Tedros prowled past Filip/Sophie like a panther towards a hidden girl. Sophie scrambled up branches behind him, knowing she had to get to Agatha first. She lunged through sharp, tangled branches and yanked Tedros’ cloak collar. The prince ricocheted backwards, watching his friend pass him.
“What are you doing!” Tedros hissed —
Sophie levied every ounce of power in her boy body to swing up the tree towards the hidden girl. Just as she got close, Tedros tackled her from behind—
“She’s mine, Filip,” he growled, shunting his friend aside. Panicked, Sophie shoved her boot in his backside, and Tedros faceplanted on a lower branch.
As Filip fumbled past him, Tedros swung up and grappled him, Filip gave him a hard slap, and the two boys wrestled forward along dense branches, biting and kicking each other like animals until Tedros flung Filip back just as they got to the cornered girl. Heaving breath, cheeks scarlet, the prince gnashed his teeth, raised his sword over his prey, and drew back her hood with a snarl—
Then he slowly lowered his sword.
“Who are you?”
Sophie came up beside him and looked at a red-haired girl ensconced in blue leaves, moaning softly, eyes barely open, her long-nosed, freckled face deathly pale.
“Yara?”
“You know her?” Tedros said, agog.
“Heard someone call her name in the Clearing before she went in,” Sophie lied hastily, remembering none of the boys had seen Yara before.
“Well, find her white flag and drop it,” Tedros growled. “We need to be looking for Sophie and Agath—”
His voice petered out as he noticed a splotch of dried blood on Yara’s chin. Slowly Tedros peeled back her cloak to reveal a rust-flecked jagged gash deep across her neck, already bled out.
“Aric,” Tedros breathed, watching Yara whirring and wheezing, her windpipe cut. “That’s his knife mark.”
Sophie looked at him, the two boys’ faces filled with the same helpless fear. Yara was about to die.
Sophie cradled Yara’s head while Tedros frantically ransacked her pockets, finding nothing. “We need to send you back to your teachers, Yara,” he pressured. “Where’s your white flag?”
Sophie shook her head, bereft. “She doesn’t speak.”
“Yara, we need to help you!” Tedros said manically, grabbing her shoulders—
“I told you, Tedros—”
“YARA!” Tedros screamed.
Yara stirred in his arms, her eyes still closed. “I’m…not…Yara,” she whispered.
Sophie and Tedros recoiled in surprise.
Slowly Yara’s blue eyes struggled to open, looking into Tedros’. She smiled as if looking at her best friend. “I—I—I…never was.”
The prince let go of her, for Yara’s face had started to change. Her cheeks roughened to ginger stubble, her jaw chiselling and squaring, her long, beakish nose refining, her wavy red hair shrinking back into her skull until it was cropped short. Sophie went pale, watching a spell undone that she knew so well. Tedros went paler, looking back at a boy he knew even better.
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Fire Princess
FanfictionYears ago, once her fairytale had ended, Rapunzel married a prince who's entire family possessed the powers of phoenixes. That same power was passed onto her children. This is the story of her daughter, Phoenix of Firebirch, who attends the School f...
