“Eyes on the road, darling,” Sophie chided, faking a smile.

The air was chillier than usual for a cloudless March day, the dappled sun streaking empty blue with copper and gold. She noticed a rawboned raven flapping and panting behind her; with the Woods decaying and its body weak, it was no doubt hunting in vain for a new home. Loud shouts echoed below and Sophie spotted a Woods Training class in the rotting Blue Forest, with Evers and Nevers, boys and girls, each spearing a stuffed effigy of Agatha, as Aric barked out a succession of swordplay moves.

Sophie took in this dying forest filled with Agathas, feeling like she’d wandered into a surreal dream.

All this time, she’d been obsessing about Tedros, Tedros, Tedros and blocking out the one person that mattered more to her than Tedros ever could. Even thinking of Agatha’s name kicked up a storm of opposites—love hate friend foe lost found truth lies live die—until words and labels slipped away and Sophie felt a hole at the center of herself, as if she was incomplete without Agatha and Agatha incomplete without her.

And suddenly, as she looked at forty stuffings of her bug-eyed, flat-browed, pasty-white best friend, Sophie found herself snickering, because she knew Agatha would snicker at them too. Sophie would needle Agatha about the time she’d tried to add “tweezers” and “suntan” to her vocabulary, only to see the poor girl erase an eyebrow and give herself second-degree burns, while Agatha would remind Sophie how she’d chased her down Graves Hill, one-browed, hair bleached orange, a turtle-egg-yolk mask dripping off her face as she walloped her with a broomstick . . . and before they knew it, they’d be rolling on the floor together, giggling at how terrible and wonderful they were to each other . . .

Sophie’s smile shriveled. Just yesterday she’d felt like a witch again in Lady Lesso’s office, ready to slay Agatha and her prince for Rafal, ready to do whatever it took to keep the young School Master as her true love and not be alone. And now today, she had Tedros’ name tattooed on her skin, was reminiscing about makeovers with Agatha, and couldn’t wait to get out of Rafal’s cold arms.

What’s happening to me?

Her feet skidded into stone and Sophie braced to see a black balcony off the old Honor Tower and students stampeding by to get to their next sessions on time. Quickly Sophie scrunched her hand deeper into her pocket and broke away from Rafal without looking back—

“Find me at lunch, darling!”

“Sophie.”

Sophie slowly turned to Rafal, shadowed by the sun’s glare against the railing.

“You will kill them. Tedros and Agatha.” His voice was a hot, teenage snarl. “Or I’ll know whose side you’re really on.”

His eyes flayed her for what seemed like an eternity, before he rocketed straight up into the sky and she lost him in ashes of sun.

Alone in the hallway, Sophie felt her hand sweating through her pocket.