Yet as Agatha moved past the grave of a rotting teenaged boy with curly black hair, she suddenly noticed the placards weren’t blank at all. There were carvings embedded in the steel . . .

A series of raised dots, small as pinheads, arranged in neat rows.

Her heart drummed faster. Blind Professor August Sader couldn’t write history in words like a normal historian. But he had seen history in a way no one else could and found a way to help his students see it too, using magic dots like the ones Agatha was looking at right now. Breathless, she couldn’t resist brushing her fingertips across them—

A swoosh of silver air rocketed off the placard, contorting into a floating human silhouette, three-dimensional and the size of a fairy. Professor Sader grinned back at Agatha as he hovered in midair, wearing his customary shamrock suit, his wavy silver hair neat and clean, his hazel eyes twinkling with life. For a moment, Agatha beamed in surprise, thinking he was looking at her, before Sader’s focal point scanned past her, addressing a larger audience.

“The next betrayer on our tour is Fawaz of Shazabah, a henchman ordered by an Evil sultan to hide a magic lamp where no one could find it, before Fawaz secretly tried to keep it for himself. The sultan caught him and had him killed, before he was brought here to the Brig for permanent display. You won’t need to know which sultan he betrayed for your second-year exam, but keep your eye on Fawaz, who plays a crucial role in how Aladdin came to find his magic lamp . . .”

Of course he didn’t see me, Agatha sighed, quickly moving on. One, Sader was blind; two, he was dead; and three, he was nothing but a phantom now, on a recorded loop. No doubt he’d left these placards behind for future History classes after he foresaw his own death, just as he’d once amended the class textbooks to include his obituary.

Agatha couldn’t see Sophie anymore through the mist.

What would Sader have told me to do?

Sun setting . . . shield falling . . . Tedros struggling . . . a ring on her best friend’s finger the only way out . . .

A happy ending is right under your nose.

That’s what he’d say.

Tears sprung to her eyes. He’d always felt like a father to her. Sometimes in her dreams, she’d see him, with his silvery hair and light eyes, looking down at her, with the gentlest of smiles. But when she woke up, she knew he wasn’t real, just as he wasn’t real now. Just as there was nothing under her nose except darkness and snow.

As she hurried past more tombs, she ran her fingers over the placards, so she could see his face pop up again and again, the voices overlapping as Sader’s phantom explained each one, until the entire dungeon chorused with Professor Sader’s deep, measured tones. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t real, Agatha thought. There was something soothing about hearing him, as if she was safe and protected as long as Sader was talking . . .