“Oh, you’ve clearly got it wrong,” Agatha said with relief. “That couldn’t have been my mother. She didn’t care about love in the slightest—”

Her voice trailed away. Agatha was thinking about the way her mother fumbled the kettle that morning when Agatha had accused her of never having found true love. She suddenly felt that cold feeling again, the one she’d had watching Callis pumping water at the sink . . . that feeling that told her that her mother hadn’t learned about fairy tales from reading storybooks . . .

But from living through one herself.

Slowly Agatha looked up at Merlin. “Keep going,” she rasped.

“Now as Yuba rightly pointed out at the time, the School Master should have thrown Callis out of school immediately,” the wizard resumed. “Teachers are here to shepherd students during their education, not endanger them. And fairy tales often end in so much violence and bloodshed that to have the Storian telling a teacher’s tale within the school’s walls is to invite chaos and death into students’ lives. And yet the School Master didn’t throw Professor Callis out. Not only did she stay at the School for Evil, but Yuba swears he saw Callis’ shadow in the School Master’s window on a number of nights, long after the other teachers had gone to sleep. Yuba tried to press her as to why she was in the School Master’s tower, but Callis denied she’d ever been there. Meanwhile, the teachers were abuzz with theories as to why the School Master would let her remain within school gates, especially given Callis was quite pretty—”

“Pretty? Teachers have low standards, apparently,” Tedros yawned.

Agatha fired him a glare and he bit his tongue.

“But in the end, the teachers reached the same conclusion. With Evil losing miserably in every new story, the School Master must have believed a villain like Callis posed little threat to anyone but herself. After all, the faculty, like the students, were convinced the School Master was Good and would relish the chance to see an Evil teacher perish within school walls,” said Merlin. “And yet, now my own suspicions were reawakened. Why would a School Master take interest in an Evil teacher dreaming of her one true love? If the School Master was indeed Evil and not Good, could Evil’s true love somehow be a weapon against Good? Could Evil’s true love finally help Evil win? And if so, did the School Master believe that Callis was his?”

Merlin paused. “On one of my visits, I accosted your mother in the Blue Forest but she refused to answer any of my questions about her relationship with the School Master, even though I could sense her anxiousness about it. I tried to return and press her again, but the School Master had enchanted the gates to repel me, no matter what spell I tried. Clearly he did not want me speaking to Callis and banished me from the school. Now fully convinced the School Master was Evil and using Callis as part of his plot—a plot to fight Good’s love with Evil’s—I recruited Yuba to help me gather some of the most famous heroes in the Woods, including Peter Pan, Cinderella, and others comfortably in retirement, into a League of Twelve, prepared to foil the School Master’s attack once it came. . . . Only that attack never came. Instead, Callis of Netherwood simply vanished one night from the School for Good and Evil without a trace and the Storian abandoned her fairy tale, as if it had lost track of her entirely. Soon the pen began a trifling new story about a girl named Thumbelina, Good’s winning streak continued unabated, and the League of Twelve was disbanded and forgotten, as no one but me still questioned the School Master’s Goodness. . . .” Merlin stared Agatha down. “Until almost forty years later, when the School Master found his Evil Queen after all. Only it wasn’t Callis who wore his ring now . . . but the best friend of Callis’ own daughter.”