A hot rash rose on Agatha’s neck. “What happens then?”

“Then you’re both better off with someone else, aren’t you? Or even alone . . .” Uma’s voice cracked. “Like me.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “Once happiness is gone between two people, I don’t think it ever comes back.”

“But . . . but it has to come back!” Agatha fought. “That’s why Tedros and I came back—to be happy together—”

Uma smiled sadly. “Then you’ll have to prove me wrong, won’t you?”

Agatha shook her head. “But you’re a real princess! If you couldn’t keep your prince, then how can—”

“Does Snow White still live in the cottage?” Tedros piped, busting in between them.

Agatha cleared her throat. Uma dabbed at her eyes with her pink sleeve. “A queen in a cottage? Don’t be silly,” she pooh-poohed, walking quicker. “Snow lives in the king’s castle, the one you saw before. She’s on her own now, since the king died of a snakebite five years back and her dwarf friends are scattered in other kingdoms, rich and well taken care of. When the School Master returned, the League offered to shelter Snow at Headquarters, but she said she was quite happy in her new life and had no intention of revisiting the old.”

“What does the League have to do with Snow White’s old life?” asked Agatha.

“And why would the League protect someone whose story is over?” Tedros scoffed—

A chilling, high-pitched scream tore through the Woods.

The three Evers stopped dead, looking up at a long, eight-foot-high wall of wilting lilacs, stretching out at the end of the path.

The scream came from behind it.

“We’ll take another route!” Uma panicked. “Let’s use the— Tedros! What are you doing?!”

Tedros hustled towards the hedge. “Sounded like a girl’s cry for help.”

Speechless, Uma whirled to Agatha. “Come, follow m— Agatha!”

“If he’s going to rescue a random girl, I should keep my eye on him, don’t you think?” said Agatha.

Uma was about to level them both with a stun spell, but it was too late; they were already clawing through the lilacs. “‘Rescue them from a grave’—those were my orders,” Uma puffed as she smushed through the flower wall after them. “Not ‘chase grandstanding princes’ or ‘manage jealous girlfrien—’”

She came through and froze. Agatha and Tedros stood rigid next to her.

Nestled into the back of a clearing, Cottage White lay ahead, half in shadow, two stories of lumpy wood, with a coned, pink roof shaped like a princess’s cap. An explosion of colorful shrubs and flowers had grown untended on the roof and first-story eaves, and rain had bled the colors into the wood, so that the house had the tint of a rainbow on all its sides. In the front garden, amidst the unkempt blooms and a meeting post for tours, there were seven pairs of brass shoes laid out in a row, tarnished and dented, a tribute to seven old dwarves who’d gone on to new lives. Only now, as the three Evers stared out at fourteen shoes that were supposed to be empty, they saw they weren’t empty at all.