Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

╔═══*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*═══╗
In the forest primeval
A school for Good and Evil
Two towers like twin heads
One for the pure
One for the wicked
Try to escape you'll always fail
The only way out is
Through a fairy tale
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Vivi Yukino had waited all her life to be kidnapped.

        But tonight, all the other children of Tempo writhed in their beds. If the School Master took them, they'd never return. Never lead a full life. Never see their family again. Tonight these children dreamt of a red-eyed thief with the body of a beast, come to rip them from their sheets and stifle their screams.

        Vivi dreamt of the very school they were all terrified of instead.

        She had arrived on her first day as an honorary student and stepped into the foyer to find it filled with every manner of fairytale creature, both Good and Evil. For the first time, she was finally in company of the very subject of her obsession, and she found herself rooted to the floor, eyes flicking around frantically, unable to settle on any one target. Werewolves, fairies, goblins, princesses, and any number of sentient animals bustled around the foyer, chattering amongst themselves and shooting coloured spells from pointed fingers. She stepped forward, excitement buzzing as she readied herself to dive headfirst into the clamour, when the crowd parted and she stopped. Standing at the far end of the foyer was a tall, beautiful woman, skin ghostly pale against her jet black hair. When she turned to face her, Vivi was struck by her dazzling green eyes, cold but lilted with mischief. She was almost angelic. Vivi took a step towards her, reaching out—

        A hammer broke through the walls of the room and smashed the occupants, and the dark-haired angel, into shards.

        Vivi's eyes opened to morning. The hammer was real. The woman was not.

        Rubbing her eyes, she pushed herself up in bed, squinting over at the window. ". . . Father? What are you doing?"

        "Everyone in town says that you're to be taken this year," her father said, nailing a misshapen bar over her bedroom window, now completely obscured by locks, spikes, and screws. "But no one's getting in here tonight. I'll make sure of that." He pounded a deafening crack as exclamation.

        Vivi flinched and gazed curiously at the once-lovely window, now something you'd see in a witch's den. "I'm sure we don't need all that. Why not hang a few charms around the windows and circle the house with salt?"

        Her father scoffed. "Vivi, I appreciate your love of our culture but not everything your grandmother did was effective. If this School Master has the power to drag kids out of their homes and into the woods, I doubt he's some simple yokai with an aversion to salt. This, on the other hand—" he tapped the window— "Will keep anything and everything out. And you'll be safe."

        Vivi hid a frown. The hopelessness of her grandmother's charms against the School Master was what she had been counting on. Of course, she loved her family, but she had been dreaming of attending the School all her life.

        A weight settled by her feet and she looked up to see her father sitting on her bed, resting a reassuring hand on her knee. "I'm sure you'll be safe this year. I know it's awful to wish kidnapping on another person's child, but the School Master will probably choose Mala or Tabitha. They're good girls."

        Vivi tensed. Mala was the village's golden girl; if anyone was Good, it was her. But she hadn't waited all her life like Vivi had. She hadn't hung her hopes on this opportunity like she had.

        He father looked at her, adjusting his glasses, and smiled sadly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be talking about this in front of you." He leaned forward and planted a kiss on her forehead, standing up. "Don't worry. We won't let anything happen to you tonight." And then he slipped out the door.

        Vivi sat in bed for a moment, eyeing the grotesque window, and made up her mind. She threw the covers back and got dressed, pulling out her research and planning what to follow up today. Her last day.

        After dog-earing a recently-bought storybook and charting up its links, she took a break by sitting down and reading one of her older ones, The Goose Girl, skipping to her favourite part of the story, where the wicked hag is rolled down a hill in a nail-spiked barrel, until all that remains is her bracelet made of children's bones, the deceiving gold plating long since rubbed off. Gazing at the gruesome bracelet, Vivi felt a little flicker of righteousness. Served her right, she thought, the wicked thing.

        She didn't allow herself too much time to rest and was soon back on the floor, kneeling amongst her papers. Sitting up, she looked around at the carnage and frowned. She would undoubtedly be taking her research into the woods with her—but how would she fit it all in her luggage? She could borrow another bag, she supposed, but she'd never heard of the School Master sending a carriage or footmen or anything of the sort for his students' bags. Maybe it would be best to only take one, one she could hold onto.

        After selecting today's papers and packing the rest into her reserved leather bag, she downed a light breakfast and left the house in a breezy blue dress and a basket on her arm, long hair flowing in the wind. She had one last day before the School Master's arrival and planned to use each and every minute to remind him in a last-ditch effort why she, and not Mala or Tabitha or Sabrina or any other impostor, should be kidnapped. This was her lifelong dream, after all, and she was not about to give it up easily.

༻·𖥸·༺

Vivi's best friend lived in a workshop on the outskirts of town. To get there, she had to walk nearly a mile from the bright lakeside cottages, with green eaves and sun-drenched turrets, towards the gloomy edges of the forest. Sounds of hammering echoed through cottage lanes as she passed fathers boarding up doors, mothers stuffing scarecrows, boys and girls hunched on porches, noses buried in storybooks. The last sight wasn't unusual, for children in Tempo did little besides read their fairytales. But today Vivi noticed their eyes, wild, frenzied, scouring each page as if their lives depended on it. She almost laughed seeing the children's futile attempts at salvation—four years ago, that had been her, not yet past her twelfth year but still searching for a way to get out of the town. By now, she had scoured every storybook available to her and mapped out dozens of connections between them, establishing common links between the kidnapped children in an attempt to maximise her chances of being taken.

        And now, it was her turn. At sixteen, she could no longer disguise as a child in the School Master's eyes, but that didn't matter. She was ready.

        As she descended the slope on the edge of town, picnic basket in hand, Vivi mused at the way her thighs no longer burned at the strain. These treks had made her fit and capable—something she'd need in the Woods. She had taken other measures to prepare as well, alongside her research—though she knew she was Good and a likely candidate, she had been undertaking charitable deeds the past year in order to ensure her place at the School. Fundraising for the orphanage, donating to struggling businesses, volunteering work at short-staffed shops, and buying birdfeed off the homeless hag in the square, even if she didn't use it. At least she was giving her some income.

        "Are you going to see the witch boy?"

        Vivi turned. A small group of children frolicked nearby on the hill. The eldest boy was standing and looking at her.

        "He's not a witch," she said, frowning.

        "He has no friends and he's queer. That makes him a witch." The boy thought for a moment. "And he's a bastard."

        Vivi felt a pang of anger. That was hardly his fault. Seeing as his parents were no longer alive to receive the scorn, it had fallen on him and his uncle instead.

        "You shouldn't judge someone by things out of their control," she replied, voice cold. "And I can think of many queer, friendless people that aren't branded as witches."

        The boy shrugged. "He's just different."

        She rolled her eyes and turned her back on the ignorant child, restraining herself from lecturing him. As if he knew any better; rumours were perpetuated by adults and passed onto their children. If she were to take her own advice, she shouldn't hold that ignorance against the boy.

        But on the other hand, she certainly wasn't going to waste her time trying to make the children of Tempo see reason. It was a fruitless endeavour.

        "You'll need to find a new friend when he's taken."

        She wheeled around again, indignant. "The School Master takes two."

        "He'll take Mala for the other one. No one's as Good as Mala."

        Vivi's jaw clenched. All her research, all her hard work, and they thought Mala deserved to go?

        "We'll see," she muttered, and turned away.

        By now she had transitioned onto the faint, gravelly path leading up to the Kingsmen workshop. Despite its prime position at the bottom of the slope as a vehicle repair station, it hardly received any visitors, and it showed. The paint was flaky and the tiled roof in need of repair, with windows sitting crookedly on broken hinges. She guessed the lack of business was due to its close proximity to the village cemetery, marked by a rusted iron fence a few paces behind the dwelling, but it hardly bothered her.

        Approaching the front door, Vivi screwed her nose up as the usual smell greeted her—the strong tang of oil, grease and wood shavings. Casting a quick glance to the open workshop to find it empty, she knocked on the door and prepared for a confrontation.

        The door swung open to reveal a gangly figure in oil-stained clothes, eyes bulging and cheeks sunken, spiked blonde hair stained blue at the roots. "What," Arthur said, sounding annoyed.

        Vivi winced. "Still hasn't come out?"

        "Does it look like it?" he huffed. "I look ridiculous."

        "Well, no one's gonna see you, anyway," she joked, humour falling flat as he frowned. She cleared her throat. "Uh, look, I'm sorry about the. . . dye."

        He crossed his arms. "At least it looks good on you."

        She raised a hand to her own cyan hair, perfectly coloured through. "I thought we could match!"

        "Mhm," he grouched. Silence.

        A chittering squeak, and Vivi looked down to find a hamster by her feet, hips suspended with a miniature wheeled cart. She kneeled down, stroking the animal. "Hey, Galahad."

        Arthur flushed and scooped the pet up, setting him inside. Vivi smirked at him. "What, embarrassed?"

        "No," he grumbled, scuffing a shoe in the dirt. "I just don't like people touching him."

        "Right." Another pause. "You wanna. . . come for a walk with me today?"

        Arthur leaned against the door. "I'm still trying to figure out why you're friends with me."

        "Because you're sweet and funny," said Vivi.

        He looked away for a moment, tinged with red, before clearing his throat. "Alright, well. . . it's not like I have much else to do." That was a lie, and Vivi knew it.

        She flashed him a bright smile. "Good you have me to keep you occupied, then."

༻·𖥸·༺

The dreaded 13th day of June had arrived, falling as it often did every four years on a Friday. Beneath waning sun, the village square had become a hive of preparation for the School Master's arrival. Fathers barricaded doors and boarded windows while the village mothers lined children up and set to work. Handsome ones had their hair lopped off and their teeth blackened, homely ones were scrubbed and dressed in bright colours. The best children were begged to curse or kick their sisters, and the worst were bribed to pray in church, all in hopes of confusing the visitor into, perhaps, taking none at all.

        Fear swelled into a contagious fog. In the alleyway, the butcher and blacksmith traded books in hopes of finding clues to save their sons. Two sisters sat beneath the crooked clock tower, listing fairytale villains to search for a pattern. A group of boys chained themselves together, a handful of girls hid on the schoolhouse roof, and a masked child jumped from bushes to spook his mother, earning a scolding on the spot and a barely veiled threat that maybe the School Master would take him instead tonight. The boy sobered up after that. Even the homeless hag got into the act, hopping around a meagre fire and shouting, "Burn the books! Burn them all!" But no one listened and no books were burned. If anything, villagers hugged their books tighter to their chests and avoided the mad woman.

        Arthur gawked at all this in disbelief. "How can a whole town believe in fairy tales?"

        "Because they're real."

        Arthur dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Oh yeah, I forgot about you."

        "You can't deny all the evidence! There are just too many patterns for it to all be a coincidence. And don't even start on your man-eating wolves story," she said quickly, before he could interject. "That is the weakest explanation I've ever heard."

        "Look Vivi, honestly, I've tried to humour you. I've read all the storybooks. But it's just . . ." he gestured vaguely. "It's not real."

        "Well I'll prove you wrong when we're taken tonight," she replied.

        He stopped walking. "We?"

        She stopped ahead of him and turned, realising her mistake. "I—didn't mean it that way."

        Arthur's gaze flicked pointedly beyond her and then back. "Sure you didn't."

        She followed his glance, settling on the villagers in the square. The crowd was staring at them like a solution to a mystery. Popular and outcast, Good and Evil, standing side by side. The School Master's perfect pair.

        "Can we go?" came Arthur's voice.

        Vivi turned. His eyes were once again locked on the mob.

        "Where?"

        He avoided her gaze. "Just . . . away from people."

༻·𖥸·༺

As the sun weakened to a red orb, bleeding into the sky, two friends sat side-by-side on the shore of a lake. Vivi scribbled notes on her papers, finalising her research, while Arthur scrubbed away at some gismo he'd pulled out of one of his many pockets. Vivi snatched a sideways glance at him. He was always pulling tools out of that thing like some eccentric magician. What looked to be a burnt-orange worker's shirt, hanging down to the waist and torn off at the sleeves, and sewn with a myriad of capped pockets. He defended the rag as an apron, but that never prevented copious amounts of oil and grease from staining the white shirt he wore underneath.

        "Is your house just . . . a tar pit?" she joked, counting up the black streaks over his clothing. "I never see you clean."

        Arthur glanced up at her, looking offended for a moment, then returned his focus to the thing in his hands. "I guess you wouldn't know what hard work looks like."

        Despite knowing it was only a playful jab, Vivi's ears burned. "Excuse me!" She promptly thwacked him with her papers.

        Arthur only chuckled, hands steady over the gadget in his lap, and she craned over to look. "What are you working on today?"

        He shied away immediately, almost dropping the thing into the water. "No— Nothing!"

        "Well, that's highly suspicious," she teased, easing back into her research. They were silent for a moment, listening to the chatter of geese on the far side of the lake, until she spoke up again. "You know, everyone thinks Mala is going to be taken this year."

        Arthur scoffed. "I hope."

        Vivi was offended. "Taken for Good!"

        He scrunched his nose up. "What? Mala? Mala Kostakis?"

        "That's the one," Vivi sighed. "Everyone loves her."

        "She's a master manipulator," Arthur shot back. "They can't help it. She's got the whole town wrapped around her finger."

        "Oh, c'mon, she's not that bad."

        "She puts up a front around everyone she sees as useful," he said, face etched in a deep frown. "Because I'm of no use to her, I see how she's really like. She's a scornful, snarky beast."

        Vivi heaved a sigh of relief. "So you think she'll be taken for Evil instead?"

        A beat of silence. When Arthur spoke again, he sounded hurt. "Why do you want to leave so badly?"

        Vivi paused, choosing her words carefully. "I'm . . . just not meant to be here. I can feel it. Obaachan was the same. Some people are just born . . . different."

        Another silence.

        "Do I . . . matter to you?"

        Vivi whirled, alarmed. "What kind of a question is that?"

        "I dunno, just . . ." he hunched in on himself. "You seem really happy about the idea of leaving me behind."

        Vivi gazed at him, softening, and then laid a reassuring hand on his arm. "I'm not . . . happy to leave you behind. I'll really miss you." She thought for a moment. "Maybe he'll even take you too, and we can still be together at our new school."

        He yanked his arm away. "And why are you so confident that he'll take you, if he's even real? What makes you so good and perfect and worthy of a fairytale life?"

        Vivi felt her face redden. "You think I'm . . . worth less?"

        "I don't know, probably!" He flung his arms out, raising his voice. "It's not like you're purer than everyone else! Every other ordinary person in this town! Every other loser like me!"

        "Oh-hoh, is that what you think?" she spat back. "Well, I am better than everyone else here."

        "Prove it," he hissed.

        "I became friends with you, didn't I?"

        Arthur stared at her, shocked. Words registering too late, she clapped her hands over her mouth in horror. Silence descended.

        After a long time, Vivi reached her hand out. Arthur smacked it away and stood up.

        "Arthur, please," she pried. "I'm sorry—"

        "I can't believe it," he muttered. "I can't believe I let you in. I knew it. No one here likes me at all. I'm just . . . a means to an end."

        He trudged off across the banks, leaving something behind in the grass. Vivi leaned over and took it carefully into her hands.

        It was the trinket he'd been working on—a silver music box, freshly polished. She opened the lid nonetheless to find a delicate blue orchid inside, composed of tiny, flake-thin metal plates, turning slowly along to a jingling lullaby. Something caught her eye and she squinted closer.

        Her name, engraved on the inside of the lid.

        Her head jerked up urgently, but he was gone.

        As the sun set, she sat alone on the grass, music box twinkling with the last rays. She stayed there as the last notes of the song petered out, leaving her in silence, and she stayed there as the light dimmed completely, leaving her in darkness. It was only when the first fathers emerged from their homes, locking doors behind them and wielding torches, that she dragged herself up and slogged back to her house, fingers stinging against the ice-cold keepsake.

Chapter Text

Vivi sat on the edge of her bed, feeling numb. She stared at the delicate music box on her nightstand, open and winking in the candlelight. She felt her eyes sting. How could she be so callous? So selfish?

        By the time she'd reached the town square she found all the houses closed up, doors bolted, windows boarded. The selected guard for that year were already out and surrounding the town border, lighting the dark woods up with flaming torches. She refrained from rolling her eyes. She had seen this display every year but still the children had been taken. Locked doors and angry parents weren't going to keep the magical School Master from his prey.

        She had slogged back to her house, brushing her fussing mother off and retreating to her room, slumping down on the bed. She heard the heavy bolt on the front door slide across and when she peeked through the cracks in her boarded-up window, she saw her mother, fair hair bouncing, strolling across the square towards where her father stood on guard. She reached up and touched his shoulder and he turned, smiling, and pulled her to his waist.

        Vivi sighed, some of the tension leaving her body. With her mother out on patrol, now she could undo the locks on her window. She had already written a note for her parents, which she now pulled from her drawer and pinned underneath the lit candle on her nightstand. She pondered the quiet music box for a moment, then crossed to her wardrobe and pulled out a bag of tools she'd stolen from the shed earlier, lugging them to the window.

        She eyed the clock. She had plenty of time. Perhaps if she finished early, she could go see Arthur and apologise for today. Before she was whisked away from Tempo forever.

༻·𖥸·༺

The first kidnappings had began two hundred years before. Some years two boys were taken, some years two girls, some one of each. The ages were just as fickle; one could be sixteen, the other fourteen, or both just turned twelve. But if at first the choices seemed random, a pattern soon became clear: one child was always beautiful and good, well-behaved and coveted by the other parents of the town; the other homely and odd, despised and outcast by their peers. An opposing pair snatched from their families and spirited away, never to be seen again.

        At first, not privy to any other nearby townships, the villagers blamed bears. Four years later, when two more children were taken, the villagers admitted they should have been more specific and named black bears as the culprit, bears so black they blended with the night. But as children kept disappearing, desperate parents moved to burrowing bears, phantom bears, bears in disguise . . . until eventually it became clear that it wasn't bears at all.

        But while villagers moved on to newer and increasingly more ridiculous theories (The Sinkhole Theory, The Flying Cannibal Theory), the children of Tempo noticed something strange. Examining Missing posters tacked up in the square, they found the faces of the lost children oddly familiar. That's when they opened up their storybooks and found the children amongst their pages.

        Jack, taken a hundred years before, hadn't aged a bit. Here he was, painted with the same mop of unruly hair and dimples that had made him so popular with the girls of Tempo. Only now he had a beanstalk growing in his back garden and a weakness for magic beans. Angus, the freckled, pointy-eared hooligan taken with him that year was now a freckled, pointy-eared giant at the top of the beanstalk—the two boys had found their way into a fairytale. The children excitedly presented the Storybook Theory to the disgruntled adults—but they reacted as adults most often do. They patted the children's heads and returned to talking about sinkholes and flying cannibals.

        But then the children began to show them more familiar faces. Sweet Anya, taken fifty years before, now sat singing on moonlit rocks as the Little Mermaid, while cruel Estra lurked as the conniving sea witch. Philip, the priest's upright son, had become the Cunning Little Tailor, and pompous Gula now spooked children as the Witch of the Wood. Scores of children, kidnapped in pairs, had found new lives in a fairytale world. One as Good. One as Evil.

        The books came from Mr Deauville's Tomb of Tomes, an eccentric but cozy little nook between Battersby's Bakery and and the Pickled Pig Pub. The problem was then, of course, where Mr Deauville himself got the storybooks.

        Once a year on a day he couldn't predict, Mr Deauville would enter his shop in the morning to find a box just inside the door holding four new fairytales—one copy of each. He would hang a sign in his shop window: "Closed Until Further Notice", and then for months huddle in the back of his shop, copying them by hand until he had enough copies of each for every child in Tempo. Then he would display the books in the shop window as a sign he had finished his laborious task at last and open his shop the next day to a two-mile line spanning the square, weaving through the cottage lanes and skirting the lake, jammed full of children, eager for new stories, and parents, hovering to see if any of the missing children had turned up in this year's tales.

        The Elders, of course, had plenty of questions for Mr Deauville. When asked who sent the books, Mr Deauville said he hadn't the faintest idea. When inquired for how long the books had been arriving, he said he couldn't remember a time when they hadn't appeared. When pressed whether he'd ever questioned this magical appearance of books, Mr Deauville replied, "Where else would fairy tales come from?"

        That's when the Elders noticed something else: all of the villages depicted in the stories looked just like Tempo. The same bright, lakeside cottages, the same crooked clock tower, the same painted church, only now presented as a fantasy land far, far away. The village only ever served two purposes: to begin a fairytale and to end it. Everything in between most commonly happened in the dark, endless woods surrounding the town.

        That's when the Elders realised that Tempo was also surrounded by dark, endless woods.

        Back when the children had first started to disappear (and the bear theory was gaining popularity), desperate villagers had stormed the woods to find them, only to be repelled by impassable thickets, falling trees, and violent storms. When they finally braved their way through to find a small town hiding beyond the trees, they vengefully besieged it, only to find that town was their own. Indeed, no matter where the villagers entered the woods, they were always spat back out right where they started. The forest had no intention of returning their children, it seemed. And one day they found out why.

        Mr Deauville had just finished unpacking that year's storybooks when he noticed a dark smudge inside the fold of the box. Touching his fingers to it, they came back wet with ink, and he pulled the seam apart to find an elaborate crest of a black and white swan. On the crest were three letters:

S.G.E.

        There was no need for him to guess what these letters meant, as it said so on the banner printed beneath. Small, black words that told the village where their children had gone:

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL

        The kidnappings continued, but now the thief had a name.

        They called him the School Master.

༻·𖥸·༺

Vivi snapped the last lock off her window, dropped the pliers and pushed the panes open, breathing in the cool night air. She peered out across the square, eyeing her parents standing together in the ring of guards, too engrossed in each other to actually serve as any useful lookout.

        She stepped into her shoes and crossed the room, swiping the music box from the nightstand and tucking it into a duffel which she slung over her shoulder. She glanced at the clock. An hour 'til midnight.

        As quietly as she could, Vivi swung her legs out the window and dropped to the grass below, turning and pushing the window panes shut behind her. With her room dark, it would look to her parents like she had simply gone to bed, leaving the window secure. Glancing once more across the square to ensure her parents had their backs turned, she crept around the side of the house and into the shadows of the tightly-packed lanes.

        Predictably, Kingsmen Repairs had been left unguarded, cast in shadow at the bottom of the hill. There was no danger of being spotted on the way there as the townspeople had left a large gap in the border guard at the back of the town, leaving the way to the workshop clear. Vivi shook her head as she descended the hill. These were people who thought ringing the town with torches and pitchforks would save their children from the School Master, yet they left the rear sector abandoned out of spite for Arthur's family. Her lip curled with disgust. She couldn't wait to get out of this hellhole.

        Nearing the dark house, she could faintly make out the glow of a candle behind blackout curtains. Swallowing, she stepped up to the door and knocked.

        A burly, bearded man opened the door.

        "Lance," Vivi breathed in relief. Arthur's uncle. He wouldn't turn her away.

        "Arthur's asleep," he said bluntly.

        "What?" Her heart sank. "But I . . . are you sure? I just wanted to—"

        "You'll see him tomorrow, won'tcha?"

        She fell silent. Of course she couldn't explain to the old mechanic where she was headed tonight.

        "And you should be gettin' home, missy. Don't wanna be out too late on a night like tanight."

        ". . . You're right," she conceded after a beat of silence, stepping away. She paused. "Actually . . . can you give this to him?" She dug the trinket out of her duffel and handed it to him. When she spoke, her voice was sad. "I don't think I deserve it."

        The man stared at her for a moment, face blank, and then sighed, nodding.

        "Thank you." She turned to leave again. "Goodnight, Uncle Lance."

        "Wait."

        She whirled. Arthur stood a few paces behind Lance, hair and clothes rumpled. His eyes were red and the bags beneath them were darker and deeper than usual.

        He stared at her for a moment, gaze distant. Then he swiped his arm across his face and turned away. "She can come in. I'll walk her home before it gets too late."

༻·𖥸·༺

Vivi sat on Arthur's sparse bed, hands in her lap. She raised her head.

        "I'm sorry."

        Arthur stood, back turned, at the window, silent as the graves beyond the glass. His hand dug into his pocket, brushing the music box he'd taken from his uncle and pocketed.

        "I really am. I. . . I was stupid. I misspoke. I didn't mean to hurt you and I'm sorry."

        After a beat of silence, he turned, steely eyes boring into her. "Why are you friends with me?"

        She scrunched her nose. "You know why—"

        "No. Why you're really friends with me." He didn't move, just stood still, arms hanging loosely by his sides. "Why did you come to see me on that first day?"

        Vivi opened her mouth—

        "And don't lie. I'll know if you do."

        She shut it again.

        He pursed his lips. She ducked her head. Silence descended.

        Just as Arthur turned to leave, she spoke. "I wanted to to impress the School Master."

        He didn't turn to face her. Just stood, waiting.

        "I . . . I wanted—want—to get out of here so badly. I've been dreaming of it my whole life. On my birthday last year, I dreamt Mala was taken instead. I woke up sweating. I needed to be better. I needed to prove that I was Good enough to be taken. So I started charity work. I volunteered in the shops without payment. I planted and tended new gardens in the centre of town, but it still felt like it wasn't enough. Then I remembered the boy on the edge of town."

        Arthur's silence was deafening. She strained to hear his breaths, but heard nothing. His chest was frozen still.

        She gulped. "I thought that maybe . . . if I became friends with him . . . if I showed him kindness that no one else here would . . . maybe that would prove that I was Good enough to go." She paused to catch her breath, heart hammering against her ribcage. "So I showed up on your doorstep. And I was ready to just introduce myself and visit you every Sunday instead of go to church and leave it at that. But when you opened the door and saw me standing there, you . . . you looked so surprised. So confused."

        She could barely hear his breaths now. Shallow and faint. "And when you pointed to the workshop and said you'd call your uncle, and I said that I came to see you, you . . ." Her breath stuttered. "You looked so grateful. So thankful. Your eyes shone. And I knew I couldn't just leave you there."

        A few paces away, his shoulders drooped a little, and she forged on. "And when I took you out you were so interested in everything, like you didn't understand what it was like to live up in the village, with people, and we started talking and I was surprised that you were so smart. You were just so isolated—and I began to look forward to seeing you, and I liked seeing you smile, and I realised that you're so sweet and kind and—" She stopped herself. "I . . . I realised I didn't understand why everyone avoids you and your uncle. You've been nothing but kind to me, the both of you. I'd never even thought twice about it before but I began to question how a whole town could hate a boy whose only mistake was to be born."

        She heard a soft, painful gasp, and he clamped a hand over his mouth. Vivi swallowed. "I really like you, Arthur. You're the only real friend I've ever had."

        Slowly, he turned, eyes cautious. "Then why do you want to leave me here?"

        "I don't. I just want to get out of here. I hate it here. I hate how everyone treats you and anything they don't understand. I don't want to see you hurt. I wanted you to come with me, but the School Master only takes one Good child. So I began to think . . ." She shook her head. "I connected dots that didn't exist. I made up excuses in my head so I could hope you could come with me."

        His face softened. "To the other school," he murmured.

        She nodded, swiping an arm across her watering eyes. The bed dipped beside her and she looked up to find Arthur sitting next to her, eyes on the floor.

        "All I've ever known is being alone. I used to think it was because I was bad. Why else would the adults avoid me? Why else would the kids my age throw stones at me?" He raised his eyes to the dark window. "I'd finally gotten used to the idea that I'd never have a life like the other kids. I'd never have a friend. Just me and my uncle, in this little shack, fixing vehicles for a town that hated us."

        Vivi bit her lip, raising a hand to set on his shoulder, and then he spoke again. "And then you showed up. And I couldn't believe you wanted to see me at first. That's why I was always so grumpy." He chuckled weakly. "I thought it wouldn't last. But then days turned into weeks, then months, and now you've been coming over for almost a year. And I started to hope that maybe I deserved more than what I'd been given. But seeing the way the people look at me when we walk together. . ." He trailed off. Fingers fidgeting in his lap. Finally he looked up at her, eyes shining. ". . . When we're alone, you make me feel normal. And that's all I've ever wanted."

        She felt a lump rise in her throat and swallowed it down, eyes pricking with tears. She opened her mouth but couldn't find the words. Instead, she pulled him into a hug.

        His body was rigid, but when she didn't let go, he gradually relaxed into her arms, sniffling softly. She rubbed a hand over his back. "You're my best friend. I'm so sorry I hurt you, Arthur."

        He shook his head into her shoulder and shifted closer. They sat like that, leaning into each other, for a long time. They didn't speak. They needed no words.

        Suddenly, there was a loud BANG! and the bedroom door slammed open. They tore apart.

        Lance stood in the doorway, chest heaving. "Hide. Hide now!" he panted.

        Arthur backed up. "What? Why—"

        A crooked shadow appeared on the wall behind Lance. Then they were plunged into darkness.

        When Arthur's eyes blinked open again, the lights were on. Lance was on the floor, unconscious. Vivi was gone.

        He barrelled forward into the front room and up to the window. A hunched shadow slunk its way up the hill, face obscured by a silver mask glinting in moonlight, dragging a wide-eyed Vivi behind it.

        "VIVI!" he screamed, and burst through the front door, sprinting up the hill.

        He dashed down cottage lanes and charged into the square to find Vivi and the shadow right at the edge, about to breach the ring of torch-waving, pitchfork-bearing villagers.

        He cried out and the guard spun around, eyes popping upon finding the masked School Master in their midst, dragging Vivi along with him. They bellowed and rushed towards him, but the shadow flicked a hand and their torches exploded, trapping them in rings of fire. The shadow breezed right through.

        Arthur's legs pumped faster, bolting across the square and dodging flames as he ran after his friend, now at the forest's shadowy edge. He called her name and flung himself forward, hands outstretched—his fingers latched around her ankle and he was dragged with her into the twisted trees.

        A pale hand grabbed his wrist and hauled him up and he came face-to-face with Vivi. He grabbed onto her arms.

        "We need to go! Now!" He cried, reaching over and yanking at the shadow's grip on the back of her sweater. "Let go of her!"

        "Arthur, calm down!" Vivi gasped, trying to catch her breath. He ignored her, scaling her like a tree and latching onto the shadow.

        "Arthur!" Vivi yelled, grabbing onto his ankle and trying to pull him back down. "Stop! If he drops us now, we'll be lost!"

        Arthur stopped struggling, dread dawning. He looked down at her—his grip on the shadow loosened and suddenly it was gone from beneath them, sending them tumbling into a thicket of dry, scratchy branches.

        They lay sprawled in the odd thicket for a moment, before Arthur felt a tickle against his stomach.

        "Arrfur—can't breafe—"

        He rocketed up, ears burning red, and Vivi gasped for air on her back. She scrunched up her face and stuck out her tongue, trying in vain to blow something off it.

        "Your shirt needs a wash," she said, frowning in distaste. Arthur looked down at himself—a black greasy stain over his stomach. He'd forgotten he'd used his shirt to wipe a dirty tool down earlier today.

        But that was the least of their problems.

        "Where are we?" he gasped, staggering to his feet and whipping around. "How do we get back?"

        "I can't believe he just dumped us here," Vivi huffed, sitting up. "How are we supposed to find our way to school?"

        The words hit him like a galloping horse. They'd just been kidnapped. By the School Master. He was real.

        The School was real.

        A crack. They slowly turned.

        A huge black egg nestled in the thicket behind them. Now that he looked at it, actually, Arthur realised the mass of branches and twigs looked more like a giant nest. He paled.

        A thin crack snaked its way down the side of the egg, then another. A dozen fault lines exploded out across the shell and then it burst apart, splashing them in foul-smelling black goo.

        Through the goo they could make out what looked to be a giant bird emerging from the shell, composed entirely of bones. It looked at them with empty eye sockets and screeched, spread its skeletal wings, sprung up and snatched them up in its huge claws.

        "What the fuck is going on!" Arthur shrieked, knuckles white around the talons holding him.

        "Language!" Vivi yelled, as if being abducted by a skeleton bird after being abandoned in the forest was not a cause for disagreeable words.

        Arthur opened his mouth to voice this thought when a flash of lightning and the bellowing of thunder startled him quiet. They rose up through twisted branches and into pelting rain, blinding them for a moment before the bird dove forward with a scream. They hurtled through darkness, lit occasionally by flashes from the sky, giving them glimpses of gnarled branches, reaching for them like hands; of spitting vipers hanging from the trees; of dozens of gigantic webs, holding huge spiders, fangs raised, poised to strike—Arthur shut his eyes against the dripping venom—

        Then all was quiet. The rain stopped.

        Vivi gasped beside him. "Arthur. . ."

        He opened his eyes and felt his heart stop. Beneath them sprawled two gigantic castles, reaching into clouds, straight from the pages of a fairy tale. One was made of glittering crystal, drenched in sunlight, pink and blue turrets bathed in shimmering mist, with sprawling green lawns ringed by a clear blue lake. Halfway across, the lake merged with chunky black sludge, which stretched up to muddy ground, spattered with patches of dying, yellow grass. The castle that sprang from these grounds was black stone, three sharp towers reaching into roiling storm clouds belting rain, scores of red creepers snaking over rough brick like veins. Connected over the moats by a silver-brick bridge, the two opposing castles looked like a vision of heaven and hell.

        The School for Good and Evil.

        As they soared over the pink and blue towers of Good, the bird loosened its grip on Vivi. Arthur blanched, grabbing for her in panic, eyes wide.

        But she was smiling.

        "I made it," she breathed, eyes sparkling with happiness. "Arthur, I made it to Good!"

        But the bird dropped Arthur instead.

        Too shocked to scream, Arthur fell, disappearing into shimmering mist.

        Vivi's breath caught. She looked up at the bird. With a savage screech, it swooped towards the black towers of Evil.

        "Wait!" she cried—

        It let go.

        Vivi dropped into darkness.

Chapter Text

Vivi opened her eyes to find herself floating in black sludge, staring up at a grey sky. Groaning, she tried to stand, but her feet couldn't find bottom and she sank, sludge filling her nose and mouth. Throat and eyes burning, she kicked back up and broke the surface, coughing and gagging. With effort, she struck up a kicking rhythm to stay afloat and wiped gunk from her eyes.

        Screams pealed above and her head jerked up, just in time to see a fleet of bony birds all let go of their prey—a dozen screaming students, falling through the air and then splashing into sludge. She could see another wave of the skeletal creatures coming through the fog, toting more children, and, deciding she would rather not have any land on her, she kicked to the banks and heaved herself out onto muddy soil. It was too wet for her fingers to find a hold, and she began to slip back.

        A pale hand reached for her. "Here."

        Without thinking, she grabbed it, and then looked up at the owner. A student around her age, with upswept black hair, streaked through with red, yellow-tinted eyeglasses perched on his refined nose. He raised an eyebrow. "Would you rather I leave you to float there for a while longer?"

        In response she threw up another hand to grip onto his arm and he heaved her out, holding her steady when her shoes slipped on the mud. Steadying herself, she peered up at him and removed her hand. "Uh, thank you."

        He gave her a cursory nod. Now she didn't have to worry about drowning in black gunk, she suddenly noticed that he was inexplicably clean. Whereas she was sure she looked like a swamp monster by now, caked in sludge and long hair in tangles, there wasn't a smudge or a stain on him. In fact, he looked as if he'd just washed. His hair was brushed, clothes clean and pressed.

        He must have noticed her staring because he flashed her a toothy grin. "I had the privilege of avoiding the stymphs." He looked up at the sky, a fresh wave of the birds—stymphs?—sweeping over. "I wonder where they all come from?"

        "Woods," Vivi said, without thinking. "Ours hatched in the Woods."

        "Ours?" He raised an eyebrow. "Most students aren't lucky enough to attend with a friend."

        "Well, he—" She stopped, frowning. "He was dropped off . . . earlier than me."

        "At Good?" The boy turned to look across the moat. Vivi followed his gaze, but Evil's grey fog obscured whatever lay beyond the midway point. "By a stymph? Must've upset someone."

        "What do you mea—" She turned, but the boy was gone. She frowned, and then jumped when a whip cracked across the ground in front of her.

        A bipedal wolf was standing a few feet from her, clad in a red solders' uniform, snarling. He raised his whip again. "Inside. Hurry up."

        She hurried past him, following the line of students now trudging towards the Evil castle. First, they passed through a pair of tall iron gates, crisscrossed with barbed wire. As Vivi drew closer, she noticed that in fact it wasn't barbed wire, but snakes, tangling over the bars and snapping at students as they scampered through. She followed close behind, ducking her head as she slipped through the gates, and once safely on the other side, she threw a glance back over her shoulder. Large rusted letters sat atop the gates:

THE SCHOOL FOR EVIL EDIFICATION
AND PROPAGATION OF SIN

        Pressing forward towards the main tower, the line of students were squeezed into a dark tunnel, thin and serrated like a crocodile snout. As they went deeper, the students were forced into single file, and just as Vivi felt her elbows begin to scrape against the walls, she was popped out into a dull, leaky foyer.

        The floor was paved and webbed with cracks, the walls crumbling dark brick. Carved gargoyles pitched down from high corners, lit torches in their mouths, flames glinting against a tall iron statue in the centre of the room: a bald, cackling witch, brandishing an apple.

        Along the wall, a decrepit column bearing a large black N was carved with leaping imps and trolls. The next column was decorated with swinging giants and goblins, embellished with a bloodred E. Trudging on, Vivi worked out what the columns spelled—N-E-V-E-R.

        Her eyes shifted along to a tall stone obelisk off to the side, lined top to bottom with student portraits, framed gold near the top, silver in the middle, and bronze at the bottom. Filing past in line, she peered at these portraits and found them grouped in pairs, depicting students and what they had become after graduation. Skimming along the gold-framed portraits at the top, she came to rest on a pale, elfish girl in Evil's black uniform, painted in the next portrait as a menacing witch standing over an unconscious maiden on the ground, a bitten apple in her lax hand. Stretched under the two portraits, side by side, was a plaque that read:

CATHERINE OF FOXWOOD
Snow White (Villain)

        Next to hers hung two more portraits, one with a smirking boy with a thick unibrow, and the other with a snarling bearded man, holding a screaming woman:

DROGAN OF MURMURING MOUNTAINS
Bluebeard (Villain)

        A row assigned to successful students, then, ones that became the main villains of their stories. In the silver row below Vivi's eyes landed on a slender boy with shock-blonde hair, depicted in the next portrait as one of many ogres pillaging a village:

KEIR OF NETHERWOOD
Tom Thumb (Henchman)

        The clue was in the name. Henchman and helpers, undoubtedly assigned to the gold-framed leaders at the top. Her eyes drifted down further, onto the bronze frames, chronicling the lower-ranking students that ended up Evil servants and the like, forgotten with the masses. There was one portrait, though, right at the bottom, coated in dust, that caught her attention. A boy she'd seen before, eyes wide and scared. Bane. He used to bite the other children and play cruel games on animals, before he was taken with Garrick from Tempo four years before. His plaque was much shorter than the rest, not bearing a name or a role, but a single rusted word:

FAILED

        Vivi looked at Bane's scared face and felt a chill. Failed? What happened to students who failed? She turned away, anxiety clamping in her chest—and suddenly found herself far enough into the room to see the line of students snaking in front of her. For the first time, she had a full view of her classmates, and she blanched in shock.

        A few students in front of her was a sickly pale girl with wispy hair, a hideous overbite, and one large eye right in the middle of her forehead. Behind her trudged a thin, impish boy with blonde hair and long, pointy ears. Further ahead in the line she saw a tall girl with black hair and green skin, face fixed in a snarl.

        Predictably, there were students of all shapes and sizes, all shades, with dozens of strange and unnerving features—but there was one commonality between them all. They all wore cruel expressions, lips curled in disgust, eyes brimming with hate. One by one, these eyes fell to her and narrowed, growing sharper.

        There was an intruder in their midst.

༻·𖥸·༺

Across the bay, Arthur had almost swallowed a fairy.

        He had woken on soft grass beneath a pair of giant lilies, deep in animated conversation. He was pretty sure the conversation was about him, because they kept gesturing at him with their leaves. The matter seemed to be settled rather quickly however as soon they hunched over him and wrapped leaves around his wrists, pulling him gently to his feet.

        They let go and he stumbled forward, reeling from the bizarreness of talking flowers—he stopped short.

        Scores of princesses were—there was no other word for it—blooming out of the lawn in front of him. Dozens of beautiful girls with creamy skin, luscious hair and clad in expensive dresses in an array of colours were rising from the ground, arms reaching to the sky as if just having woken up, labelled trunks sprouting beside them. Some had short hair, some long, some with dark skin, some moon-pale, some willowy and tall, while others fell on the shorter side—but each and every one of them were fantastically gorgeous, with perfect features and soulful eyes, as if from a dream. No. From a storybook. From a fairy tale.

        Arthur felt his ears burn red and turned away, catching his breath— something flew into his mouth. He gasped in shock and the thing went right to the back of his throat, sending him into a hacking fit, face reddening, eyes watering. He doubled over and pounded on his chest, gagging, coughing, until finally he spat whatever it was out.

        A dishevelled fairy, wet with saliva.

        Slowly, he looked up.

        Sixty gorgeous girls gaped back at him.

        He closed his eyes. He didn't have the strength to deal with this.

        Thankfully, he didn't have to, because next thing he knew his feet left the ground. His eyes shot open to find a fairy on each shoulder, flying him over the grass and towards the crystal castle across the lake. The princesses were also being ferried across the water, each with a fairy patrol of three. He glanced back to see the fairy from before, assumedly part of his own patrol but steadfastly refusing to assist, standing on the grass and wringing its clothes out. It looked up. It was a boy.

        Looking first to the Good castle, then to the sixty girls in front, then to Arthur, the fairy shook his head disapprovingly. Flushing, Arthur turned back to stare at his shoes. He was sure the fairy was thinking the same thing he was.

        Out of all the potential students in Tempo, all the students from wherever these girls were from, the hundreds of pure souls hoping to attend this school to graduate into fairy tales . . . how had a loser like him, someone who half an hour ago hadn't even believed in all this, ended up here?

༻·𖥸·༺

        As soon as the students reached the banks on the other side, they were all dropped off by their fairies, who instead turned to assisting with the luggage. Arthur's fairies, however, stayed clamped to his shoulders and dragged him towards the castle. Arthur was sure this was because they could sense that if they put him down he would have bolted the other way and dived into the lake. He wasn't sure if this uncanny ability to read his mind was a good thing or not.

        To reach the castle students first had to pass through a set of tall golden gates, topped with large mirrored words:

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD ENLIGHTENMENT
AND ENCHANTMENT

        He ducked his head to avoid the reflections as he passed through. He didn't need to look at his sunken face and dark eye bags to remind himself he didn't belong here.

        The fairies swept him up to large frosted glass doors, emblazoned with the silhouettes of twin swans, and ushered him through with the rest. Finally they let him go, and he almost stumbled when his feet touched smooth marble.

        Now that everyone was inside, the huge doors shut magically behind them. He was left in a hall full of beautiful girls, now all stopped and staring at him. His cheeks burned. This was a nightmare. Like that one of him turning up to school completely naked.

        Girls started whispering. Fixing his eyes on the floor, he tried to shrink back—

        "Hey, hon, what's your name?"

        His eyes flicked up. A beautiful princess stepped forward from the mob and approached him. He backed away.

        "Hey, it's okay," she soothed, as if trying to tame a wild animal. "I don't bite." She tucked a lock of mulberry hair behind her ear and smiled. "I'm Annik."

        "Hi," he mumbled, eyes flicking around nervously.

        She was quite close to him now. She smelled of roses. "You feeling okay, hon? You look kinda sick."

        He forced out a laugh. "Not the first time someone's said that."

        She huffed softly out of her nose and laid a hand on his shoulder, leaning closer. "Hey, uh, I just want you to know you shouldn't be embarrassed. I think these girls are being pretty rude. I'm sorry this has to be your first experience at school."

        He relaxed, just a bit. This girl seemed nice. She wasn't going to ridicule him. "Hah . . . yeah."

        "Not much of a talker, are you?" she hummed. His eyes flicked nervously to the girls surrounding them and then back to the floor. She seemed to understand because she straightened and turned. "Hey everyone, don't we need to go and get settled in before the Welcoming? Wouldn't want to be late."

        With half-hearted grumbles, the girls seemed to agree and began shifting down the hallway. Arthur breathed out a sigh of relief.

        Annik laughed and laid a hand on his shoulder, guiding him along. "Come on, we need to get you settled in too."

        Arthur tensed at that. "Uh, actually, I don't think I should be here."

        "What do you mean?" she asked, affording him a curious glance.

        "I, uh. . ." His eyes drifted back to his feet. "My friend Vivi should be here. She's been dreaming of going to this school all her life."

        "Aw, well, that's a shame hon, but that's not your fault. She should understand."

        "No—I mean she's here . . . we both came together . . . but the bird dropped me into Good instead of her."

        "That's very sweet of you," she said, smiling at him, "but stymphs don't make mistakes. They can tell an Ever and a Never apart from first sight. Which means she's in Evil, right? That's pretty lucky, actually! I've never heard of anyone coming to school with someone they already knew. That should make things a lot easier on you two."

        Arthur flailed for words—

        "I've never heard of a stymph taking an Ever to school before, though. I thought they only took Nevers. Where are you from? Couldn't you access the Flowerground?"

        "Flowerground?" he asked weakly.

        "Yeah—that's how we all got here." She laughed. "I know it looks strange seeing people bloom from the ground first time, but you get used to it after a while."

        Before Arthur could respond, they entered an enormous foyer and he lost his breath.

        Polished marble floors reflected in glossy white walls, soaring up to a meet a domed glass roof, sunlight spilling down from above. Four columns against the walls flaunted the letters E-V-E-R in pink and blue, carved with sylphs, angels, and other elegant and magical creatures. In the middle of the room stood a tall obelisk, lined top to bottom with ornately framed portraits, painted in rich oil colours, depicting students and what they became after graduation. Scanning the portraits, Arthur found that despite whether the students came out of their stories as gold-framed royalty, silver-framed fairy godmothers and sidekicks, or bronze-framed servants or chimney sweeps, every single face was beautiful and good, flashing warm smiles, expressions gentle and kind. He looked away guiltily, searching for something else to distract himself with.

        Four glass staircases wound up from the floor in each of the room's four corners, two pink, two blue. One of the blue banisters was tattooed HONOUR, etched with dashing knights and kings, while the other read VALOUR, embellished with friezes of muscular hunters and archers. The two pink staircases named PURITY and CHARITY were decorated with sculpted reliefs of gentle maidens, beautiful princesses, and adorable animals.

        A line of adults in colourful attire stood at the far end of the foyer, women on the left, by the pink staircases, wearing matching gowns, each of a unique block colour, with sweetheart necklines and long sleeves poofed slightly at the shoulders. The men on the right, closer to the blue staircases, wore similarly-hued, well-fitted suits, along with matching vests and slim ties.

        As Arthur's eyes travelled across their faces, he found kind smiles and warm eyes, found lines in faces made by a lifetime of laughter, found youth and beauty in all its glory. Here were the most attractive, the most attentive, and the kindest-looking adults he'd ever seen.

        His ears burned red under their gaze, wondering what each of these beautiful and happy people thought when their gaze landed on him, pale, gaunt, expression betraying his shame. He watched as teachers' eyes widened when they saw him, travelling along the line, synchronised. . . until the last teacher in line, a young, pale woman, with short black hair and a pale blue dress, looked at him and crinkled her eyes in an even warmer smile, as if glad to see him, as if believing wholeheartedly that he belonged here in this perfect, pure School for Good.

        He immediately averted his gaze, uncomfortable.

        "Welcome, new princess," said a voice, and he turned. Floating beside him was a seven-foot nymph with neon green hair and flowing robes, clutching a basket of books and a schedule in her hands. Arthur blinked in shock.

        The nymph handed Annik her load, then her eyes shifted past her to Arthur. He froze, a deer in the headlights.

        "And welcome, new prince," the nymph said, not batting an eye. "Come with me and I will find you your schedule. Your uniform will be in your room."

        "R-Room?" he squeaked, eyes flicking to Annik for protection.

        She smiled. "Go get settled in. I'll see you at the Welcoming."

        The nymph rested a hand on his shoulder and began to guide him away. Speechless, he could only follow dumbly, looking over his shoulder at Annik. The purple-haired girl gave him a small wave and turned away, heading for one of the pink staircases, effectively leaving him alone.

        Again.

༻·𖥸·༺

Vivi moved forward in line, gaze fixed ahead, trying to ignore the dozens of eyes boring into her. She'd be out of here soon enough. Surely she could make someone see there had been a mistake; she didn't need the other students' hateful stares to tell her she didn't belong here.

        The line crept forward towards three twisted black staircases at the far end of the foyer. The first, crooked baluster carved with monsters, was tattooed MALICE; the second with spiders MISCHIEF; and the third with snakes VICE. They three stretched up past a semicircular stone chamber, lined with even more portraits, this time with faces she recognised. There, near the top, was the pale girl with one eye, labelled ARACHNE OF FOXWOOD; next to her portrait the blonde boy with pointy ears, labelled VEX OF SLEEPING BOUGH; and a couple of rows below the green-skinned, black-haired girl's portrait—MONA OF OZ.

        As her eyes scanned the walls, Vivi found one more familiar face: the boy who had helped her out of the moat, labelled MATOKO OF BLOODBROOK. Here he was painted with a sneer to match the other portraits' scowls but it didn't look right on his calm face. She glanced over her shoulder, looking back along the line behind her, but couldn't find him in the sea of faces.

        Turning back, she and the other students approached a hag, a satyr and a dwarf at the bottom of each respective staircase, all with wicked expressions and a load of fraying baskets. As students approached, the three would step forward and foist these baskets and slips of stained parchment on the students, who would then ascend a given staircase. Vivi waited with bated breath, creeping along in line, until she was close enough to speak to one of them. She went for the least-murderous-looking one of the bunch, the satyr.

        "Excuse me," she whispered hurriedly, grabbing a hold of his arm. "There's been a mistake. I was dropped into the wrong school—I should be in Good—"

        He yanked out of her grip and shoved a basket in her face which she barely caught before being pushed aside by bustling students. Peering into the basket, she saw her name on a piece of paper and snatched it up.

VIVI OF WOODS BEYOND
EVIL, 1ST YEAR
Malice Tower 66

Session — Faculty
1: UGLIFICATION — Prof. Skandar Mépris
2: HENCHMEN TRAINING — Castor
3: CURSES & DEATH TRAPS — Prof. Cadence Eliades
4: HISTORY OF VILLAINY — Prof. August Chambers
5: LUNCH
6: SPECIAL TALENTS — Prof. Declan Corvus
7: SURVIVING FAIRY TALES — Yuba the Gnome
(Forest Group #3)

        It was a schedule.

        She gaped, whipping around. "But—"

        She didn't get time to finish her sentence as she was shoved up the Malice stairs by dozens of impatient students, hurrying to their assigned rooms to get settled. After fighting the tide for a moment, she realised her efforts were fruitless against the mass and slumped along with them into Malice Tower. Filing down the hallway, she watched as students found their doors and disappeared inside. Checking her room number again, she glanced around at the surrounding dorms, doorplates in ascending order. 63, 64, 65 . . .

        Finally she found number 66 and hurriedly stepped out of the line before she was trampled by grumbling students. Setting her hand on the rusted doorknob, she took a deep breath and opened the door.

        A screeching black blur flew into her face and she dropped her books.

༻·𖥸·༺

Arthur was ushered up the blue Honour staircase and down a sea-green corridor, painted with cresting waves and stamped with numbered doors on either side. Finally they reached the door numbered 51 and the nymph opened the door, pushed him gently inside, and shut it behind him.

        He stood, gaping, at a spacious, blue-upholstered room, furnished with thick cerulean carpet, and two large, plush, four-poster beds against the far wall, the only one of which was left painted in a block royal blue, jarringly simple against the three others, painted with scenes of sculpted princes, sparring or clasping beautiful maidens by their sides, in rich colours and painstaking detail. An ornate lamp hung from the ceiling, glistening carved nacre, with matching sconces on the walls over the beds and lamps on the nightstands.

        He closed his eyes in disbelief. I have to be dreaming. This can't be real.

        He opened them again. The room was still there, even more dazzling than before, if possible. He steadied himself against a muralled wall, knees weak. He'd never seen such luxury.

        The dorm was decorated in dark hues but bright rays still streamed through from the large window on the far wall, reflecting off the white curtains and pillows on the beds and bathing the room in light. He drew closer to the window and peered out.

        Valour's deadly-sharp blue spire jutted up beneath, sparkling in warm sunlight. Pushing the double panes open, Arthur gripped onto the top of the window and leaned out, twisting around—Purity and Charity's pink towers loomed behind him, connected in the middle by a purple glass breezeway; he looked down at the parallel blue towers, also connected by a similar breezeway. Raising his eyes, he squinted across the interconnected moats at the far banks, obscured by grey fog, but looking up, he could just see the faint shadows of three crooked towers reaching into stormclouds, still belting rain. A flash of lightning glinted off something in the corner of his vision—he turned and gaped.

        A thin, silver-brick tower rose from the middle of the bay, anchored right between lake and sludge, bordered by wooden planking over the moats, hosting a guard of bipedal wolves in red soldier jackets, each with a quiver of arrows slung over its back and armed with a wooden bow; higher up, a drone of fairies circled the tower, keeping a lookout. Arthur frowned. Just what in that lone tower would need so much protection?

        He lifted his eyes to the singular window at the top and froze. A crooked silhouette loomed inside, and Arthur squinted closer, sun shining from the Good castle and into the tower. . . he could make out glinting green eyes . . . flowing robes and a silver mask. . .

        The figure turned and Arthur jerked back, trying to duck below the windowsill, but tripped over his own feet instead and landed on his backside on plush carpet. Heart pounding, he crawled forward, rising to his knees and peeking over the windowsill—but the figure was gone, the window dark.

        Arthur stood on wobbly knees and slammed the panes shut, yanking the curtains across to block out the view. That crooked shadow was the same one that crept into Tempo last night, wearing an identical silver mask. . . His breath shallowed. Now he knew where the School Master was. Could they meet with him and ask him to send them home?

        He turned back into the room, trying to calm his racing thoughts, and noticed that each of the two beds had baskets on them, filled with brightly-covered books. He padded cautiously towards the bed on the left side of the window, peering at the slip of parchment poking out and the name at the top.

EUGENE OF NETTLE FOREST
GOOD, 1ST YEAR
Honour Tower 51

        Eugene? Was that his roommate? He turned to the other bed, zeroing in on its basket's contents. A piece of paper poking out, stamped with a name:

ARTHUR OF WOODS BEYOND
GOOD, 1ST YEAR
Honour Tower, 51

         He gulped and crept forward, pulling the sheet out.

ARTHUR OF WOODS BEYOND
GOOD, 1ST YEAR
Honour Tower 51

Session — Faculty
1: GROOMING — Pollux
2: CHIVALRY — Prof. Lykoi Corvus
3: SWORDPLAY — Prof. Eider Întuneric
4: HISTORY OF HEROISM — Prof. August Chambers
5: LUNCH
6: GOOD DEEDS — Prof. Pippin Deoír
7: SURVIVING FAIRY TALES — Yuba the Gnome
(Forest Group #3)

        It was a schedule. For the School for Good.

        With his name on it.

        Heart pounding, he peered at the text on the spines of the books.

        Privilege and Power: The Princely Balance
        Rescuing (And Winning!) Your Princess
        The Recipe Book for Good Looks
        How to Rule a Kingdom 101
        Combat Sparring: Form and Techniques

        He felt the blood drain from his face. How to Rule a Kingdom? Rescuing Your Princess? Somewhere along the line, someone had made a huge mistake. He shouldn't be here. He wasn't cut out for a life like this. A prince? A fairy tale prince?

        He dropped the schedule like a hot stone. He needed to get out of here.

        But first, he needed to find Vivi. And soon. He couldn't imagine what could be happening to her over in Evil.

        Rescuing Your Princess, his thoughts mocked.

        Shut up, he gritted back, and then stopped. Annik had said something about a Welcoming. Would Evil be going too? Would he find Vivi there?

        He turned back to the basket, hoping to find some sort of map or students' handbook. Instead he noticed a sliver of blue cloth tucked in beside the books.

        He pulled it out and almost dropped it.

        A royal blue jacket with intricate gold brocade, a silver swan crest glittering over the heart, tucked around a slim-cut white dress shirt and matching white trousers. Leaning further over the basket, he found inside a blue-and-gold striped tie embellished with a capital A, long grey socks, and a pair of blue briefs, stamped over and over with what looked like a school crest.

        He swallowed. Those briefs were way too big for him.

        He turned back to the door and only now noticed two huge pairs of tall black boots tucked into the corner. Great. As if he wouldn't be drawing enough attention to himself already, not only would he have to wear a baggy uniform, but now he'd be clomping through halls in too-big boots like a toddler playing dress-up in his parents' wardrobe.

        Eyeing his books again, he was reminded of Vivi, no doubt trapped and terrified in Evil. He held up the uniform, clenching his jaw. He'd just have to grin and bear it.

Chapter Text

Back in Evil, Vivi had just been assaulted by a rabid bat.

        She let out a startled scream and lifted her hands, shielding her face and trying to bat the thing away. Screeching, it winged around her head for a few moments more and then withdrew, flapping across the room to hang from a hooded girl's pale finger.

        "Good boy," she said.

        Vivi stared at her, sitting, legs folded, on a bed across the room. She wore a green coat with ridiculously long sleeves, a wisp of blonde hair poking out from under the sagging hood. Vivi squinted, making out in shadow a ghostly pale face and piercing green eyes. The rest of the girl's slim body was covered up in long garments, hiding every inch of skin.

        Vivi's eyes drifted around the room. It might have been a cozy dorm once, before a cyclone, flood, and fire swept through. The walls were streaked with brown and black scorch marks and the floor was carpeted in ash. Even the once-white sheets of the four beds were stained and the pillows singed.

        "What are you doing here," a flat voice droned, and Vivi turned to find another student leaning against the wall, also wearing long, draping robes. Their black hair, highlighted with pink and yellow—strange choice of colours for a student of Evil, Vivi thought, but who was she to judge—reached to their shoulders and hid half of their face with a drooping bang. Their one visible eye was narrowed in a frown, toned, tan arms folded over their chest.

        Vivi blinked. "What?"

        "Here. In Evil," they drawled, monotone.

        "The same as the rest of us," a nervous voice chipped in, and Vivi turned again to find a pudgy student sitting on a third bed against the wall, munching on a piece of crispy chicken, with long, deep brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail and streaked through with red, and with dark skin and friendly eyes, shadowed by the darkest bags she had ever seen. She winced. And she thought Arthur needed more sleep.

        The pale, green-clad girl turned to her rusted bedframe and hung her bat next to two others roosting comfortably. "Of course, how could I forget. Exchange students between schools this year."

        "What?" The plump boy blinked.

        "Even if she did belong here, four's too many for a coven. She needs to go," sneered the girl.

        "Don't be rude!" the boy cried. "It's not her fault she's an exchange student!"

        Vivi, the girl and the other student against the wall stared at him.

        "What?" he said.

        "Sarcasm," the student against the wall yawned.

        The boy turned to the girl, betrayed. "Chloe."

        The girl groaned. "And now she knows my name."

        "Should we introduce ourselves?" the boy mulled, still munching. "She is our new roommate."

        "No," Chloe and the third student groaned.

        "Well, you already know that's Chloe," the boy said, turning to Vivi, and pointed with his chicken at the student against the wall. "They're Duet, and I'm Rooster."

        "Shut up," Chloe snapped, rather rudely. "She doesn't need to know our names because she's not staying here."

        "Then where else am I supposed to go?" Vivi said.

        "I've heard Halfway Bay is hospitable," Duet said, nodding out the window at the dividing line between sludge and lake in the moat.

        "I know a quick way down," Chloe said, eyes glinting.

        "Chloe!" Rooster cried, scandalised.

        "What," she snapped back.

        Vivi frowned. These students were all her age. They were just kids. They couldn't do anything to her.

        She cleared her throat. "Since you all want me gone so bad, do any of you know how to get to Good?"

        "Swim," Chloe said, not missing a beat.

        "I don't want you gone," Rooster said, looking hurt.

        "I agree with Chloe," Duet deadpanned.

        "Can I get across the Bridge?" Vivi fought.

        "Students can't cross the Bridge," Rooster replied.

        "Bodies can though," Chloe quipped.

        "We can help you out," Duet said.

        Irritation rising, Vivi took a deep breath and turned to Rooster. "Where are the teachers? Maybe I can ask them to help me."

        "Oh, they'll help you out alright," Chloe said. "I can't imagine how much fun they'd have punishing a princess for infiltrating the wrong school."

        "Can you SHUT UP?" Vivi finally snapped, raising her voice and turning furiously on Chloe. "What is your problem? It's not my fault I'm on the winning side. It's not my fault Evil always dies at the end of your fairytales. And no wonder they do, if this is how you all behave," she hissed, and set burning eyes on Duet. "So if you don't even have the human decency to help a classmate, let alone a supposed roommate, why don't you all do yourselves a favour and go home before you graduate into fairytales and get slaughtered."

        The two Evil students gaped at her, looking like they'd just been slapped. Vivi stared them down from the doorway, breathing fire, daring them to challenge her again.

        Rooster whistled and took another bite of his snack.

        "Told you two she belongs here."

༻·𖥸·༺

Arthur stole down the Honour Tower staircase, boots squeaking on polished glass. To his surprise, the moment he donned the clothes in his basket (excluding the crest-spotted boxers), they had magically shrunk to fit, wrapping snugly around his thin frame; too snugly. The form-fitting trousers and trimmed jacket showed off spindly legs and a slender, feminine waist, features Arthur had previously hidden with his baggy clothing from back home. Looking down at himself, he'd felt strangely exposed in such non-revealing clothing, and thought he'd rather stick his head in a toilet than walk through school like this.

        But this was the only way he'd make it to the Welcoming without raising suspicion. He'd tolerate an hour in this awful uniform if it meant getting out of here with Vivi.

        When he reached the foyer, tugging uncomfortably at his high collar, he found it completely empty. Giggles and high-pitched chatter echoed down from the two pink staircases. The two blue flights were silent.

        Where are all the other guys? Arthur thought anxiously. A man's voice drifted towards him from the back of the foyer and his ears pricked up. He crept towards the sound, towards a pair of tall frosted glass doors, emblazoned in gold lettering:

THE GALLERY OF GOOD

        The doors were ajar. He peeked inside.

        Two teachers stood inside, a pale man in navy and a tan woman in red, like yin and yang, engaged in heated conversation. Arthur recognised the man as one of the many teachers he saw in the foyer, with short blue-black hair and soulful dark eyes.

        "He can't control the Storian, Kay," the man was saying. "He may be School Master but he doesn't have the power to control something so powerful."

        "And how do you know?" the shorter woman retorted, glaring with piercing red eyes. "Last student turnover marked two hundred years since Evil's last victory. And we're supposed to believe that and the School Master coming to power are coincidence? He's controlling the fairytales, Eider. He's killing our students!"

        Arthur remembered seeing that name on his schedule. Professor Eider Întuneric.

        The aforementioned professor paused for a moment, emotion flickering over his face. "It doesn't matter which side wins, Cadence. There are always casualties in a fairytale."

        "And for the last two centuries every single one of those casualties has been one of my students," Cadence hissed. When she next spoke, it was quiet and threatening, ruby hair falling forward as she leant unbearably close. "As Dean of Evil I will not let my students be driven to slaughter."

        This time, Professor Întuneric didn't flinch. "Then you're welcome to take the issue up with the School Master yourself."

        The woman withdrew, suddenly unsure.

        Professor Întuneric sighed, turning away from her. "You're being paranoid again. Your charges have every capability of winning their fairytales."

        "And yours even more so," Cadence grumbled.

        The professor cracked a grin. "Maybe you should be more concerned about my position as Dean of Good playing a part in my school's winning streak."

        "You?" Cadence snorted, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips. "I'd be more worried about Ptísi's role in their students' stories than yours."

        "You mean to say an extravagant wardrobe isn't an undeniably powerful weapon?" the professor teased, beginning to walk towards the door.

        Cadence fell into step beside him, giving him a small shove. "If that were the case, I'd have my own fairytale already."

        Arthur jerked back, hiding against the wall as the doors glided open before the teachers. They strolled through together, voices falling to whispers as they transitioned into the foyer, and Arthur glanced back to the tall doors, beginning to swing closed. He slipped through just in time.

        The first half of the room was bathed in sunlight, streaming down from a glass skylight, and the second half cast in shadow, lit only by golden sconces high against the walls, with high ceilings and filled with portraits, sculptures, and glass cases. The left wall was painted with a huge mural depicting a dashing prince and beautiful princess kissing at their wedding in front of a golden castle, with dozens of celebrating well-wishers and rose petals raining from above, sprinkled by cupids nestling in clouds. Large golden letters stretched through the clouds, informing Arthur what he was looking at:

E V E R A F T E R

        He frowned. Of course—the ultimate fairy tale ending. The weddings and castles written about in storybooks at home had never appealed to him, but he had to admit that this school did an eerily good job of selling it.

        There has to be a map or a guide in here somewhere, he thought, and crept towards one of the exhibits, a glass box holding an open schoolbook filled with flowery handwriting. The plaque read: SNOW WHITE, ANIMAL FLUENCY EXAM (LETITIA OF MAIDENVALE). As he ventured deeper into the museum, he found preserved in more glass cases the blue cape of a boy who had gone on to become Cinderella's prince, Red Riding Hood's dorm pillow, Pinocchio's pyjamas; any number of relics from students who had gone on to win their fairytales. Venturing deeper into the museum and farther away from the skylight, he scanned the darkening walls for a map of the school—and that's when he saw the dead animals.

        Dozens of taxidermied animals, mounted on stands; the Three Bears, Cinderella's favourite rat, Jack's sold-off cow, all stamped with the names of students who hadn't been good enough to graduate as human. Arthur turned and saw a pumpkin carriage and a preserved beanstalk, students' names on plaques beneath, and went pale. All these years and he'd never believed; but it was painfully real now. In two hundred years, none of the kidnapped children had ever made it back to Tempo. What made him think he and Vivi would be the first?

        Breathless, feeling sick, he hustled out of the collection of students—dead students!—and, desperate to find something else to focus on (or find a map) he drifted to a little corner nook with a string of paintings in gauzy, impressionist colours. As he examined them, he noticed there was something familiar about them. Scanning the line, he finally noticed—they were all paintings of Tempo. He went back to the start, looking at each in turn, finding children frolicking and reading books, set against the same lakeside cottages, the neat gardens, the crooked clock tower . . . until he stopped at the last painting. This one wasn't like the others at all.

        In the town square, children heaved books into a raging bonfire, smoke billowing up into thick grey clouds that blocked the sun and contorted into hulking shapes.

        A patrol of fairies burst through the tall doors across the museum and Arthur dove behind an exhibit. Peeking out from behind it, he watched as the fairies scoped the room, looking for something. They drew closer, closer . . . And just as they reached the back wall, Arthur bolted out from hiding and towards the glazed doors. The fairies screeched, surprised, and darted after him, shooting golden webs from their mouths. He zigzagged between statues and cabinets, dodging the missiles, and finally threw open the doors to a tsunami of pink uniforms—

        He saw a flash of purple hair and dove into the mass, ducking behind Annik.

        She swivelled in surprise on tall pink heels, identical to the pairs worn by every other single girl in the line. "Hello—?"

        "Hide me," Arthur hissed, glancing pointedly over at the doors, where fairies hovered, searching the crowd.

        Annik hummed. "Mmm, afraid I can't do that."

        Arthur's eyes blew wide, waiting for her to turn him over—

        Instead, she grabbed ahold of his arm and pulled him into her side, strolling quickly along with the other girls. Arthur squeaked in surprise.

        "The only blue uniform in a sea of pink? You're just going to have to be my date-at-first-sight until we get away from the fairies," she whispered, gliding forward, head held high. Arthur glanced back over his shoulder at the said fairies—they were stopped in their tracks, frowning at him on Annik's arm. Muttering amongst themselves, they turned away. Arthur drooped in relief.

        "Thank you."

        "It's no problem." She glimpsed the initial on his tie and lit up. "Oooh, 'A'? What is your name then? Austin? Adrien? Anthony?"

        "Arthur," he said, glancing back again to check for the fairies, but they were gone.

        "Arthur," she mulled, stretching her mouth around the name. "Sounds like a king's name."

༻·𖥸·༺

Vivi had resolved to gathering up her dropped books from the floor and sorting through them before dumping them on the unclaimed bed. The titles were interesting enough:

        Best Villainous Monologues, 2nd Ed.
        Spells for Suffering, Year 1
        The Novice's Guide to Kidnapping and Murder
        Embracing Ugliness Inside & Out
        How to Cook Children (with New Recipes!)

        Truth be told, she couldn't wait to read them—maybe she could take them with her when she switched to Good. Her mind was already buzzing with all the possibilities. Digging in the bottom of her basket, she pulled out a hideous black frock with a starched collar that looked like it had been fashioned out of a bat wing. Was this Evil's uniform? She scrunched her nose in distaste. This, she could leave behind.

        "So, where in the Woods are you from?" Rooster asked, awkwardly breaking the silence. Chloe glared at him. He nervously ignored her and continued. "Netherwood? Murmuring Mountains?"

        "She's an Ever, you idiot," Chloe snapped.

        Vivi looked up from her uniform. "Ever?"

        "It's what we call the Good kids," Rooster explained. "Short for 'Ever After'."

        "Which makes us . . . 'Nevers'?" Vivi mulled, remembering the lettered columns in the foyer.

        Rooster nodded. "That's right."

        "Short for what?" she asked, packing the frumpy smock away.

        "'Nevermore'," Chloe said. "Eternal solitude."

        Vivi raised an eyebrow.

        "So, where in the Woods are you from?" Rooster pushed, magically producing another bit of chicken.

        "I don't come from the Woods," Vivi replied, slumping onto the unclaimed bed. "People actually live in there?"

        "Uh, yeah?" Rooster blinked.

        "But what about those birds? The simps—synths—"

        "Stymphs?" Rooster asked, mouth full, and leaned back. "Oh, those come from the Thicket Tumble. People don't really live there."

        "Thicket Tumble?" Vivi murmured.

        Duet cleared their throat across the room, seemingly curious despite themself. "Not from the Woods?"

        They remained unfazed as Chloe turned angry eyes on them. Clearly, she was still miffed about being stood up.

        "No, I'm from Tempo," Vivi said, and held up her schedule, her name at the top. "It says on here 'Woods Beyond'."

        "Never heard of it," Duet replied, examining their fingernails. "What fairytale family are you from?"

        "Distant relative of the Goose Girl," Vivi fired off, wondering if image mattered amongst her Evil peers.

        "Oh? How distant?" She had their attention now, their dark eyes fixed on her.

        She folded her arms. "Two generations."

        "Ah, grandchild then," Duet said, eyes flicking to Chloe, who caught their gaze and grinned wickedly. "Well that's certainly strange."

        "How so?" Vivi huffed, irritated.

        "The Goose Princess never had any grandchildren," Chloe said, smirking.

        "And how on earth would you know?"

        The blonde girl rolled back her sleeves and leaned forward, eyes glinting dangerously. "Because my grandmother made sure she never bore any children."

        Vivi scoffed. "Your grandmother? What are you talking abo—"

        She stopped, for she'd noticed the bracelet clasped around her roommate's wrist.

        A bracelet made of children's bones, stained a pale yellow.

        Chloe held it up on her wrist, admiring it. "Plated in gold, it looked just like the Queen's charm, which is how she convinced them she was the Princess." The girl raised her eyes to Vivi, whose blood ran cold. "Granny stabbed her womb through so she couldn't have any children. Wanted to make her watch her take her place and suffer. Should have killed her when she had the chance, and she would have avoided that barrel." She rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't make that mistake."

        Eyes wide, Vivi turned slowly to the nightstand by Duet's bed, holding a claw-shaped candle and a small framed painting—a painting of a dark-skinned man sitting on a throne, a beautiful maiden on the floor beside him. Duet's lips twitched. "My father made the same mistake. Always had a weakness for good stories, so he let Scheherazade live as long as she shared her tales—and eventually married her." They gagged. "She poisoned him at the wedding banquet. Served him right."

        Vivi whipped to Rooster on his bed and the poster peeling from the wall behind him: a young man in green, walking the plank to sharks in the water below, stamped with bold black letters:

WANTED:
————————
PETER PAN
Dead or Alive
By Order of Captain Hook

        "Never really knew my dad," Rooster sighed. "Kept a princess in the galley. Had lots of brothers and sisters growing up, though."

        Vivi was hit with a wave of nausea and clamped a hand over her mouth. These kids were from the fairytales. Raised to torture. Born to kill. She was in a school full of murderers.

        She needed to get out of here now.

        Wolf howls blared outside and her three roommates straightened. "Let's get this over with," Duet grumbled, grabbing a putrid uniform from their bed and slipping it on. It looked like an oily potato sack.

        Chloe stood, donning her own black robe, and swished to the door, cracking it open. Duet followed behind and slipped into the hallway after her and into a stampede of students.

        Rooster yawned from his bed, stretching and pushing himself to his feet, lazily pulling on his own robes. He walked to the door and then stopped, turning to Vivi. "Aren't you coming?"

        "Coming where?"

        "The Welcoming. Both schools are meeting in the Theatre of Tales to debrief on the rules and year events and stuff." He nodded at her basket. "Oh, and you better put on your uniform before you come out."

        He slid into the stream of students, leaving Vivi alone in the room. She stayed put and fingered her uniform, frowning with distaste, until she noticed a wolf herding students out in the hall, head turned and eyes fixed on her. He reached for the whip coiled at his belt.

        Vivi hurriedly shoved the potato sack on over her clothes and scurried past him into the herd of students, keeping her head low on her their way to the joint-school meeting. If she just lasted until the Welcoming, surely she could speak to a teacher about switching schools.

        Not that she was afraid of her roommates, or being trapped in a school full of rabid wolves and murderous students.

        No, Vivi wasn't scared at all. So she clenched her clammy fists and kept marching.

Chapter Text

The Theatre of Tales was split into two halves with Evil's doors opening onto their side from the West and Good's from the East. While Good's half of the Theatre was decorated with pink and blue pews, walls carved with crystal friezes of dashing princes, beautiful princesses and helpful animals, Evil's half was packed with warped wooden benches and carved with scenes of torture and murder. At the front of the Theatre stood a wide marble stage emblazoned with the image of an inset phoenix.

        Entering from the West doors with the Nevers, Vivi migrated immediately to the far end of a bench on the edge of the aisle. With the wolves and fairies standing guard in the silver aisle separating the two sides, she knew she wouldn't be able to cross over, but perhaps if she sat close to the Evers they would notice her and back her up when it came time to exchanging schools.

        She watched as gorgeous girls streamed through the East doors in high heels and pink pinafores, sleeves poofed and dotted with carnations. They'd look much better in blue, she thought to herself, but beggars couldn't be choosers. The Good girls' dresses were much more attractive than Evil's dumpy black sacks.

        By this time, the wolf and fairy sentinels had moved to the far ends of the Theatre to keep watch, leaving the aisle clear as students took their seats. She leaned over, trying to catch the Good girls' attention, but none of them were paying any mind to her half of the room. She slumped, frustrated, and then felt eyes on her. She looked up to see a kind-faced girl with purple hair turned and looking at her. She waved frantically at her. The girl smiled and turned to speak to the student next to her, clad in blue.

        He whipped around.

        Arthur's eyes bulged. He quickly scanned the room, ensuring no one was looking, and then slid discreetly out of his shared pink pew and scurried over to sit across the aisle from her on a blue bench.

        "Oh thank god you're safe," he motormouthed, leaning out across the aisle. "I know where he is and we can go talk to him to send us back because we need to get home. If we fail they'll turn us into squirrels or beetles or sunflowers—"

        She hushed him, fearing the other students would overhear. "Where who—? Actually, don't worry, I'm already on it."

        Arthur slackened in relief. "Really?"

        "I'm going to find a teacher and explain there's been a mistake," she whispered. "I'm sure they'll switch me over, and then we won't have to worry about failing, because we can work together."

        Arthur gaped at her. "What?"

        "We don't have to worry about failing if I move to Good," she repeated, glancing around to make sure no one had noticed them. "We can study together and I can help you in class if we need it. I'll make sure you're okay."

        "We're not staying here!" Arthur choked.

        "Shh-shh! How are we supposed to get home from here, Arthur?" she asked, voice low. "Our best bet is to stay where it's safe."

        "I already told you I know where he is, he can send us back—you should see what they do to students—" his eyes widened. "Wait. You want to stay here?"

        "I've been dreaming of this place my whole life!" she pleaded. "We don't have to go back there! We can be happy here!"

        Arthur opened his mouth to argue, but she was gazing at him with those big blue eyes, begging for him to let her stay. He slumped in admission and began to nod—

        There was a crash! and they spun around. The East doors had been flung open, and 58 boys danced through engaged in heated swordfight, weapons clashing as they duelled, boys disarming their partners, pinning them against pews, until each pair brought forward a victory—and then every single boy stood up straight, drew a single red rose from his jacket and, with a united cry of "Milady!", tossed it to the Evergirl who most caught his eye.

        Arthur grimaced. "Why do they get their own entrance?"

        Vivi nudged him. "Jealous?"

        "No!" he said, way too defensively—

        One more boy walked in.

        His tanned skin glowed with warmth, toned muscle filling out his white shirt, broad chest tapering down to a narrow waist. His slim-fitting breeches showed off sculpted calves, and, panning up, he sported a strong jawline, supple lips, and deep amethyst eyes gazing out from beneath a tufty mulberry fringe.

        "Whoa," Vivi breathed. "He's pretty."

        Arthur watched him out of the corner of his eye. Sure, he was good-looking—he wasn't blind—but there was nothing special about him. Sure he was tall, fit, chiselled, with kind, soulful eyes, looking right at him—

        Arthur flushed and ducked down.

        Vivi watched as standing boys glowered at the newcomer, swords still unsheathed by their sides. They all shared a look, then raised their weapons, stepping closer—

        The new student's fists burst into magenta flame, and Vivi gasped. His expression didn't change, but he stared the other boys down, daring for them to take him on. They promptly sat down.

       The newcomer's hands extinguished and, scanning the room, his eyes landed on someone, delicate face framed with long cyan hair. Smiling, he withdrew a purple rose from his jacket and hefted it into the air—

        Vivi rocketed out of her seat to claim her rose. Arthur jumped up to stop her too late—

        She crashed face-first into a wolf, who grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and shoved her back into the Evil pews, far away from the aisle.

        The newcomer watched, wide-eyed, as who he'd assumed a princess was herded into Evil in a sagging black uniform. He turned to find Arthur, agog in Everboy blue, purple rose plopped into his open hands.

        Before he could react, Arthur was corralled by fairies into the Good pews, leaving the stranger standing, mouth hanging open in shock. Dumbfounded, he stumbled forward and sunk into a seat, twisting a golden ring around his finger, eyes still searching the Evil benches for the blue-haired girl.

        Back next to Annik in pink, Arthur snatched a quick glance over his shoulder at the bewitching stranger. "Who is that?" he whispered, nudging her.

        She shifted, pretending to adjust her skirts beneath her, examining the student for a moment from beneath her fringe before she settled and leant over to whisper back. "I have no idea."

༻·𖥸·༺

"Welcome to the School for Good and Evil," said the nicer of the two heads.

        A large-bodied dog stalked across the stage, balancing two opposing heads; one was snarling and rabid, with large teeth and red eyes glaring down at the seated students, and the other one cuddly and cute, with a weak jaw and small pink nose.

        "I'm Pollux, Welcoming Leader," said the nice head.

        "AND I'M CASTOR, WELCOMING LEADER ASSISTANT AND EXECUTIVE EXECUTIONER OF PUNISHMENT FOR ANYONE WHO BREAKS RULES OR ACTS LIKE A DONKEY," the rabid one boomed.

        Everyone looked scared of Castor. Even the villains.

        "Thank you, Castor," said Pollux. "So let me first remind you why it is you're here. All children are born with souls that are either Good or Evil. Some souls are purer than others—"

        "AND SOME SOULS ARE CRAP!" Castor barked.

        "As I was saying," said Pollux, "some souls are purer than others, but all souls are fundamentally Good or Evil. Those who are Evil cannot make their souls Good, and those who are Good cannot make their souls Evil—"

        "SO JUST 'CAUSE GOOD IS WINNING EVERYTHING DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN SWITCH SIDES," snarled Castor.

        The Good students burst into a cheer of "EVERS! EVERS!", Evil retorted with "NEVERS! NEVERS!", until wolves doused the Evers with buckets of water, fairies cast rainbows over the Nevers, and both sides shut up.

        "Once again," said Pollux tightly, "those who are Evil cannot be good and those who are Good cannot be Evil, no matter how much you're persuaded or punished. Now sometimes you may feel the stirrings of both but this just means your family tree has branches where Good and Evil have toxically mixed. But here at the School for Good and Evil, we will rid you of stirrings, we will rid you of confusion, we will try to make you as pure as possible—"

        "AND IF YOU FAIL, THEN SOMETHING SO BAD WILL HAPPEN TO YOU THAT I CAN'T SAY, BUT IT INVOLVES YOU NEVER BEING SEEN AGAIN!"

        "One more and it's the muzzle!" Pollux yelled. Castor stared at his toes.

        "None of these brilliant students will fail, I'm sure," Pollux smiled at the relieved children.

        "You say that every time and then someone fails," Castor mumbled.

        Vivi remembered Bane's scared face and felt a chill. She needed to switch schools soon.

        "Every child in the Endless Woods dreams of being picked to attend our school. But the School Master chose you," said Pollux, scanning both sides. "For he looked into your hearts and saw something very rare: Pure Good and Pure Evil."

        Vivi heard villains in her row grumbling disbelievingly in her direction.

        "Every class, we bring two Readers here from the Woods Beyond," Pollux declared. "They may know our world from pictures and books, but they know our rules just as well as you. They have the same talents and goals, the same potential for glory. And they too have been some of our finest students."

        "Like two hundred years ago," Castor snorted.

        "They are no different than the rest of you," Pollux said defensively.

        "They look different from the rest of us," one-eyed Arachne mumbled to herself, two rows ahead. Classmates rumbled in agreement.

        "Do not question the School Master's selections," said Pollux, voice rising over the chatter. "All of you will respect each other, whether you're Good or Evil, whether you're from a famous tale family or a failed one, whether you're a sired prince or a Reader. All of you are chosen to protect the balance between Good and Evil. For once that balance is compromised . . ." His face darkened. "Our world will perish."

        The hall fell silent.

        Castor raised his paw. "What," Pollux groaned.

        "Why doesn't Evil win anymore?"

        Pollux looked like he was about to bite his head off, but it was too late. The villains were rumbling.

        "Yeah, if we're so balanced," yelled green-skinned Mona, "why do we always die?"

        "We never get good weapons!" shouted impish Vex.

        "Our henchmen betray us!"

        "Our Nemesis always has an army!"

        Chloe stood. "Evil hasn't won in two hundred years!"

        Castor tried to control himself, but his red face swelled like a balloon. "GOOD IS CHEATING!"

        The villains burst into mutiny, hurling shoes and insults at the shocked Evers. Vivi stayed in her seat, sighing. She glanced across the Theatre, immediately locking eyes with the purple-haired stranger's, already turned towards the Evil pews. She pinked and turned back to face the stage, heart fluttering.

        Around her, wolves and fairies doused the rogue Nevers, but this time they couldn't be stopped.

        "The School Master's on their side!" Chloe screamed.

        "We don't even have a chance!" Duet shouted.

        Villains broke past wolves and charged the Evers' pews—

        "It's because you're idiotic apes!"

        The villains looked up dumbly.

        "Now sit down before I give all of you a slap!" shrieked Pollux. Nevers obeyed without argument.

        Pollux scowled down at the villains. "Maybe if you stopped complaining, you'd produce someone of consequence! But all we hear is excuse after excuse. Have you produced one decent villain since the Great War? One villain capable of defeating their Nemesis? No wonder Readers come here confused! No wonder they want to be Good!"

        Vivi felt eyes on her from both sides of the hall.

        "Students, all of you have only one concern here," Pollux said, softening. "Do the best work you can. The finest of you will become princes and warlocks, knights and witches, queens and sorcerers—"

        "OR A TROLL OR PIG IF YOU STINK!" Castor spat.

        Students glanced at each other across the aisle, sensing the high stakes.

        "So if there are no further interruptions," Pollux said, glowering at his brother, "let's review the rules."

༻·𖥸·༺

"Rule thirteen. Halfway Bridge and tower roofs are forbidden to students," Pollux lectured onstage. "The gargoyles have orders to kill intruders on sight and have yet to grasp the difference between students and intruders—"

        Vivi found all of this incredibly dull, but nevertheless forced herself to pay attention. She wasn't in Tempo now. Remembering these rules—especially in the school she found herself right now—could be a matter of life or death.

        "Your first year will consist of required courses to prepare you for three major tests: the Trial by Tale, the Circus of Talents, and the Snow Ball," Castor growled. "After the first year, you will be divided into three tracks: one for villain and hero Leaders, one for henchmen and helper Followers, and one for Mogrifs, or those that will undergo transformation."

        "For the next two years, Leaders will train to fight their future Nemesis," Pollux said. "Followers will develop skills to defend their future Leaders. Mogrifs will learn to adapt to their new forms and survive in the treacherous Woods. Finally, after the third year, Leaders will be paired with Followers and Mogrifs and you will all move into the Endless Woods to begin your journeys . . ."

        Vivi felt her attention begin to drift again, stifling a yawn; it was just like a school assembly back home. She ran her fingers over the glittering silver swan crest embroidered on her chest, the one commonality between both schools' uniforms. It was very different from the usual swan-and-shield crest; she wondered what it meant.

        "Now as to how we determine your future tracks, we do not give 'marks' here at the School for Good and Evil," said Pollux. "Instead, for every test or challenge, you will be ranked within your classes so you know exactly where you stand. There are 120 students in each school and we have divided you into six groups of 20 for your classes. After each challenge, you will be ranked from 1 to 20. If you are ranked in the top five in your group consistently, you will end up on the Leader track. If you score in the midrange repeatedly, you'll end up a Follower. And if you're consistently below a 13, then your talents will be best served as a Mogrif, either animal or plant."

        Students on both sides began murmuring, already placing bets on who would turn out a baobab tree.

        "I must add that anyone who receives three 20s in a row will immediately be failed," said Pollux gravely. "As I said, given the exceptional incompetence required to earn three straight last-place ranks, I am confident this rule will not apply to any of you."

        The dog seemed to notice something in the audience and spoke again. "Your swan crest will be visible on your heart at all times," he continued. "Any attempt to conceal or remove it will likely result in injury or embarrassment, so please refrain."

        Confused, Vivi glanced around to see other students examining their crests as well. Mimicking them, she folded her bat-wing collar over to cover the swan—and it immediately appeared on her skin beneath. Stunned, she felt over it, but it was thoroughly embedded. She released the collar and it returned to her uniform. Oh, she'd have to test that out!

        "Furthermore, as the Theatre of Tales is in Good this year, Nevers will be escorted here for all joint school functions," said Pollux. "Otherwise, you must remain in your schools at all times."

        "Why is the Theatre in Good?" Rooster asked, in front of her.

        Pollux raised his nose. "Whoever wins the Circus of Talents gets the Theatre in their school."

        "And Good hasn't lost a Circus or Trial by Tale or, now that I think about it, any competition at this school for the last two hundred years," Castor harrumphed. Villains started rumbling again.

        Pollux ignored the Nevers' grumbles and droned on about curfew times, lulling half the room to sleep. A dark-skinned princess with ebony hair raised her hand. "Are Groom Rooms open yet?"

        All of a sudden the Evers looked awake.

        "Well, I was planning to discuss Groom Rooms next assembly," Pollux said—

        "Is it true that only certain kids can use them?" asked a freckled redhead.

        Pollux sighed. "Groom Rooms in the Good Towers are only available to Evers ranked in the top half of their class on any given day. Rankings will be posted on the Groom Room doors and throughout the castle. Please do not abuse Albemarle if he's behind on posting them. Now as to curfew rules—"

        Vivi leant forward to whisper to Rooster. "What are Groom Rooms?"

        "Beauty salons," he replied quietly. "Evers are crazy about them."

        "What about Nevers?" she asked, eyeing the greasy, pockmarked students around her.

        "Of course not," he whispered back. "We have Doom Rooms."

        "Sounds pretty similar."

        "It's where we get sent for punishment," he said. "Torture chambers."

        Vivi sat back.

        "Now curfew will occur at precisely—"

        "How do you become Class Captain?" Chloe asked. The question and the presumptuous tone behind it instantly made her unpopular on both sides.

        "If you all flunk curfew inspections, don't blame me!" Pollux groaned. "All right. After the Trial by Tale, the top-ranked students in each school will be named Class Captain. These two students will have special privileges, including private study with select faculty, field trips into the Endless Woods, and the chance to train with renowned heroes and villains. As you know, our Captains have gone on to be some of the greatest legends in the Endless Woods."

        He cleared his throat, moving on to the next topic. "This year you will have six required classes in your individual schools. The seventh class, Surviving Fairy Tales, will include both Good and Evil and takes place in the Blue Forest behind the schools. Also please note, both Beautification and Etiquette are for Good girls only, while Good boys will have Grooming and Chivalry instead."

        Arthur was only half paying attention to all this, trying to get Vivi's attention from across the hall but also aware he needed to keep his wits about him. His friend's attention was firmly fixed on the two-headed Cerberus pacing the stage, so he turned to Annik.

        "Do you have anything to write with?"

        She fumbled in her pocket and handed him a tube of lipstick. Arthur grimaced and she shrugged. "If it doesn't work then it has another use, doesn't it?"

        "Breakfast and supper will take place in your school supper halls, but you'll all eat lunch together in the Clearing," Castor grunted. "That is, if you're mature enough to handle the privilege."

        Arthur's heart leapt into his throat—he could see Vivi there!—then he saw Annik smirking coyly. He turned to find another student's eyes fixed on the lipstick in his hand. Ears burning, he shoved it into his pocket and out of sight.

        "The Endless Woods beyond the school gates are barred to first-year students," said Pollux. "And though that rule may fall on deaf ears for the most adventurous of you, let me remind you of the most important rule of all. One that will cost you your lives if you fail to obey."

        On opposite sides of the Theatre, Vivi and Arthur snapped to attention.

        "Never go into the Woods after dark," said Pollux.

        The Theatre was silent.

        His cuddly smile returned. "You may return to your schools! Supper is at seven o'clock sharp!"

        Murmurs filled the hall as students rose and began to file out. Struggling through a sea of Evers, Arthur tried to push his way over to Vivi's side, intent on finding her. He heard a high jingle and turned to find a patrol of fairies had noticed his crossing over. He sped up, scanning the black-robed students.

        He saw a flash of blue hair and lunged forward, but was arrested in his motion as the fairies caught up and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Vivi!" he cried, and the blue hair turned, wide eyes falling on him.

        "Lunch!" he cried, struggling against the fairies as they whisked him away, but then he noticed she wasn't looking at him at all. As he was pulled back through the doors, he passed the new student with purple hair, standing still in the middle of the pews, gaze locked with his friend's.

        Right then and there, the problem smashed Arthur in the face. The one that had plagued them all along. For as the two friends were pulled to their opposing towers, their opposing desires couldn't have been clearer. Arthur wanted to stay with his only friend in this strange land far from home. But a friend wasn't enough for Vivi anymore. Because he recognised that look in her eyes, and it sent his stomach plummeting.

        Because Vivi's sparkling stare, that rosy blush, that shy lovestruck smile was something Arthur was intimately familiar with.

        It was the way he looked at her.

Chapter Text

After supper, the fairies whisked Arthur back to Good and dumped him in the foyer, leaving him to find his own way back to his room. The light from the sky was gone, replaced with a blanket of inky black and twinkling stars through the glass domed ceiling, the foyer now bathed in a warm golden glow from lit sconces on the walls. As girls and boys split apart, Arthur remembered Honour stamped on his schedule and, slouching, followed blue-robed students up the matching blue glass stairs. Much like he had with the girls, Arthur noticed some of the boys throwing him odd looks and whispering amongst themselves, but by this point he had too much on his mind to care. It was too late to meet with Vivi now; but if he made it through the first four classes tomorrow they would all go to Lunch and then he could meet and talk with her—maybe, he thought hopefully, after four hours of grinding through Evil classes, she'd be open to finding a way home. The only thing to do now was try and sleep through the night.

        Tromping through the crowded sea-green hall he found the door stamped 51 and flung it open, stepping hurriedly inside and out of sight of the other whispering princes. He closed the door behind him and turned back into the room, taking a step towards his bed—

        There was a shadow reclined behind curtains on the other bed. He froze.

        Holding his breath, Arthur tiptoed forward quietly, just far enough into the room to be able to peer through the gap in the drapes. Two glimmering eyes stared back at him. Arthur lurched back.

        There was a soft chuckle and the figure sat up to push the drapes back, revealing himself. A student around Arthur's age sat cross-legged on the plush duvet, yellow eyeglasses perched on his nose, dark hair upswept and streaked through with red.

        The student seemed completely unbothered as he examined Arthur from behind his spectacles. Then, lips quirking, he spoke. "How was the Welcoming?"

        Arthur blinked, and then swallowed. "Fine. It was fine." He nervously padded forward and sat on the edge of his bed.

        Another chuckle. "Sounds eventful." The student sat up straighter and stretched his arms. "Well, I suppose that's par for the course."

        Not knowing how to answer, Arthur turned and grabbed his basket of books, setting them gingerly on the nightstand instead. He caught sight of his name on the parchment sticking out, and the name he'd seen printed on the other schedule drifted back to him. "So you're . . . Eugene?"

        "Matoko," the boy said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and shot him a grin. Arthur could have sworn he saw a flash of fang. "There was initially a mix-up with the baskets, but the nymphs fixed it while everyone was out."

        There was something off about his new roommate, but Arthur couldn't quite put a finger on it. He remembered his strange answer about the Welcoming. "How did you find it? The Welcoming?"

        "I didn't go," Matoko replied, unfazed.

        Arthur blinked. "What? I thought it was compulsory."

        "Compulsory for new students," his roommate replied.

        Arthur's eyes bulged. "New—? How long have you been here?"

        "Oh, in and out for years," Matoko replied, seemingly disinterested. "Never as a student, of course, until today."

        Arthur frowned. He spoke as though it was completely normal, and honestly, it could very well have been—Arthur didn't know the first thing about this place. Perhaps all the other students had been introduced this way, too. There was a loud jingling outside and Arthur jumped.

        "That's curfew," Matoko said, closing the book on his lap and setting it on his nightstand. He pushed himself off the bed, stretched, and padded across the room to the ensuite door, slipping inside, presumably to change.

        Arthur remained sitting for a moment, dumbly staring at where his roommate had been before disappearing from view, before realising he should probably change too and turning to dig through his basket (surely, if they'd provided them with underwear, they'd packed some pyjamas too).

        By the time Matoko emerged from the ensuite, Arthur was changed and still sitting on the edge of his bed, now staring out the window. He heard the bathroom door creak and turned, remembering his confusion from earlier in the foyer. "It's dark outside."

        His roommate gave a soft chuckle. "Yes, well the sun does go down at night."

        "No, I mean—it was light outside only an hour ago," Arthur tried again. "But—it's still the middle of the night. Does time work differently here?"

        Matoko shook his head, padding forward in a white cotton shirt and long black pyjama pants, in stark contrast to Arthur's blue, crest-dotted, school-provided pyjama shorts. "No, just an inverted Lights-Out Jinx for the Welcoming." He looked at Arthur's bruised eyes and his lip curled in a small smirk. "You won't have to worry about losing too much sleep here."

        Arthur bristled and opened his mouth to shoot back, but when he looked into his roommate's bespectacled eyes, he could see there was no malice in them. The smirk, as aloof and cocksure as it was, almost seemed friendly.

        Arthur exhaled and looked away.

        Matoko sat on the bed across from him, removing and folding his spectacles, placing them delicately on the book on his nightstand, switching the bedside lamp off and pulling his legs up onto the bed before pulling a silken rope and drawing the bed curtains. Arthur watched as his silhouette lay down on the bed, and a shadowed arm lifted to turn off the last light, plunging his side of the room into darkness.

        Arthur sat for a moment, feeling oddly smited, mind drifting back to his smirk and his strange comment on his eye bags. He thought for a beat and then drew a breath, calling across the void.

        "Goodnight."

        Silence.

        Arthur sighed, lifting his own covers and settling beneath them, turning away—

        "Sleep well."

        He threw a look over his shoulder. Everything was still. No more sounds came from Matoko's side of the room.

        He lay his head down and immediately found himself suffocating, swallowed by a lavish pillow. He threw the pillow to the floor and sat up, searching through the half dozen for a flatter one, but they were each just as plush and deep. Annoyed, he selected one and pushed the rest to the carpet, settling down again and immediately finding himself sinking into a foot of satin and goosefeathers.

        He sighed. This was going to be a long night.

༻·𖥸·༺

A few hours later, Arthur blinked awake to rich sunlight streaming in the window, and for a moment, he wondered if he'd forgotten to close the raggedy curtains last night. Then he felt silk against his skin and bolted up, suddenly wide awake.

        He wasn't at home anymore; he was trapped in a faraway fairy tale school, his only friend stuck across the moat, his only company a strange boy who seemed to lack any emotional intelligence or regard for the rules. He glanced across the room—the bed across from his was empty, curtains drawn and sheets perfectly made. The spectacles and book were gone from the nightstand, too. He frowned.

        He heard chatter outside and slipped out from under the covers, preparing himself for the shock of cold wood beneath his feet like usual, and blinked in surprise when he felt instead plush carpet on his toes. He felt a pang of homesickness and swallowed it down, padding across the room and cracking open the door.

        Dozens of boys stood in the hall, milling and chatting, ducking in and out of rooms, some dressed in pressed white breeches and jackets with gold brocade, others slugging around in crested boxers and white singlets. He saw heads begin to turn and quickly shut the door, leaning against it as he willed his breathing to even out.

        They were all getting ready to go to class. He was a student here now, too. He had to go to class. He had to go to magical class for fairy tale princes.

        Swallowing his nausea down, he tried to reason with himself. Just make it through the first four classes and he could see Vivi at lunch. There they could talk and maybe he could convince her to come home with him. Because, he realised with a pang of anxiety, if she wouldn't go with him, he wasn't sure he'd have the courage to go on his own.

        Fifteen minutes later he emerged from his room to an empty hallway. There was no sound from the other rooms, and with a sigh he realised everyone must have already left for breakfast. And damn, he was hungry, but he couldn't remember where to find the supper hall; he had been hoping to just follow everyone else around until he got his bearings. Why didn't they give students maps?

        Arthur sighed and turned down the hall. He'd look like an idiot creeping through the foyer alone. Perhaps he could just take this time to explore the castle himself. And if he ran into a teacher who knew their way around, he wouldn't be any worse off than he already was.

༻·𖥸·༺

Across the moat, Vivi had woken bright and early (much to the chagrin of her sleepy roommates) and immediately gone about brushing the ash from her long hair and washing her face the best she could before dumping herself back on her bed and skimming through her textbooks. She wondered if she could steal them back to Good once she transferred; they were Evil books, after all. If not, she supposed she could make do with borrowing them and copying out the important bits by hand.

        "Why's the princess up so early," Chloe grumbled, finally sitting up with mussed hair.

        "Maybe it says something about your level of motivation," Vivi replied, not breaking away from her book. "That a Good student is more excited to go to Evil classes than you are."

        She could feel Chloe glaring daggers at her from across the room.

        Rooster stirred in his own filthy bed. "I think she's refreshing," he said, groggily. "Not every villain needs to look and smell bad."

        "She's not a villain," Chloe and Duet groaned in unison.

        Rooster rolled lazily out of bed and pulled on his smock, his one act of preparation before he bounced back onto his bed, cross-legged, and pulled out a piece of strangely-shaped crispy chicken. He held it out in offering to the two Nevers on the far side of the room, and when he found no takers, turned to Vivi, chicken outstretched.

        She finally looked up. "Don't we have breakfast in ten?"

        "No," he said, and leaned over to give it to her. "Villains don't get breakfast. They think it makes us reliant."

        She uncertainly took the chicken, grease smearing on her fingers, and watched as he whipped out another piece, like some frumpy magician. She giggled despite herself. "Where does all the chicken come from?"

        "Secret," he said, shooting her a grin, before taking a bite. She followed his example, taking a small nibble, and her eyes blew wide as the flavour hit her tongue.

        "Oh . . . wow," she said, taking a proper bite. "Thish ish sho good!"

        "Princesses don't talk with their mouths full," Chloe sneered from across the room, grabbing her uniform.

        Vivi ignored her, stuffing the rest into her mouth. Damn, she was hungry. "There'sh nofing like thish in Tempo! Oh my god."

        "Good, right?" Rooster agreed, and smiled as he watched her lick her fingers. He pulled another piece out, the size of a fist this time and shaped like a lumpy ball, and handed it to her. She broke into a fit of giddy giggles.

        "Oh my god yesh," she said, stuffing as much as she could into her mouth. She could see Chloe gaping at her from her spot on her bed.

        Duet leaned over. "Maybe she is a Never," they whispered, and Chloe gave them a shove.

        So all in all, among Evil textbooks and a mouth-watering breakfast, Vivi had a pretty decent morning, and followed her roommates contented and with a full stomach to her first class.

        She was so food-drunk she completely forgot to pull the teacher aside and ask about transferring before he was standing at the front of the class, dark hair messily slicked back, sideburns slipping into stubble, dressed in baggy clothes and a sad cloak, eyeing the students down with sharp emerald eyes.

        "We can skip the introductions. My name's on your schedule," he snapped, leaning against the teacher's desk. "And I don't care about yours, so don't bother. Dunno why I even try anymore. Like after two hundred years you sorry lot are gonna be the future of Evil."

        A couple of desks away, Chloe regarded him appreciatively. Meanwhile, Vivi stared at him from her own decrepit desk. He would have been vaguely attractive had his attitude not been so foul. His eyes were bloodshot and the space beneath them bruised. Do villains ever get any sleep? she wondered, and checked her schedule. Professor Skandar Mépris. Looks like a Skandar.

        Their first lesson was a simple pox potion made up of mashed tadpoles. While her classmates bashed away eagerly at their metal bowls in front of rusted mirrors, Vivi's only solace was that she may be saving them from an uglier fate as she squashed them as quickly as possible, only to look around her and find students drinking the still-moving mush and sprouting angry red shingles. She gagged.

        "I'm not an interactive teacher so you better listen if you don't wanna fail," the "professor" drawled from the front of the classroom. It was possible he couldn't look any less interested as he slumped against the desk. "Villains uglify because giving up your physical appearance means you can more easily focus on what's underneath. That's why so many of the Evergirls you meet are prissy lipstick-bearing airheads."

        Vivi saw a couple of the students smirking. She frowned, and then noticed Mépris' eyes on her.

        "Truth hurts, does it, sweetheart?" he sneered.

        Meeting his gaze, Vivi steeled herself and lifted the bowl to her lips, drinking the foul stuff in one gulp. She clapped a hand over her mouth, nausea swimming, and then felt her skin blistering beneath her fingers. She set the bowl down and glared at him defiantly.

        He looked vaguely impressed. Vivi immediately regretted it when she saw herself in the mirror, spotted all over. She gingerly poked at one of the pimples. Will it wear off?

        "If you're intelligent enough, you don't have to rely on what you look like. And intelligence will save you much faster than looks in the Woods," Mépris said at the front of the classroom, lazily flicking at a strand of hair fallen over his face. "If you're not finished by now, you're getting a rank to match." He raised his finger, tip glowing green. Vivi watched as smoky green ranks exploded over students' heads, some she recognised from the portraits in the anteroom—"1" over Chloe, "2" over Duet, "3" over oily, brown-skinned Ravan, "4" over blonde, pointy-eared Vex—and, to her surprise, a toxic-green "5" over her own head.

        "Not bad," Mépris mused, looking right at her. "Maybe our little princess has a chance after all."

༻·𖥸·༺

As it turned out, Arthur did manage breakfast after all. Wandering up through Honour Tower he found his way to a wing of first-floor classrooms made completely out of candy, labelled Hansel's Haven by a golden plaque on the corridor wall. As he crept through, cracking open doors, he came upon a room of sparkled blue swizzles and rock sugar, glittering like a salt mine. There was a marshmallow room with white fudge chairs and gingerbread desks. There was even a room made of lollipops, blanketing the walls in rainbow colours. Back in Tempo, rooms like this would have been decimated in a day. Arthur was beginning to wonder just how they managed to stay intact when he saw an inscription of cherry gumdrops sweeping the corridor wall:

TEMPTATION IS THE PATH TO EVIL

        Arthur ate the first half of it and kept going, stealing a caramel doorknob and a butterscotch welcome mat as well to complete his heavenly breakfast, leaving the hall behind him emblazoned PATH TO EVIL.

        Still licking his fingers, Arthur heard chatter up the stairwell and climbed to the next floor to find the boys had returned from their own breakfast, slipping into classrooms in groups. Remembering the classes on his own schedule, Arthur scurried forward and spoke to a blonde-haired boy with blue eyes.

        "Uh, excuse me, is this . . . Grooming with Pollux?" he asked nervously, and the boy gave him a friendly smile.

        "Yeah, this is it. Forgot your schedule?"

        Arthur flushed. "I was in a hurry this morning."

        "That's all good," the student said, and stepped back so he could enter first. Arthur scooted inside and quickly found a desk, right at the back of the classroom, whose left wall was almost entirely taken up by sparkling glass panes, allowing for a generous view over the grounds and bathing the room in warm sunshine. The boy from the door found a seat at the ivory desk next to him, and Arthur shrunk into himself a little, nervous.

        The boy fidgeted a little, head ducked, before he leaned a little closer. "What's your name?" he asked quietly.

        Arthur quickly scanned the classroom. There were no other students near them yet. It was obvious the boy was talking to him.

        ". . . Arthur," he whispered back.

        "Nice to meet you, Arthur," the student said, and smiled. "My name's Gene."

        "That's a nice name," Arthur mumbled, eyes fixed on his desk. There was a thin stack of parchment and a quill and inkpot placed neatly in front of him, as with the rest of the desks.

        Gene noticed his silence and leaned a little closer. "I get it. I didn't settle in so smooth either."

        "What happened?" Arthur asked, more out of politeness than genuine interest.

        "I was kicked out of my room," the student said, chuckling lightly. "I found it after the Welcoming and when I opened the door this guy with glasses and red and black hair told me there'd been a mistake, gave me my basket and shut the door on me."

        Arthur was suddenly extremely interested. "Red and black—? What colour were his glasses?"

        "Yellow."

        "Sharp teeth?"

        "Yeah." Gene grimaced. "You . . . know him?"

        "He's my roommate," Arthur said quietly, eyeing the other students still milling around. "And you're Eugene?"

        Gene gave him a surprised look, and Arthur explained. "I arrived early and found your basket on the bed. When I got back from the Welcoming the guy with glasses was there. He said there'd been a mistake and the nymphs moved your basket."

        "No . . . it was definitely him," Gene said. "He sent me across the hall."

        Arthur opened his mouth to speak again when a skinny goat carcass wobbled into the room, bearing the head of the nicer dog from the Welcoming. Arthur forgot what he was going to say but his mouth remained open.

        "Before any of you ask," the dog sniffed, teetering precariously on bony legs, "Castor has the body this week. I'd appreciate it if none of you mentioned the obvious."

        The students still stared at him.

        "It's not like I chose this body," Pollux snapped. "There's a shortage. Now I hope you all have a generous teacher next lesson because I'd fail you all for Chivalry in a second."

        The boys closed their mouths and stopped staring.

        "Now, a must-have for any self-respecting prince is facial grooming. Today we will start simple with clean-shaving and aftercare. The rest of the week we will move onto styling. Now will everyone please come to the front and pick up a hamper."

        Arthur's eyes bulged when he sat down and opened his. It was full to the brim with shiny metal tools and tubes of creams and moisturisers. He leaned over to check Gene's basket, thinking there must have been a mistake, but it was exactly the same. Gene shot him a look, equally perplexed.

        "Now, I'm sure some of you may be confused," Pollux said at the front of the classroom, trying and failing to sit his goat's body on the desk. "You may be used to using a simple cream-and-razor duo, or, heaven forbid, a razor alone. Not here! I will teach you how to use each and every product in your hampers, and by the time I'm finished with you, students, you will be irresistible. There's nothing like proper skincare to make one's face glow!"

        The class passed by in a confusing blur. To Arthur's shock, Pollux waved a cloven hoof and all of the boys sprouted short, fuzzy beards, and then they were all instructed by Pollux how to properly shave and moisturise, but without a demonstration and through Pollux's mangled orders everyone ended up looking different. Gene ended up half clean shaven, perfectly cut down the middle with a fuzzy beard on the right. Arthur ended up shaved but nicked all over and dabbed with globules of cream.

        At the end of class, Pollux stared from his wobbling goat's body at twenty shaving disasters, struggling to decide on ranks. Eventually he gave up and sighed, waving a hoof and restoring the boys' faces. "You're all equally as terrible so I'm just going to give you all a '15'."

        Most of the boys groaned in disappointment, but Arthur sighed with relief, counting it a miracle he'd passed his first class without a "20". He just had to hold on for three more and then he could see Vivi. But how could he convince her to go home? She still wanted to cross to Good, but didn't Pollux say at the Welcoming that the schools needed to stay balanced—

        Then he looked up to see Pollux bumbling hurriedly out of the room with a squawked "class dismissed!" and Arthur yelped, bolting up from his desk and after the mismatched dog.

        By the time he weaved through the desks and stumbled out the door, the dog was already halfway down the hall. "Pollux!" he yelled, running after him, and the dog stopped and peered around.

        "What?"

        Arthur pulled up in front of him, hands on knees, panting. "You said—last night—at the Welcoming—schools—need to stay—balanced—"

        "I know what I said," Pollux scoffed, turning to leave. "I told you all you needed to listen and now you're chasing me after class for rules? Tough luck!"

        "No no no no Pollux please," he begged, following him. "I just need to know—the schools need to stay balanced. So it's not possible for one student to switch to a different school, is it? They'd need to swap places with someone."

        Pollux stared at him as if he'd lost his head, which was ironic. "No one has ever switched schools and no one ever will. Didn't you listen? I made it very clear that souls are either Good or Evil and nothing can change that. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a class to get to and so do you." He turned and bumbled away again, surprisingly quickly, mumbling about "ignorant students" and "think they know everything".

        Arthur was left standing in the hall, torn. He didn't understand that Vivi was Good. She belonged here. But if someone found out, and she made it here, she'd never want to go home. He'd have to stick it out here as a student so even if someone did let Vivi switch, they wouldn't be able to find anyone to swap her with. And Vivi wouldn't want to stay in Evil forever. If she refused to go home at lunch, he just had to hold his place here, and after a few more days in Evil she'd beg to go back to Tempo.

        Just find a way to last at this school. And then Vivi would get sick of it and come home with him.

        Cautiously, his heart opened to hope.

        He arrived at Chivalry in the Valour Commons five minutes later and dumped himself in a seat to see a flash of purple in his peripheral. He turned around and froze.

        The purple-haired boy from the Welcoming—the one who had bewitched Vivi—was sitting at the desk right next to him. And he was staring right at him.

        Arthur stood up so fast his chair fell over and he powered to the back of the room, sliding into a corner desk. He looked back at the mysterious student and found him turned in his seat, still staring. The stranger straightened and whipped back around.

        As boys settled down around them, Arthur examined the stranger from across the room; his tan skin, rippling muscles beneath his shirt, his plush lips, and his soulful eyes. Hope died. There was no way he could win Vivi over when this guy was still in the picture.

        A bestubbled man with pale cyan hair glided into the room and went straight to stand beside the teacher's desk at the front, turning to face the class. His alert eyes scanned the room and he cleared his throat.

        "Welcome, new students, to Chivalry. You may call me Professor Corvus. Now, a show of hands; how many of you have heard of the Princely Code?"

        The second class went much the same as the first, leaving Arthur dubious and confused at the quiz sheets foisted at the students. He didn't need the rusted "20" hovering over his head at the end of the lesson to tell him he was hopeless.

        He glared from his seat at the handsome stranger from the Welcoming, a golden "1" shining over his head. He scoffed audibly. And of course he's a goody-two-shoes.

        The stranger turned at Arthur's scoff and he flushed, immediately standing, screwing his paper up and tossing it in the bin on his way out. As soon as he was far enough down the corridor, he stopped and took a breath to steady himself. Two classes down, two to go. Swordplay was next, then History of Heroism. Surely they couldn't be that bad, he thought. Surely.

        He thought wrong.

༻·𖥸·༺

Henchmen Training took place on the Belfry, an open-air cloister on Malice tower, accessible only by a thirty-flight staircase so narrow all the students were squeezed into single file. Climbing the stairs, surrounded by 19 other sweating, heaving students, Vivi suddenly felt grateful for her many trips up and down the slope to Arthur's house back in Tempo and how they had built up her fitness.

        "So . . . nauseous . . . ," Rooster wheezed behind her.

        "Wondered if that chicken had any side effects," came Duet's voice, further down.

        Craning up, Vivi could see the top, and shoved her way forward until they broke out onto the Belfry, and she sighed with relief.

        "'COURSE I GET THE READER IN MY GROUP."

        She whipped her head up to meet Castor's frowning gaze, head off-centre on his massive dog's body, a space where Pollux's head should have been. Castor caught her staring and growled. "Pollux is taking classes in Good."

        Vivi opened her mouth to pry when someone burst out into cackles. She turned to see a red-skinned, horned dwarf in the corner, pointing at the villains emerging behind her and chortling. "Ugly witches!"

        Castor wasn't as amused. "You're all revolting enough as is," he said, and sent the dwarf, "Beezle", to fetch honeysuckle which cured the pox. Villains around her groaned in disappointment, but Vivi sighed in relief.

        "Now, whether you win or lose your battles depends on the competence and loyalty of your henchmen!" Castor said. "Of course some of you will end up henchmen yourselves, with your own lives depending on the strength of your Leader. Better pay attention then, if you want to stay alive!"

        Vivi wondered what Arthur was doing over in Good. Practicing ballroom dancing, probably. She snickered fondly. He probably hated it.

        "And now for your first challenge. How to train . . ." Castor stepped aside. "A Golden Goose."

        Vivi's eyes sparkled as they settled on a graceful, long-necked bird, feathers lined with gold.

        "But Golden Geese hate villains," Duet frowned.

        "Which means if you can train one, then taming a mountain troll will be easy," Castor said.

        The Goose opened pearly blue eyes, examined the students before it, and smiled.

        "Why is it smiling?" Rooster said.

        "Because it knows we're wasting our time," Chloe huffed. "Golden Geese only listen to Evers."

        "Excuses, excuses," Castor yawned. "Your job is to make that pathetic creature lay one of its prized eggs. The bigger the egg, the higher your rank."

        Vivi began to buzz. If Golden Geese only listened to Evers, then she had this in the bag! All she had to do was convince the bird to lay the biggest egg, and she'd be back to Good in no time!

        Castor turned to the Belfry wall and, with a claw, began carving the five strategies for training henchmen:

1. COMMAND
2. TAUNT
3. TRICK
4. BRIBE
5. BULLY

        "Now don't go bullying the blasted bird unless you've gone through the other four," he warned. "Ain't nothin' stopping a henchman from bullying back."

        Vivi made sure she was last in line to think over her strategies and watched the first five kids have zero luck in taunting and yelling at the bird. She rolled her eyes. No wonder.

        She watched as pointy-eared Vex stepped up, expecting another failure, until he grabbed the Golden Goose's throat and in a flash it whipped free and yanked his tunic over his head. Vex flailed around, banging into walls, before he tripped over a low wall and toppled over the edge. Vivi gasped—and then Castor threw his paw out, grabbed the boy by the ankle and yanked him back onto the platform. The Golden Goose was delighted. It flapped its wings and sniggered and squawked so raucously that it lost control and excreted a golden egg the size of a coin.

        Vex scrambled forward and held it up in stunned triumph. "I won!"

        "Right, because in the heat of battle, you'll have time to run around naked and make your Goose crap," Castor snarled.

        Still, the dog had said whoever made the biggest egg won, so the other Nevers mimicked Vex's tactic. Rooster made faces, Ravan made shadow puppets, Mona tickled it with a feather, and bald, doughy Brone sat on Beezle, much to the bird's delight. ("Smelly witch!" the dwarf howled.)

        Chloe frowned at all this from a corner. When her turn came, she walked up silently and punched the Golden Goose in the stomach, and it dropped an egg the size of a fist. Chloe took it without saying a word and walked back to her corner.

        Next up was Duet. They strode up to the Goose and did the same, but Vivi noticed their swing, though firm, was lighter, and sure enough, the Goose dropped a smaller egg. Vivi frowned. Duet was built heavier than Chloe; they could have gotten a bigger egg if they wanted to.

        But then it was Vivi's turn, and all thoughts of the pair left her mind as she stepped up to the elegant creature. It seemed exhausted from laughing and laying, but when the Golden Goose met Vivi's gaze, it stopped blinking and sat still as marble, seemingly examining her. For a moment, Vivi felt an eerie chill float through her body, as if she'd let something that didn't belong into her soul. But then she looked into the bird's warm, wise eyes and felt her chest swell with hope. Surely, it could help her. Surely, it saw she was different from the others.

        Yes, you certainly are different.

        Vivi backpedalled in shock. She glanced around to see if anyone else had reacted, but her classmates just glowered impatiently, willing her to finish so they could get their ranks. One even booed.

        Shaking her head, Vivi turned back to the Goose and leaned closer. You . . . can hear my thoughts?

        They're quite loud, replied the Goose.

        What about them? she asked, eyes flicking pointedly to the villains standing around her.

        No. Just you.

        Because I don't belong here? Vivi smiled. Because I'm Good?

        I can give you what you want, said the Goose. I can make them see you're a princess. One perfect egg and they'll put you in your school.

        Vivi gasped, covering her mouth with tentative fingers. Yes! Please! I'll do whatever you want if you can help me!

        The bird smiled. Close your eyes and make a wish.

        Flooding with relief, Vivi closed her eyes. Beaming with hope, she wished for her school, she wished for Good, and maybe she even wished for that beautiful boy from the Welcoming. . . .

        Suddenly, she washed cold with realisation, Pollux's words from the Welcoming echoing around her head. "All of you are chosen to protect the balance between Good and Evil. For once that balance is compromised . . . our world will perish."

        There were 120 students in each school in order to keep that balance. If she transferred to Good, another student would have to be sent back to Evil in her place. She remembered the dozens of kind and beautiful faces on the opposite side of the Theatre, each as pure and devoted to Good as the other . . . until Arthur's face flashed into her mind, and she scrunched her nose in determination. It doesn't matter what I have to do to get there. This has been my dream for as long as I can remember. Her face darkened. And no one is going to take it away from me.

        Gasps flew around her. Vivi opened her eyes just in time to see the Goose's gold feathers finish turning grey. Its eyes darkened from blue to hollow black. Its warm smile went dead, its face expressionless and empty.

        And there was definitely no egg.

        "What happened?!" Vivi cried, whipping around in desperation. "What's that mean?"

        Castor looked petrified. "It means she'd rather give up her power than help you."

        A "1" exploded in red flames over Vivi's head like a diabolical crown.

        "It's the most evil thing I've seen," Castor said softly.

        Stunned, heart pounding in her chest, Vivi watched her classmates shrink back, huddling like scared minnows—until her eyes found Chloe, standing in place, green eyes flashing in fury, as if amongst these useless Nevers, she'd found a real threat. Behind her, Beezle huddled shivering in a dark corner.

        "Grand Witch!" he squeaked.

        "No no no!" Vivi cried, horrified. "There's been a mistake! I'm not a witch!"

        But Beezle nodded with certainty, eyes wide with fear. "Grand High Witch Ultimate!"

        Vivi whipped back to the Goose in desperation. What did I do?!

        But the Goose, eyes empty and feathers grey as the fog that hung over the bay, looked at her as if it had never seen her in its life and let out the most ordinary of squawks.

༻·𖥸·༺

The squawk echoed across the moat and into the high window of the silver tower that split the two sides of the bay. A crooked shadow approached the ledge in response, green eyes glinting from behind a silver mask, and watched as smoky ranks floated towards them from the two schools—bright from Good, dark and gloomy from Evil.

        When the ranks reached the window, the figure lifted their hand, trailing their fingers through the smoke, which gave them the power to see who won each rank and why. They sifted through numbers until they found the one they sought—a flaming red "1", and dipped their fingers in, events replaying in their mind.

        A Golden Goose giving up its powers . . . for a student? Only one could be so powerful. Only one could be so pure.

        The one who would tip the balance.

        With an anticipating chill, the figure retreated into their chamber, waiting for her arrival.

༻·𖥸·༺

Curses & Death Traps took place in a bone-numbing chamber, with the walls, floors, desks and chairs all made of carved ice. As she blew clouds of mist with her breath, Vivi thought she could see bodies entombed far below in the ice.

        "Ittt'ss ffrrreeez-zinngg in heerree," Rooster chattered from the desk beside her, arms wrapped around himself.

        "It's warmer in the Doom Room," Professor Eliades replied, sounding utterly disinterested.

        Screams echoed from the torture chamber below.

        "Acct-tuuallyy, yyou kn-knooww wwhatt itt'ss nnott that b-badd," Rooster gritted, lips blue.

        "Thought not," their red-gowned teacher replied, ruby eyes drifting over her students, and, landing on Vivi, she suddenly straightened. "Is this the Reader topping our challenges?"

        Vivi remained silent, trying to hide her shivers.

        "Mmm," the professor mulled, examining her. "Maybe it is time for a change." Tucking a strand of bloodred hair behind her ear, she started forward, prowling through the rows of students. "Now, I feel obliged to tell you that I will not be giving you any challenges until you prove yourselves worthy. Unlike your other teachers, I don't enjoy watching my students flounder and fail, because ineptitude in your students tells you something about their teacher, doesn't it?"

        Vivi tensed as the teacher strode past her, heels clacking sharply on ice. Another scream echoed from the Doom Room and, feeling the students hold their breath, their teacher stopped and turned. "This is not a school for unwarranted cruelty. Hurt without purpose, and you're not a villain, but a beast. Impulsivity will not help you win your fairytale. You need to be cold and calculated if you want to kill your Nemesis."

        She started forward again, gliding between desks, away from Vivi. She let out a relieved breath. "Only remarkable villains have Nemeses," Eliades continued, "and here, I will teach you how to find them, if you have one. Your Nemesis will make your heart cold and your blood boil. They will plague your dreams until you gnash your teeth and tear your hair out. Only once your Nemesis is dead will you find peace, and only then will you be granted access to Nevermore. Because we are cursed to suffer."

        She slammed her hand down on Ravan's desk, making him jump, and then dragged her nails across it, eliciting an ear-splitting screech. "We are damned to insanity until our Nemesis, the one that stands in the way of our paths and our goals, is gone. Which is why we need to win." Her eyes flashed, her lip twitched. "The real world as we see it isn't about fairness and love and happy endings. The real world is about pain and suffering and war. We villains drew the short straw and so we must kill for our freedom, for our peace. It is not enough to exist. We need to survive."

        Vivi slowly looked up at her teacher, staring right at her, as if she could see something Vivi couldn't. Eliades slowly straightened, and, with narrowed eyes, surveyed her class. "And survive we will."

        Terrified to her core, Vivi fled the chamber as soon as the wolf howls signalled end of class. Without any idea of where she was going, she shot down the hall, bolted up a flight of stairs and when she found herself on a quiet, open-air balcony, she let herself lean against the wall, sink to the floor and tremble. She was stuck in a school of soon-to-be murderers and her chances of escape were dwindling rapidly.

        Heaving for breath, she raised her head to see the spires of Good shining in sunlight across the bay, and remembered something. Lunch.

        There, she would be safe among her Good classmates. There, she could find a teacher who could help her. Surely they couldn't leave her here.

        Holding onto hope, she pushed herself to her feet, wiped her eyes, took a steadying breath and stepped back into the castle. Just make it to lunch, she thought, descending the staircase to the main level. One more class and then this nightmare will be over.

        When she finally made it through twisting corridors to Evil Hall, however, she found her History of Villainy class crowded outside. Rooster saw her and grabbed her arm. "They cancelled classes!"

        "Why?" Vivi asked, alarmed.

        "Lunch will be sent to your rooms!" a tall, white wolf boomed from the doors. Fellow wolves cracked whips and herded students to their towers.

        Vivi deflated. "What? What happe—"

        Smoke curled into her nose and she turned, drawn to the open window at the end of the corridor. Looking out, she gasped. Villains crowded behind her.

        Across the bay, a Good tower was on fire.

        "Oh my god," Vivi breathed in horror.

        "Oh no!" Rooster gasped beside her.

        "Brilliant," Chloe breathed from behind, full of adoration.

        "Who would do such a thing?" Vivi cried, wheeling around. She flung an accusatory finger at Chloe. "Was it you?!"

        Chloe raised her hands. "I wish."

        "Then who did??"

        None of the villains had an answer for her.

        If only Lunch hadn't been cancelled, Arthur could have filled her in on the details.

Chapter Text

An hour before, golden boy Lewis Pepper had decided on a swim.

        By now, the ranks for the first two classes were up on the Groom Room doors, and so access was granted to students in the top half of the rankings. Inside, the girls' Groom Room resembled a medieval spa, with three aromatic bath pools ("Hot", "Cold", and "Just Right"), a Little Match Girl sauna, three Rose Red makeup stations, a Cinderella-themed pedicure corner, and a waterfall shower built into a Little Mermaid lagoon. The boys' Groom Rooms focussed more on fitness, with a Midas Gold sweat lodge, a peasant-themed tanning room, and a gymnasium with Norse hammers, mud wrestling pit, saltwater lap pool, and full array of Turkish baths.

        Head still buzzing with thoughts of that strange boy from the Welcoming and Chivalry, Lewis had hoped a dip in the chilled waters before Swordplay would clear his mind enough to focus. When he emerged dripping from the pool, swan crest glittering on bare chest, he lifted his head to find a gaggle of girls in the hallway outside crowded at the porthole window to the boys' Groom Rooms, gaping at him. He flushed and hurriedly picked up a towel to cover himself and dry off.

        Lewis took his time, the swan crest transferring once again to his shirt and then his jacket as he redressed slowly, buying as much time as possible before he had to confront the girls at the door. Finally cinching his tie, he lifted his head to see a flash of purple at the window, and sighed. Looked like he wouldn't be avoiding them after all. He trudged slowly to the door and opened it, keeping his eyes down—

        The hallway was empty. Nothing there but the scent of roses in the faint breeze. Confused as he was, Lewis sighed in relief and took a step forward.

        Something smacked into his chest, landing with an "Oof!" on the floor before him. Lewis looked down with surprise and froze.

        It was that boy from before—the one that had caught his rose at the Welcoming. He was muttering to himself, pushing himself to his feet and then brushing himself down, before looking up and freezing under his gaze.

        Seconds ticked by in tense silence.

        "Uh . . . sorry," Lewis finally managed, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "I wasn't watching where I was going."

        "Well, you should," the other huffed, shoulders tense, eyes fixed on the floor, and walked past him without another word, crossing the hall and reaching out to yank at a door. It was locked.

        Lewis stared. "Are . . . you going to Swordplay?" He gestured the other way with his thumb. "It's this way."

        The student stomped past him, fists clenched.

        "Uh, it was nice to meet you!" Lewis tried one more time. The boy shook his head and disappeared around the corner.

        Lewis stood alone in the hallway, staring after where he'd last seen him, feeling confused and scorned.

༻·𖥸·༺

Swordplay took place in a grassy clearing around the side of the castle with Professor Eider Întuneric—Arthur jolted when he saw him. Of course, it was the teacher he'd seen the previous night in the Gallery of Good, raven-black hair upswept, navy eyes bright and piercing, sporting a form-fitting waistcoat and white shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Funnily enough, up close, he looked barely older than his students, though he was around a head taller.

        "Swordplay will be a mix of theory and practical lessons, depending on the material," Professor Întuneric announced, after introducing himself. "Our theories will be held either in the Valour Commons or Hansel's Haven, depending on availability, and our practicals here. Today we'll just be gauging everyone on what they know already, so we can work on improving from there. That sound good?"

        Though Arthur had never touched a sword in his life and was unsure if he could even hold one without accidentally stabbing himself, he found himself relaxing just a little in Întuneric's casual presence, devoid of expectancy like the other classes.

        "Arthur of Woods Beyond?"

        Arthur's head jerked up. "Huh?"

        The professor chuckled from the front of the class, holding a ledger. "Roll call."

        "Oh," Arthur replied, exhaling. "Here."

        "Chaddick of Foxwood?"

        "Yes."

        "Eugene of Camelot?"

        "Present, Sir."

        "Thank you. Lewis of Foxwood?"

        Silence.

        He tried again. "Lewis of Foxwood?"

        "Here! I'm sorry," came a voice from behind, and the class turned. Arthur paled.

        The purple-haired boy from the Welcoming was jogging toward them from the castle, pulling up on the edge of the group with an apologetic grin. "Sorry, Sir, I got lost."

        Arthur grimaced. Hadn't he pointed Arthur to Swordplay?

        "No trouble," their teacher reassured, and scribbled on his ledger. "Nicholas of Murmuring Mountains?"

        Arthur stepped further into the crowd of students, trying to hide from the newcomer—Lewis. God, this guy was everywhere.

        "Alright," came Întuneric's voice. "I'm gonna partner you guys up first to see how you do with students your own age, then I'll duel each of you one-on-one to gauge your experience." He winked. "Don't worry, I'll go easy on you. Could everyone please choose a training sword from the crate?"

        Once everyone had a sword the professor paced through them, examining the way they held their weapons. "Alright . . . Chaddick, you go with Eugene. Nicholas . . . with Tarquin. And Lewis . . ." He stopped in front of the student and turned to scan the class. ". . . You go with Arthur."

        Arthur deflated. Oh, great.

        With pairs allocated, students drifted together, raising their swords and adopting their stances, all except Arthur and Lewis, who stood with legs together, swords hanging by their sides, awkwardly avoiding looking at each other.

        After a few moments, Lewis cleared his throat. "Um, hello again."

        Arthur stayed silent.

        ". . . Have you fought with a sword before?"

        God, he didn't want to have to talk to this guy, but with one last-place ranking already, Arthur knew he couldn't make a habit of failing classes. He shook his head no.

        "That's alright. I've fought before a couple of times. I can . . . teach you a bit, if you like?"

        Arthur sighed heavily. This was a nightmare. He forced his eyes up to meet Lewis'. "Okay."

        The boy seemed to brighten a bit as he took a step closer and held his sword up. "Okay, well first thing is you'll need to anchor the hilt with your thumb and forefinger in a 'C' shape, to keep from dropping it. Grip it securely, but not too tight; your knuckles will get fatigued."

        Arthur begrudgingly loosened his grip around the hilt, but only the tiniest bit. He still didn't have much faith in himself to wield the thing safely.

        "If you're holding it pointing towards the ground, use one hand so you can swing freely. But if you're holding it pointing upwards, two hands help steady the sword and you'll have more force behind your swing," Lewis continued, demonstrating with his own weapon. "And angle it like this for proper form."

        Shoulders raised by his ears, Arthur raised the thing in front of him, pointed at the other student, as if to ward him off. Copying the boys around them, he stood with his feet apart and bent his knees a little.

        "Hey, that looks great!" Lewis smiled, and Arthur immediately averted his eyes. "We can try sparring if you like? Just slowly."

        Arthur nodded once, and the other advanced, slowly, so he could predict his movements, raising the hilt of his sword so the tip pointed down and bumping it against Arthur's blade as he raised it to defend. Next, Lewis brought his sword around and swung it slowly from the side, Arthur bringing his own weapon to point down as he blocked.

        As they worked, Lewis' advances slowly became faster and faster, until their swords clashed with rhythmic frequency, Lewis pressing forward a little harder, Arthur stepping back in response.

        "You're doing really well," Lewis smiled, and his teeth gleamed in the sunlight. "Do you know how to win a duel?"

        "No," Arthur huffed, choosing to ignore the compliment, sword raised and stepping back as Lewis advanced.

        "You have to catch your partner off guard, bring their sword down—" Lewis began, swinging lower. Arthur caught the blow with the blade diagonally, leaving plenty of sword across his body so as to not leave an opening.

        "That's really good," Lewis said, but then he started moving faster, slashing his sword up, down, to the side, and Arthur responded by following with his own blade, Lewis pressing forward, Arthur stepping back, steel clanging, until Arthur felt something against his back and, unable to move further, hurriedly blocked a swing from the side, and suddenly Lewis' training blade was framing him against the tree he had backed into, blade levelled and inches from his throat.

        When he met Lewis' eyes, the boy grinned. "And that's how you win a duel."

        "Alright, let's split!" came Întuneric's call from across the clearing, and Lewis turned to look over his shoulder. Arthur dropped his own sword and shoved him away by the chest, tromping forward. He saw Lewis' face fall, and crushed the guilt that welled up inside him. This guy was the enemy.

        The boys gathered before their teacher, ready for their one-on-ones, and Arthur hurriedly grabbed another dulled blade from the crate.

        As the class watched on, their professor duelled both Gene and another student named Chaddick, with dark honey hair and grey eyes. Both of them responded exceptionally well to Întuneric's advances but both were ultimately disarmed, the latter with a hooked foot around the ankle, tripping him, training sword thunking to the grass.

        "No fair!" Chaddick yelped, sword to his throat, and the professor chuckled.

        "You're here to learn to fight Nevers, aren't you? Nevers don't play by the rules—they'll play dirty." He grabbed him by the hand and heaved him up. "You need to keep your eyes open at all times."

        Chaddick nodded begrudgingly, and Întuneric smiled. "But otherwise, well done," he said, clapping Chaddick on the back as he picked up his sword, and scanned the class for his next duel. His glittering blue eyes fell on Arthur and he tilted his chin in a gesture. "Arthur! You're next."

        Arthur shyly stepped up to him, adopting his stance and shifting his weight between his feet to stay alert.

        "Have you sparred before?" his teacher asked, lunging forward fluidly. Arthur raised his blade to block with a clang!.

        "Not until today," he gritted, straining against his teacher's weight. The professor backed off and came forward again with another attack.

        "Really? I saw you with Lewis earlier. You're pretty good for a beginner."

        "Thanks," he said, flicking his teacher's sword up and away.

        "Try a bit of offence," Întuneric offered, clashing against his blade again. "If you see an opening, go for it."

        They parried back and forth for a little, Arthur deflecting his blows, until his teacher raised his arms a little higher than before and Arthur saw his opening, swinging low—

        "Remember what I told Chaddick?" Întuneric smirked, and Arthur's eyes widened.

        The professor jumped his swing easily and spun his own sword around to hold it by the blade, reaching around and swiping Arthur's ankles out from under him.

        Arthur fell seemingly in slow motion, holding his sword out to the side to avoid impaling himself, and just as he would have hit the ground—

        He fell into warm, strong arms.

        He looked up.

        Lewis' amethyst eyes blinked back at him.

        Arthur could see the question in them. The seeking of approval.

        He grunted and rolled out of them and onto his knees on the grass, hurriedly picking himself up.

        "You did well," their professor smiled at him.

        "Th-Thanks," Arthur grumbled, keeping his eyes down.

        "Are you okay?"

        The question was soft, but he didn't look up at Lewis.

        "Just fine," he said cuttingly, and when their teacher called up another partner, Arthur went forward and dropped his sword in the crate and then powered across the clearing and away from the class, away from Lewis, whose eyes he could feel burning into his back.

        Once he rounded the castle and was out of sight Arthur exhaled, letting his shoulders droop just a little. There was a strange feeling trying to rise in his chest and he squashed it. What was the guy's problem? Couldn't he see he just wanted to be left alone? Was he that irritating with everybody?

        As Arthur walked through spattered trees, he came to a group of girls in Good's pink uniforms by the lakeside, gathered around and gazing into the water. He grimaced.

        "Beautiful, Annik! So clear," their teacher preened, a short, lean woman in fuchsia with almond skin and dark curls. "With projection like that I can see you have a predisposed talent for passive communication! Now, should I give you your ranks?"

        The girls all straightened and nodded, and the teacher waved her pink-lit finger, shining numbers popping into existence above their heads. The woman in pink turned to face the forest and lifted a hand to the sky, squinting into the sun as she measured it with her fingers.

        Arthur froze, afraid he'd been spotted, but the teacher smiled with an "Oh!" and dropped her hand, turning back to the girls. "This lesson went much faster than I expected. Girls, I'm letting you go early. Well done, everyone!"

        Tittering, the students made their way back towards the frosted castle doors in pairs. Arthur stepped up behind a tree, leaning out and squinting at the lake. What had they all been looking at?

        "Hello," said a soft voice beside him, and Arthur whirled around in fright to find the teacher right next to him. Completely unperturbed, she smiled at him. "You're looking at the lake, I see."

        Confused, Arthur threw a glance over his shoulder. She had just been standing a dozen metres away. How had she been so quick?

        "Would you like me to show you what's in it?" she asked, and Arthur turned back to face her. Seeing his expression, she laughed. "Light-footedness is a talent of mine."

        Mind blank, Arthur searched for something to say. ". . . What class do you take?" he asked eventually, and winced in embarrassment.

        The teacher's raspberry eyes were kind as she rested a gentle hand between his shoulder blades, guiding him forward with her. "I teach Animal Communication to the girls of Good. We were just looking at Wish Fish."

        "Wish Fish?" Arthur asked, nose crinkling.

        "Magical fish you can find scattered in oases across the realms," she explained, walking them both to the grassy banks and settling down on her knees. "They're a very useful form of communication if you're facing troubles—lost your voice, under a spell, missing your tongue—and for some, they also serve as a force of direction. They can help you realise your dreams, recover memories . . . but it takes a special soul to connect with them that way. They operate mainly off very concise, concentrated thoughts." She leaned forward to trail her fingers through the water. "I was just asking the girls to show me their deepest wishes, if they had any."

        "And . . . what were they?" Arthur asked, intrigued despite himself.

        The teacher giggled. "Boys, mostly."

        Arthur grimaced. "Oh."

        She laughed again, swishing her fingers deeper, eyes on the lake in front of her. "All except one. Special girl, she is."

        As Arthur watched, a hundred tiny white fish bobbed up to the surface, kissing her fingers. Entranced, he leaned forward, trailing his fingers in too, and felt tingles across his skin as the fish greeted him as well.

        "Who was it?" he asked, watching as the fish meandered through the water, coiling and twisting around each other playfully.

        "I'm not telling," the teacher teased, and she turned to look at him, eyes sparkling. "Do you want to see how they work?"

        "Yes please," he said, and withdrew his fingers as the teacher leaned in closer, closing her eyes, a smile playing around her lips. Before his eyes, the fish began to turn pink, blue, green, white, and then arranged themselves into a cloudy picture—as the lines sharpened, he found he was looking at a group of girls in pink, brandishing glinting swords as they duelled in trousers and shirts, and a separate class of boys in blue on the bank before them, reaching into the crystalline water, much like the teacher was doing right now.

        "What's that?" he breathed, entranced by the magical image.

        The teacher opened her eyes and sighed in contentment. "Equality." She withdrew her fingers but the fish stayed, image rippling in the waters. "A School for Good in which boys and girls can take whatever classes they want. Wear whatever they want." She paused for a moment, thinking. "A school where girls aren't told their worth depends on whether or not they can marry a prince."

        Arthur scrunched his nose. "What? They teach that here?"

        When the teacher turned to him, she was still smiling, but there was sadness in her eyes. "You've read the fairytales, haven't you? All those heroes were once students at this school. That's how they were taught."

        "So that's why boy and girl classes are divided?" Arthur asked, watching the picture as it began to fade.

        The teacher nodded, lips pursed. "They say it's tradition. I've gone to the Deans about it, but they have to follow the School Master's orders, and he has no intention of changing the schools. It just makes me wonder . . . Evil classes aren't divided by gender. Surely, Good would be stronger united. I guess everyone's too convinced of Good's winning streak to think about change."

        Arthur was silent for a moment. Now that he thought about it, dividing boys and girls like that didn't really make any sense. He looked up at her. "Is the School Master Evil?"

        The teacher looked shocked. "Why would you say that?"

        He shrugged. "I'd think if he was Good then he'd be happy to work on strengthening Good, whether they keep winning or not."

        The teacher thought about this for a moment, and then smiled. "No one really knows which side he's on. But everyone assumes he's Good, because we've been winning all the stories for the last two hundred years."

        Arthur nodded slowly. That also made sense. So why would the School Master want to keep Good divided?

        They sat like that for a while, silent, each lost in their own thoughts, waters lapping at the banks, until the teacher spoke. "Would you like to try a wish?"

        Arthur snapped to attention. "Huh?"

        "The Wish Fish." She gestured to the school of pale fish, bobbing patiently before them. "Make a wish and see if they draw it for you."

        Arthur gulped. "I'm . . . allowed?"

        The teacher smiled. "I know boys don't take Animal Communication, but . . . my dream has to start somewhere, right?"

        Arthur stared at her with wide eyes for a moment before remembering his manners. "O— Oh! Thank you, uh . . ."

        "You can call me Alita." Her eyes were warm.

        Arthur nodded, offering a small smile of his own, and leaned over across the water, reaching in. The fish immediately gathered around his fingertip, kissing the skin and shimmying around each other.

        "Close your eyes," Alita instructed, "And just focus. What do you wish for?"

        Arthur obeyed, letting his eyelids flutter shut, and thought. What do I wish for . . . ? Well, he didn't want to fail school, for starters . . . he wanted to see Vivi again . . . he wanted to go home . . .

        He felt the fish twirling around his finger and peeked open an eye to find them flushed in shades of orange, blue, and pink. It didn't look like anything.

        "Keep going," Alita coaxed. "It looks like you're a bit foggy. Just concentrate."

        He frowned, burrowing into his thoughts. The fish started to tremble like tulips in the wind, and suddenly Arthur found himself wrestling with wishes in his head.

        Back home—Don't fail—Back home—Vivi safe—Back home—Lewis gone—

        Wishes swept into a cyclone, and the fish flailed in the water. "Concentrate . . ." Came Alita's voice, fading into the background.

        New face—Same face—Different school—Away from school!—More friends—No friends—

        The fish, red as blood, started to quake, as if about to explode. Alarmed, Arthur tried to pull his finger out, but the fish clamped onto it, anchoring him in place.

        "What the—!"

        The fish turned black as night and flew to him, flooding his hand in a shivering mass. Beside him, Alita gasped, and Arthur frantically wrenched harder, but then his head exploded with pain—

        Home School Mom Dad Good Bad Boys Girls Ever Never—

        The fish vibrated harder, faster, until they blurred from vision and Arthur saw eyes pop off, fins shatter, bellies swell with engorged blood vessels, the fish letting out a thousand tortured screams, Arthur's head splitting in two—

        FailWinTruthLiesLostFoundStrongWeakFriendFoe—

        The fish swelled into a ballooning black mass, creeping up his hand. Arthur thrashed to free his finger until he heard his bone break and shrieked in agony as the screaming fish sucked his whole arm into their ebony cocoon.

        He whirled to Alita, gaping beside him— "Help!—"

        The cocoon billowed into his face, suffocating his cries. With a high, sickening shriek, the deathly womb swallowed him. Arthur gasped for breath, limbs flailing, trying to kick himself out, but pain seared through his head and the surrounding mass forced him into a foetal crouch.

        HateLovePunishRewardHunterHuntedLiveDieKillKissTake—

        Screaming with vengeance, the black cocoon sucked him deeper like a gelatinous grave, stifling his last breaths, leeching him of every last drop of life until there was nothing left to—

        Give.

        The screaming stopped. The cocoon sloughed away.

        Arthur fell back in shock.

        In his arms was a young girl, no more than twelve or thirteen, with sandy skin and rich dark curls. Gasping softly, like a fish on land, she raised a hand to squeeze his shoulder, and looked up at him with amber eyes.

        "A hundred years, and you're the first who wished to free me," the girl whispered, smiling. "Thank you."

        Letting her eyes flutter closed, her hand dropped, her body splintering into golden light, and then with a burst of white, she was gone, Arthur alone on the bank.

        Slowly, he turned to Alita, still frozen beside him. He held up his finger, healed like new. "Was. . . Was all that. . ."

        He took a deep breath. ". . . NORMAL?"

        Alita's expression told him all he needed to know.

        Loud squawks pealed from above. Arthur looked up at a friendly dove hovering above them; only the dove's calls weren't friendly at all, but wild, frantic. From the Endless Woods came a fox's growl, guttural and disturbed—then more howls and wails from all around, animals in a frenzy—Arthur rocketed to his feet, and they screamed louder, louder, building with fever—

        "WHAT'S GOING ON?" Arthur yelled, hands clamped over his ears, turning again to Alita.

        As soon as he saw the teacher's face, he knew.

        They want it too.

        Before Arthur could move, the stampede came from every direction. Squirrels, rats, dogs, moles, deer, birds, cats, rabbits, a bumbling otter—every animal on the school grounds, every animal that could squeeze through the gates charged towards their saviour. . . .

        Make us human! they demanded.

        Arthur blanched. Since when could he understand animals?

        Save us, young prince!

        Since when could he understand delusional animals?

        Panicked, he cried to Alita— "What do I do?!"

        The teacher took one look at the stampede, her supposed friends, and, eyes wide, turned to him. "RUN!"

        Finally, a piece of advice he could use.

༻·𖥸·༺

Far across the bay, from its perch atop the Evil turrets, a security gargoyle stirred from its slumber to a cacophony from the opposing banks. It blinked open red eyes and lifted its horned head, glancing across at its two companions, one with dragon wings and one with a snake's head, still asleep. Turning back to face the castle across the bay, the horned gargoyle could just make out a prince in blue charging toward the front doors, a stampede of roaring, shrieking animals on his heels. The gargoyle's eyes flashed. Uncurling its studded tail and thrusting out wide, jagged wings, it launched off its tower and swooped towards the bay.

༻·𖥸·༺

Arthur dashed for the towers as magpies pecked his hands, mice clung to his boots, frogs hopped up his suit. Batting at the mob, he stumbled up the hill, shielding his head, hurdling hogs, hawks, hares. But just as he had the white swan doors in sight, a moose charged out of the trees and sprang—he ducked and the moose crashed, skewering the swans. Arthur bolted through the glass stair room, past Pollux on goat legs, who glimpsed the onslaught behind him.

        "What in the devil's—"

        "Help!" he yelled—

        "DON'T MOVE!" Pollux shrieked—

        But Arthur was already charging up the Honour stairs. When he looked back, he saw Pollux deflecting animals right and left, before a thousand butterflies crashed through the sunroof and knocked his head off his goat legs, leaving the herd to chase him up the steps.

        "NOT INTO THE TOWERS!" Pollux's head screeched as it rolled out the door—

        But Arthur blew through the corridors into the full classrooms of Hansel's Haven. As boys and teachers tackled porcupines (ill-advised) and screaming girls hopped desks in high heels (extremely ill-advised), he tried to escape the threering hubbub, but animals just snatched mouthfuls of candy and kept chase. Still, he managed just enough of a lead to sprint up the stairs, slide through the frosted door, and kick it shut before the first weasel popped through.

        Arthur doubled over, heaving for breath, breeze wafting over the rooftop. He lifted his head to find himself in an expansive menagerie, a collection of green leafy shrubs, artfully trimmed into scenes of Good's greatest victories; Snow White's prince kissing her back to life from her coffin, a prince slaying Sleeping Beauty's evil witch, a butler slipping Cinderella's glass slipper onto her foot. . . .

        Something crashed against the door behind him and Arthur jumped, fumbling with his belt and yanking it off. Turning around, he hurriedly clasped it around the doorhandles and backed away, searching for another way off the roof. He spied a looming silhouette through the glaring sun and wilted in relief. Thinking it a teacher, he ran towards the shadow—

        Fire blazed towards him and he ducked just in time, the bush behind him bursting into flames. When he raised his head the first thing he saw was a pair of flashing red eyes, set against a stony, demonic face atop a muscular man's body, swooping toward him from Evil on huge, batlike wings—

        Arthur yelped and spun around, bolting in the opposite direction. Gargoyles! What did Pollux say about gargoyles at the Welcoming!

        Another hedge burst into flame beside him and he dodged it just in time, heat searing his side. Orders to kill.

        He scampered between topiaries, dodging reaching talons and balls of fire, until he found himself facing a shimmering glass wall, the entire menagerie burning behind him, nowhere left to run.

        He spun just in time for the gargoyle to reach out and knock him to his back, settling over his chest with a vicious snarl, its hot musty breath fanning across his face. Arthur closed his eyes, waiting for the pain—

        It never came.

        Cautiously, he opened his eyes to find the gargoyle motionless on his chest, so close he could see the reflections in his red eyes . . . reflections of a scared little boy.

        "You . . . You want my help?" Arthur wheezed.

        The gargoyle nodded, blinking back hopeful tears.

        "B-But I— it was an accident," Arthur stuttered. "I . . . I don't know how I did it. I'm sorry."

        The gargoyle gazed into his eyes and saw he was telling the truth. It slumped to the ground beside him, scattering ash.

        Sitting up and looking down at the monster, just another lost child, Arthur thought of all the creatures in this world, the animal sidekicks from the stories. They didn't follow orders because they were loyal. They didn't help heroes because they were loving. They did it because someday, maybe loyalty and love would be repaid with a second chance at being human. Only through a fairy tale could they find their way back, to their imperfect selves, to their storyless lives. He was just like them now, searching for a way out, just wanting to go home.

        He tentatively reached out to rest a hand on the gargoyle's back, fingers running over its studded spine. "I wish I could help you," he whispered, chest toiling with grief. "I wish I could help us all go home."

        The gargoyle leaned into his touch, and Arthur rested his cheek against its stony back. As the burning menagerie closed in, he let the tears come.

        Stone softened beneath his cheek.

        The gargoyle lurched back in shock. As it stumbled to its feet, its rock shell cracked . . . its claws smoothed to hands . . . its eyes lightened with innocence, the monster's face beginning to melt into a little boy's. With a stunned gasp, Arthur reached out—

        There was the crash of splintering glass and suddenly someone was standing in front of Arthur, sword drawn. "Get back!" a voice demanded, and Arthur paled.

        "No!" he cried, scrambling to his feet. "No, Lewis, wait—"

        "Get back to Evil where you belong, or I'll kill you," Lewis seethed, raising his sword—

        The boy shrank back in terror, transformation not yet complete. . .

        Lewis closed his eyes and swung the blade down, straight for the gargoyle's neck. . .

        "NO!"

        Lewis' sword stopped. He opened his eyes to find Arthur standing in front of him, shielding the boy, blade buried in the arm he'd flung out to protect himself.

        "Arthur," Lewis gasped in horror, and Arthur fell to his knees, blade sliding out with a sickly sound. Behind him, the boy collapsed too, skin dewy soft, brown hair flopping over his eyes.

        Lewis' mouth dropped open. "Who—"

        Teachers charged through the shattered door behind him and swarmed to the two on the ground, their Swordplay professor propping a pale Arthur up in a growing pool of red and a dishevelled Alita collecting the unknown boy into her arms, but just as she did he gave one last breath and splintered to light, vanishing off the rooftop.

        Weak in Professor Întuneric's arms, Arthur's breaths were laboured, arm limp by his side, soaked in blood. He slowly looked up at Lewis.

        "Why . . . do you like me so much?" he breathed, and passed out.

        Long after they'd hustled an unconscious Arthur off to be treated, long after the nymphs had extinguished the fire on the roof, long after the animals had been rounded up and the halls mopped and repaired, Lewis found that question still lingering in his mind. And he found he couldn't answer it.

Chapter Text

Classes were cancelled the next day too, stranding Vivi in her room with a pail full of gruel and pig feet she was expected to eat, two murderous roommates and a third she'd branded as her saviour from both said gruel and murderous roommates.

        Right now, she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, munching on a handful of greasy chicken after having dumped the contents of her pail out the window. She'd heard a disgusted shriek below but hadn't had the space of mind to feel guilty.

        She'd been staring out across the bay at the obscured Good towers in a daze all day, wondering what exactly could have happened. She'd pressed Chloe and Duet relentlessly about their involvement but eventually realised that if they indeed had managed to wreak havoc on Good, Chloe would already be rubbing her face in it as revenge for insulting her motivation on the first day. On the contrary, Chloe had been sulking in the corner since they were sent to their rooms, glaring daggers at Vivi from beneath her hood.

        Feeling those eyes on her now, Vivi turned around with a huff. "What."

        "The Goose," Chloe said, voice a low growl. "How did you do it."

        "For the last time Chloe, I don't know," Vivi frowned. "It promised to help me switch schools but obviously it lied. Probably broke after laying so many eggs. Anyone would lose their minds after being cooped up in this school for so long."

        "You talked to it?" Duet blurted, with more expression than she'd ever seen on them. Chloe shot them a scowl.

        Vivi sighed heavily. "I told you, didn't I? I belong over there." She pointed out the window at the school across the bay. "Princesses can actually talk to animals."

        "But it never said a word," Chloe said, still frowning.

        "Did you guys speak tepelathicalogically?" Rooster mumbled through a mouthful of chicken.

        "It's telepathically, you idiot," Chloe hissed.

        "Yeah?" Vivi looked between them. "Why?"

        Chloe and Duet gaped at her. Vivi threw her hands up. "Good souls can talk to animals!"

        "But not hear their thoughts," Rooster munched. "For that, your soul has to be one hundred percent pure."

        "See?" Vivi said, relieved. "Proof I'm 100% Good!"

        "Or 100% Evil," Duet corrected. "The Goose didn't help you. It gave up its powers."

        "NOT MY FAULT THE BIRD LOST IT," Vivi blared, spilling over.

        "Look," Chloe seethed, words dripping venom. "You can lie all you want but you can't fool me. Everyone else might think you're weak and pathetic but I know you're just a snake in sheep's clothing."

        "Oh my god," Vivi groaned, rolling her eyes.

        "This is my school," Chloe lashed.

        "KEEP YOUR CRUMMY SCHOOL!" Vivi yelled.

        "And I'm Class Captain. And I'm not gonna let a prissy, lying witch get in my way!"

         "YOU KEEP SAYING THAT, BUT I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU WIN ONE CHALLENGE WITHOUT YOUR LAPDOG HOVERING OVER YOUR SHOULDER," Vivi roared, pointing at Duet.

        Duet's eye twitched. "Lapdog."

        "IT'S NOT MY FAULT THAT I'M GOOD AT EVERYTHING AND I MAKE ALL OF YOU THAT ARE ACTUALLY TRYING LOOK PATHETIC!" Vivi bellowed, unable to stop herself.

        With a searing hiss, Chloe flung her bucket at Vivi's head. She ducked just in time, the bucket hitting the wall behind her with a loud thunk!, splattering her hair with gruel. When she turned, she found the rim of the metal bucket buried in the flaking wall, cut right through the plaster. Paling, Vivi raised a hand subconsciously to her head and turned.

        Chloe and Duet were glaring at her from across the room with equally black scowls, Chloe's usually pale face scarlet with anger, Duet's thick knuckles white with barely-concealed rage around the pendant hanging from their neck. Without a word, they stood and strode from the room, slamming the door behind them so hard the walls shook. Chloe shot Vivi one last searing look before she too rose and slunk from the room.

        Speechless, Vivi's eyes drifted to Rooster, seemingly unfazed as he sat on his bed, munching away.

        "Ohhh, you've done it now," he teased, but even his lazy grin couldn't quell the sudden cold fear spiking in her stomach.

༻·𖥸·༺

Arthur had woken up the day after the incident to find himself in his own room, mind a blurry haze. He tried to lift a hand to rub his eyes but found his left arm too stiff to move—rolling his head over, he found it swaddled in a thick layer of bandages and plaster.

        "You're awake," came a voice, and he turned towards it blearily. Red eyes met his from across the room.

        "How are you feeling," Matoko said, more a statement than a question.

        Arthur grumbled, trying clumsily to manoeuvre his arm over from behind him. His roommate chuckled. "Better than you expected, I'll take it."

        "Expected?" Arthur murmured, rubbing his eye with his right hand and squinting into the light. "Wha d'you mean?"

        "Still fuzzy, I see—that would be the magic. You set a tower on fire yesterday and almost got your arm cut off in the process," Matoko said casually, as if discussing the weather.

        "Mhm," Arthur said, sinking back into his pillow . . . and then jolted upright. "WHAT?!"

        "Well, from what I heard, it wasn't your fault, exactly," Matoko replied, checking his nails as Arthur shivered above the covers without a shirt. "Apparently a sentry gargoyle from Evil noticed your stampede and followed."

        Arthur sat blinking dumbly for a moment before his brain caught up and he gasped. "That little boy . . ."

        "You're pretty lucky, actually," Matoko resumed, completely unfazed. "If your friend's sword had gone an inch deeper, it would have cut a central tendon in your arm."

        Arthur stared at him. "How do you know all this?"

        "I heard it from the healer nymphs," his roommate returned. "They've been in and out since yesterday, pouring magic into that arm of yours. They seem to think you've been healing pretty quickly, given your non-magical constitution."

        Arthur slowly looked down at his plastered arm, foggily recalling yesterday's events. Despite what Matoko had described, he felt just fine. He noticed a crack in the plaster and dug his fingers into it, prying the alabaster shell open and unwrapping the bandages. Running his fingers up his bare arm, he felt no abnormalities, and craned his neck to get a better look. His skin was completely smooth but for a few spattered freckles and the faintest white line across his upper arm. He brushed his fingers over it gingerly.

        Matoko whistled from across the room, and Arthur startled, burning scarlet as he fumbled to cover himself up.

        "That is impressive," his roommate said, eyes trained on his arm. Arthur relaxed. "I've never seen someone heal so fast, even with the use of magic."

        "How deep was it?" Arthur asked, staring at the faded line.

        "Almost to the bone," Matoko replied. There was a murmuring outside and he immediately stood, striding to the ensuite and slipping inside. No sooner had he pulled the door shut behind him that a trio of nymphs bustled in from the corridor, muttering between themselves. They stopped when they raised their heads to find Arthur sitting up in bed.

        "He's awake," the pink-haired one smiled, floating forward and checking his arm. "And completely healed."

        The one with neon green hair drifted up to the bedside, checking his temperature and pulse. "No fever, heartbeat stable."

        The third with azure curls bustled forward next, deftly gathering the remains of his cast and bandages into her arms and seemingly magicking away the plaster dust. "I'll take these."

        Arthur flushed, unused to and uncomfortable with being fussed over, and glanced over to the bathroom door. What the hell was Matoko doing in there, anyway?

        Pink Hair noticed the look, glancing over her shoulder and then back to Arthur. "Do you wish to be alone?"

        "Uh," Arthur said eloquently, eyes drifting to the door again.

        "Do you need help?" Green Hair asked, eyes fixed on him intently.

        "Ah—no!" Arthur yelped, shrinking back against the headboard. The nymphs seemed to get the picture and hung back, waiting expectantly for him to speak again. He gulped, opening his mouth to explain, but something stopped him. He shook his head. "No—nevermind."

        "Well, you seem to be faring much better. We'll notify the Dean while you get dressed. You will be escorted to his office shortly," said Blue Hair, and turned and floated back to the hallway door, other nymphs following in suit.

        "Wait—Escorted?" Arthur yelped. "Am I in trouble?" No sooner had the words left his mouth that Arthur felt his stomach plummet. Of course he was—he'd led an animal stampede and left the rooftop menagerie in ashes. "Am I going to be . . . expelled?" Or worse?

        The nymphs didn't answer, slipping silently out into the hallway and shutting the door behind them, Arthur gaping after them.

        He had barely finished strapping on his boots when his door was unceremoniously flung open, almost whacking him in the face and revealing a wolf he recognised from the Welcoming—one with white fur and rippling muscles, standing at least a foot taller than the others. The wolf grabbed him by the arm, claws digging into his singed sleeve, and yanked him down the corridor past scowling students and teachers that couldn't meet his eyes. Arthur hung his head in shame. He hadn't even lasted a day in the virtuous, chivalrous, pure school for Good. Who had he been kidding, trying to cheat the odds? If he couldn't last here, then maybe Vivi had been right. Maybe he was Evil.

        He suddenly jerked to attention when he noticed the glass stairs beneath his feet were no longer blue, but pink. He peered up at the wolf in confusion. "Aren't we going to the Dean's office?"

        "Lucky for you, he's busy right now," the wolf growled, hauling him up the last of the stairs and into Charity Tower.

        Arthur trembled. "Am I going to see . . . the School Master?"

       His only response to that was a snort before they pulled up at the door at end of the hall, the wolf rapping strong knuckles against the white wood.

        "Come in," came a gentle voice from within.

        Head racing with thoughts of Vivi and home, Arthur looked up at the wolf with wide eyes. "I don't want to die."

        For the first time, its sneer softened.

        "I didn't either," it said, and then opened the door and pushed him through.

༻·𖥸·༺

It seemed the fire had been brought under control because after lunch on the second day Vivi found herself sitting in a dank, mouldy classroom for Special Talents, Chloe and Duet still glaring at her from across the room. Everyone was already seated when Vivi caught a flash of red in her periphery and turned to see the boy from the shoreline—Matoko—saunter in late and plop carelessly into a seat at the back. Vivi gaped.

        "I appreciate it's early days, but I'd rather you be on time from now on, Matoko," their teacher lectured in a surprisingly gentle voice. Special Talents was taught by Professor Declan Corvus, a tall, cloaked man with pale skin and ginger hair. "Every villain has a talent," he continued, and Vivi forced her eyes back to the front to watch him. "In this class, I'll help all of you find yours. Furthermore, I'll be honing and refining your skills as villains to give you the best possible chance in the Woods and—more importantly—the Circus of Talents!"

        He spread his arms wide in a dramatic flourish and Vivi almost rolled her eyes. This guy acted like he came straight from theatre school. "Not all of you deserve to be here," he continued woefully, "As we will no doubt come to find with the arrival of the Circus and the Evers' Snow Ball. But for the rest of you, just listen to me, my dears, and we will turn your bush into a tree!"

        For the day's challenge, each Never had to show off a unique talent to the class. The more potent the talent, the higher the student's rank. But the first five kids failed to produce anything, with Vex whining he didn't even know his talent.

        "Poor dear shrub," Corvus sighed. "Still so green. Still so young. No matter. When you sprout we will prune your leaves into something of consequence! Who's next?"

        The woeful displays continued. Green-skinned Mona made her lips glow red ("Festive, but could do with some fine-tuning," Corvus mused), Chloe made her bats grow an inch, Arachne popped her one eye, Ravan burped smoke. Even their ever-optimistic professor was starting to look a little unnerved until, still sitting in the back, Matoko flexed his fingers and sprouted claws, mouth opening to sharpened teeth, face narrowing and furrying. It was by no means an incredible transformation, and Matoko himself looked noticeably disappointed, until Corvus clapped his hands from the front. "Very impressive, my boy! I can see you on stage yet!" The class turned to their teacher and he grinned heartily. "See that, my Nevers? Biological transformation takes incredible focus and discipline. You're all to be unlocked and learn Mogrification in time, but it looks like Matoko here is racing ahead!"

        Next, he turned to Rooster, who touched his desk and turned it into fried chicken.

        "Mystery solved!" Vivi giggled, despite herself. Rooster grinned over at her. She felt eyes burning into her neck and turned to find Duet sitting in the last row, scowling.

        "Duet, show us what you've got!" Professor Corvus called from the front.

        Their scowl slipped into a leer as they gripped the edge of the desk with one hand and raised the other to clench around the amulet that hung around their neck. Dark eyes fixed on her, they gripped tighter and tighter, knuckles whitening.

        Nothing happened. Vivi raised an eyebrow.

        Then, there was a short, sharp flash of blue light from their amulet, rays peeking through the gaps in their fingers. Then it pulsed again, so bright it shone through the skin of their hand, and with a dangerous grin, Duet opened their hand.

        A flood of light burst forth from the amulet, whipping up localised winds as it funnelled into a tendril that rose up and grew thicker, thicker, expanding and then shaping until a humanoid form, swathed in rags, floated in the air above them, head drooping. As it solidified, Vivi noticed bones and skin forming beneath the tattered robes, converging into a zombie-like creature, skin stretched too taut over bones, or simply hanging from them, giving it a horrific skeletal appearance. The thing raised its head straight towards Vivi, locking onto her, grinning without any lips, and two piercing eyes flashed into existence.

        The class froze.

        With a distant roar, the creature raised its bony hands and tore towards Vivi at her desk. She yelled in shock, falling backwards in her chair and then scrambling across the floor to get away. The thing swooped, just missing her as she ducked, tearing a new hole into her robes, and she shrieked, vaulting forward and ducking behind a bookcase against the wall for protection.

        "Use your talent to defend yourself!" Professor Corvus encouraged from the front of the room.

        Duet circled their deathly spirit for a second attack, and it shot towards her. Vivi shoved the bookcase over in panic and it tumbled over, trapping the writhing spirit beneath it. Books fell and scattered across the floor. Vivi spun around to get away, glimpsing a fallen book and scooping it up just before she dove behind the teacher's desk.

        Peeking around it to keep an eye on the spirit across the classroom, Vivi opened the Encyclopedia of Villains to the contents and scanned the list of names. Banshee, Beanighe, Berserker . . .

        "Vivi, hurry!" Rooster screeched. Vivi whipped her head up to see the spirit shove the bookcase off and spring into the air, turning to face her. She ducked down to continue scanning. Crypt Bat, Cyclops, Demon—is that thing even a demon??—Dhampir, Diao Si Gui, Dip . . .

        Vivi looked up again to see the thing tearing towards her, no less than five feet away.

        "Any time now!" Corvus warned.

        Vivi flung the book, knocking it back, and darted around the room to the door, yanking on the handle. The spirit reoriented itself surprisingly quickly and locked onto her, lurching forward—Professor Corvus lunged forward to intervene but Chloe stuck out a leg and tripped him—

        The door was locked. Vivi wheeled to the creature, halfway to her by now, and picked up a chair and hurled it—the chair missed and the creature opened its maw wide and raised its clawlike hands—

        Having exhausted every other avenue, Vivi could think of only one other option. She brought her fingers to her mouth and let out a piercing whistle, hoping against hope for the first time in her life that gender stereotypes would pull through, and a kind, noble animal like in the fairytales would come to save her life—

        Black wasps smashed through the window and swarmed the spirit on cue.

        Duet jolted back, as if they'd been stabbed.

        Vivi's eyes bulged in horror. She whistled again—but now bats stormed in through the broken glass, sinking teeth into the corporeal spirit as the wasps continued to sting. The spirit crumpled to the floor with a howl, and in their seat, Duet's skin went deathly pale as they gasped for breath.

        Panicking, Vivi whistled louder, higher, but then came a cloud of bees, hornets, and locusts, besieging the thrashing creature as Duet convulsed in their seat.

        Vivi stood paralysed in front of the locked door as screaming villains batted them away from the spirit with books and chairs, but the swarm had no mercy, savaging it until Duet's eyes glazed over.

        Vivi launched herself at the spirit and threw herself over it, screaming at the swarm—

       "STOP!"

        The swarm went dead still. Like scolded children, they whimpered obediently and fled out the window in a dark cloud.

        Gurgling, the spirit clawed its way out from under Vivi and back to Duet, dissolving into light and draining back into their amulet. Duet choked and hacked, heaving in a huge gulp of air, and then gaped at Vivi, flooding with fear.

        Vivi scrambled to her feet and rushed to help them. "I didn't mean to—I thought a bird or something would—" Duet recoiled from her.

        "I thought because I'm a princess—I—" Vivi's mind raced with panic. "I'm Good! You have to believe me!"

        "Well done, Vivienne!"

        Vivi whirled.

        "What a fantastic talent! I never saw it coming!" Professor Corvus declared, sweeping forward. He knelt by Duet, checking them over, but motored on. "Mark my words, everyone! This one will win the Circus Crown!" He looked up at her and beamed.

        For the second time in two challenges, Vivi looked up at the top rank, spewing red smoke above her head.

        Panicked, she whipped to her schoolmates to explain, but stopped when she saw the expressions on their faces.

        Respect.

        Her place as #1 Villain was getting surer by the minute.

༻·𖥸·༺

Arthur had barely caught the golden nameplate on the door before he was shut in, trapped in Professor Pippin Deoír's office. Slowly, he turned to face his executioner.

        His eyes fell on a young woman sitting behind a mahogany desk across the room, shuffling papers under a crystal moth paperweight. She looked up at him and met him with soft grey eyes.

        It was the teacher who had smiled at him in the foyer. He shrunk back a little in surprise.

        She wasn't smiling now. With a heavy sigh, she gestured for him to come forward and stand before the desk. Though she looked young and meek, those grey eyes betrayed something brooding and powerful, so Arthur obeyed.

        When he reached the desk, the teacher sighed again. "I hate handling these things. I'd much rather the School Master handle situations like this, but I'm afraid he has a rather strict policy on privacy."

        Arthur remained silent. When he didn't reply, her eyes narrowed.

        "Arthur Kingsmen." He bristled in fear. "Right now we have a days' worth of classes to make up, two doors and a staircase that need renovating or replacing, a treasured menagerie burned to ashes, a school full of terrified students, and five hundred animals whose memories need erasing. Can you tell me why this is?"

        Arthur opened his mouth but found the words stuck in his throat.

        "This is all because you skipped class and disobeyed Pollux's simple order, leading an animal rampage through the castle, and nearly cost lives in the process." She gazed at him with baleful eyes. "Namely yours."

        Arthur couldn't meet her gaze and looked away, out the window where he could see Good students sitting and chatting in groups in the sun, finishing lunches of roast chicken dolloped with mustard, spinach and Gruyère crepes, and flutes of apple cider—except for one lone student in the shade of the trees, sitting by himself and picking at his lunch basket. It was Lewis.

        Arthur tore his eyes away and looked back to his teacher. "Can I . . . say bye to my friend first? Before you. . ." He swallowed. ". . . . Please?"

        "That won't be necessary."

        "But she won't know what happened to me!"

        Professor Deoír shot him a strange look. "I'm sure she can wait until you tell her in your next class."

        Arthur caught his breath. "You're not going to . . . . kill me?"

        Deoír looked at him in horror. "Why on earth would we do that?"

        "Because I— I—"

        She gazed at him for a moment, examining him, before she let out a breath. "Arthur . . . What you did today was something incredible."

        Arthur gaped at her. ". . . What?"

        "You do realise what you did with those creatures, don't you?" She eyed him cautiously, waiting for a response, and when she got none, continued. "Arthur, you granted their wish. You turned them human again. Do you have any idea the amount of power and pure of will that takes?"

        He didn't move.

        "Furthermore, you risked your life on the rooftop to rescue a gargoyle, of all things. You almost had your arm cut off as a result." Her gaze drifted to his right arm, skin hidden beneath the sleeve of his uniform, and Arthur clasped it with his right hand unconsciously. When he looked back up at her, he found her smiling warmly at him once again, eyes glistening. "I knew there was something special about you. In all my years at this school, and of all the fairytales I've mentored, I don't think I've ever seen such a pure display of Goodness."

        The swan on her dress twinkled, as if winking at him. Arthur could only stare at her in astonishment.

        Still smiling, Deoír ducked her head shyly, fingering the papers on her desk. "Sometimes the best things come in the most unassuming packages . . . . all we need to do is believe we are worth something."

        She remained in silence for a few moments, contemplating, before seemingly composing herself and meeting his eyes again. "Now that's over," she said, with noticeable relief in her voice, "I can assume you'll be on your best behaviour from now on. And resuming classes again, of course, since you seem to have healed quite well. Please remember to attend Surviving Fairy Tales this afternoon, Arthur, won't you? I can't have another unexplained absence on your record or Eider will be on my case again."

        Arthur blinked, still reeling from the earlier revelation. "Uh. Sorry?"

        Deoír cleared her throat. "Întuneric. Professor Întuneric. So you'll be going back to classes, yes?"

        Arthur nodded dumbly, and received a beaming smile for his efforts. "Wonderful. Off you go then, and take care of yourself."

        Arthur nodded and turned to leave, but before taking his first step he glanced out the window again, to the lonely spot in the shade, but Lewis had disappeared. The only hint he had ever been there was the slight compression in the grass where he had sat.