Sophie knew she should be sickened by what she was seeing, but instead felt a mutinous thrill at the sight of Evil winning so defiantly, so matter-of-factly, as if Good was never supposed to win at all. How could she not take secret pleasure in the thought? Her whole life she’d tried to be Good. She’d tried to join their school where she thought she belonged. Only Good had rejected her, again and again until here she was, Queen of Evil . . . queen of the same school she once thought a mistake. Soaking in the last mural—Sleeping Beauty and her prince, lashed to a spinning wheel, set aflame by a black-caped witch—Sophie started to feel disoriented, as if she couldn’t remember the real endings anymore.

What if I’d learned these stories as a child? Would I have ever wanted to be Good?

Doesn’t matter, Sophie thought, breaking from her trance. “An inspired bit of redecorating, Rafal. But it still doesn’t make any of it true.”

“Says who?” he called back.

Sophie frowned at the murals. “Says the storybooks, obviously. I can paint an ending where I bask on a tropical island, serviced by well-muscled slaves. But it’s just a fantasy. All of these are fantasies. They don’t mean anything. The real endings already happened.”

Rafal turned. “And what about your kiss with Agatha? Or Agatha’s kiss with Tedros? Weren’t those real endings too? And yet here we are, back in your story, as if those endings never happened. Endings can change, my queen.”

He gazed out a window at the School for Old. “And change they must.”

Sophie could have sworn she heard a roar from deep within the Old castle, like a monster breaking out of its cage.

“The Deans are eager to meet you,” he said, heading towards the rear staircase. “They’ll take you to your class.”

Sophie didn’t move, hands on hips. “You said it yourself. Agatha and Tedros are on their way to kill you. I can’t be in class! I have to protect you . . . I’ll fight with you—”

“And who do you think will be your army against Agatha and Tedros, if not your class?” he said, not looking back.

“What? No one at this school even likes me—they’ll never listen to me—”

“On the contrary, they have to listen to you,” Rafal said, fading up the stairs.

Standing alone in the hallway, Sophie watched his shadow spiral up the banister. She groaned, glancing quickly at her schedule.

Sophie snorted, confused. “There’s a mistake on here—has my name for—”

“Your class.”

Your class.

No.

Not possible.

Sophie dropped the schedule like a stone.

“I’m a teacher?”