The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes Read Free

her daughter’s eyes. “But part of me worries what you gave up.”
    Agatha stared down at her black clump shoes as her mother towed the baskets into the kitchen. “You know how I feel about waste,” Callis sighed. “Let’s hope our bowels can handle a lizard stew.”
    As Agatha chopped onions by torchlight, she listened to her mother hum off-key, like she did every night. Once upon a time, she had loved their graveyard haven, their lonely routines.
    She put down the knife. “Mother, how do you know if you’ve found Ever After?”
    â€œHmmm?” said Callis, bony hands scraping a few roaches into the cauldron.
    â€œThe people in a fairy tale, I mean.”
    â€œIt should say so, dear.” Her mother nodded at an open storybook peeking from under Agatha’s bed.
    Agatha looked down at its last page, a blond prince and raven-haired princess kissing at their wedding, framed by an enchanted castle.
    THE END.
    â€œBut what if two people can’t see their storybook?” She gazed at the princess in her prince’s arms. “How do they know if they’re happy?”
    â€œIf they have to ask, they probably aren’t,” said her mother, jabbing a roach that wouldn’t drown.
    Agatha’s eyes stayed on the prince a moment longer. She snapped the storybook shut and tossed it in the fire under the cauldron. “About time we got rid of these like everyone else.”
    She resumed chopping in the corner, faster than before.
    â€œAre you all right, dear?” Callis said, hearing sniffles.
    Agatha dabbed at her eyes. “Onions.”
    The rain had gone, but a harsh autumn wind raked across the cemetery, lit by two torches over the gates that clung to skipping flames. As she approached the grave, hercalves locked and her heart banged in her ears, begging her to stay away. Sweat seeped down her back as she kneeled in the weeds and mud, her eyes closed. She had never looked. Never.
    With a deep breath, Sophie opened her eyes. She could barely make out an eroded butterfly in the headstone over the words.
L OVING W IFE
&
M OTHER
    Two smaller gravestones, both unmarked, flanked her mother’s like wings. Fingers covered by white mittens, she picked moss out of the cracks in one, overgrown from the years of neglect. As she tore away the mold, her soiled mittens found deeper grooves in the rock, smooth and deliberate. There was something carved in the slab. She peered closer—
    â€œSophie?”
    She turned to see Agatha approach in a tattered black coat, balancing a drippy candle on a saucer.
    â€œMy mother saw you out here.”
    Agatha crouched next to her and laid the flame in front of the graves. Sophie didn’t say anything for a long while.
    â€œHe thought it was her fault,” she said at last, gazing at the two unmarked headstones. “Two boys, both born dead. How else could he explain it?” She watched a blue butterfly flutter out of darkness and nestle into the carving on her mother’s decayed gravestone.
    â€œAll the doctors said she couldn’t have more children.Even your mother.” Sophie paused and smiled faintly at the blue butterfly. “One day it happened. She was so sick no one thought it could last, but her belly still grew. The Miracle Child, the Elders called it. Father said he’d name him Filip.”
    Sophie turned to Agatha. “Only you can’t call a girl Filip.” Her cheekbones hardened. “She loved me, no matter how weak I had left her. No matter how many times she watched him walk to her friend’s house and disappear inside.” Sophie fought the tears as long as she could. “Her friend, Agatha. Her best friend . How could he?” She cried bitterly into her dirty mittens.
    Agatha looked down and didn’t say a word.
    â€œI watched her die, Aggie. Broken and betrayed.” Sophie turned from the grave, red faced. “Now he’ll have everything he