“And it’s time I finally felt good, isn’t it?” she grinned, feeling the dark stirrings of her heart.

She kissed her beautiful boy again, biting his lip so hard she tasted blood. “I’m your queen now, in heart and soul,” she whispered.

Rafal licked his lips with pleasure and ran his hands through her hair. “Only one thing still missing, then . . .”

The dress was no accident, it turned out. He’d planned the whole ceremony while she was sleeping.

Now Sophie waited outside tall double doors inside the old Evil castle, her chest drumming with anticipation.

With a baleful creak, the dark-wood doors slid open and eerie off-key music began, like a wedding march played backwards. She looked up at two black fairies perched on the door, sliding their green stingers across tiny violins.

“Are you ready?” his voice said.

She turned to Rafal, his young face framed by a wall of defaced old portraits in the leaky stair room.

“Yes,” she said.

His fingers slipped through hers and he led her through the open doors.

Everyone in the Theater of Tales stood up as Master and Queen paraded down the long silver aisle. Once divided into Good and Evil, the vast, torchlit room was now fully devoted to Evil, Old and New. On one side of the aisle, the Dark Army of zombie villains watched from crumbling wooden pews, bounded by scorched walls spattered with green mold. Most of the old villains wore crossbone pins over their hearts, except for some of the most famous, including Red Riding Hood’s wolf, Cinderella’s stepmother, Jack’s giant, and Captain Hook, alive despite the bloody sword wound in his chest. Hook flashed Sophie a cheeky smirk and she stiffened, reminding herself she was his queen and he could do nothing to hurt her.

“Crossbones mean they’ve killed their old Nemesis and rewritten their storybooks,” Rafal whispered, noticing her expression. “Pesky old wizard’s been hiding the most famous heroes in his so-called League. That’s why the shield over your world has yet to fall. But they’re running out of time. Soon Merlin and his League will come to us.”

Sophie felt a hot glow of satisfaction at the thought of those foul old freaks being slain, after the way they’d bullied her in their cave.

“Readers are believing in the power of Evil, my queen,” he said. “The shield hangs by a thread now. Any one of those famous heroes dead and Readers will surely lose their last faith in Good. The shield will break and then you will seal Evil’s victory once and for all.”

“How?” Sophie whispered back. “What do we need in Gavaldon?”

But Rafal only smiled.

Over his shoulder, Sophie glimpsed the other side of the theater and her young Ever and Never classmates, who’d trekked across the Bridge from the old Good castle, and were standing in ivory pews made of polished bone. The last time she saw them, they looked defiant and resentful of their new Evil school. Now all of the young students were goggling across the aisle at the old villains, finally seeing what the School Master had been hiding in the other school and looking completely scared out of their wits. But joining the two schools wasn’t the only thing that had brought the New students into line. Because as Sophie peered closer, she saw her former classmates had been sectioned into three groups.