Agatha nodded, breathless.

He shoved her away and she hurtled after Sophie into the trees. She peeked over her shoulder at Tedros, trying to repel Rafal’s death spells with a broken stymph bone, before she saw Lancelot storming towards them, the gang of old heroes at his back.

“Do we fight or do we cower!” Lancelot yelled.

“We fight!” the League roared.

They followed him into battle as Agatha ran away from it, Good’s last and only hope to survive.

32

The Meaning of Evil

With the light of the black fairies and flaming arrows illuminating her path, Agatha launched after Sophie, who was sprinting eastwards towards the edge of the Stymph Forest. Sophie had a good thirty-yard lead on her, but the farther she ran, the more the lights receded from the Good-Evil war, and soon Sophie was stumbling through the dark in her black-leather catsuit, trying to find her way out of the Woods.

“Wait!” Agatha shouted, unable to see her anymore. If she lost Sophie here, she’d never find her before the sun set. “Sophie—”

A pink blast of light blazed towards her head and Agatha dove just in time. She looked up to see Sophie racing ahead.

Where is she going? Agatha thought, holding out her own gold fingerglow like a lantern.

But then she saw it, through the gaps of skeletal branches overhead . . . the outlines of the two school castles.

Agatha stopped cold.

Sophie was Queen of Evil. She could open and close the school gates now, like any of the teachers. Which meant if Sophie crossed before Agatha caught her, she’d slam the gates shut.

Agatha exploded forward, trying to make up ground, as the two of them broke out of the Woods and into a grove of purple, giant-thorned trees separating the Stymph Forest from the School for Good and Evil. The lethal-sharp thorns stirred languidly, as if woken from a deep sleep, and Agatha knew she only had seconds before they spotted her. Ahead, Sophie was nearing the school gates, but Agatha suddenly couldn’t see her anymore as deadly thorns started stabbing down in front of her like falling stalactites.

“Sophie!”

Agatha hurdled and dodged thorns, feeling the ground caving in as more and more thorns smashed holes around her. A thorn sliced from the left and she slid beneath it, only to have one gash her arm from the right; Agatha bit back the pain and fumbled forward, eyes locked on Sophie as the gates magically opened for her and started slatting shut the second she surged through. Agatha skidded towards them, still ten yards away, knowing she wasn’t going to make it. The gate was closing too fast—

She glanced back and saw another thorn lashing down like a wave, about to impale her against the closing gates—