The Last Ever After (8 page)

Tedros and Agatha followed their teacher's eyes down to the empty grave that once held Sophie's mother. . . . Only the headstone was different now. Instead of a tall rectangle, it was a murky oval, with a long crack down the middle, carved with thick black letters.

“Vanessa was Sophie's mother. ‘Butterfly,' I think the name means,” remembered Tedros, studying the stone. “Sophie told me one night when she was Filip.”

“Sophie never told me her mother's name,” Agatha said, hurt.

“Perhaps because you never asked,” said Tedros. His face changed. “Wait a second. Her name wasn't
on
the grave before. And look, it doesn't say
‘Loving Wife and Mother'
like it used to.” He squinted at the shadows of crooked slabs around them. “We're in the same graveyard, in the exact same spot. Doesn't make any sense. A gravestone can't just change—”

“Unless you're not in the same graveyard at all,” Princess Uma said behind them.

Agatha and Tedros spun to see their teacher shoot a bolt
of white glow into the sky. From every direction, thousands of fireflies whizzed to it like a signal, swarming over the Evers' heads and detonating neon-green wings into a giant light cloud, illuminating a sprawling landscape in every direction. Prince and princess gazed out at a vast cemetery, with thousands and thousands of gravestones sloping over steep, barren hills. For a moment, Agatha thought Graves Hill had magically grown bigger. But it was what lay beyond the cemetery that made Agatha feel faint—a dark, endless gnarl of black trees, rearing high into the night like a primeval monster.

They weren't on Graves Hill.

They weren't in Gavaldon at all.

“We're in the Woods,” Agatha rasped.

She was suddenly aware of the sea of dead bodies under her feet. In an instant, the images she'd been damming up broke through with a vengeance—guards, spears, her mother falling . . . Agatha buckled, about to retch—

Tedros' hand touched her arm. “I'm right here.”

His voice brought her back to the moment. Agatha swallowed the acid taste in her mouth and uncurled to stand, clutching her prince by the shirt laces. She steadied her legs, trying to see a graveyard in front of her, just a graveyard and nothing more . . .

“Hold on. I've been here before,” said Tedros, searching the landscape.

“Each Forest Group makes a trip first year to scavenge meerworms. No doubt Yuba accompanied you,” Princess Uma replied.

“The Garden of Good and Evil,” said Tedros. “That's what he called it. Every Ever or Never whose name makes it into a storybook is buried here.”

Under the firefly cloud, he scanned thousands of coffins down one side of the hills, teeming with glittering gem-crusted memorials for pairs of Evers, united in life and now in death. “That's Ever Embankment, where the greatest heroes are,” he said. “Except Dad, of course.”

Agatha looked at her prince, waiting for him to go on, but he turned back to her. “We must have come out the other side of Vanessa's grave. One end is Gavaldon, the other end the Woods. It's the only explanation. But how would your mother have known the grave was a portal?”

Agatha thought of the black and white swans on the two graves flanking Sophie's mother's. “Even if she did know somehow, why would Sophie's mother's grave connect the two worlds?”

“You're asking the wrong questions, students.”

Agatha and Tedros looked up at Princess Uma, studying them intently.

“You should be asking why her grave is
empty
.”

Uma circled her finger at the sky and the firefly cloud swept over their heads, illuminating the slope Agatha and Tedros were standing on. A bank of cracked and moldy headstones glowed in the alien green light, jutting from ragged black mounds.

“Necro Ridge,” said Tedros. “It's where the worst villains are buried.”

“Sophie's mother was a
Never
?” Agatha asked, disoriented.

“Not according to our findings. The League of Thirteen has no evidence of a Vanessa of Woods Beyond attending the School for Good and Evil, being mentioned in a fairy tale, or having her body buried here at all,” said Uma, pocketing gooey gray meerworms off a tomb. “And yet, she has a grave amongst our most famous Nevers.”

“You keep talking about this League,” Tedros rankled. “I've never heard of them—”

“As you shouldn't,” said Uma, even more unhelpfully than before. “Listen to me, Agatha. There are no words to ease the pain you're in right now. But your mother died before she could give the League the answers we needed. Think back. Do you have any idea why Vanessa's name is carved into a headstone on Necro Ridge? And where her body might be?”

“I don't see why we should help a League we know nothing about,” Tedros grouched.

But Agatha's head was still swimming. Her own mother, Callis, had moved between the two worlds as a witch without anyone in Gavaldon knowing, including her own daughter. And yet, her mother fit all the traits of a Never—unmarried, mysterious, reclusive. . . . If anything, Agatha should have seen the clues. But
Sophie's
mother? Sophie had spoken only rapturously of her mother, doting on her wicked, unfaithful husband until her dying day. There was no hint of her being anything other than a radiant, loving caretaker and wife. So how could her name be on a villain's tomb? Agatha shook her head, at a dead end . . . until her eyes suddenly flared wide.

“The Crypt Keeper will know!”

Quickly she scoured the horizon for the blue-skinned, dreadlocked giant she'd learned about at school, responsible for digging and filling graves. “Hort said he buries everybody himself. Never lets anyone interfere. That's why Hort's dad's been waiting for a coffin all these years. So the Crypt Keeper has to know why Sophie's mother has a headstone here . . .” But the hills were deserted, except for a few hovering vultures nearby. She turned to Uma. “Where is h—”

Agatha stopped cold, seeing Uma's expression.

Slowly Agatha turned back to the vultures.

Lying on the ground beneath them was a massive, blue-skinned body crumpled in a spray of dirt. His bones were broken and his throat split open, the blood staining his neck long dried out. Agatha could see the whites of his wide-open eyes, as if the shock of dying paled to the shock of what killed him.

Agatha felt Tedros squeeze her hand with his sweaty palm, telling her she hadn't seen the worst of it. Dread growing, she tracked his gaze past the dead Crypt Keeper and across the 200 graves on Necro Ridge, marking the resting place of famous fairy-tale villains. But now Agatha saw why there were so many mounds of dirt, blacking out the grass. Every single one of the famous villains' tombs had been dug up, the insides of all of them . . .

“Empty,” said Agatha. “The villains' graves are empty.”

Legs shaky, Tedros gaped at the bodiless graves. “Red Riding Hood's wolf . . . Jack's giant . . . and a whole lot worse . . .”

Agatha whitened, remembering who the wolf said they worked for. “And they're all under the School Master's control.”

Princess Uma came up behind them. “For hundreds of years, Evil lost every story because Good had love on its side. Love gave Good a power and purpose Evil couldn't match. But those happy endings held only as long as Evil wasn't able to love. Things have changed, students. The School Master has found someone who loves him and who he loves in return. He's proved Evil deserves a chance to rewrite its fairy tales. Now every old villain gets a new turn at their story. Every dead villain is reborn.”

True love? The School Master?
Agatha shook her head, trying to understand. How could anyone love
him
?

Suddenly Agatha noticed Vanessa's empty grave again and her heart seized. “Wait—Sophie's mother . . . body missing . . . means she's . . . she's—”

“She wasn't buried here, remember?” Uma said, cutting her off. “We don't even know if her body was buried at all. And yet, the Crypt Keeper saved this grave for Sophie's mother amongst the famous Nevers—the Crypt Keeper, who answers to no one but the Storian itself.
Why
he saved a villain's grave for her could be our greatest clue to understanding how the School Master came to choose his new queen.”

Agatha felt a cold darkness rip through her stomach. She had a thousand questions: about her mother and her best friend's mother, about letters and Leagues, about empty graves and undead villains . . . but only one mattered.

“Queen?” she whispered, slowly looking up. “Who?”

Uma met her eyes. “Sophie took the School Master's ring. She is his true love.”

Agatha couldn't speak.

“But . . . but we came to rescue her from him,” Tedros said, stunned.

“And you
must
. But it will not be an easy task,” said Uma. “Sophie's kiss may have brought him back to life—but it is his ring on her finger that makes the power of that kiss last. As long as Sophie wears his ring, the School Master remains immortal. And yet, there is a way to undo the kiss, children. A way to destroy the School Master once and for all. And it is our one and only hope.” Her voice was fiery, urgent. “You must convince Sophie to
destroy
the School Master's ring by her own hand. Convince Sophie to destroy his ring and the School Master will be destroyed with it forever.”

Agatha was still lost in a fog.

“But beware,” Uma added. “While you seek your true ending to
The Tale of Sophie and Agatha
, the School Master seeks his too.”

Tedros could see Agatha staring into space, no longer listening. “And what ending is that?” he asked.

Uma leaned in, her soft features hardening. “The wolf and giant were no accident. War is coming, Son of Arthur. As long as Sophie wears the School Master's ring, all of Good is in terrible danger, past and present, young and old. Either you and your princess bring Sophie back to Good . . . or Good as we know it will be wiped out forever. That is the ending he seeks.”

Agatha's heartbeat swirled in her ears.

Once upon a time, she and Sophie had slain a deadly villain who'd torn them apart.

Now her best friend had given her heart to that villain.

“But he's Evil. She
knows
he's Evil . . . and Sophie isn't Evil anymore,” Agatha breathed, looking up. “Why would she want to be with him?”

“For the same reason you and your prince want to be with each other.” Uma gave her a wistful smile. “To be
happy
.”

Agatha and Tedros watched the Princess circle her finger, extinguishing the fireflies, and hasten towards the dark Woods beyond the hills. “Quickly, Evers,” she said, snatching a few more meerworms off a grave. “It's a two-day journey to school and we must get to Sophie before they find you.”

Tedros frowned, lagging behind. “Before who finds us?”

“Who?”
Uma glared back, incredulous. “Whoever else was in those
graves
.”

6
A Forest No Longer Blue

R
afal never slept in his chamber, so when the pen finally began to write, in the first hours of dawn, it was Sophie who was there to see it.

She'd been ill for six nights, ever since she took his ring—so ill, with a scorching fever and bone-numbing chills that she'd yet to leave her bed. Curled up in blankets, she imagined Tedros and Agatha gallivanting about town, snacking on Battersby's cupcakes (
maybe he'll get fat
, she hoped) and watching the sunset by the lake (
maybe he'll drown
), while here she was cooped in a sooty tower, sniffling and shivering like a snotty Rapunzel, and no one liked Rapunzel because she was boring.

“You said—I
could—see the—school,” she'd babbled to Rafal in a sweaty fit this morning. “I want to see—Hester—Anadil—”

“And infect them with whatever plague you're carrying?” he teased, wrapping her in a fresh blanket.

She'd have pressed her case, if only he hadn't been taking such good care of her. He barely left her side during the day: sponging her forehead, feeding her bone-marrow soup, bringing her baggy, black nightdresses that she could hibernate inside, and enduring her inane blathering about Tedros and Agatha and how little or much fun they must be having, depending on whether her jealousy was at a peak or a valley in any given moment. Soon Sophie began to dread the nights, when Rafal would go away, just as she once dreaded those first mornings when she was afraid he'd come. In her delirious haze, she began to crave the marble cradle of his arms . . . his fresh, teenage scent . . . his cold touch on her burning skin . . . his silvery voice pulling her out of nightmares . . .

“I bet you . . . made me sick . . . so I'd need you . . . ,” Sophie slurred as he'd left.

The young School Master looked back and smiled.

As her fever deepened, Sophie's nightmares grew clearer. Tonight she'd been dreaming of a pitch-black tunnel with a halo of light at its end. Floating in the dark tunnel was a giant gold ring, lined with razor-sharp teeth, spinning in midair and blocking her path. As she moved towards it, the ring spun faster, until she could see her reflection in the mirrored blur of teeth. Only, as she drew towards the ring, Sophie realized the reflection wasn't hers at all. It was a face she'd never seen
before—a strange man's, with wild brown hair, dark, leathery skin, and a fat, hooked nose. Confused, Sophie leaned in to see him . . . closer . . . closer . . . until the man lifted black, bloodshot eyes, with a dangerous grin—

Then he stabbed out his hands and slammed Sophie into the guillotine of teeth.

Sophie gasped awake, scared out of her wits—

She froze dead still. Someone was in the chamber. Scratching and rustling, like a black cat sharpening its nails.

Chest hammering, she squinted into the early morning. No one there. Slowly she turned her head and to her relief, saw it wasn't a person making the sounds, but a whirring gleam of steel. Still half-asleep, she first thought it a spindle, before she remembered spindles were for Sleeping Beauty, the lamest princess of all time and surely dead by now since she was old and old people die and Sophie wasn't old or dead . . . and well, that finally got her out of bed.

She had to blink a few times to make sure what she was seeing was indeed there: the Storian itself doing all that scratching and rustling—the pen that had dimmed the Endless Woods by refusing to write, now . . .
writing
.

But how
? she thought. The Storian had been stalled over the last page of her and Agatha's storybook for weeks. It hadn't moved an inch when she took the School Master's ring. Which meant it wasn't
her
ending the pen had been doubting, but rather—

Sophie's heart skittered.
Impossible . . .

Pulling her blankets around her, she tiptoed forward in her
saggy black nightdress, afraid the slightest sound might disrupt it. But as Sophie grew closer, she saw the pen wasn't writing at all, but chipping at her storybook like a bricklayer removing bricks, scraping off the last line, letter by letter, until
“THE END”
was fully gone. With a red-hot glow, the Storian twirled into the air, like a butterfly freed from its cocoon, and dove back down to the book, continuing the story right where it left off. The steel nib spilled ink onto brand-new pages, filled by dozens of flurried paintings Sophie could hardly follow: walls of emerald flames . . . guards in black masks . . . swan-marked tombs . . . a cadaverous wolf and giant . . . until swirls of forest green streaked across a blank sheet.

Two lean bodies came into view, framed by the high, twisting trees of the Woods. Sophie watched the pen fill in the blankness of their faces . . . a boy's slate-blue eyes and juicy lips . . . a girl's flat brows and sunken cheeks. . . .
It can't be
, she thought, waiting for the Storian to slash an errant line. But every stroke made the scene more and more real, as if birthed from her own memory, until Sophie was sure this was all still a dream, for the pen was drawing two people in the Woods—two people who
couldn't
be in the Woods, because they'd found a happy ending somewhere else. She pinched her arm hard, expecting to wake up in bed, but they only grew clearer: Agatha and Tedros, alive on the page, gazing at her with wide eyes, inviting her in.

They're . . . back
? Sophie gasped, heart swelling. Jealousy and betrayal and pain broke away like a soft eggshell and a warm wave of hope flooded through her before she could keep
it down. She caressed her two best friends, looking out of her storybook, and let herself feel what she'd been ashamed of all this time.

I miss you, Aggie.

I miss you, Teddy.

Tears rising, she imagined herself in the empty space on the page between them—

Until the Storian drew Agatha and Tedros' hands intertwined across the gap, the two Evers following a shadow into the darkness of the Woods.

Sophie studied their clasped fingers, no longer any room for her.

“They're coming for you,” said a voice behind her.

Sophie turned to Rafal, gorgeously posed against the window like a teen rebel, clad in a lace-up black shirt and black leather pants. His ice-blue stare lingered on the storybook, but carried no surprise, as if he'd been waiting for the prince and princess to return.

“I told you it wasn't our ending the Storian questioned,” he said. “Turns out your friends aren't happy without you. They think you need to be rescued from me. That your ending is with them.”

Sophie looked back at the Storian, writing beneath the painting of Agatha and Tedros in fresh ink:

“Love wasn't enough for them anymore. They needed their best friend.”

Sophie gaped at the storybook. Here she'd been, berating herself for thinking of Aggie and Tedros every spare second . . . when they'd been thinking of her too? She smiled at the thought, touched. Then her smile evaporated.

“How can three people have a happy ending?” Sophie asked.

Rafal watched her carefully. “If one person is happy alone, of course.”

“While two get each other?” Sophie asked, frowning.

“Oh you'd get used to it. Watching them kiss by the fireplace . . . sitting alone during supper while they nuzzle each other . . . trailing behind them on garden strolls like a puppy on a leash . . . settling year by year into your role as the third wheel . . .” Rafal glided towards her, half of his face still in shadow. “Then again, you could always meet a boy in Camelot. Not much of a kingdom anymore, but plenty of peasant boys to choose from. Sunburnt cheeks, yellow teeth, chubby backsides, not a coin in their pockets. But a nice, normal boy and isn't that what matters?” He drew her into his arms. “A boy who lives with his old, wrinkled mother in her ramshackle house, raising goats and pigs. A boy who will give you an ordinary life, where you fry his meat and bathe old Mummy and raise sunburnt, chubby little sons . . .”

Sophie was tensing so much she couldn't breathe. “That will never happen,” she whispered and her muscles relaxed in his grip.

“Didn't think so,” Rafal whispered back. He touched her shoulder, his long, milky fingers tracing up her neck. Sophie's
skin quivered. She'd never had a boy hold her that she hadn't manipulated. She'd never had a boy touch her that didn't mind the storms and rages of her heart. She'd never had a boy love her for everything she was, warts and all.

Sophie looked up and saw him in the light—pearly, angelic skin, powder-blue eyes, luscious pink mouth, like a young Jack Frost—so white-hot and handsome that she suddenly felt the uglier of the two. “You might like me now, but what happens when I get old?” she asked. “Will you still want me then?”

Rafal smiled. “My brother and I stayed young as long as we loved each other. When I broke our bond, I was destined to age and die like every other villain who proved they couldn't love. But your kiss restored my youth, Sophie. Your love will let me live forever, just like my brother's love once did. Just like my love once kept him alive too. Which means as long as you wear my ring, neither you nor I will ever grow old.”

Sophie turned to him. “I'll live forever?”

Rafal pulled her in once more. “
We
will. Together.”

Live forever?
Sophie thought in a fog. Old but young . . . young but old . . . just like the beautiful boy holding her. What would it be like to love someone forever? Could love even last that long? She thought of Agatha on the lakeshore, vowing to be her friend forever . . . Tedros on a moonlit bridge, promising to be her prince forever . . . Agatha and Tedros kissing, swearing to each other . . .
“Forever . . .”

Only Forever never seemed to last.

Sophie lay against Rafal's firm chest, studying the gold ring on his finger, matching the one on hers. All this time she'd
been so hurt by her two best friends who deserted her, so sure they'd forgotten her and gone on to perfect happiness. Instead they'd come back to redo their Ever After, wanting
her
, needing
her
to be happy. Sophie waited to feel the same feeling, to choose her best friends even it meant she ended up alone . . .

But all Sophie could feel were the arms of a boy who'd stayed loyal to her from the beginning, a Forever that finally sounded like the truth.

She spun and kissed Rafal, his mouth cold against hers, holding it long and slow, waiting for something in her heart to stop her. Nothing did. As their lips parted, she saw the Storian conjure a new page, capturing their kiss in brilliant colors, before adding a closing line:

“But friendship wasn't enough for Sophie anymore. She needed love.”

Sophie looked up at Rafal, her forehead beaded with sweat. He put his hand to it.

“Look at that. Fever's broken.”

Together, they watched the sun slide out from behind a cloud, Sophie expecting its return to brilliant life . . . only to see the sun still yolky and anemic against a cold blue morning, even weaker than before. Only it wasn't just weaker, it was leaking small gobs of yellow light into the sky,
drip
,
drip
,
drip
, like an icicle in summer. Sophie stepped closer to the window ledge, eyes wide. There was no question about it.