Enough was enough, Sophie scowled. She was Training Leader and the training fights would continue as scheduled, no matter what anyone said. It didn’t matter if the old villains were injuring and torturing the new students. Evil had a war to win, and Evil only learned to be Evil through suffering and pain.

That’s how she’d learned, after all. And now her classmates would too.

She’d planned the entire training schedule herself. For the next six days, four hundred villains, Old and New, would be divided amongst the various Evil teachers and rooms. During each class, there were no lectures, no tests, no challenges. Instead, teachers would supervise one-on-one fights between an old zombie and a young student in accordance with a class theme. Each student’s schedule consisted of the following sessions:

From the very first class, screams of young Evers and Nevers rang through the hall. An ogre chased Reena with an axe during Weapons, a witch burned a hole in Vex’s thigh during Spells, Jack’s giant threw Chaddick down the stairs in Talents, and Red Riding Hood’s wolf ate half-feathered Kiko before Pollux made him choke her out. Meanwhile, Aric’s Hand-to-Hand Combat sessions produced so many gashes and concussions and broken bones that the fairies set up a makeshift infirmary in the foyer, supervised by Beatrix, who scurried about in a panic, dispensing healing elixirs and spells out of old library books.

As the days went on, Sophie began to relish the students’ misery and the growing number of bodies in the infirmary, as if her heart, once fueled by love and hope, was now only fueled by other people’s pain. She woke up craving the first screams of the morning and felt forlorn when the day’s training ended and the students limped back to their rooms. By the third night, she was staying up late to make her own draws of who would fight each other the next day.

“Think I’ll put Beatrix against Hook,” she said, perched in the windowsill, as she scribbled onto a piece of parchment.

Rafal eyed her across his chamber as he changed shirts. “The point of training is to prepare the Dark Army for war. Not batter young students, who won’t be on the front line.”

“That wasn’t my decision,” Sophie murmured.

“Our students are Evil’s future, Sophie. We have to protect them until they’re fully trained—”

“And that’s what I’m doing. I’m training them.”

“By breaking their bones and spirits? I’m not sure they see it that way.”

“I’m not sure I care,” Sophie murmured.

“Says the girl who used to care desperately what other people thought of her.”

Sophie looked up. “I care what you think.”

The young School Master smiled. “I think you’re forgetting that once upon a time, you were in their shoes.”