But as her anxiety over Tedros grew, Agatha was suddenly distracted by a view of a small Ever kingdom beyond the hills, made entirely of red sandstone. She could see the ant-like figures of men and women, building up a giant wall of brick around their domain.

“What are they keeping out?” Agatha asked, confused. “They’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“As soon as the School Master came back to life, the Ever kingdoms started fortressing for a second Great War,” Merlin explained, as he led them down the slope into the misty valley. “They assume he will marshal his Dark Army and attack the Good realms any day now.”

“So why don’t the Ever kingdoms join forces and attack the School Master instead?” Tedros asked.

“For the last time, my boy, Evil attacks and Good defends. First bloody rule of the Woods. A rule you’ve had trouble with since birth,” said Merlin, firing him a look.

Tedros grumbled and dropped behind the wizard.

“Then what’s the School Master waiting for?” Agatha pushed, taking the prince’s place beside Merlin. “You said it yourself: he has an army of the greatest villains ever written. He could wipe out whole kingdoms of Evers. So why is he wasting time killing old heroes and rewriting old storybooks—”

Merlin raised a brow at her. “. . . unless the Old gives him power over the New.”

Before Agatha could press further, the wizard stopped cold. She and Tedros both followed his gaze to the mist clearing over a sprawling, half-frozen lake, spanned by an elaborate wooden bridge. Only the bridge had since been smashed to pieces and the lake’s glaciers and shore completely blanketed in splintered shivers and shards. Lying in a heap amidst the wreckage were three corpses, flesh eaten to the point they were practically skeletons. As Agatha and Tedros inched closer behind Merlin, they saw that the little skin left on the bodies was old and haggard, with downy coatings of gray and white hair.

“Those aren’t humans,” Tedros winced, repulsed. “They’re—”

“Goats?” Agatha kneeled for a closer look. “Who would do all of this for . . . goats?”

“Very special goats, my dear,” said Merlin, kicking aside scraps of wood to reveal a bloodstained storybook. It was open to its last page: a painting of a giant horned troll feasting on three goat brothers. “The End” was written beneath the scene in bold, black letters. Merlin crouched down and touched the words. Fresh ink smeared onto his fingertips.

He snapped the book shut. “Hurry, children,” he said, walking faster now. “Every second we delay, more of our old friends are at risk.”

As Agatha followed, she looked back at the storybook on the shore and its mud-soaked cover . . .

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

Keeping ahead of the young Evers, Merlin guided them through a snow-dusted valley between mountains of cliff rock that took nearly two hours to cross. The temperature plummeted as hulking gray clouds moved in over the melting sun and soon it began to rain. With a glacial wind lashing at them and the grass slippery with frozen droplets, Agatha and Tedros clung their cloaks to their bodies and battled forward, dropping farther and farther behind the wizard, who was moving like a man half his age. Agatha saw Tedros’ face chapped hot pink, his nose runny and red. She threw him a few darting looks, hoping he’d forgive her for what she’d said back at the cave, but Tedros looked away each time.