Free The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes by Soman Chainani

her breath.
    From the steep window, Agatha looked down at the Blue Forest, the enchanted training ground for Good and Evil, sprawled in an array of hues behind the school. It was as it always was, quiet and thriving despite the autumn chill, neatly fenced in by spiked golden gates.
    The sounds were coming from beyond the gates.
    At first she thought they were dead leaves, swathing the Endless Forest in rusted brown and orange beneath stripped, crooked trees. Then she looked closer and saw they were men.
    Thousands of them were crammed against the Blue Forest gates in a filthy homeless camp, hunched around fires like gaunt, miserable peasants. She couldn’t see faces, but she glimpsed scraggly beards and blackened cheeks, mottled breeches and bony legs, ripped coats and sashes with gleaming . . .
    Crests.
    These weren’t peasants. They were—
    â€œPrinces,” Sophie gasped, looking out beside her.
    â€œIt’s her!” a voice screamed from the crowd. Heads swung to the tower window.
    â€œIt’s the witch!”
    All at once, a savage mob rushed the Forest gates—
    â€œDeath to Sophie!”
    â€œKill her!”
    â€œKill the witch!”
    The men fired arrows and catapulted stones at the tower, but the weapons instantly vanished into an enchanted shield, bubbly and violet tinged, that appeared over the school gates. As the crowd roared and swung pickets, mounted with the same WANTED signs the girls had seen in the woods, an intrepid prince leapt onto the spiked gates. The gold metal magically sizzled and he let go in shock, impaling on spikes below. Sophie spun inhorror—
    â€œHow can those be princes?” she cried.
    â€œHow can those be princes?” Lady Lesso mimicked. “Those princes are there because of you .”
    Agatha and Sophie gaped at each other. “We don’t understand—” Agatha spluttered.
    Professor Dovey ground her teeth. The only time Agatha had seen her fairy godmother this furious was when she had disobeyed a teacher her first year and almost burned down the castle.
    â€œ Think , Agatha. Once upon a time, you believed yourself an ugly witch. But instead, your destiny was to become a princess . To find Ever After with the most coveted prince in our land! It would have been Good’s greatest victory! A restoration of all the values we’d lost! Kill the School Master, send your Evil friend home safe—and stay here with Tedros, as his queen. All you had to do was take his hand before you disappeared. That would have been the correct fairy tale. But instead . . .”
    She looked daggers at Sophie. “You chose her.”
    â€œAnd rightly so,” Sophie riposted. “If you knew Agatha at all, you’d know she could never give me up for a boy .” She whirled to her friend, knowing this time Agatha would defend her. But again, Agatha didn’t. She just gulped hard and stared at her muddy clumps.
    â€œWhat happened after we left?” Agatha said.
    â€œThe Eviction.”
    The girls turned to Lady Lesso, who shuddered at thememory.
    â€œAfter your kiss, students tried to return to their schools, but the Evil towers ejected the Nevergirls. Sixty girls flung through windows into the bay—from stairs, classrooms, beds, toilets, common rooms . . . They tried to go back, but the Evil gates barred their entry. All the Nevergirls fled to Good for sanctuary, and the Evergirls welcomed them, inspired by your happy ending.”
    â€œAs soon as they arrived, the Good towers evicted the Everboys just as rudely,” Professor Dovey went on. “The moment the boys were all gone, the castle magically changed to what it is now—their portraits removed, murals repainted, friezes recarved, as if mirroring your tale. The School for Good had become the School for Girls .”
    And indeed, the glittering crests over her and Lady Lesso’s hearts, once silver swans, were now sparkling blue