All eyes went to her.
“They’re gone,” said Nicola.
“We know the pirates are gone,” Hort said, impatient, “that’s why we need to go right no—”
But Nicola wasn’t looking at where the pirates had been.
She was looking at the nooses.
The front row of them.
All missing.
“Huh? Where did they g—” Hort started.
Then he gasped.
So did everyone else, the chain of teenagers suddenly lurching backwards, each of them tripping over their feet—
Because scaly nooses were flying towards them, over the valley, over the crowd, like bats out of hell.
No one had time to scream.
The eels lashed around their necks like vises and ripped the crew into the air, bodies still chained in a line. Hort bucked madly, feeling Nicola choking beside him, but the nooses just squeezed harder, draining their breath, before all at once, the eels dragged the prisoners down towards the gallows, seven prey quivering before the kill.
20
SOPHIE
The Lion and the Snake
Sophie awoke to the smell of roses.
She opened her eyes, feeling their petals drizzle down her back. A single wine-red bloom lay cupped in the lap of her baby-blue dress. Her body was moving, magically coasting past bushes and flower beds as if pushed by a strong wind. White leaves and florets fluttered from trees overhead like an enchanted snow.
I’m in a dream, she thought, her eyes still on the rose in her lap, its lush folds sparkling under a pink sunset.
Not only because she was magically gliding through a garden under someone else’s power, but because the rose matched the one Tedros had thrown into the crowd on the first day of school, hunting for the girl who would be his princess . . . a rose Agatha had caught just like this . . . the happy ending to a fairy tale that hadn’t yet begun. . . .
But now the rose was in Sophie’s lap, which meant it must be a dream, for this rose wasn’t meant for her. If there was one lesson the whole world learned from her fairy tale, it was certainly that.
Unless it isn’t Tedros’ rose at all, Sophie thought. Unless someone else threw it and I caught it, just like Agatha caught her prince’s. Which means this is a new fairy tale and this time I won’t end up alone. There’s someone else in this story . . . someone just for me. . . .
Sophie looked up, curious . . . fearful . . . hopeful. . . .
Her face changed.
It was no dream.
Agatha glided beside her, bound, blindfolded, and gagged by the Snake’s slimy, scaly scims. Not only that, but the entire back of her best friend’s body was covered in scims like a coat of armor, from the dome of her hair, down to her calves, down to the soles of her shoes, not a shred of clothes or skin left bare. With high-pitched gurgles, like a chorus of helium-voiced rats, the scims pushed Agatha along, twitching and waggling, as she writhed blindly under her binds.
Sophie grew aware of the drizzling feeling on her back again . . . the one she’d dreamily ascribed to falling flowers. . . .
Dread rising, she peeked over her own shoulder and saw that she too was coated in thick, gooey scims, all the way down to her dainty slippers. Fear bolted her spine straight, upending the rose, which fell to the ground and smashed under her feet. A scream stalled in her throat.
“Aggie,” she wheezed. “What do we—”
But Agatha shook her head sharply and Sophie read the gesture at once: He’s listening.
Sophie’s eyes darted around, looking for the Snake in the garden.
Where is he?
The scims were moving her faster now, through blue-and-white gates and up a steep grassy slope. Sophie looked at Agatha, who was unable to see or talk, her friend’s body helpless to the scims. A swell of panic crashed over her. Sophie liked to pretend the two of them were a team, but in truth, it was always Agatha who took charge, Agatha who kept her safe. No matter how much of a witch Sophie could be, she was Agatha’s princess, riding behind her on her white horse. Maybe that’s why Agatha had been drawn to Nicola as a friend. Because she wasn’t a spinning top like Sophie. Because with Sophie, Agatha always had to take the reins of the story when it counted.
Only now the roles were reversed, with Agatha left helpless. Which meant for once, it was Sophie who had the reins.
She tried to remember what had happened in the Map Room. Slowly it all came back to her . . . the Quest Map with their classmates’ names . . . the storybook that called Tedros a Snake and the Snake a Lion . . . the new pen he vowed would shatter their fairy tale forever. . . .
All of these were pieces of a bigger plan, the Snake said. A plan Chaddick had figured out.
It’s why he’d had to die.
The Snake wasn’t Rafal. That much was clear.
And yet, he seemed to know her, Agatha, and Tedros intimately . . . as if he’d come from inside their storybook. . . .
Something had happened in that story. Something that made him want revenge.
So who was he, then?
Terror attacks.
Arthur’s blood.
Tedros’ crown.
All of it was connected. How?
Aric.
He’d been friends with Aric, he said. Close friends.
But Aric was dead, slain during the School Master’s war . . . so the Snake and Aric had to have been friends before that. . . .
Could the Snake have been a student at school?
She pictured the Snake’s long, youthful body . . . his lean, perfect muscles . . . his glacial blue eyes. . . .
Or was it someone Aric met before school?
Sophie’s forehead throbbed. Think harder.
But all she could think about was the Snake pinning her against the pillar, with his minty Tedros scent, before he fractured into a thousand eels, which came flying towards her. . . .
That’s when Sophie had passed out.
Now these same eels were plastered across hers and Agatha’s backs, wheeling them around like corpses. Sophie felt faint once more, but she forced herself to stay conscious.
The scims pushed the two girls down the hill, through a gathering mist, the fading sun infusing it with a bruised-purple glow. Over the scims’ loud burbles, Sophie heard dark rumbling ahead. But she couldn’t see anything but thick, gray fog. . . .
Sophie coughed.
Not fog. Smoke.
Only now it was clearing and Sophie’s eyes flared wide—
The scims drove them smack into a screaming mob, brandishing fiery torches and weapons under a darkening sky. The crowd spread as far as Sophie could see in every direction, converging from four different kingdoms around a walled-off plot of land.
The Four Point, Sophie thought. It’s where her quest mates were headed on the Snake’s Quest Map. Now she and Agatha were heading there too.
Sophie spotted Camelot’s flag flying high above the Four Point.
Chills ran down her spine.