Agatha lifted her eyes to a swollen-eyed boy standing over her, beautiful and scared, and for a moment, she saw nothing but a stranger. It was only when Agatha saw his legs unsteady, that she knew her prince was trying to tell her something. Slowly Tedros pointed a shaky finger over her head. Agatha turned.

Six guards raced towards them from the square, armed with torches and spears.

“We have to run, Agatha,” Tedros rasped. “We have to run right now.”

Agatha didn’t move, still nauseous. “How could she let them . . .”

“To save you, Agatha,” her prince implored, watching the guards gain ground. “And everything she did, everything your mother and Sophie’s father did to keep us alive will be in vain if we don’t go now.”

Agatha gazed into the wet pools of his eyes and suddenly she understood. Her mother didn’t want her to stay with her. Her mother didn’t want her to come back to Gavaldon. She wanted Agatha to save her best friend . . . to find happiness with her prince . . . to abandon this world for a better one, far far away . . .

Because her happy ending wasn’t here. It was never here.

Her mother had died to set her free.

Do not fail.

She had to find her real ending.

She had to run.

Agatha looked up at the guards bolting towards them, spears gleaming in torchlight. Rage blasted through her blood and scorched through her muscles, nothing holding her back anymore. Lunging to her feet, she hurtled up the slope of Graves Hill.

“Come on! We’ll lose them in the graves!”

Together, they ripped through the rusted graveyard gates into the dark expanse of graves. Even in pitch black, Agatha knew every step, navigating the headstones like a wily squirrel, while Tedros collided with them, cursing so barbarically even the grave worms fled.

Panting fire, his princess led him into the thick of the cemetery. The Elders had taken her family from her. They wouldn’t take her prince too.

“The grave between the swans,” Tedros called out behind her. “She said help would be waiting there—”

“Swans?” Agatha blurted. “There are no swans in Gavaldon!”

Tedros looked back down the hill and saw the guards barreling up, carrying torches. “Thirty seconds, Agatha! We have thirty seconds!”

Agatha scoured stones and plaques and obelisks for evidence of a swan. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for!”

“Twenty seconds!” Tedros voice rang out.

She couldn’t see her prince anymore. Agatha whirled desperately, trying to steady her mind. The only birds she’d ever seen in Gavaldon were smog-colored ducks and obese pigeons. She’d never even seen a real swan, especially not on Graves Hill—

Agatha’s heart pattered faster.

But she had seen swans before, hadn’t she? Swans were the symbols of the School for Good and Evil: one black, one white . . . representing two School Masters in balance . . . one brother Good, one brother Evil . . .