Fire Princess

Chapter Thirty

Phoenix was on her way to breakfast the next day when bloodcurdling screeches exploded in the hall, causing Phoenix to cover her ears. Phoenix saw Agatha and Sophie up ahead. Agatha whirled to the door and yanked it open—thick smoke flooded into the room as shadows of fleeing girls and butterflies ripped past, neon-haired nymphs floating behind them, shrieking alarm like banshees.

“What’s happening!” Sophie gasped, grabbing Mona’s arm.

“The princes! They broke the shield!”

Sophie and Agatha spun to each other, stunned. Phoenix gasped and tried to see past the smoke, but was dragged away by a frightened Kiko.

Pollux’s voice blared from a distant bullhorn—“All girls to the gallery! Use the breezeways, not the foyer! I repeat—do not use the foyer!”

Phoenix ran alongside Kiko towards the breezeway from Honour to Valor, choking on acrid smoke.

Then she saw Sophie and Agatha slip out of the crowd and followed them, curious. All the smoke was seeping into the towers from here. The domed sunroof had been shot through and shattered, each of the G-I-R-L walls impaled with hundreds of fire-tipped arrows. Nymphs floated in a circle around the four tower staircases, shooting water spells to extinguish the small fires, while a scattering of dead butterflies smouldered on the ground, caught in the crossfire.

“Phoenix!” Agatha gasped as the girl jumped out the window, shifting into her phoenix form, and absorbing majority of the fire.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Sophie said, gripping the glass railing. “Why would they shoot the foy—”

But as the fires cleared, the girls saw that each of the dripping-wet arrows had been speared to something: paper scrolls that had been taken away, leaving parchment scraps under the arrow tips.

“Sophie, look.”

Phoenix landed next to the Gavaldon girls and followed Agatha’s eyes to a shadowed patch of floor behind the stairs. There was a fallen scroll, thoroughly singed, but still intact. As the nymphs swept up the ashes and pulled out arrows around the foyer, Agatha quickly hopped over the banister and grabbed it. The scroll was sealed with a wax snake, the colour of blood. Sophie landed beside her and looked over her shoulder as Agatha unrolled the scroll’s scorched edges, the two girls hidden behind the stairs.

“What is it?” Phoenix asked, making the girls jump.

Sophie clutched the page so tightly her knuckles blued.

“Agatha?” she breathed, looking up. “What were you going to tell me?”

But Agatha was still staring at the scroll.

The dark cast in her eyes returned. The blush faded from her cheeks. The graveyard girl was back, a wish forgotten. She looked up at Sophie, sad and empty.

“I should have listened to you,” she said, voice cracking.

Sophie paused carefully. “You went to him?”

Agatha smeared away tears, unable to look at her.

“And he attacked you, didn’t he,” Sophie said.

Agatha cried harder. “How’d you kn-kn-kn—”

“I warned you,” Sophie whispered. “I warned you what boys do.”

Agatha collapsed into her arms, sobbing. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”

Sophie hugged her tight.

“He attacked you?” Hester said to Agatha, sitting with Anadil, Phoenix, Dot, and the rest of the girls on the gallery floor, waiting for the Dean and teachers to arrive.