The Last Ever After. Soman Chainani

her!” the Elder’s voice shouted faraway.

      Callis raised her arms, welcoming the guards.

      They charged and Agatha’s mother fell.

      “NO!” Agatha screamed, voice tearing out of her throat. She sank to her knees at the foot of Graves Hill. Her eyes fogged. Her heart deadened. All she saw was a blur of shadows swarming her mother as the shallow fires extinguished, an army of darkness overwhelming the last ashes of light.

      “She let them …,” Agatha whispered. “She let them kill her.”

      Little by little, she felt the dirt wet on her knees, the numbness wearing off to an onslaught of pain—the dagger-edged thoughts that she had no family anymore … that her only parent had deserted her … that her mother had given her nothing to come home to ever again. She curled into herself, sobbing with fury. Men were no match for a witch. She could have done another spell! She could have ripped them all to shreds! Agatha cried and cried until she heard a strange echo between shuddering breaths … the whispered sound of her name …

      Agatha lifted her eyes to a swollen-eyed boy standing over her, beautiful and scared, and for a moment, she saw nothing but a stranger. It was only when Agatha saw his legs unsteady, that she knew her prince was trying to tell her something. Slowly Tedros pointed a shaky finger over her head. Agatha turned.

      Six guards raced towards them from the square, armed with torches and spears.

      “We have to run, Agatha,” Tedros rasped. “We have to run right now.”

      Agatha didn’t move, still nauseous. “How could she let them …”

      “To save you, Agatha,” her prince implored, watching the guards gain ground. “And everything she did, everything your mother and Sophie’s father did to keep us alive will be in vain if we don’t go now.”

      Agatha gazed into the wet pools of his eyes and suddenly she understood. Her mother didn’t want her to stay with her. Her mother didn’t want her to come back to Gavaldon. She wanted Agatha to save her best friend … to find happiness with her prince … to abandon this world for a better one, far far away …

      Because her happy ending wasn’t here. It was never here.

      Her mother had died to set her free.

      Do not fail.

      She had to find her real ending.

      She had to run.

      Agatha looked up at the guards bolting towards them, spears gleaming in torchlight. Rage blasted through her blood and scorched through her muscles, nothing holding her back anymore. Lunging to her feet, she hurtled up the slope of Graves Hill.

      “Come on! We’ll lose them in the graves!”

      Together, they ripped through the rusted graveyard gates into the dark expanse of graves. Even in pitch black, Agatha knew every step, navigating the headstones like a wily squirrel, while Tedros collided with them, cursing so barbarically even the grave worms fled.

      Panting fire, his princess led him into the thick of the cemetery. The Elders had taken her family from her. They wouldn’t take her prince too.

      “The grave between the swans,” Tedros called out behind her. “She said help would be waiting there—”

      “Swans?” Agatha blurted. “There are no swans in Gavaldon!”

      Tedros looked back down the hill and saw the guards barreling up, carrying torches. “Thirty seconds, Agatha! We have thirty seconds!”

      Agatha scoured stones and plaques and obelisks for evidence of a swan. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for!”

      “Twenty seconds!” Tedros voice rang out.

      She couldn’t see her prince anymore. Agatha whirled desperately, trying to steady her mind. The only birds she’d ever seen in Gavaldon were smog-colored ducks and obese pigeons. She’d never even seen a real swan, especially not on Graves Hill—

      Agatha’s heart pattered faster.

      But she had seen swans before, hadn’t she? Swans were the symbols of the School for Good and Evil: one black, one white … representing two School Masters in balance … one brother Good, one brother Evil …

      If Callis was a witch, she’d have known the Good and Evil swans. That’s how she knew so much about the school, Agatha thought. Her mother must have seen it for herself …

      “Ten seconds!” Tedros shouted—

      Agatha closed her eyes and tried to focus, her temples throbbing.

      Swans … school … Stefan …

      “You saved me,” Callis had whispered to him.

      What had she meant? If Callis and Stefan had a history, maybe the swans involved something that connected her mother and Sophie’s father … something that both of them had in common … or someone …

      Agatha’s heart stopped. Her eyes shot open.

      She was already running.

      “What is it?” Tedros yelled, seeing her shadow dart deeper into the cemetery, towards the house on Graves Hill.

      “Here! It’s over here!”

      Tedros chased her, squinting at her outline fading into the dark. He looked back and saw the army of shadows smash through the graveyard gates, spears glinting. Tedros dove to the ground behind a domed stone. He peeked over it and saw the guards sweeping torches over the rows of graves. Tedros ducked down. “This is worse than the Woods,” he wheezed, crawling through stones to follow Agatha. “Sooooo much worse—”

      Then he saw her, crouched in the final row of headstones, only a short distance from her house. Tedros skidded into dirt beside her. “They’re coming, Agatha!”

      “Sophie’s mother. That’s what connected them,” Agatha said, gripping a tablet gravestone knifing out of the ground, engraved with the words “Loving Wife and Mother.” Two smaller dirt-caked graves, one lighter, one darker, flanked it on either side like wings. “Before Sophie, she couldn’t have a child. Two boys, both born dead.”

      She ran her hand over the lighter of the two boys’ graves, pulling away the grime. Tedros’ eyes bulged as Agatha’s fingers cleared the headstone, revealing a small black swan carved into the unmarked grave. Tedros tore away the moss from the darker grave, revealing a white swan set in the stone. He and Agatha both turned to the larger grave in the middle, towering between the two swans.

      “When she couldn’t have a child, Sophie’s mother went to see mine as a patient. That’s what Sophie told me,” Agatha pressed. “Somehow it’s all connected. Sophie’s mother … my mother being a witch … the debt she owed Stefan … I don’t know how it’s connected, but it has to be—”

      Firelight swept over the both of them.

      Agatha and Tedros flattened to the ground and swiveled to see the guards five rows back.

      “We found the swans—we found the grave—” Tedros panicked, gaping at the bigger headstone. “Where’s the help?”

      Agatha shook her head. “We can’t fight the guards without magic, Tedros! We need to make our wish!”

      The prince swallowed. “Wish to reopen our story on three, okay? Hands behind our back—” He stopped.

      His right fingertip was already glowing gold.

      Agatha looked down at hers, glowing almost an identical shade.

      “Did you make the wish?” Tedros asked.

      Agatha shook her head.

      “Neither did I,” Tedros said, confused. “How could our fingers be glowing, then?”

      Torchlight shined in their faces.