Suddenly, Agatha glimpsed a flash of golden hair and broad shoulders.

Tedros?

He was already gone.

There was no time to think about her prince. If she wanted to help him, she had to get through the shield and find Sophie.

Agatha refocused and reached a hand through a hole, probing its edges. Breaking barriers was a personal talent. She’d gotten through the one on Halfway Bay every time she’d tried; surely she could get through this one too. But there was no gatekeeper to fool, nor any way to get through holes this small or—

Something nipped her finger.

Agatha recoiled in surprise and saw one of Anadil’s black rats planted on the Woods’ side of the shield, tiny claws clasping the edges of the hole for support. “Rat #3,” Agatha remembered, the only one still perky enough to get this far, for the other two had yet to recover from retrieving Dovey’s wand and zip-lining chocolate fog. Now, Rat #3 tittered sternly at Agatha through the hole, ordering her to pay attention, before it started crawling through the hole into Gavaldon . . .

The instant its nose crossed the plane between the Woods and the Reader World, the rat was assaulted by a fiery shock that sent it flying to the ground.

Through the shield, Agatha watched Rat #3 jerking in the dirt, still alive despite the magical shockwave.

So the shield won’t let it through, she thought. She slipped her own hand through the hole again easily. But then why does it let me?

Agatha shook off the thought. What does it matter? The hole’s still too small for me to fit int—

Something bit her again.

Agatha looked at Anadil’s rat, who’d crawled up the shield again despite its obvious pain, and was still glowering at her. Agatha glowered right back. What did the little pest want—

She gasped.

Little.

It’s showing me how to get through.

Mogrify.

It wants me to mogrify.

And there was only one animal Agatha knew how to be.

Instantly she closed her eyes and visualized the spell, feeling her fingertip glow hot gold. In a flash, she shrunk to the ground, her clothes flopping on top of her, before she crawled out from under them, a skinny black cockroach. Antennae quivering, Agatha the Roach skittered up the side of the shield, leaving her clothes behind, and scooted through one of the holes, before she followed the rat down the side of the shield and into the Woods.

The second Agatha pattered through the first trees, a green fireball scudded past her, nearly incinerating her and the rat. Petrified, she chased after Anadil’s pet, zipping through the war in full flight; but as a cockroach, she was so small that all she could see were crashing feet and falling bodies and the glow of flaming arrows and magical spells shooting back and forth above her. She needed to look for Sophie, but with all the fighting around her, she’d never find her as a bug—