The School for Good and Evil Prequel The Never Prince (fanfic)

Chapter 12

Garth was still hanging there after curfew, not really caring. His ankles hurt, but that pain was nothing compared to the fact that he had hurt Lilac. He had never wanted his past to harm her, and yet today, it did. He felt the vine twitch or something, as if it was... He landed on the ground with a thud, getting a mouthful of dirt. Dinner. Lovely.

"Whoops!" Garth shot up and turned toward the tree. Lilac was standing there, one of the prince's dulled blades in her hands. Garth sank back down to the ground, realizing what had happened. "I didn't mean to drop you on your face," she apologized as she tried to sit him up. He got up on his own.

"Why did you even come out here? You should be resting. Not just that, but it's after curfew." Garth wasn't sure why he mentioned curfew. Probably because princesses needed their beauty sleep or followed rules or something. But Lilac most of all needed her rest. She looked surprised.

"I came out here to help you." He groaned.

"Don't you get it. I'm-"

"A Never. And I'm an Ever. I can't be helping you because it might be that you're the bad guy in my fairytale who tries to kill me." Garth stared at her in the moonlight.

"And yet you're still out here," he muttered. She crossed her arms.

"And I don't care. I know you're not Evil, and you know it too." Garth kept staring into her eyes, seeing the confidence. He glanced down at the grass.

"How can I not be Evil? I hurt the one person who stuck by my side through...pretty much everything." Lilac's eyes softened.

"You didn't mean to." Garth stared into her eyes. There was no way around it. He pulled off the black tunic, exposing his chest to the cool air of the Blue Forest. "What are you doing?" Lilac asked, leaning away slightly.

"Telling you something no one in the world knows about me." He turned to her, pointing to the scar on his chest. "My past." Lilac's eyes were those of an owl. She had seen his scar so many times, but it seemed as if she was just seeing it for the first time. Garth took a breath, promising himself he wouldn't break.

"My mom died after I was born. My father and...sister...took care of me." This was new to Lilac, everyone in Gavaldon believing he was an only child. "My sister was...sweet and generous. A lot like you." Lilac blushed. Usually he would have smiled, but the weight of what was coming next extinguished that joy. "It was understandable why she was taken by the School Master." Lilac nodded.

"The girl in the coffin," she said. He nodded.

"My dad broke. He went a little...crazy. I was all he had left and...he was focused on making sure he didn't lose me too." Lilac's eyes started to pry, so he turned away.

"He locked me up in our house. No daylight. He would leave and come back with food. But he never let me go outside. So I got smart, and made my own escape. The first few weeks he would catch me and..." Garth took a steady breath. "Punished me." He glimpsed at Lilac, her eyes filled with understanding. "I got trickier, faster, stronger. He would always find me, so I was whipped almost every night. That's when the pain became nothing.