Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)

Chapter 32

"She's fine," Beatrix yawned from bed, squinting at me perched on the blue-glass windowsill. Sophie was already fast asleep.

"Just want to make sure she's safe." I peered down at the two armored knights, one short, one tall, standing in the blue pumpkin patch near the Woods gate.

"You sound . . . like . . . a . . . prince . . . ," Beatrix babbled before her breaths turned heavy, untroubled by the angry chants echoing outside.

I could barely see the source of these chants over the spiked gates, just snatches of the princes' shadowed, distorted faces and shredded clothes. Nothing in this world was ever certain. Princes could become as frightening as ogres. Princesses could become villains.

Hours passed, and neither Dot nor Agatha budged from the pumpkins, enduring the princes' blind threats and their weapons fired and absorbed into the enchanted shield over the gates. Midnight came and went, then two o'clock . . . four o'clock . . .

Agatha made no move towards Tedros' castle.

Finally, as the moon sank into the glow of a new sun, Agatha still in place, I colored with shame. This school had turned both of us distrustful.

Resting my head against the glass, I realized how exhausted I was. My thoughts thinned to fragments and flowed into dream. . . .

My eyes flared open. The sky over the Woods gate had gone pitchdark—torches extinguished, moonlight snuffed. The princes howled with confusion before the torch and moon suddenly returned, leaving them dumbstruck at the passing eclipse. But I knew it wasn't an eclipse at all. It was a Lights-Out Jinx.

It was Agatha's favorite spell.

I leapt to my feet—but neither of the knights had shifted from their post. I groaned and plopped down on my bed. Enough paranoia. Time to sleep. I pulled back the bedcovers but felt myself hesitate. Slowly I turned to the window again.

The taller knight had lost an armored shoe. The orphaned shoe was clearly visible a few feet away, but neither the taller nor the shorter knight made an effort to retrieve it. I squinted closer and saw that shoeless Agatha was having trouble standing, while Dot tried to prop her up. But the more Dot tried to help, the more Agatha flailed and flubbered, until finally the two knights fell to the ground, Dot's sword slipping from its sheath as she squealed in horror. Dot lunged to grab it, but it was too late—Agatha crashed face-first on the sword in a terrible heap and impaled on the blade, severing her neck.

I opened my mouth to scream, watching Agatha's head roll out of its helmet—

Agatha's big, blue pumpkin head.

I froze. Dot slowly looked up from the Forest, covered in pulp and seeds.

Blood roared through my veins.

Agatha had gone after all.

***

My feathers shivered in gusty wind as my hawk flew across the sky towards the School for Boys. I'd been scared to mogrify again after the panther incident, but rage blasted away any fear. I had to get to Tedros before Agatha kissed him.

Angry tears dripped onto my wings. I can't lose Agatha, I prayed.

With an anguished caw, I ripped towards the boys' jagged red towers—

CRACK!

An electric shock stabbed through me and I plummeted out of the sky. I tried to flap my wings, but every inch of my body was paralyzed. Mogrif shield, I realized. Hurtling towards Evil's shore, my feathers violently sloughed to skin, my beak to lips, my body to human, preventing any return to bird—before I belly-flopped into mulch, fifty feet from Evil's entrance tunnel. My groans snuffled against wet earth, my legs sticky and cold. For a moment, I was grateful the shield had reverted me without any trouble, given what happened in Lesso's class. Then reality set in.