Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)

Chapter 17

Time passed in a haze, sleep and reality blurring together. Being pulled from my sleep, forced to sit up and drink some water. Snips of muddled conversations. Shivering. Hot and sweating and kicking off thin blankets. Hands holding the water bottle to my lips. Drink. Drink. Drink. Eat this soup. Drink some more. Unfamiliar laughter made me curl up in a ball and burrow beneath the blankets.

Light. Darkness. Light again.

Finally I awoke, groggy but lucid. Saliva was thick and sticky in my mouth and I was lying on my dorm bed.

The memories returned, lazy at first. The Trial by Tale. Teaming up with Tedros. The Harpies, the scarecrows, Hester's demon, Tedros almost dying—

Getting stabbed in the side.

Sophie.

Moonlight danced through the window and spilled onto the scorched floor. Jett nuzzled me affectionately, encouraging me to go back to sleep. I let my eyes slip shut again.

I jolted awake. Daylight streamed through the window.

Agatha sat on the edge of my bed, wrapped in my sheets.

When she saw my open eyes, she gasped. "You're awake!"

"Not so loud," I winced, head throbbing.

"Sorry." She dropped her voice. "You've been out for three days."

I groaned. "I'm going to have so much homework to make up."

"Y/n. . .I saw what happened. In the Trial by Tale, I mean. Everyone's talking about it."

I bit my lip. "What are they saying?"

"Nevers hate you. Evers are confused. Really, no one has seen anything like it before, a Never saving an Ever."

"Well, I had to win him over in some way, and I couldn't just let him die," I said, leaning back onto my pillow. "How's Sophie?"

"Do you want the nice answer or the real answer?"

"The real answer."

"She hates you."

I massaged my temples. "I figured as much." A bolt of pain went through my side and I groaned.

Agatha snapped to attention. "What do you need? Food? Water? I can—"

"Blood," I exhaled.

She stalled. ". . .What?"

"I'll explain later," I replied. "Just bring me some. Any kind will do."

"Um. . .okay. . ."

Ten minutes later Agatha was back, holding a crimson vial.

"What exactly are you going to do with this?"

"Just give it here."

She obeyed, and I downed it in one gulp.

"What—Y/n, why—"

She cut off when I released a sigh. The familiar itch was felt across my skin, in every place I had been wounded—my side, my shoulder, my leg. The stitches fell off and landed on the bedsheets in mangled piles of thread.

Agatha gaped.

I sat up. "I can heal myself when I consume blood," I told her. "I'm not sure how. I think it's inherited."

"But—wow. Inherited from where, though?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "We know my dad was a villain. I'm just not sure which one."

Suddenly an idea flew to the front of my mind.

"Hey, Tedros said that Good had an extensive library. Do you think we could go check it out?"