Agatha watched her, stunned. “Sophie, don’t you get it? Choosing Rafal only makes you more like her. Your mother did Evil in order to force love and look what happened! Choosing Rafal will only leave you more alone in the end—”

“Aggie, you’re acting like I care about your opinion,” Sophie spat, pounding on graves. “You heard what Sader said. There is no love between us. There is no bond. You’re Good. I’m Evil. And now we’ll see who makes it to The End first. Either Tedros gets you to Camelot or Rafal and I seal our Never After. Only one of us wins our fairy tale.”

“Sader also said he believed in us,” Agatha said, accosting her. “He died for us—”

“Just like my mother died knowing she’d never found love,” Sophie said, elbowing her away. “Evil souls don’t find love. First lesson at the School for Evil. Evil souls are meant to end up with no one.”

“I won’t let that happen to you,” Agatha fought back.

“Really? Because you, Tedros, and I will be a happy threesome? Because I’ll be your Evil little pet?” Sophie hissed, punching tombs. “Don’t you get it? My soul is broken! I’m messed up, sick in the head, rotten to the core! I’m damaged. I’ll never find the kind of love you did because I’ll never be happy inside. All these years, I wanted to be like the mother I thought I had—an angel of Good and light—and instead, I see I was always like her. Unlovable down to the pit of a bad, bad soul.”

“You aren’t her,” Agatha said, tailing behind. “Deep down, you’re nothing like her—”

“Are you deaf? Did you hear her story?” said Sophie, hitting tombs faster now. “I made friends with you so I could get a prince, just like my mother made friends with Honora to get my father. I tried every trick my mother did to find love—love spells, beauty potions, wishing on stars—only to end up hated and alone, while my best friend gets everything. And just like my mother, I’m going to end up dead in a frozen dungeon, with all these other cowards, who were too weak to accept they were Evil.”

She whirled to Agatha, splotched with rage. “So you better believe, if I get out of here, I’ll do anything it takes to keep my true love, no matter how Evil. Anything.”

A high-pitched ping! rang through the Brig.

All the steel placards on the tombs lit up with blinking, bright blue arrows that pointed towards a glowing tomb, before its coffin door magically popped open.

Lady Lesso’s recorded voice blared from all sides: “The student exit has been opened. Kindly exit the dungeon with the rest of your class and return to school. The student exit has been opened. Kindly exit the dungeon with the rest of your class and return to school.”

Agatha gaped at the lit-up coffin.

“Now go and open the door.”

Sader’s last words. He must have put a charm on it to unlock once they’d gotten close enough—