As Sophie, Agatha, and I sprinted behind Professor Dovey into the mirrored corridor, I tried to find my breath. Professor Dovey had to give us answers.
"Who are those red hoods?" Agatha asked.
"How did the School Master survive?" I said.
"Why are the Nevers on his side?" said Sophie.
"Quiet!" Professor Dovey snapped, erasing our footsteps with her magic wand. "We don't have much time!"
"You don't seem surprised to see us," Agatha whispered, but the fairy godmother didn't respond as she rushed us into Good's deserted foyer, magically bolting doors behind us.
In the Legends Obelisk in the center of the foyer, a soaring crystal column blanketed with portrait frames. Inside each of the frames was a painting of a past student, next to a storybook illustration of what the child became upon graduation. But looking up at the gold-framed Evers on top who became princesses and queens, the silver-framed ones in the middle who became helpers and sidekicks, and the bottom-rung lot who became cinder sweeps and servants, the I noticed something peculiar. . . .
"Where are the boys?" Sophie said, for all their portraits had been removed.
I swung my head to the Honor staircase: the frieze of knights and kings had been replaced with a frieze of sword-brandishing, chain-mailed princesses. Then I glanced at the Valor staircase, once decorated with burly hunters and their trusty hounds—now huntresses in houndskins and decidedly female dogs.
I twirled to the lettered murals across the walls that once spelled E-V-E-R . . . and now spelled G-I-R-L.
"It is a School for Girls!" said Agatha, thunderstruck.
"What happened to Good?" I asked.
"We can't fight the School Master without boys!" cried Sophie.
"Shhhh!" Professor Dovey hissed, rushing us up the Valor staircase. "No one must know you're here!"
"Why?" I asked, but Dovey ignored me.
As we chased her elegant silver-haired bun through Valor's princely blue arches and murals, we gawked at the once virile visions of princes destroying demons and saving helpless princesses, now flaunting different endings: Snow White smashing out of her glass coffin with her fists, Red Riding Hood slitting the wolf's throat, Sleeping Beauty setting her spindle on fire. . . .
The red-blooded princes, hunters, men who rescued them, who saved their lives . . . gone.
"It's like Everboys never existed!" whispered Agatha.
"Maybe the School Master killed them all!" whispered Sophie.
"Hurry!" Dovey scolded, and we scampered to follow, stooping past the Laundry, where two seven-foot, floating nymphs scrubbed sudsy blue bodices, through the Supper Hall, where enchanted pots stewed saffron rice and lentil soup, and past the Valor Common Room to the rear stairwell.
Exhausted and aching from the torments in the Woods, we tried to keep up, but Professor Dovey was sprier than she looked.
"Where are we going?" Agatha panted.
"To the only other person who can keep you alive," the fairy godmother shot back, bustling up the stairs. We instantly ran faster, up five long flights to the lone white door on the sixth floor—
"Professor Sader's office?" Agatha puffed. "But he's dead!"
I whirled to her. "He's what?"
"Oh—" Agatha stuttered. "Yeah. Last year, in the battle between Good and Evil. He sacrificed himself."
YOU ARE READING
Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)
FanfictionBOOK 1 OF SGE x READER SERIES *** "Is there a reason you're talking to me right now?" he asked. "Or are you just trying to get me out of the way?" I scowled, all nervousness falling away. "If I wanted to do that, you would have been long gone by now...
