Chapter 34: Breadcrumbs

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That night they flattened Radley's house first, with a boulder lobbed over trees, then the crooked clock tower, which tolled broken moans as screaming villagers fled through the square. Soon whole lanes went up in splinters as parents clung to their children in wells and ditches, watching rocks fly across the moon like meteors. When the blitz ended at four in the morning, only half the town remained. The trembling villagers looked out at the theater, illuminated in the distance, the lights on its red curtain rearranged: Sophie or Die

While Sophie and Agatha slept calmly through all this, Y/n sat trapped in the church, listening to the screams and thumps. How long had they even been in this church now, a month? It would almost be April now. Give them Sophie, and her best friend would die. Don't give them Sophie and her whole town would die. Shame burnt her throat. Somehow she reopened the gates between fairy tale world and Gavaldon's, which was quite clear because the late January air from the woods started to invade, just perfect for when people were left homeless. But, who wanted Sophie dead? Why would they want Sophie dead?

There had to be a way to fix this. If she'd reopened the gates, surely she could close them! First she tried to make her finger glow again, which worked. But none of her spells seemed to work. She then started to try anything else she could think of. She tried praying to stained glass saints, wishing on a star, rubbing every lamp in the church for a genie. All of it was a dud. In a last ditch effort she took Sophie's pink lipstick and wrote on a frost-stained window "TAKE ME INSTEAD". To her surprise, she got an answer.

"NO," flames spelled across the forest fringe. For a moment, through trees, Y/n saw a glint of red. Then it was gone.
"WHO ARE YOU?" she wrote.
"GIVE US SOPHIE," the flames answered.
"SHOW YOURSELF," she demanded.
"GIVE US SOPHIE."
"YOU CAN'T HAVE HER," Y/n scribbled.

A cannonball smashed through Sophie's statue in reply. Sophie and Agatha stirred awake behind her, she could hear Sophie mumble about poor sleep and pimples. Banging around the dark, she lit a candle that streaked the hemlock rafters with bronze glow. Then she did a few bumbling yoga moves, nibbled on an almond, rubbed her face with grapefruit seeds, trout scales, and cacao cream, which took as long as it took for Agatha to finally be fully awake and sit up.
"Morning, darlings, what's the plan?"

But hunched on the windowsill, Y/n just stared out the broken glass, and then so did Sophie and Agatha, at the leveled town, the homeless masses picked through rubble, and Sophie's severed statue head gaping at them from the church steps. Sophie's smile slowly vanished.
"There's no plan, is there?"
CRACK!
The oak door shivered as hammer bashed away the padlock.
CRACK! CRACK!

"Assassins!" Sophie cried.
Agatha leapt up in horror. "The church is hallowed ground!"
Boards snapped; screws loosened and clinked to the floor. The girls backed against the altar.
"Hide!" Agatha and Y/n gasped, and Sophie ran around the lectern like a headless chicken–
Something metal slipped into the door.
"A key!" Agatha squeaked. "They have a key!"
Y/n heard the lock catch. Behind her, Sophie fluttered uselessly between curtains.
"Hide now!" cried Y/n–

The door crashed open, and she spun to the dark threshold. Through weak candlelight, a hunched black shadow slunk into church.
Y/n's heart stopped.
No...
The crooked shadow glided down the aisle, flickering in flame light. Y/n dropped to her knees against the altar, Agatha did the same. Her heart was rattling so hard she couldn't breathe.
He's dead! Ripped to pieces by a white swan and thrown to the wind! His black swan feathers rained over a school far, far away! But now the School Master was creeping towards her, very much alive, and Y/n and Agatha cowered against the lectern with a shriek–

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