Hort stalked away, leaving Agatha alone by the pond.

She watched him go, her heart wasting to a small, dark hollow.

Soft burbles echoed behind her and she turned to see the Wish Fish, white-hued once more and bobbing at the pond’s edge for her turn.

“Please help me, little fish,” she said softly.

The fish’s eyes twinkled with moonlight, like a thousand wishing stars.

With a breath, Agatha dipped her finger in the water and waited for her heart to give her an answer . . . the way Sophie’s heart had led her so clearly to Tedros . . .

Tell me what I really want, she asked.

Instantly the fish began to turn different colors . . . pink, blue, green, red . . . vibrating and shaking madly, like corn kernels in a fire—

Agatha closed her eyes, knowing the fish were about to paint the answer . . . her path towards goodness and happiness, once and for all . . .

Her lashes fluttered open.

The Wish Fish hadn’t moved.

Like fading flowers, they drained to white, looking up at her, tired and defeated.

Agatha smiled sadly, remembering what her teacher once decreed of such a result.

“Foggy mind,” she whispered.

She caressed the fish goodbye and followed Hort’s receding shadow back towards the house.

Neither Hort nor Agatha had noticed there was a third person by the pond the whole time, sitting behind a tall oak.

The blond prince never moved from his spot, even when the sun rose the next morning like a golden ring and cast him in precarious light. Instead, he lay against the tree and listened again and again to the echo of everything he’d just heard, a single tear shining on his face.

25

The Scorpion and the Frog

For the next week, Tedros was a ghost.

No one saw him during the days—not in the house, nor on the moors, or near the oak grove—and no one had the slightest clue if or where he slept. Guinevere fretted her son would starve, until Agatha gently suggested they leave a basket of food on the porch for him in the evenings. By the morning, it was always gone.

To Agatha, his disappearing act was at once a terror and a relief. On the one hand, the sun was getting smaller every day, leaving the moors streaked in permanent pink and purple sunset. The world was barreling to an end and the prince who could save it with a kiss was nowhere to be found.

And yet, it also meant for the first time in weeks, Agatha didn’t have to think about that prince. The two of them had become inextricable, the way she and Sophie had once been. Every thought she’d had these past few weeks had been consumed with Tedros: worrying about Tedros, fighting with Tedros, making up with Tedros—Tedros, Tedros, Tedros, until she’d run herself ragged living life from both their points of view. With the prince gone, she suddenly remembered she was a full human being without him. And indeed, if being alone was her ending to come . . . then now was the time to start preparing for it.