Sophie.

This time no anger came at the name. Only an echo, like the password to her heart’s cave.

Sophie.

Sophie, who she’d loved through Good and Evil. Sophie, who she’d loved through Boys and Girls. Sophie, who she vowed to protect forever, young or old, until death did them part.

How do you turn your back on your best friend? How do you leave them behind?

For a boy.

Shame colored her cheeks.

For a boy who can barely stand the sight of me anymore.

Agatha’s heart shrank as small and hard as a pebble. All this time, she thought she had to choose between Sophie and Tedros to find a happy ending. And yet, each time she picked one over the other, the story twisted back upon itself and the world fell out of balance more than before. Every thought of Sophie, alone in a tower with a deadly villain, brought on more guilt, more pregnant fear, as if she was trapped in a purgatory of her own making, as if she hadn’t failed by choosing a prince over her best friend . . . but in making that choice at all.

“I think about her too.”

She turned and saw Tedros at the window, watching her, his mouth trembling. “About how we just left her,” he rasped, eyes welling. “I know she’s a bad friend, I know she’s Evil, I know Filip was a lie . . . but we just left her . . . with that monster. We left all of them. The whole school . . . just to save ourselves. What kind of prince is that, Agatha? What would my father think of me?” Tears spilled down his stubbled cheeks. “I don’t want you to leave your mother. I really don’t. But we’re not happy, Agatha. Because the villain’s still alive. Because we’re not heroes at all. We’re . . . cowards.”

Agatha looked into her prince’s messy, earnest face, and remembered why she loved him. “This isn’t our happy ending, is it?” she breathed.

Tedros smiled, his old glow returning.

And for the first time since they came home, Agatha smiled too.

3

The New or the Old

“Maybe we have to close our eyes,” said Tedros.

“Or do a rain dance in pajamas while singing ‘Ring Around the Rosie,’” Agatha grumped, Reaper fast asleep in her lap. “It’s past dinnertime and I’m starving. How many times can we try this?”

“Oh I’m sorry. Do you have somewhere better to be at the moment?”

Agatha watched a roach mosey by, cram under the double-locked front door, and disappear. “You have a point,” she said, and shut her eyes.

“All right,” Tedros sucked in, closing his eyes. “One . . . two . . . three!”

Agatha scrunched up her face, Tedros did too, and both of them thrust their index fingers at the other. They exhaled at the same time and opened their eyes.