The Last Ever After (4 page)

Agatha smashed face-first into a wall of dirt.

Dazed, she'd opened her eyes to pitch darkness, her body on top of her prince's in Gavaldon's snowy cemetery. In an instant, she remembered all she'd once left behind in this tiny
village: a broken promise to Stefan to bring his daughter home, the Elders' threat to kill her, the stories of witches once burned in a square. . . .
Relax. This is our happy ending
, she'd soothed herself, her breath settling.
Nothing bad can happen anymore.

Agatha squinted and saw the slope of a roof atop the snow-capped hill, shaped like a witch's hat. Her heart had swelled at the thought of being home once and for all, of seeing her mother's euphoric face. . . . She looked down at her prince with an impish grin.
If she doesn't have a stroke first.

“Tedros, wake up,” she'd whispered. He'd stayed limp in her arms in his black Trial cloak, the only sounds coming from a few crows pecking at grave worms and a weak torch crackling over the gate. She grabbed her prince by the shirt strings to shake him, but her hands were flecked with something warm and sticky. Slowly Agatha raised them into the torchlight.

Blood.

She'd dashed frantically between jagged graves and sharp-edged weeds, clumps crunching through powdery snow, before she saw the house ahead, none of its usual candles lit over the porch. Agatha turned the doorknob slowly, but the hinges squeaked and a body bolted out of bed, tangled in sheets like a bumbling ghost. Finally Callis' head poked through, her big bug eyes blinking wide. For a split second, she colored with happiness, reunited with her daughter who'd been gone for so long. Then she saw the panic in Agatha's face and went pale. “D-d-did anyone see you?” Callis stammered. Agatha shook her head. Her mother smiled with relief and rushed to embrace her, before she saw her daughter's face hadn't changed. Callis
froze, her smile gone. “What have you done?” she gasped.

Together, they'd fumbled down Graves Hill, Callis in her saggy black nightgown, Agatha leading her back to Tedros. Plowing through snow, they lugged him home, each grappling one of his arms. Agatha peeked up at her mother, just an older version of herself with helmet-black hair and pasty skin, waiting for her to balk at the sight of a real-life prince—but Callis' pupils stayed locked on the darkened town below. Agatha couldn't worry to ask why. Right now, saving her prince was the only thing that mattered.

As soon as they pulled him through the door, her mother lay Tedros on the rug and slit open his wet shirt, the prince unconscious and covered with cockleburs, while Agatha lit the fireplace. When Agatha turned back, she nearly fainted. The sword wound in Tedros' chest was so deep she could almost see the pulsing of his heart.

Agatha's eyes filled with tears. “H-h-he'll be okay, won't he? He has to be—”

“Too late to numb him,” said Callis, rifling through drawers for thread.

“I had to bring him, Mother—I couldn't lose him—”

“We'll talk later,” Callis said so sharply Agatha shrank to the wall. Crouched over the prince, her mother made it five stitches in, barely closing the wound, before Tedros roused suddenly with a cry of pain, saw the needle in a stranger's hand, and grabbed the nearest broomstick, threatening to bash her head in if she got an inch closer.

He and Callis had never quite seen eye to eye after that.

Somehow Agatha sweet-talked Tedros into sleeping, and that next morning, while he snuffled shallow breaths, his stitches half-done, Callis took her daughter into the kitchen, hanging a black sheet to close off the bedroom. Agatha had sensed the tension immediately.

“Look, first time we met, he threatened to kill me too,” she'd cracked, pulling two iron plates from the cupboard. “He'll grow on you, I promise.”

Callis ladled foggy stew from the cauldron into a bowl. “I'll sew him a new shirt before he leaves.”

“Uh, Mother, there's a real-life prince from magical fairy land sleeping on our floor and you're worrying about his shirt?” Agatha said, perching on a creaky stool. “Forget that the sight of me within a hundred feet of a boy should be cause for a town parade or that you've been telling me fairy tales are real from the day I was born. Don't you want to know who he is—” Agatha's eyes widened. “Wait. Before he
leaves
? Tedros is staying in Gavaldon . . . forever.”

Callis put the bowl in front of Agatha. “No one likes toad soup cold.”

Agatha bucked up. “Look, I know it's crowded with him here. But Tedros and I can get work in the village. Think about it, if we save up enough, maybe we can all move to a bigger house, maybe even something in the cottage lanes.” Agatha grinned. “Imagine, Mother, we could actually have
living
neighbors—”

Callis fixed her with a cold, brown stare and Agatha stopped talking. She followed her mother's eyes to the small,
slime-crusted window over the sink. Agatha pushed out of her chair, bowl untouched, and grabbed a wet dishtowel from the rack. Pressing against the glass, she scraped at the gray smear of dust, grease, and mildew, until a stream of sunlight pierced through. Agatha backed away in surprise.

Down the snow-coated hill, bright red flags billowed from every lamppost in the square:

“Witch?” Agatha choked, gaping at a hundred reflections of her own face. Beyond the square, the colorful storybook houses, decimated by attacks from the Woods, had been rebuilt
as monotonous stone bunkers. A phalanx of guards in long black cloaks and black-iron masks carried spears, patrolling the cottage lanes and forest perimeter. Dread rising, Agatha's eyes slowly fell on the spot where her and Sophie's statues once glistened near the crooked clock tower. Now there was only a raised wooden stage, with a giant pyre made of birches, two flaming torches fixed to the scaffolding, and a banner of her and Sophie's faces hanging between them.

Agatha's stomach dropped. She'd escaped a public execution at school only to find one at home.

“I warned you, Agatha,” her mother said behind her. “The Elders believed Sophie a witch who brought the attacks from the Woods. They ordered you not to go after her the night they surrendered her to the attackers. The moment you disobeyed them, you became a witch too.”

Agatha turned, her legs jellying. “So they want to
burn
me?”

“If you'd come back alone, the Elders might have spared you.” Callis was sitting at the table, head in hands. “You could have taken punishment, like I did for letting you escape.”

A chill went up Agatha's spine. She looked at her mother, but there were no wounds or marks on her hooked-nose face or gangly arms; all her fingers and toes were intact. “What did they do to you?” Agatha asked, terrified.

“Nothing that compares to what they'll do to you both when they find him.” Callis looked up, eyelids raw. “The Elders always despised us, Agatha. How could you be so stupid to bring someone back from the Woods?”

“The s-s-storybook said ‘The End,'” Agatha stuttered. “You said it yourself—if our book says ‘The End,' this
has
to be our happy ending—”

“Happy ending? With
him
?” Callis blurted, jolting to her feet. “There is a
reason
the worlds are separate, Agatha. There is a reason the worlds
must
be separate. He will never be happy here! You are a Reader and he is a—”

Callis stopped and Agatha stared at her. Callis quickly turned to the sink and pumped water into a kettle.

“Mother . . . ,” Agatha said, suddenly feeling cold. “How do you know what a Reader is?”

“Mmm, can't hear you, dear.”

“A
Reader
,” Agatha stressed over the strident cranks. “How do you know that word—”

Callis pumped louder. “Must have seen it in a book, I'm sure . . .”

“Book? What book—”

“One of the storybooks, dear.”

Of course,
Agatha sighed, trying to relax. Her mother had always seemed to know things about the fairy-tale world—like all parents in Gavaldon who had feverishly bought storybooks from Mr. Deauville's Storybook Shop, hunting for clues about the children kidnapped by the School Master.
One of the books must have mentioned it,
Agatha told herself. That's why she called me a Reader. That's why she wasn't surprised by a prince.

But as Agatha glanced up at Callis, back to her, pumping water into the kettle, Agatha noticed that the pot was already full and overflowing into the sink. She watched her mother
staring off into space, hands clenched, pumping water faster, faster, as if pumping memories away with it. Slowly Agatha's heart started to constrict in her chest, until she felt that cold sensation deepening . . . whispering that the reason her mother wasn't fazed by Tedros' appearance wasn't because she'd read storybooks . . . but because she knew what it was like to live through one . . .

“He returns to the Woods as soon as he wakes,” Callis said, releasing the pump.

Agatha wrenched out of her thoughts. “The
Woods
? Tedros and I barely escaped alive—and you want us to go
back
?”

“Not you,” said Callis, still turned. “Him.”

Agatha flared in shock. “Only someone who's never experienced true love could say such a thing.”

Callis froze. The skeleton clock ticked through the loaded silence.

“You really believe this is your happy ending, Agatha?” Callis said, not looking at her.

“It has to be, Mother. Because I won't leave him again. And I won't leave you,” Agatha begged. “I thought maybe I could be happy in the Woods, that I could run away from real life . . . but I can't. I never wanted a fairy tale. All I ever wanted was to wake up every day right here, knowing I had my mother and my best friend. How could I know that friend would end up being a prince?” Agatha dabbed at her eyes. “You don't know what we've been through to find each other. You don't know the Evil that we left behind. I don't care if Tedros and I have to stay trapped in this house for a hundred years. At least we're
together. At least we'll be happy. You just have to give us the chance.”

Quiet fell in the sooty kitchen.

Callis turned to her daughter. “And Sophie?”

Agatha's voice went cold. “Gone.”

Her mother gazed at her. The town clock tolled faintly from the square, before the wind drowned it out. Callis picked up the kettle and moved to the wooden stove. Agatha held her breath, watching her spark a flame beneath the pot and stew a few wormroot leaves in, circling her ladle again and again, long after the leaves had dissolved.

“I suppose we'll need eggs,” said her mother at last. “Princes don't eat toads.”

Agatha almost collapsed in relief. “Oh thank you thank you thank you—”

“I'll lock you both in when I go to town each morning. The guards won't come here as long as we're careful.”

“You'll love him like a son, Mother, you'll see—” Agatha grimaced. “Into town? You said you had no patients.”

“Don't light the fireplace or open the windows,” ordered Callis, pouring two cups of tea.

“Why won't the guards come here?” Agatha pushed. “Wouldn't it be the first place they'd check?”

“And don't answer the door for a soul.”

“Wait—what about Stefan?” Agatha asked, brightening. “Surely he can talk to the Elders for us—”

Callis whirled. “
Especially
not Stefan.”

Mother and daughter locked stares across the kitchen.

“Your prince will never belong here, Agatha,” said Callis softly. “No one can hide from their fate without a price.”

There was a fear in her mother's big owl eyes that Agatha had never seen before, as if she was no longer talking about a prince.

Agatha crossed the kitchen and wrapped her mother in a deep, comforting hug. “I promise you. Tedros will be as happy here as I am,” she whispered. “And you'll wonder how you ever could have doubted two people so in love.”

A clang and clatter echoed from the bedroom. The curtain drew back behind them before collapsing entirely, and Tedros lumbered through, groggy, red-eyed, and half-naked with a torn, bloodied piece of bedsheet stuck haplessly over his wound. He sat down at the counter, smelled the soup and gagged, shoving it aside. “We'll need a sturdy horse, steel-edged sword, and enough bread and meat for a three-day journey.” He looked up at Agatha with a sleepy smile. “Hope you said your goodbyes, princess. Time to ride to my castle.”

That first week, Agatha believed this was just another test in their story. It was only a matter of time before the pyre came down, the death sentence lifted, and Tedros felt at ease with ordinary life. Looking at her handsome, teddy-bear prince who she loved so much, she knew that no matter how long they stayed in this house, they would still find a way to be happy.

By the second week, however, the house had started to feel smaller. There was never enough food or cups or towels; Reaper and Tedros fought like demented siblings; Agatha
began to notice her prince's irritating habits (using all the soap, drinking milk out of the jug, exercising every second of the day, breathing through his mouth); and Callis had the burden of supporting two teenagers who didn't like to be supported at all. (“
School
was better than this,” Tedros carped, bored to tears. “Let's go back and you can finish getting stabbed,” Agatha replied.) By the third week, Tedros had taken to playing rugby against himself, dodging invisible opponents, whispering play-by-play, and flinging about like a caged animal, while Agatha lay in bed, a pillow over her head, clinging to the hope that happiness would fall like a fairy godmother from a star. Instead, it was Tedros who fell on her head one day while catching a ball, reopening his stitches in the process. Agatha belted him hard with her pillow, Tedros clocked her with his, and soon the cat was in the toilet. As they lay on the bed, covered in feathers, Reaper dripping in the corner, Agatha's question hung in the air unanswered.