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      ave you seen my pajamas?” Hort whimpered outside Sophie’s door. “The ones with frogs?”

      Swaddled in his tattered bedsheets, Sophie stared at a window she’d sealed dark with a black blanket.

      “My father made them for me,” Hort sniffled. “I can’t sleep without them.”

      But Sophie just gazed at the blackened window, as if there was something in the darkness only she could see.

      Hort brought up barley gruel, boiled eggs, browning vegetables from the Supper Hall, but she didn’t answer his knocks. For days, Sophie just lay still as a corpse, waiting for her prince to come. Soon her eyes dulled. She didn’t know what day it was. She didn’t know if it was morning or night. She didn’t know if she was asleep or awake.

      Somewhere in this grim fog the first dream came.

      Streaks of black and white, then she tasted blood. She gazed up into a storm of boiling red rain. She tried to hide, but she was strapped to a white stone table by violet thorns, her body tattooed in a strange script she’d seen before but couldn’t remember where. Three old hags appeared beside her, chanting and tracing the script on her skin with crooked fingers. Faster and faster the hags chanted until a steel knife, long and thin as a knitting needle, appeared in the air over her body. She tried to wrest free, but it was too late. The knife fell with vengeance, pain flooded her stomach, and something inside her was born. A pure white seed, then a milky mass, bigger, bigger, until she saw what it was. … A face … a face too blurry to see. …

      “Kill me now,” said the voice.

      Sophie jolted awake.

      Agatha sat on the edge of her bed, wrapped in Hort’s stained sheets.

      “I mean, I don’t even want to know what’s on these.”

      Sophie didn’t look at her.

      “Come on. You can borrow my nose clips for Yuba’s class.” Agatha stood, lit by a small tear in the window. “Day three of ‘Know Your Animal Dung!’”

      Strained silence ticked by.

      Agatha slumped to the bed. “What should I have done, Sophie? I couldn’t let him die.”

      “It’s not right,” Sophie said, almost to herself. “You and me … it’s not right.”

      Agatha scooted closer. “I only want the best for you—”

      “No,” said Sophie so sharply Agatha lurched back.

      “I just wanted to get us home!”

      “We’re not going home. You’ve seen to that.”

      “You think I wanted this?” Agatha said, exasperated.

      “Why are you here?”

      “Because I wanted to see how you were. I was worried about you!”

      “No. Why are you here,” Sophie said, looking at the window. “In my school. In my fairy tale.”

      “Because I tried to save you, Sophie! I tried to save you from the curse!”

      “Then why do you keep cursing me and my prince?”

      Agatha scowled. “That’s not my fault.”

      “I think it’s because deep down you don’t want me to find love, Agatha,” Sophie said, voice calm.

      “What? Of cour—”

      “I think you want me for yourself.”

      Agatha’s whole body went rigid. “That’s—” She swallowed. “That’s stupid.”

      “The School Master was right,” Sophie said, still not looking at her. “A princess can’t be friends with a witch.”

      “But we are friends,” Agatha sputtered. “You’re the only friend I’ve ever had!”

      “You know why a princess can’t be friends with a witch, Agatha?” Slowly Sophie turned to face her. “Because a witch never has her own fairy tale. A witch has to ruin one to be happy.”

      Agatha fought back tears. “But I’m not—I’m not a witch—”

      “THEN GET YOUR OWN LIFE!” Sophie screamed.

      She watched the dove flee through the rip in the black window, then crawled back under her sheets until all the light was gone.

      That night, Sophie had her second dream. She was running through woods, hungrier than she’d ever been—until she found a deer with a human face, the same milky, blurred face she glimpsed the night before. She looked closer to see whose it was, but the deer’s face was now a mirror and in it, she could see her reflection. But it wasn’t hers.

      It was the Beast’s.

      Sophie woke in icy sweat, blood burning through her veins.

      Outside Room 34, Hort huddled in his underpants, reading The Gift of Loneliness by candlelight.

      The door cracked open behind him. “What is everyone saying about me?”

      Hort stiffened as if he’d heard a ghost. He turned, eyes wide.

      “I want to know,” said Sophie.

      She followed him into the dark hall, joints cracking. She couldn’t remember the last time she stood up.

      “I don’t see anything,” she said, searching for the glint of his chest’s swan crest. “Where are you?”

      “Over here.”

      A torch ignited, swathing Hort in firelight. She staggered back.

      Every inch of the black wall behind him was covered in posters, banners, graffiti—CONGRATULATIONS, CAPTAIN! TRIAL TRIUMPHANT! READER TO THE RESCUE!—accompanied by depraved cartoons of Evers suffering miserable deaths. Beneath the wall, carnivorous green bouquets littered the floor, carrying handwritten messages between the blooms’ sharp teeth:

      Sophie looked dazed. “I don’t understand—”

      “Tedros said you used him to win the Trial!” Hort said. “Lady Lesso named it the ‘Sophie Trap’—said you even fooled her! Teachers are saying you’re the best Captain Evil has ever had. Look!”

      Sophie followed his eyes to a row of eel-green boxes amid the bouquets, wrapped СКАЧАТЬ