The Last Ever After (51 page)

Now the girls were outside in the square at night with a mob of onlookers, watching Callis tied to a torchlit pyre, as the three bearded Elders presided from the stage.

“The Elders believed him, for Stefan had always been a beloved son. Moreover, the Elders had been leading witch hunts for years, searching for anyone who might be responsible for the child kidnappings that continued to happen every four years. So when Stefan pointed his finger at Callis—a strange, unmarried woman they'd never seen in town before—the Elders finally found their witch.”

The executioner reached for the torch over Callis' pyre. Sophie and Agatha could see Stefan at the side of the stage, glaring at Callis as the executioner lowered the flame to the wood sticks under the witch. Callis' face flooded with tears of terror and regret; she'd tried to do one last act of magic in exchange for the chance at a life of Goodness and love and now she'd be slaughtered as an Evil witch instead. As she wept for the mistakes of her life, the flames spreading under feet, Stefan
watched her, his own face beginning to soften.

“When he saw her in that moment, a human-hearted soul just like him, Stefan realized he didn't have it inside of him to be responsible for another's death,” said Professor Sader. “Though he still believed Callis was a witch, he recanted his story and agreed to marry Vanessa in order to save Callis' life. Per the Elders' conditions for sparing her, Callis had to move to the graveyard and stay out of the townspeople's affairs forever. She could never marry a man from town, never have a shop in the square or a house in cottage lane . . . but she would keep her life, even if it was a loveless one. As would Stefan, who in the process of saving her, had doomed himself to a loveless life with Vanessa too.”

Agatha couldn't breathe, watching Stefan free Callis off the pyre. “The debt,” she whispered. “That was the debt she owed him.”

Sophie shook her head. “But she looks so different from your mother, Aggie.”

“So does yours,” said Agatha.

Both girls turned back to the story as the scene melted into a lavish, sun-drenched wedding at the town church. Stefan stood at the altar next to a pregnant Vanessa.

He'd never looked more miserable.

“Stefan married Vanessa, while Honora's parents soon forced her to marry the odious butcher's boy. Now Vanessa had everything she'd always wanted. Her one true love and his child on the way to keep him. The girl he once loved married off and out of their lives. A perfect fairy-tale ending. Or so she
thought. Because Vanessa hadn't counted on one thing . . .”

The church dissipated and now the girls were on Graves Hill in the middle of the night. Grim-faced, Stefan shoveled dirt to fill the last of two small graves. Vanessa watched him, weeping.

“Stefan's fear that the spell would backfire came true. Vanessa gave birth to two boys. Both born dead.”

The scene shifted and Sophie and Agatha were back where they began: in Sophie's cottage, lit by a red sunset, with Vanessa glowering through her kitchen window. Her eyes were on Stefan in a hooded coat, hustling down the lane, before Honora snuck him into her cottage.

“In the years that followed, Vanessa tried everything she could to have a child with Stefan, but her efforts failed again and again. Soon, Honora suspected that Stefan was telling the truth all along: Vanessa had tricked him into marrying her. With Honora just as unhappy with her husband as Stefan with Vanessa, Honora and Stefan began to see each other in secret once more.”

Brightness leeched out of the scene and now the girls were in Agatha's house on Graves Hill, watching Vanessa fuming at Callis.

“Vanessa visited every doctor in Gavaldon, who all agreed she'd never have a child. Enraged, she returned to Callis and demanded a new potion that would help her bear Stefan's baby. Unless she had his child—a child that could prove their love was real—Stefan would never believe in their marriage. Callis refused, insisting she was done with magic forever and
just wanted to keep to herself, per the Elders' orders. But Vanessa threatened her: she said she'd go to the Elders and tell her she'd cursed her to never have children; that she was cursing other townswomen as well; that
she
was the one responsible for the kidnapped children . . . Callis knew then that there was no stopping Vanessa. Her only choice was to help her.”

The scene skipped ahead and the girls watched as Vanessa drank a smoking black tonic from a wooden bowl.

“Callis warned her that magic could not force the union of souls into a child, as love does, just as magic could not force true love itself. Try to unite two souls into one child through magic and you would only split those souls even more,” said Sader. “But just as before, Vanessa didn't listen, determined to have Stefan's baby. And soon enough, a healthy child was growing inside of her.”

Night fell darker over the house. Vanessa was in painful labor now, as Callis comforted her.

“‘The Miracle Child,' the doctors named it. Vanessa promised Stefan it would be a boy as handsome as him. Seeing Vanessa carrying his child again and how much it meant to her, Stefan tried to give his wife another chance. In his heart, he knew sneaking off to Honora's was wrong, for they'd both taken wedding vows to other people. Besides, it didn't matter what Vanessa did in the past; they were about to be a
family
. She was his wife now and forever and that meant if Vanessa had his baby, he would love it and its mother as much as he possibly could. Stefan even let himself name the child before it was born: ‘Filip' after his own father,” said Sader. “And in
time, the night came where Vanessa finally had Stefan's child, thanks to the secret power of Callis' magic. Only it wasn't a boy at all. It was a fair, luminous girl that looked just like Stefan.”

Weak and sweating, Vanessa stroked the blond, beautiful girl in her arms, before she suddenly felt strong pains again—

“But just as the witch predicted, the souls of Stefan and Vanessa never fused, for there was no love between them. Each soul produced its
own
child, which meant Vanessa delivered not one baby, but two. This second girl, then, looked nothing like Stefan. Instead, she looked just like her mother.”

Vanessa gasped as Callis held out the baby: raven-haired, with bulging big eyes and a hideous face. Vanessa recoiled in disgust, shoving it back at the witch.

“She ordered Callis to dump the baby in the Woods and leave it there to die. She could never take such an
ugly
child home to Stefan, she scoffed, before bundling up her beautiful, blond daughter and hurrying off, sure that everything between her and her husband was about to change,” said Sader. “But Callis, who only saw beauty in the girl Vanessa threw away, kept the child for herself. She named her Agatha, which meant ‘Soul of Good.' Finally, after so many years of loneliness, Callis of Netherwood had found her one true love.”

Callis glanced into a mirror as she studied the child's big, insect-like eyes. Slowly, Callis magically made her own eyes bigger.

“To ensure no one asked questions as to whether she was the child's mother, Callis gradually transformed herself over the years, using her Uglification skills to look more and more
like Agatha. Soon the villagers began to notice Callis' child lurking on the hills, a practical duplicate of her. The Elders asked Callis questions, of course, but she gave no answers, and in time, the town simply shunned the young girl just as they shunned her mother.”

Morning streamed through the house's rickety windows, as black-haired, sallow-skinned, scraggly Callis read storybooks to her black-haired, sallow-skinned, scraggly daughter.

“When new fairy tales appeared in Gavaldon year after year, with Good still winning every story, Callis began to question whether she had it all wrong. Perhaps the School Master hadn't been Evil at all. She even wondered: had she made a mistake by not taking his ring? As the years went by, she began to wish that her daughter would be taken to the School for Good and Evil so that Agatha could have a future filled with magic, adventure, and love, instead of being trapped in a lonely, ordinary life because of her mother.”

The scene flashed to Stefan in his cottage, sitting at the dining table with Vanessa and young Sophie. He was eying his three-year-old daughter warily, no tenderness in his face.

“Meanwhile, as young Sophie grew, Stefan had an instinctive stiffness towards her. He tried so hard to love her: taking her to Battersby's for cookies, reading her storybooks at bedtime, smiling when passerbys said his young Sophie looked just like him. . . . But deep down, all Stefan could see in his daughter was Vanessa's soul.”

Now Stefan was carrying lumber to the mill. He paused on the path, noticing five-year-old Agatha playing alone in the
weeds on a nearby hill. She looked up at Stefan and smiled toothily. Stefan smiled back.

“And yet, when he'd see the strange urchin girl that skulked around Graves Hill, he'd feel such affection towards her, even as the other mill workers noticed her striking resemblance to Vanessa,” said Professor Sader. “With two girls born to her, one ugly, one beautiful, Vanessa had kept the one she thought Stefan would love. The one who would bring her closer to him. But it was the one she threw away who imprinted herself on Stefan's heart.”

Stefan's scene disappeared and the girls were alone with Vanessa in her bathroom, filled with hundreds of beauty potions, creams, and elixirs, as she thickened her lips with a special paste, made her eyes green with herbal drops, and dyed her hair golden-blond with a homemade brew. Seven-year-old Sophie mimicked her mother, rubbing honeycream from a bottle into her own cheeks.

“Vanessa couldn't understand why Stefan still seemed cold to her, even after Sophie's birth.
Was Sophie not pretty enough?
she thought.
Am I not good enough either?
Panicked, Vanessa obsessively tried to make herself more beautiful. Her daughter too. But no matter what she did, Stefan seemed to shirk from the both of them.”

Sharply, the scene pivoted to Vanessa standing with young, ten-year-old Sophie at the kitchen window, each of them blond and gorgeous, watching Stefan playing with two young boys in Honora's front yard. Vanessa no longer looked angry anymore. She looked defeated and heartbroken.

“Eventually, Vanessa died alone, while her true love abandoned her for a girl she once thought an ugly witch. She lived to see Honora have two children of her own. Two boys Vanessa
knew
were Stefan's until the day she died, even if Honora pretended otherwise. She knew it from the way Stefan loved them. From the way Stefan held the boys at Honora's husband's funeral after he was killed in a mill accident. And from the way Stefan stared so distantly at Sophie, the daughter he had at home.”

As Stefan played with Honora's children, he looked up and saw Agatha, hunched and gangly, stalking up Graves Hill. He smiled fondly.

“Yet Stefan never forgot about the girl in the graveyard, who he looked for whenever he passed by . . . because deep inside, she felt more like his child than any of them.”

The story washed away like a painting in the rain, and Sophie and Agatha were in vast, silent blackness, listening to the sound of their matching breaths.

“Two sisters,” said Sader's voice. “But sisters in name only, for there was no love in their making. Two souls, forever irreconcilable, since each soul was a mirror of the other: one Good, one Evil. Indeed, if fate ever brought these girls together, they'd be mortal enemies, even as their hearts yearned to find a bond. There would be no path to happiness, just as there had been no path to happiness for their parents. They were old souls made new, doomed to hurt and betray one another again and again, like Stefan and Vanessa, until they too were torn apart forever. And for anyone to think these two girls could defy that ending
and find an Ever After together . . . well, that would be a fairy tale, wouldn't it?”

Slowly the Brig filled in around them and the two girls were in the frozen dungeon, their bodies slack, their faces ash white. Professor Sader floated in front of Vanessa's tomb, gazing back at them.

“But
I
had hope, even if I couldn't see what your ending was. Look at how far you've come already, against all odds. That's why I moved your mother here, so you could see the truth about your story. That's why I sacrificed my life for the both of you. Because by breaking all the rules of our world, you have the chance to save it when we need it most. To find a bridge between Good and Evil. To put love first, whether it's a Boy's or Girl's. To shatter the chain between your parents' Old story and your New one. No one knows if you will succeed, children. Even me. But the Storian chose you for a reason and it's time to face it. No more running. No more hiding. The only way out is through your fairy tale.”

His hazel eyes sparkled with tears. “Now go and open the door.”

Professor Sader smiled at the two girls one last time. Then his phantom dissipated to darkness, like the last tears of a sun.

34
The War of All Things

N
either girl could look at the other. They just stared at Vanessa, dead and beautiful in her frozen grave.

“We're sisters,” said Sophie, a strange flatness in her voice.

“But
not
,” said Agatha softly. “Family but not family. Blood but not blood. Together but apart.” She could feel a wave of emotions trapped behind her heart, too big and powerful to let in. “That's why I saw Sader in my dreams like he was my father,” she rasped. “Because he always reminded me of your father. Somewhere, I knew I was Stefan's daughter all along.”

Both of them were quiet, watching each other's blurred reflection in the iced tomb.

“Sophie?” Agatha finally looked at her. “We have to go. We have to go right now.”

Sophie didn't meet her eyes. Her muscles were tense, her entire body on edge.

“Did you hear me?” Agatha pressed. “We have to g—”

“It doesn't change anything, Agatha,” said Sophie coldly, still staring at her mother.

“What? Sophie, it changes
everything
—”

“No,” she retorted. “It proves I was Evil from the start. That my mother was never Good and cursed me to relive her miserable little life, rotting away alone while you get a happy ending with Tedros the same way my father gets a happy ending with Honora. Good gets Good; Evil gets nothing. Except I have the chance to change my ending. Now, more than ever, Rafal is my only hope to not end up alone. To not end up like
her
.”

She shoved past Agatha and started jostling random tombs. “Bloody hell! There has to be another door somewhere.”

Agatha watched her, stunned. “Sophie, don't you get it? Choosing Rafal only makes you
more
like her. Your mother did Evil in order to force love and look what happened! Choosing Rafal will only leave you more alone in the end—”

“Aggie, you're acting like I care about your opinion,” Sophie spat, pounding on graves. “You heard what Sader said. There is no love between us. There is no bond. You're Good. I'm Evil. And now we'll see who makes it to The End first. Either Tedros gets you to Camelot or Rafal and I seal our Never After. Only one of us wins our fairy tale.”

“Sader also said he believed in us,” Agatha said, accosting her. “He
died
for us—”

“Just like my mother died knowing she'd never found love,” Sophie said, elbowing her away. “Evil souls don't
find
love. First lesson at the School for Evil. Evil souls are meant to end up with no one.”

“I won't let that happen to you,” Agatha fought back.

“Really? Because you, Tedros, and I will be a happy
threesome
? Because I'll be your Evil little
pet
?” Sophie hissed, punching tombs. “Don't you get it? My soul is broken! I'm messed up, sick in the head, rotten to the core! I'm
damaged
. I'll never find the kind of love you did because I'll never be happy inside. All these years, I wanted to be like the mother I thought I had—an angel of Good and light—and instead, I see I was
always
like her. Unlovable down to the pit of a bad, bad soul.”

“You aren't her,” Agatha said, tailing behind. “Deep down, you're nothing like her—”

“Are you
deaf
? Did you hear her story?” said Sophie, hitting tombs faster now. “I made friends with you so I could get a prince, just like my mother made friends with Honora to get my father. I tried every trick my mother did to find love—love spells, beauty potions, wishing on stars—only to end up hated and alone, while my best friend gets everything. And just like my mother, I'm going to end up dead in a frozen dungeon, with all these other cowards, who were too weak to accept they were Evil.”

She whirled to Agatha, splotched with rage. “So you better believe, if I get out of here, I'll do anything it takes to keep my
true love, no matter how Evil.
Anything
.”

A high-pitched
ping!
rang through the Brig.

All the steel placards on the tombs lit up with blinking, bright blue arrows that pointed towards a glowing tomb, before its coffin door magically popped open.

Lady Lesso's recorded voice blared from all sides:
“The student exit has been opened. Kindly exit the dungeon with the rest of your class and return to school. The student exit has been opened. Kindly exit the dungeon with the rest of your class and return to school.”

Agatha gaped at the lit-up coffin.

“Now go and open the door.”

Sader's last words. He must have put a charm on it to unlock once they'd gotten close enough—

Her thoughts broke off because Sophie was already sprinting towards the glowing grave.

“Sophie, wait!” Agatha said, racing after her. She couldn't let her get to Rafal—

But Sophie was already thrusting herself into the empty coffin and shoving through a false snow wall at the back of the grave. Agatha tried to grab Sophie from behind, but Sophie flung her away and Agatha reeled off-balance. She recovered and lunged after Sophie through the wall, propelling into the freezing block of white.

As she came out the other side, Agatha shook the snowflakes out of her eyes and hair to see she was in a dark, leaky tunnel, sloping steeply uphill. Sophie was way ahead, almost to the door at the end. Agatha hurtled after her, hearing the
echoes of Sophie's stuttered breaths and rustling leather catsuit as she wrestled the handle. When it wouldn't budge, Sophie threw her shoulder against it as hard as she could, before Agatha tackled her against the door, slamming it open with a tumultuous groan as both girls tumbled through—

Agatha's head cracked hard against a stone floor. By the time she wobbled to her knees, eyes blearing open, Sophie was gone. Agatha lurched up to the big, empty room lit by a weak green torch. A room she'd been in before.

The Exhibition of Evil.

She hustled towards the museum's exit, not wanting to let Sophie get too far ahead—

A sharp hiss slashed through the silence. Agatha froze on her heels.

Slowly she turned and spotted a small, dark shadow huddling on the floor beneath Sader's last painting of Gavaldon.

“Reaper?”

The bald, mashed-up creature hissed at her again before it glared up at Sader's painting with copper-yellow eyes.

Agatha rushed towards him and scooped him into her arms—

He bit her wrist and she dropped him with a yelp. Reaper turned back to Sader's painting, his slit-like pupils locked on the scene.

All Agatha's questions of how her cat had gotten into the school, where he'd been the past few weeks, or why he was in Evil's museum fell away. Because right now, Reaper wanted her to look at the painting on the wall. As she leaned in towards
the canvas, Agatha saw why.

The scene was different than it was before.

It was darker, with only a needlepoint of light left in the top corner. And where the shadows of villains once closed in on Gavaldon as the villagers burned storybooks in fear, now there were
actual
villains coming through the trees as they battled the young and old heroes back. The only thing separating the villains from Gavaldon was a thin, hole-riddled shield, about to break.

Agatha bolted straight. Once a vision of the future, Sader's painting was now magically tracking the present. She was watching the war between Good and Evil as it unfolded . . . and Good was
losing.

Urgently, her eyes scoured the scene for Tedros, but Sader had always painted with hazy, impressionistic brushstrokes, no detail to the faces at all.

I have to get to Sophie
, she panicked.

But how?
Sophie had too much of a head start—

Reaper meowed again, still fixed on the painting, as if whatever answers she was looking for were inside its frame.

What hadn't she seen?

She put her nose closer to the canvas, her fingers running across the oily surface . . . until they stopped.

The empty anvil from which she'd drawn Excalibur was tucked beneath the canopy of Mr. Deauville's book shop, far away from the action of the war.

Reaper growled, urging her on.

Of course
, Agatha thought.

The School Master had enchanted the sword to hide it in Sader's painting . . .

Which meant he had to enchant the anvil too.

And if he enchanted the anvil . . . then maybe . . .

Heart rattling, Agatha slowly slid her right hand through the tight, wet surface of the painting until she watched her fingers appear in the painting . . .

She felt the cold, hard metal of the real anvil under her palm.

Her hand wasn't just inside the painting. Her hand was in Gavaldon.

A portal.

Reaper curled around her leg, ensuring he'd be along for the ride. Agatha smiled down sadly.

“Thanks for helping me, Reap,” she whispered, prying him off. “I'll be back for you when it's safe. I promise.”

As her cat whimpered, Agatha grabbed the anvil tighter and pulled herself headfirst into the painting. Her whole body was swallowed into hot, wet darkness, before her face poked through another tight, wet barrier and into cold night air. Still levitating horizontally, Agatha grabbed hold of the anvil with her second hand and yanked the rest of herself through the portal wall, the heel of her last clump popping out before she collapsed onto sooty cobblestones.

When Agatha raised her head, the first thing she saw was hordes of screaming villagers fleeing for cover. Trapped in the stampede, Agatha rolled like a log under Mr. Deauville's awning, just missing being trampled, before she ducked behind
the anvil. Peeking over it, she could see people of Gavaldon cramming into the church, shuttering themselves in shops, and chaining themselves in cottages. Once upon a time, she'd witnessed the same scenes as parents tried to protect their children from the School Master. Now, it wasn't just the children they were hiding from him.

Agatha rose from behind the anvil, gazing out at the Woods, a half mile away.

It was exactly as she'd seen in Sader's painting. Flames streaked through the distant trees, illuminating legions of zombie villains as they battled old heroes and students out of the Woods, backing them towards an invisible barrier that separated the forest from Gavaldon. From inside the town, Agatha couldn't see the enchanted shield the way she'd seen it inside the Woods. She only knew it was there because an ogre slammed a stymph out of nearby trees, sending it whizzing into the shield and ricocheting to the ground, toppling the young rider on its spine.

Agatha squinted harder, trying to make out faces through the trees, but like Sader's painting, all she saw was a blur of bodies and fire. Scared, Agatha searched for the sun, but couldn't find it through the clouds of smoke.

How much time was left? Twenty minutes? Fifteen? Less?

All at once, it overwhelmed her. She'd never find Sophie in time. She'd never make her destroy that ring. She'd die here, useless and cowering, beneath a storybook shop. Panic ripped through her blood—