’t make any sense. You can’t be the villain in our story if we’re friends.”
“That’s why the School Master said we can’t be friends,” Sophie replied. “Something has to come between us. Something that answers the riddle.”
“What could possibly come between us?” Agatha said, still at a loss. “Maybe it’s all connected. This thing that Good has and Evil doesn’t. Do you think it’s why Good always wins?”
“Evil used to win, according to Lady Lesso. But now Good has something that beats them all.”
“But the School Master forbade us to return to his tower. So the answer to the riddle isn’t a word or a thing or an idea—”
“We have to do something!”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. First, it’s something that can turn us against each other. Second, it’s something that beats Evil every time. And third, it’s something we can physically do—”
The girls spun to each other. “I got it,” said Agatha—“Me too,” said Sophie—
“It’s so obvious.”
“So obvious.”
“It’s—it’s—”
“Yes,
