Aric barred them with his big arm. “You may be teacher’s pet, but that doesn’t mean you can break the rules, Hester. Even I can’t break the rules, or I’d have cut my mother into pieces by now and served her as a midnight treat.” His tongue traced his teeth, his eyes on Hester. “Strange, though. My mother insists you’re one of Evil’s Great Hopes, sure to become an illustrious witch. And yet, I can’t imagine Evil’s Great Hope cavorting about with a dodgy boy after curfew.” His pupils flicked to Agatha. “Stranger indeed, given I’ve personally punished almost every boy in school but don’t recognize this one in the slightest.” He fingered the coiled whip on his belt hook, prowling towards the twiggy stranger. “The muscleless legs . . . flaccid wrists . . . weak jaw . . . almost feminine, don’t you think?”

“Edgar keeps to himself,” Hester replied calmly. “With all the Evers and Nevers mixed together and your being new here, no wonder you don’t recognize—”

“Oh I’d remember a boy this . . . soft,” Aric purred, backing Agatha against the banister. “You see, Edgar, I don’t like boys who don’t act like boys. I spent years trapped in a cave, abandoned by my own mother, and yet I taught myself not to shed a tear. Boys don’t cry or snivel or bend over like passive little princesses. Boys fight. Boys dominate. It’s what I told Tristan in the Trial, when he begged for his life like a dog. No matter how many times I’d taken that tart to the dungeon, teaching him what it meant to be a boy . . . still he didn’t learn his lesson. And then to find him high up in that tree, unashamedly a girl!” Aric’s cheeks raged red. “Never again. Every boy in this school belongs to me now. Especially ones like my new friend Edgar, who don’t seem much like boys at all.” He leaned in, his lips almost touching Agatha’s, as he grinned into her eyes. “Best move along, Hester dear. I need some alone time with our young Edgar tonight. And when I send him back in the morning, he’ll be a real boy.”

Agatha couldn’t breathe.

Hester didn’t move.

“Go,” Aric hissed at Hester, viper-quick. “Because this time, when I slit you open, you won’t have a Trial flag to save you.”

Hester swallowed and gave Edgar a helpless stare.

Legs shaking, Agatha watched her friend quail up the stairs and vanish. Agatha hastily focused on her fear, feeling her own fingertip start to burn gold. She had only one hope to escape—

Aric’s whip lashed around her wrist. Agatha’s glow extinguished in surprise.

“Magic? How feeble.” He yanked her down the stairs by the whip like a leash. “Can’t even fight like a boy.”

Agatha’s fear scorched to adrenaline. “How’s this, then?”

Aric turned—

She punched him in the face.

Aric reeled backwards into the wall, nose gushing blood, before he recovered and charged her like a bear. Agatha dove under him, but he grappled her by the belly, ramming her headfirst into the banister. Bleary with pain, Agatha made out a hard stone floor four flights down—