“It’s my nature,” Agatha finished.

Sophie smiled, surprised. “So you do know it!”

“Better than you can imagine,” Agatha said sharply.

Sophie didn’t say another word for the rest of the ride.

By the next day, the girls had fallen back into their old friendship, with Agatha grumbling at Sophie’s monologues, Sophie teasing Agatha over her clumsiness, and the two of them bickering and giggling like teenagers in love. The days rolled by, into the second week, and still there was no sign of the prince, except for the missing baskets of food each morning. And yet, his absence brought Sophie and Agatha closer and closer, whether they were drinking cherry punch in front of a fire, exploring the moorlands, or gabbing and snuggling with each other well after the rest of the house was asleep.

“Why do you think Lancelot and Guinevere have a guest room at all?” asked Agatha one evening, as they shared a picnic basket in a wild garden about a mile from the house. “It’s not like they can have guests. Except Merlin, I suppose, but he prefers to sleep in a tree.”

Sophie stared at her.

“The things you learn when you’re camping with someone,” Agatha smirked, picking at a slice of Guinevere’s almond cake. “Do you think she and Lancelot wanted a child together?”

“It would explain the puerile choice of wallpaper,” groused Sophie, sipping at homemade cucumber juice.

“But what’s stopping them? Been more than six years since Merlin hid them here.”

“Maybe Guinevere realized she didn’t want a child with a man whose personality is as odious as his hygiene,” Sophie snipped.

When they were finished, they treaded farther into the flower garden, reveling in the hazy air and feeling of safety, as if they were in a bigger, better version of the Blue Forest.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” said Agatha, sucking the honey out of a honeysuckle. “When we came back to the Woods, Tedros and I found a portal through your mother’s grave on Graves Hill. But there was no body in it. And when we came out the other side—”

“My mother had a villain’s grave on Necro Ridge.”

Agatha looked at Sophie, thrown.

“The things you learn when you’re camping with someone,” Sophie smiled. “Tedros told me everything that happened before you both rescued me. But it doesn’t make sense to me either, Aggie. It has to be the Crypt Keeper’s mistake. I know your mother didn’t tell you she’d been at school, but my mother would have told me. She never went to the School for Good and Evil. She never went into the Woods. I’m sure of it. So the Storian couldn’t have written her fairy tale. Because my mother died right in front of me . . .” Sophie stopped, voice faltering. “Like yours died in front of you.”

Agatha’s throat dried out.

“I’m so sorry, Aggie,” Sophie rasped.

Agatha felt old emotions rise as Sophie wrapped her in a smothering hug. For the first time since she left Gavaldon, Agatha wept for her mother.