Lady Lesso sniffed the coffee and poured it into the plum basket. The plums liquefied with a smoking, poisonous reek.

“School Master forbade him to kill me but he still tries,” she said grimly, pitching the mug out the window. “Yesterday, he put an asp in my toilet.”

“Aric is your . . . your son?” Sophie gasped. “He’s a monster—a murderer—he killed Tristan!”

“Nearly managed to kill me too in the brief chaos after the Trial, before the School Master took control,” the Dean said much softer now. “I don’t blame him, of course. When I accepted the position of Dean of Evil fifteen years ago, it was my duty to sever all attachments—children included. But instead, I hid Aric in a cave near school, stealing in to see him at night, year after year, pretending like he had a mother who would always love and protect him.” Her voice quavered and she fiddled with the plum basket. “The School Master found out and sealed me inside the gates. Never even had the chance to say goodbye to my son. Aric will never forgive me for it . . . leaving him there, six years old in the Woods, all alone. And he shouldn’t.” She looked at Sophie. “Like I said, you and I must both pay the price of our mistakes—and mine is having my own son vengefully plot my death, while he shares my power as Dean.”

She glanced out the window with a wistful grin. “Suppose it’s just like the School Master wants. Mother and son as Deans . . . a former student teaching my class . . . a timeless Master and his young queen . . . Old and New working together for Evil.”

Sophie followed her eyes to what used to be the School for Evil across the bay, now the crumbling, pockmarked School for Old. There were shadowy figures on the roofs now: hulking, misshapen, and clearly not human, with bows and arrows slung on their backs, like a monstrous castle guard. Then beneath them, through a tower window, Sophie noticed another shadow—this one human. Stepping closer, she glimpsed a man’s silhouette with a boat-shaped hat, like a pirate’s . . . and where his hand should be, a sharp flash of metal instead . . .

A tuft of fog floated in front of him and when it cleared, the man was no longer there.

Sophie bit her lip. Rafal had refused to tell her anything about the Old castle. But she was queen, wasn’t she? She had a right to know what he was hiding in the other school.

“Lady Lesso, please tell me what’s in the School for Old,” she said firmly.

“Students of the old fairy tales, of course, just like we teach a new fairy tale here. But the School for Old is the School Master’s domain—not yours,” the Dean snipped, before a cacophonous crackle broke through the castle, like an army of demented crickets. “That’s the fairies signaling end of session.” She stood up and clacked towards the door in her steel stilettos. “Shall we? Students won’t respect a Curses teacher who’s late. Especially a teacher who’s supposed to be the new me.”