If they’d looked closer, they may have seen a small rain puddle still rippling over stone . . . a single clump print gleaming under the moon . . . or the two specks of light across the Bridge, floating low like fallen stars . . .

The bold yellow eyes of a bald, wrinkled cat, watching Agatha vanish safely into a den of danger, before the cat pulled into darkness and pit-patted away.

19

Old School Reunions

Do girls have softer heads than boys?

All Tedros could feel was drool dripping off his lip, his scraped-up cheek, and his skull ripping with pain. He couldn’t feel his eyes, let alone open them, and he wondered if this is how mangos felt when they fell off trees and smashed to bits, before he realized mangos don’t have feelings and he was likely suffering from a violent concussion.

Between pangs of nausea, he tried to touch the back of his head and check for blood, but his hands wouldn’t budge.

Slowly he slit open his eyes to see he was still in a girl’s body, splayed on a white canopied bed, his mouth gagged and wrists lashed to bedposts with red velvet sheets.

Stomach sinking, he turned his head to see Sophie perched on a stone altar table in the corner, the Storian paused over a blank page.

“Well, Essa—if that is indeed your name—you’ve told me so many lies that listening to you, ‘girl to girl’ seems rather pointless, don’t you think? But let me tell you what I do know. You’re not a new student. You’re not a Never assassin. You’re not a Never at all. You and your ‘cousin’ are spies for Good, here to destroy my happy ending. Only you’re too late, Essa dear. Agatha and Tedros are long gone, as this blank page attests, and Rafal and I would be in the throes of a heavenly romantic evening if it wasn’t for you.”

Tedros garbled urgently into his gag.

“Still have something to say? Oh dear,” Sophie drawled, standing up. “Well, since the School Master and you are such bosom buddies, why don’t you just tell it to him.” She raised her fingerglow towards the window, about to shoot a flare into the sky—

Sophie dropped her hand, eyes widening.

On the bed, Essa’s long hair was lightening from black to gold.

It shrank into her scalp, as her chin dimpled and her cheeks hardened, amber stubble stippling her jaw. Faster now, her legs and arms sprouted with fuzz, her feet ballooned two sizes and her shoulders and chest broadened, shredding her shirt seams. As the girl stranger writhed in pain, her calves chiseled, her biceps rippled, her forearms swelled, bursting the knots of her binds, until at last she tore away the gag with a virile roar, no longer a girl or stranger at all, but a prince in his body like a lion uncaged.