“What happens if it goes dark?” She peered at the small gold circle in the colorless sky, so faint she could look right at it. “It’s barely lighting the Woods anymore.”

“When it drips its last light, the sun will sink into the horizon and our world will extinguish like a candle into the sea,” said the wizard. “Every story must end, Agatha. That is how the land of stories stays alive. But your fairy tale undoes its endings: first you and Sophie, then you and Tedros. Well, now the moment is coming where your fairy tale either ends for real and earns its place in eternal lore—or becomes the last Ever After for us all.”

“How long do we have?” Agatha asked, the boggy trail growing firmer and drier under her feet. “For Sophie to kiss Tedros, I mean?”

Merlin gave the sun a cursory glance. “It’s melting faster. Three weeks at most. Might not last until the boy’s coronation. But perhaps that’s another secret we’ll keep from him until the School Master is dead.” He pulled a peach-flavored lollipop out of his hat, only to see it covered in mold. “Even the best magic seems to be losing its luster,” he mumbled.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Agatha mulled as the trail sloped upwards. “Why didn’t the School Master chase us? If he knew Sophie could destroy the ring, why didn’t he try to keep her at school?”

Merlin gave her a curious stare, but said nothing.

Agatha didn’t ask any more questions as they moved out of the Boglands and into Gillikin on the outskirts of Oz, the kingdom famous for its Emerald City. Gillikin’s hills were steep and purple, blemished with dead, saffron-colored streaks, and the glittering green city in the valley was hardly visible behind yellow-bricked walls built to keep out the Dark Army.

Agatha looked back, trying to spot Tedros and Sophie down the slope, before she saw Merlin glowering at her and forced her eyes ahead. They hiked the purple hills for an hour, Agatha itching at what seemed a copious amount of unseen pollen, before Merlin spoke again.

“Agatha, since we have a while before lunchtime and I know you’re sorely in need of distraction, may I ask you to recount for me the events of last night? I’m particularly interested in anything you may have learned about the School Master.”

Agatha quelled her instinct to check on Sophie and Tedros one last time and drew a deep breath. She told Merlin every detail of what happened once he’d left them behind Evil’s glowing green gates. She revealed how she and Tedros made up before they parted ways as Edgar and Essa, how they kissed as boy and girl instead of girl and boy, and how Hester saved her from a night with Aric in the dungeons. She explained how the menagerie atop Honor’s rooftop was now Tedros’ story instead of his father’s, how she outwitted her reflection on Halfway Bridge, and how the old villains had defaced each other’s student portraits. She spoke of the classes in the School for Old, including the villains’ assessment of past mistakes and the maps pinning down the whereabouts of their Good Nemeses. She talked about finding Excalibur in Sader’s painting, the School Master’s revelation about the Reader World, and the beautiful, white-haired boy named Rafal, who remained calm and still at his window as he watched Sophie escape. And when she was finished, Agatha had to double over for breath, because she’d been so lost in her story that she hadn’t realized they’d made it all the way to the highest hill in Gillikin, crested with a field of wilted tulips.