The Tale of Two Hearts | Tedros x Reader

Chapter 17: Sidekicks

The next morning, Agatha approached Y/n as she walked into the lunch line with Tedros.

"Where's Sophie?" Agatha asked.

"I haven't seen her yet," Y/n replied.

"Won't come out of the room. Missed all our classes," Hester said as a wolf dumped mystery meat into her pail. "Apparently sharing a coffin with Hort robs you of your will to live."

"Interesting," Y/n said as she looked at Agatha.

The two girls left lunch and made their way over to the School for Evil to find Sophie. When they arrived at Room 66, the door was unlocked. Agatha and Y/n found Sophie curled under her scorched, tattered covers.

"Get out!" Sophie hissed. "I'm done with both of you!"

"Sophie, what's the matter?" Y/n asked.

"You! I don't ever want to see you again! You took my school, my prince, and now you're going to get my happily ever after!" Sophie screamed at Y/n.

"You don't know that Sophie. Maybe Y/n is right, maybe he doesn't actually like her," Agatha reasoned.

"No! I see now the way he looks at you. He does it every time you're around. He was even doing it in class when he was Chaddick had picked you. He was jealous! I saw it!"

"I can't help that Sophie!" Y/n snapped back. "How he acts has nothing to do with me."

Sophie's eyes drilled into her.

"Look, I didn't want him to pick me okay? When I was in the coffin, I wished he would choose you for this exact reason. I didn't take him from you. He simply didn't choose you," Y/n stated.

Sophie searched her face for a long moment. With a sigh, she turned to the window.

"You don't know what it was like. I still smell him everywhere. He's in my nose. They've given him his own room until the stench goes away. But who's to say where skunk ends and Hort begins?"

Shuddering, Sophie turned back. "I did everything I could. I focused on all the things I love about Tedros—his skin, his eyes, his cheekbones—"

"Sophie, that's his looks! Tedros won't feel a connection if you just like him because he's handsome. How is that different from every other girl?" Y/n stated.

Sophie frowned. "I didn't want to think about his crown or his fortune. That's shallow."

Y/n groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Think about who he is! His personality! His values! What he's like deep down!"

"Excuse me, I know how to make a boy love me," Sophie huffed, shooing them out. "Just stop ruining things and let me do things my way."

For a weeklong challenge in Henchmen Training and Animal Communication, students of both schools had to bring assigned creature sidekicks everywhere they went. At first, both schools exploded into chaos, with trolls tossing Nevers out windows, stampeding satyrs stealing lunch baskets, baby dragons setting desks on fire, and animals christening the Good halls with mountains of dung.

"It's a tradition. An attempt at school unity," Professor Dovey said to her Evers, clothespin on her nose. "However misguided and poorly organized."

Castor scowled at Nevers flitting about the Belfry, under siege by their henchmen. "ONCE YOU GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR BEHINDS, YOU'LL REALIZE WHO'S MASTER!"

And indeed, after three days, Hester had her baby ogre potty trained and spitballing Evers at lunch, Tedros had his wolfhound swaggering behind him, Y/n's owl perched itself on her shoulder as she walked from class to class, Anadil's python befriended her rats, and Beatrix's fluffy white bunny inspired such love she named it Teddy. (Tedros kicked it every time he saw it.) Even Agatha managed to teach her plucky ostrich how to steal candy without teachers noticing.