A World Without Princes

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 the honeycream 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.

Sophie shook off the thought. Agatha had given up a prince for her. Almost given her life for her. Agatha had found them a happy ending against all odds.

In the cold, dark church, Sophie’s heart skittered out of beat.

So why would she ruin our fairy tale?

Behind her, the church doors creaked open. Sophie turned with relief and saw the shadows waiting in their gray cloaks, black hats in hand.

Only the Eldest was holding something else.

Something sharper.

The problem with living in a graveyard is the dead have no need for light. Besides the flittering torches over the gates, the cemetery was pitch-black at midnight, and anything beyond just an inky shadow. Peering through her window’s broken shutters, Agatha caught the sheen of white tents down the hill, pitched to house those left homeless by the attacks. Somewhere out there, the Elders were about to move Sophie to safety. All she could do was wait.

“I should have hidden near the church,” she said, and licked a fresh scratch from Reaper, who still acted like she was a stranger.

“You can’t disobey the Elders,” said her mother, sitting stiffly on her bed, eyes on a mantel clock with hands made of bones. “They’ve been civil since you stopped the kidnappings. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Oh please,” Agatha scoffed. “What could three old men possibly do to me?”

“What all men do in times of fear.” Callis’ eyes stayed on the clock. “Blame the witch.”

“Mmhmm. Burn us at the stake too,” Agatha snorted, flopping onto her bed.

Tension thickened the silence. She sat up and saw her mother’s strained face, still staring ahead.

“You’re not serious, Mother.”

Sweat beaded on Callis’ lip. “They needed a scapegoat when the kidnappings wouldn’t stop.”

“They burnt women?” Agatha uttered in shock.

“Unless we married. That’s what the storybooks taught them to do.”

“But you never married—” Agatha countered. “How did you survive—”

“Because I had someone stand up for me,” her mother said, watching the bones strike eight. “And he paid the price.”

“My father? You said he was a rotten two-timer who died in a mill accident.”

Callis didn’t answer, gazing ahead.

A chill prickled up Agatha’s spine. She looked at her mother. “What did you mean when you said Stefan suffered worst of all? When the Elders arranged his marriage?”

Callis’ eyes stayed on the clock. “The problem with Stefan is he trusts those he shouldn’t. He always believes people are Good.” The long bone ticked past eight. Her shoulders slumped with relief. “But no one is as Good as they seem, dear,” Callis said softly, turning to her daughter. “Surely you know that.”

For the first time, Agatha saw her mother’s eyes. There were tears in them.

“No—” Agatha gasped, a red rash searing her neck.

“They’ll say it was her choice,” Callis rasped.

“You knew,” Agatha choked, lurching for the door. “You knew they weren’t moving her—”

Her mother intercepted her. “They knew you’d bring her back! They promised to spare you if I kept you here until—”

Agatha shoved her into the wall—her mother lunged for her and missed. “They’ll kill you!” Callis screamed out the window, but darkness had swallowed her daughter up.

Without a torch, Agatha stumbled and tripped down the hill, rolling through cold, wet grass until she barreled into a tent at the bottom. Mumbling frantic apology to a family who thought her a cannonball, she dashed for the church between homeless dozens stewing beetles and lizards over fires, wrapping their children in mangy blankets, bracing for the next attack that would never come. Tomorrow the Elders would mourn Sophie’s valiant “sacrifice,” her statue would be rebuilt, and the villagers would go on to a new Christmas, relieved of another curse …

With a cry, Agatha threw the oak doors open.

The church was empty. Long, deep scratches ripped down the aisle.

Sophie had dragged her glass slippers all the way.

Agatha sank to her knees in mud.

Stefan.

She had promised him. She had promised to keep his daughter safe.

Agatha hunched over, face in her hands. This was her fault. This would always be her fault. She had everything she wanted. She had a friend, she had love, she had Sophie. And she had traded her for a wish. She was Evil. Worse than Evil. She was the one who deserved to die.

“Please … I’ll bring her home …,” she heaved. “Please … I promise … I’ll do anything …”

But there was nothing to do. Sophie was gone. Delivered to invisible killers as a ransom for peace.

“I’m sorry … I didn’t mean it …” Agatha wept, spit dripping. How could she tell a father his daughter was dead? How could either of them live with her broken promise? Her sobs slowly receded, curdling to terror. She didn’t move for a long time.

At last Agatha slumped up in a nauseous daze and staggered east towards Stefan’s house. Every step away from the church made her feel sicker. Limping down the dirt lane, she vaguely felt something sticky and wet on her legs. Without thinking, she wiped a gob off a knee with her finger and smelled it.

Honeycream.

Agatha froze, heart pounding. There was more cream on the ground ahead, spurted in a desperate trail towards the lake. Adrenaline blasted through her blood.

Nibbling his toenails in his tent, Radley heard crackles behind him and turned just in time to see a shadow swipe his dagger and torch.

“Assassin!” he squeaked—

Agatha swung her head back to see men explode out of tents and chase her as she tracked the honeycream like breadcrumbs towards the lake. She ran faster, following the trail, but soon the globs turned smaller and smaller and then sprayed to specks in every direction. As Agatha hesitated, searching for another sign to guide her, the men reached the lake, racing east around the shore towards her. But there were three figures across the lake, hunting her from the west. In their torchlight, she saw the shadows of three long cloaks and beards—

Elders.

They’d kill her.

Agatha spun, waving her torch in front of her, as both sides converged. Sophie, where are you—

“Kill him!” she heard a man’s voice cry from the mob.

Agatha swiveled in shock. She knew his voice.

“Kill the assassin!” the man screamed again as his mob ran towards her.

Panicked, Agatha stuttered forward, swinging the torch at the trees. Something heavy whizzed past her ear, another past her ribs—

Then a sparkle flared ahead and she froze her flame on it.

The empty honeycream pouch lay at the forest edge, snakeskin scales glinting.

A hard, cold blow smashed into her back. Agatha buckled to her knees and saw a jagged rock on the ground beside her. She turned to see more men aiming stones at her head, less than fifty feet away from the east. Rushing in from the west, the Elders held up their torches, about to glimpse her face—

Agatha hurled her torch in the lake, plunging her into pitch darkness.

With confused cries, the men whisked torches wildly to find the assassin. They saw a shadow sprint past them for the trees. Like lions to a kill, they charged in a grunting, vengeful mob, chasing faster, faster, one breaking from the pack, and just as the man who screamed for blood caught the assassin by the neck, the shadow whirled to face him—

Stefan gasped in shock, long enough for Agatha to press her lips to his ear.

“I promise.”

Then she was gone into the labyrinth, like a white rose into a grave.

Agatha heard the men’s shouts recede with the light of their torches. Kneeling against a wet, crumbly tree trunk in darkness, she folded her shivering arms into her black dress.

A few distant hoots and skitters muffled to silence. Agatha didn’t move, her spine throbbing where the rock hit her. All this time she had focused on rescuing her best friend and going back. Back to what? Murderous Elders? More assassin attacks? A village that wanted Sophie gone?

She thought of innocent women burnt publicly in a square, not so long ago, and her stomach turned over. How can we ever go home? Their future in Gavaldon was just as dark as the Woods around her now. To go home, she couldn’t just rescue Sophie. She had to defeat these assassins—whoever they were—and stop their attacks once and for all.

But she had no idea how to even begin looking for her friend. For hundreds of years, the villagers had stormed into the forest, seeking its lost children—only to come out the other side, right where they started. Like all the missing children, she and Sophie had seen what lay beyond the forest: a dangerous world of Good and Evil that had no end. They had been the lucky ones to return, sealing the gates between reality and fantasy forever … or so she’d thought. One wish, and the gates had reopened.

Wherever Sophie was, she was in terrible danger.

Rising from a crouch, Agatha stepped into the Endless Woods, clumps crunching on dead leaves. Inching forward, she probed blindly with her hands, feeling splintered bark, cobwebbed branches … Her head smacked into a tree and a shadow flung out, spewed something wet at her face, and vanished with a hiss. In response came a chorus of grunts and groans, all through the woods, like a sleeping enemy called to arms. Dazed, Agatha scraped the goo off her face and pulled Radley’s dagger from her pocket. Scuffling sounds came from beneath her feet.

Through dead leaves, she saw pupils open and shut in the undergrowth, yellow and green, glinting in one place, reappearing in another. Agatha shrank against the tree, trying not to blink. Little by little, her eyes adjusted, just in time to see eight slinky shadows unfurl from the ground in a circle around her, like coiling trails of smoke.

Snakes.

Only they were thicker than snakes, black as ash, with flattened heads and needle-sharp barbs through every scale. They rose higher, higher around Agatha, angling towards her with long, overlapping hisses, opening their full-fanged jaws wide—

All at once, they spat.

Gobs of mucus pinned Agatha to the tree, and she dropped the dagger. She tried to wrench free, but sour film smacked into her mouth and eyes so all she could see was a ring of blurry, spiny silhouettes. They all aimed at different parts of her body, then curled their trunks around her, barbs piercing into her skin. Flailing silently, Agatha saw a last one, bigger than the rest, lower from a branch and loop its cold, black tail around her neck. As its barbs pricked her throat, she gasped for more breath, but the monster’s head was slithering up her face now. It pressed its fat nose against the film over her cheeks, glaring at her through thin, acid-green pupils … and started to squeeze. Agatha choked and closed her eyes.

She felt no hurt, only her soul searching for a memory … She was sitting on a lakeshore, head on someone’s shoulder. Arm in arm, they held each other, sun drenching their skin, breaths quietly matched. Agatha listened to the silence of happiness, Ever After in a single moment … Then sharp, stabbing pain flooded her body and she knew the end had come. Gripping the arm beside her, Agatha gazed into their lake’s reflection, needing to see her happy ending’s face, one last time—

It wasn’t Sophie’s.

Light speared the darkness. The snakes recoiled with screams and scudded back under dead leaves.

Agatha opened her eyes. Dazed, she looked around for the source of light. Through the veil of goo, she saw it was her fingertip, burning gold for the first time since the wedding. She was at once relieved and sickened. Both times it had happened thinking of him.

Magic follows emotion, Yuba had warned. She’d lost control of both.

This time, however, her finger didn’t dim. Agatha held it up, confused. She focused on her need to get off this tree, and suddenly the glow pulsed brighter, as if waiting for instructions. Agatha’s heart pumped faster. She’d crossed into the fairy-tale world. Her magic was back.

Bursting with pain and stuck to a tree, Agatha was hardly in shape to remember spells from school. But when her breaths settled, she managed a basic melt jinx, and the mucus rinsed away with the blood, leaving her black dress sticky and soaked. Still, she was alive somehow, and with a wretched groan, Agatha picked up Radley’s dagger and pried off the soggy bark.

Finger aglow, she swept it like a torch through knotted trees, searching for a path, like Yuba had taught them. Like all the group leaders at the School for Good and Evil, the old gnome had used the Blue Forest, a lush, tranquil training ground meant to mimic the Endless Woods and prepare students for what they’d face. Agatha squeezed between two rotted tree trunks, trying to ignore the burning cuts all over her body. Now the Blue Forest seemed like the School Master’s cruel joke.

Agatha wrenched between more webbed trees towards a gap in the thicket, hoping it’d be the path. She didn’t dare call Sophie’s name and signal the assassins she was on their trail.

With each step, Agatha felt a growing sense of doom. She’d been in the Endless Woods twice before, but this time it was different. There was no school to save her. There was no Tedros.

Her fingerglow pulsed brighter.

Tedros of Camelot.

Finally she said his name to herself, here, alone in the Woods. The last time she’d seen her prince was in the twilight of her and Sophie’s kiss, a kiss he thought would be his. As he watched her disappear into thin air, he reached for her, choking a scream—“Wait!”

She’d had the choice to take his hand. She’d had the choice to stay as his princess. She felt it as her body glowed to light, trapped between worlds.

But she chose Sophie, and then Agatha was gone.

She was so sure she’d made the right choice. It was the only ending she ever wanted. But the more she tried to forget him, the more her prince came. In dreams, day and night … his pained blue eyes … his body lunging … his big, strong hand, reaching for hers …

Until one day she reached back.

Just find Sophie, she gritted, remembering her promise to Stefan. All she wanted was Sophie home alive—charming, maniacal, ludicrous Sophie. She’d never doubt her happy ending again.

As she waded through a mess of fallen branches towards the gap in the trees, Agatha held up her lit finger and saw it wasn’t a path at all. It was a vast cesspool of mud, rusted red, stretching east and west as far as she could see. She picked up a rock and lobbed it into the pool. The splash wasn’t shallow.

Suddenly Agatha noticed two shadows down the bank, probing at the red mud with dark hooves: a horned stag with his female deer. After a few more testing prods, the stag seemed satisfied, and both slid into the mud side by side, swimming towards the distant bank. Relieved, Agatha rolled up her dress to follow them—

Something snatched the female deer and Agatha stumbled back in shock. Three long, spiny white crocodile snouts rose from the mud, thin and rectangular, with enormous round nostrils and black shark teeth, tearing into the thrashing female. They pulled her under, ignoring the bigger male completely as he flailed whimpering to the far shore.

Agatha didn’t try to cross.

Tears in her eyes, she staggered back the way she came, sweeping her fingerglow across the maze of trees. Where was her friend? What had they done with her? Trying to stifle her sobs, she limped towards the forest edge, seeing nothing but the shadows of skeletal branches … slivers of dark clouds … a hot glow of pink …

She stopped her finger on it, pulsing like a beacon to bad behavior. Anyone else would have mistaken it for an animal’s eye. But Agatha knew.

Only one animal on earth made a pink like that.

She tore through trees, fighting her pain, following the pink glow fading weaker in the distance. As she neared, she began to see smears of blood on trees, like the trail of a wounded beast. She plowed through broken branches and ripped away vines, hair snaring on nettles, until she caught wisps of lavender perfume. Agatha jumped over a log, heart bursting from her chest, and charged into the small glade—

“Sophie!”

Sophie didn’t respond. Facing away, she was slumped on her knees behind a far tree, arms over her head. The second finger on her right hand pulsed her signature pink glow a few last times and dulled to pale.

“Sophie?” Agatha said. Her own gold fingerglow went cold.

Sophie still didn’t move.

Agatha approached the tree, dread rising. She could hear her friend’s shallow breaths. Slowly Agatha reached out and touched bare shoulder through Sophie’s torn dress.

There was blood on it.

Agatha spun her around. Sophie’s hands were lashed to a branch with braided horse reins. There were shallow knife pricks in each of her palms, from which the Elders had taken blood and smeared a scarlet message on Sophie’s chest.

Frantic, Agatha cut Sophie down with her knife, trying in vain to think of a spell to wash away the blood. She scrubbed at her friend’s skin with shaking palms. “I’m sorry—” she choked, severing the last rein. “I’ll get us home—I promise—”