The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes (34 page)

As the Dean sashayed out of the ballroom between sessions, Agatha tried to follow her, but maneuvering invisibly through crowded hallways required agility and grace, neither of which were a strength. After losing the Dean four times, Agatha slackened against the wall, discouraged.

“Really, Pollux, I'm fully capable of getting lunch by
myself
,” huffed Professor Dovey's voice behind her—

Agatha looked up to see Pollux's furry head attached to a rickety old owl's body, flapping after the green-gowned professor.

“Strange business of late,” Pollux panted. “Voices in sewers, butterflies eaten by rats, ghosts bumping girls in the halls . . . Dean's advised me to keep a close eye on both you and Lesso until the Trial.”

“Perhaps if Evelyn hadn't taken my
office
, it would be easier to find me,” Professor Dovey snapped, and hurried down the steps, Pollux's owl sputtering behind her.

Agatha's eyes bulged wide.

With thirty minutes left in class, she scurried up Charity's spiral glass steps to Professor Dovey's old office, the lone white-marble door on the sixth floor, once inlaid with a single emerald beetle, now a blue butterfly. Agatha peered down the stair gap and made sure no one was coming up.

She tried the silver door handle, but it was bolted shut. She shot a shock spell at the keyhole with her glowing finger, then an even more useless melt spell, then a desperate freeze spell—

The lock caught.

Agog at her luck, Agatha grabbed the handle, only to see it opening from the
inside
. Panicked, she ducked against the stairway banister as the door flung wide—

A girl poked her long-nosed freckled face through, eyes darting right and left before she hurried out the closing door and nimbly slid down the banister to the floor below.

Crouched on the ground, Agatha gaped at the girl's red hair flowing out of sight.

What was Yara doing in the Dean's office?

Suddenly Agatha heard a creak behind her and whirled to see the door closing, about to bolt shut—

She stabbed out her foot, jamming it just in time.

Professor Manley came by the Doom Room twice before supper, promising to feed Tedros if he told him where the Storian was. Tedros begged and pleaded for mercy . . . but he had no new answers. Manley left the prince hungry once more.

Light used to come through the sewers at sunset, when the sinking sun's reflection over the bay fractured to slivers, spilling red-orange glow from the Good tunnels into Evil's. Now the prince sat on his metal bed frame in perpetual darkness, listening to the churning moat slap against the rocks that blocked the two sides from each other. It'd been six days since he'd eaten. His heartbeat puttered sluggishly, like a dying piston. His empty stomach hurt so much he couldn't stand. His teeth had started to chatter, even in the sweltering tunnels.

He wouldn't survive punishment tonight.

The cell door unlocked and creaked open, but the prince didn't look up. Not until he smelled the meat.

Filip slid a pail of braised lamb chops and mashed potatoes in front of him and stepped back.

“Told Manley it was for Castor,” he said, in his strange, affectedly low voice. “Told Castor it was for Manley.”

Tedros peered at the elfin prince, so strong and yet delicate, like a boy who wasn't sure how to be one. He smiled too much, stood too close to the other boys, played with his hair excessively, ate in oddly small bites, kept touching his face like he was checking for pimples. . . . And yet strangest of all were those eyes—Filip's big emerald eyes, sometimes ice-cold, sometimes deep and vulnerable, as if flickering between Good and Evil. Once upon a time, Tedros had been taken by eyes just like them.

He'd learned his lesson.

Tedros snatched the pail and flung the food against the stone wall, splattering Filip with grease. He dumped the pail to the floor with an ugly clang and sat back down on his bed, panting.

Filip said nothing and slouched down on the edge of his own bed.

The two cell mates hunched next to each other in dead silence . . . until the door creaked open once more and a dark shadow floated over them.

“No—” Filip gasped, looking up at Aric, a coiled whip on his belt. “You'll kill him!”

“Late for Storian duty,
aren't you
?” Aric sneered.

“Look at him!” Filip pressed, voice straining. “He can't survive—”

But Aric's violet eyes had drifted down to the empty pail near Tedros' bed. He leered at the prince, fingering his whip. “Perhaps we'll start with extra punishment tonight.”

“No!” Filip cried. “It's my fault! Tedros, tell him!”

Tedros silenced him with a glare and turned away coldly.

Tedros heard Filip's frantic breaths slow behind him, realizing he wasn't wanted. Filip's shadow hovered on the wall a moment longer, then finally slumped out of the cell.

“Hands on the bricks,” Aric ordered the prince.

Tedros turned and put his hands high on the rotted wall.

He heard the soft snap as Aric unhooked the whip from his belt and the panicked thumping of his own heart, telling him that one of these lashes would kill him. He didn't want to die—not like this. Not worse than his father. Tears rising, limbs shaking, he looked up at Aric's shadow on the wall, uncoiling the whip.

The shadowed hand rose with the handle and then swung full force, the first lash hissing towards his back—

Aric's shadow lurched on the wall, and the whip cracked sickly against someone else's skin.

Tedros spun around—

Filip had Aric by the throat against the bricks, the whip coiled around Filip's bleeding forearm.

“Tell the teachers that if anyone tries to hurt him again, they'll have to get through me,” Filip snarled.

Tedros blinked hard, unsure if he was alive or dead.

Under Filip's tightening grip, Aric looked nervous—before he managed a cruel smile and wrenched away. “Just what we need in the Trial. Someone who puts loyalty first,” he said, leaving quickly. “I'll talk to the teachers about finding you a more suitable room.”

“Fine right here!” Filip barked after him.

Tedros' eyes were the size of marbles now. Slowly he turned to Filip, who bared his teeth, cheeks blushed furious red.

“Either you eat now, or I kill you myself,” his roommate lashed.

This time Tedros didn't argue.

Agatha gazed up at the grandmother clock in the corner of the study.

Ten minutes before the next class break.

She peered around at the Dean's office, which was strangely barren. Where Professor Dovey's desk had once teemed with broken quills, ranking ledgers, and scrolls under pumpkin paperweights, Evelyn Sader's desk was clean, empty mahogany, with only a tall, thin candle in its corner, the color of parchment.

Agatha hunched in the sturdy wooden chair behind the bare desk, each minute ticking by. She stared distractedly at the candlewick.

The Dean had arrived the day the School for Good and Evil became the School for Boys and Girls. Which meant her and Sophie's fairy tale had killed the School Master—and then let an Evil teacher he'd
banished
back in.

But
why
?

Agatha thought back to what Dovey and Lesso had said. Sophie's symptoms had come either from Evelyn or Sophie herself. There were no other suspects. Evelyn had been convicted of crimes against students before. Evelyn had been in the room for all of Sophie's symptoms—the Beast . . . the wart . . . the corrupted Mogrif. . . .
Why am I thinking about this?
. . . Of course it had to be Evelyn. . . . It
was
Evelyn. . . .

And yet . . . if it
wasn't
Evelyn . . .

Agatha closed her eyes, letting a dream back in. . . . He'd looked so calm, so happy, his golden hair haloed in snow. . . . She could see his crooked smile, his shirt laces undone, as they were when he once asked her to a ball in this very same school . . . as if everything since had been a wrong turn in their story . . . as if all of this was a big mistake. . . . She tasted his lips again as he held her, her heart fluttering against his, fluttering more than ever before—

Agatha's eyes flashed open to the cold, empty office.

This time it was more than a dream.

Her heart was still wishing for Tedros.

Wishing even stronger.

Agatha scorched red. She was still wishing for her prince over her friend? Her loyal friend, who was risking her life to save them from the very same boy she was wishing for? Agatha pushed up angrily from the desk, hating the weak, foolish princess inside her, the princess she couldn't silence—

Then slowly Agatha sat back down.

There was an odd, jagged wrinkle in the candle's texture. She reached out and touched it, expecting to feel wax—only to feel paper instead. She pulled the candle closer and saw a camouflaged scroll bound tightly around it, tied with a small white string. Agatha tried to settle her emotions, knowing the Dean would be back any moment. She carefully untied the scroll, lifted it off the candle, and spread its parchment across the desk.

There were three pages.

The first was a map of the Blue Forest, the same map the students received every year in Forest Groups, with all the notable areas labeled: the Fernfield, Turquoise Thicket, Blue Brook . . .

Agatha noticed one of these areas circled in red pen, the lone marking on the page, strangely conspicuous. She stared at the circled label.

The teachers never mentioned the caves nor took students up there, presumably because there was no way up the jagged cliff face, nor any reason to explore empty caves. Why had the Dean marked them?

Agatha moved to the next sheet: a letter with a broken seal of a scarlet wax snake. It was dated today.

Professor Bilious Manley

Acting Dean, School for Boys

Agatha frowned, questions churning. Why had Evelyn wanted the Trial scout canceled? And why had she circled the caves if they were off-limits? She flipped to the third page, still silently fuming for even thinking of Tedros, let alone wishing for—

Her heart stopped.

In her hands was a long, tinily scrawled list of potion ingredients, followed by an even longer series of precise directions for brewing them, filling up every inch of an old, tattered page.

A page Yuba said he'd lost in a classroom weeks ago.

Now as Agatha stared at it here in the Dean's office, a question burnt into her skull, searing away everything else.

Only the question wasn't how Evelyn Sader had found the gnome's recipe for Merlin's lost spell.

The question was what she had done with it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

O
n his knees, Tedros snatched another lamb chop off the floor and ripped into it like a lion, shredding off the meat and flinging the bone onto the heap of others. After devouring six more, he clutched his stomach, slightly green, trying to hold it all down.

Art to come

The cell door squeaked open, and he looked up at Filip slicked with sweat, forearm streaked with dried blood, carrying two steaming mugs.

“Knew you'd overeat,” Filip said, and put down a mug of frothy liquid in front of him. “Bit of rice stewed in hot water calms the stomach. Wish we had some peppermint or fresh ginger—brew a nice
digestif
—”

Sophie saw Tedros staring and she cleared her throat with a macho grunt. “Drink up.”

Tedros stuck his tongue in the tea and put it down, frowning. “Late for Storian duty, aren't you, Filip?”

“Told Manley I should interrogate you first,” Sophie said sternly as she sat facing him.

That's why I saved his life
, she scolded herself, resting her bulky shoulders against the wall. Because Tedros would tell her where the Storian was.
That's why.
Not because she cared the slightest bit about him. She glared at him, muscles clenched, refocusing on the goal.

“Tell me where it is, Tedros.”

“For the last time, Tristan and I buried it to keep it away from Sophie and Agatha,” he snapped. “We hid it under a loose brick. I don't know how it could have moved.” He saw Filip studying him and hung his head. “Look, I wouldn't lie to you, Filip. Not after what you've done for me.”

“But who took it, then?” Sophie said, stomach turning. “Did they question Tristan—”

“Pfffft, he'd be the first one to hand it over to a teacher,” Tedros groused, kicking off his boots. “Besides, no one's seen that mouse for weeks. Probably left before classes started. Never liked the other boys.”