These weren’t trophies of obscure Evil victories from hundreds of years ago.

These weren’t Finola the Fairy Eater, Children Noodle Soup, and Rabid Bear Rex.

These were stories every Reader knew, only with the villains winning instead of the heroes.

Sophie rolled her eyes at these clearly faked relics. First the murals in the hall and now the Gallery too? Rafal obviously couldn’t accept the real endings—

Then she remembered something he’d said.

“Endings can change, my queen. And change, they must.”

Sophie shuddered, thinking of the way he’d grinned out at the School for Old . . . the strange roar from inside . . . the dark shadows on the rooftop . . .

Had Rafal found a way to change the old fairy-tale endings?

And was that way hidden in the other school?

Sophie’s stomach dropped like a stone.

She’d lost the mouse.

Panicked, she ransacked every corner of the Gallery. No sign of it. She groaned, furious with herself. Her one chance to catch the spy and she’d botched it like a fool. She took a quick peek at her left hand, still tattooed with Tedros’ name. Shoulders slumping, cursing under her breath, she tromped out of the museum, late to her own class, spy still unfound, fully convinced her true love was going to kill her—

Something caught her eye down the hall.

A flit of white scampering towards the castle doors.

Got you.

Hurtling after the rodent like a castaway after a boat, Sophie blasted out of the Gallery, through the black-marble foyer, into the mirrored entrance hall (every mirror now cracked), and out the swan-frosted doors onto the Great Lawn, quite sure she was the first pretty girl in history to run towards a mouse rather than away from it—

A wall of green smoke blinded her.

Sophie shielded her eyes, but wind was blowing more green mist towards her, off the surface of the steaming, corrosive bay. Determined not to lose the mouse again, she hobbled down the hill, her suede stiletto boots snagging in dead, muddy grass as she scanned the ground, hoping the mouse had snagged somewhere too. But every time she thought she found it, it turned out to be a stray crog bone, which she punted in anger, until she skirted the shore of the lethal moat, looking left, then right, at a loss which way to go—

A human shadow skulked towards her out of the fog.

Sophie stumbled back.

Aggie?

Only it wasn’t one shadow.

It was two.

Aggie and . . . Teddy?

“S-s-stay where you are!” she called out.

The pair of shadows advanced faster.

Sophie’s fingertip burned pink with terror. “Stop! Stop right there!”

But the shadows were coming even faster now and Sophie held out her glow like a dagger, ready to stun them both as they broke through the mist—

“Oh.” Sophie dropped her right hand, glow evaporating. “It’s you.”

“Had to fetch the new students,” Hester puffed, looking winded.

“School Master sent us to welcome them,” said Dot, panting beside her.