Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)

Chapter 2

I woke to the most brilliant pair of blue eyes I'd ever seen.

And a hand clapped over my mouth.

The sheets of my bed twisted as I writhed, trying to get out of my captor's grip.

"Shh," he said into my ear. "You belong with the others. Now sleep."

As he lifted his fingertip to brush my temple, I was forced to do just that.

***

When I woke for the second time, I was hacking up bucketfuls of water.

I leaned to the side and coughed until the last bits of moisture were dispelled from my lungs. My throat burned.

"Y/n!"

Then Sophie was there, throwing her arms around me and sobbing into my shirt.

"Wha—Sophie?"

"Oh, Y/n, you're okay!"

I gripped her upper arms and pulled her away from me enough so I could see her face. "What are you talking about?"

Her crying eyes were nearly frantic. "I don't know! All I saw was you dropped into the moat and then one of the wolves threw you onto shore but you weren't waking up for the longest time!" She pressed her hands to her tear-stained face and sobbed. "And Agatha's here but she was dropped into the School for Good! Oh, there's been a terrible mistake, they've mixed us up! I'm supposed to be where she is!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down." I shifted to sit up more, wincing as my soggy clothes grated against my sand-crusted skin. "What do you mean? They've mixed what up?"

Sophie cried some more. "Don't you see? We've been taken to the School for Evil."

Something gripped the back of my collar and hauled me to my feet. I came face to face with the snout of a large gray wolf. Its breath stank of rotting carcass.

He pushed me into a line. I stumbled, nearly slipping on wet sand, but the soles of my boots found traction at the last second.

A pack of wolves stood—on two feet—in bloodred soldier jackets and black leather breeches, snapped riding whips to herd students into line. If any dawdled, a wolf delivered a swift crack, so I kept an anxious pace. I spotted Sophie a few heads in front of me, her golden locks making her stick out like a sore thumb.

The tower gates were made of iron spikes, crisscrossed with barbed wire. Nearing them, I saw it wasn't wire at all but a sea of black vipers that darted and hissed in our direction. I swallowed and breezed through. The rusted words held between two carved black swans over the gates read:

THE SCHOOL FOR EVIL EDIFICATION AND PROPAGATION OF SIN

Ahead the school tower rose like a winged demon. The main tower, built of pockmarked black stone, unfurled through smoky clouds like a hulking torso. From the sides of the main tower jutted two thick, crooked spires, dripping with veiny red creepers like bleeding wings.

The wolves drove the children towards the mouth of the main tower, a long serrated tunnel shaped like a crocodile snout. The tunnel grew narrower and narrower until I could barely see the child in front of me. I squeezed between two jagged stones and found myself in a leaky foyer that smelled of rotten fish. Demonic gargoyles pitched down from stone rafters, lit torches in their jaws. An iron statue of a bald, toothless hag brandishing an apple smoldered in the menacing firelight. Along the wall, a crumbly column had an enormous black letter N painted on it, decorated with wicked-faced imps, trolls, and Harpies climbing up and down it like a tree. There was a bloodred E on the next column, embellished with swinging giants and goblins. Creeping along in the interminable line, I worked out what the columns spelled out—N-E-VE-R—then suddenly found myself far enough into the room to see the line snake in front of me. For the first time, I had a clear view of the other students.