Never After (School for Good and Evil x Reader)

Chapter 44

It is natural to doubt your true love when you do not know if he is young or old.

He certainly looks young, I thought, peering at the lean boy as he gazed out the tower window, bathed in faded sunlight. I studied his alabaster skin and black breeches, his hair the color of snow, his tight-veined arms, his glacier-blue eyes.

He didn't look a day older than eighteen.

And yet somewhere within this beautiful stranger was a soul older than that—much, much older.

And for the last three weeks I had been locked in his tower.

The first few days were fine—I had spent time reading up on Pan, trying to learn the history of my father, something I hadn't had time for during the craziness in the war of Boys and Girls. Something I couldn't do in Gavaldon. But when we touched down in the School Master's tower, he immediately pointed me to the bookshelves, as if he knew exactly what information I'd been craving about my past.

It was fascinating, the way Pan designed Neverland so that it was one big trap. He'd have the Lost Boys fight one another in a specially-crafted arena. When blood spilled on its floor, Pan would somehow absorb its power and use that to stay young.

But after I had finished his story, I turned to the School Master with more questions. He answered each one patiently. That is, until I started asking about going outside.

"I'm still getting everything ready, darling," the School Master would say. And just like that, the issue was dropped.

What he was getting ready, I didn't know.

A sudden thought occurred to me. It's magic that's keeping this boy young, I thought. But how long does magic last?

"You're asking yourself the wrong questions," came the smooth voice. "Magic thinks nothing of time."

I lifted my eyes. The boy didn't look at me, his focus on the sallow sun, barely a force through the morning fog.

"Since when can you hear my thoughts?" I asked, stepping closer.

"I don't need to hear thoughts to know how my love's mind works," he said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

But he still didn't look at me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The sun," he said, watching it flicker through the mist. "Every day it rises weaker than the one before."

I glanced over my shoulder at the white stone table in the corner, where a long, knife-sharp pen, shaped like a knitting needle, hovered over an open storybook. The last page showed my painted self and the School Master locked in an embrace.

The words The End were etched in the bottom.

"Three weeks since the Storian wrote our Never After," said the boy. "Within days, it should have begun a new story with love on Evil's side now. Love that will destroy Good, one fairy tale at a time. Love that turns the pen into Evil's weapon instead of its curse." His eyes narrowed to slits. "Instead it reopens the book it just closed and stays there, hanging over The End like a play whose curtain won't shut."

I couldn't look away from Agatha painted on the page, wrapped in her prince's arms.

I looked away.

"This is no accident," the boy said. "The Storian keeps our world alive by writing new stories, and at the moment, it has no intention of moving on from your story. And as long as the pen does not move on to a new story, the sun dies, day by day, until the Woods go dark and it is The End for us all."