Read Online The School for Good and Evil #2: A World without Princes by Soman Chainani - Free Book Online Page A

its stained glass windows, spiral staircases, and marble floors to shards. But now the two friends drew breaths at its redone facade. Where there used to be two pink staircases and two blue, all four stairwells were now the same royal blue as the castle. Lit by high stained glass windows, the staircases spiraled up to the dormitory towers, names tattooed on richly decorated balusters: HONOR, VALOR, PURITY, and CHARITY. Agatha had loathed the prissy princess pink of the PURITY and CHARITY towers, but seeing them turned the same color as the prince towers gave her an unsettled feeling.
    Sophie nudged her, and Agatha turned to see her peering curiously at the Legends Obelisk in the center of the foyer, a soaring crystal column blanketed with portrait frames. Inside each of the frames was a painting of a past student, next to a storybook illustration of what the child became upon graduation. But looking up at the gold-framed Evers on top who became princesses and queens, the silver-framed ones in the middle who became helpers and sidekicks, and the bottomrung lot who became cinder sweeps and servants, the two girls noticed something peculiar. . . .
    â€œWhere are the boys?” Sophie said, for all their portraits had been removed.
    Agatha swung her head to the Honor staircase: thefrieze of knights and kings had been replaced with sword-brandishing, chain-mailed princesses. Sophie swiveled to the Valor staircase, once decorated with burly hunters and their trusty hounds—now huntresses in houndskins and decidedly female dogs. Both girls twirled to the lettered murals across the walls that once spelled E-V-E-R . . . and now spelled G-I-R-L.
    â€œIt is a School for Girls!” said Agatha, thunderstruck. “What happened to Good?”
    â€œWe can’t fight the School Master without boys !” cried Sophie.
    â€œShhhh!” Professor Dovey hissed, rushing them up the Valor staircase. “No one must know you’re here!”
    As the girls chased her elegant silver-haired bun through Valor’s princely blue arches and murals, they gawked at the once virile visions of princes destroying demons and saving helpless princesses, now flaunting different endings: Snow White smashing out of her glass coffin with her fists, Red Riding Hood slitting the wolf’s throat, Sleeping Beauty setting her spindle on fire. . . . The red-blooded princes, hunters, men who rescued them, who saved their lives . . . gone.
    â€œIt’s like Everboys never existed!” whispered Agatha.
    â€œMaybe the School Master killed them all!” whispered Sophie.
    She suddenly heard soft tinkling and twirled to see three glowing blue butterflies peeking from behind a wall. They caught her looking and with a high-pitched meep! ducked and disappeared.
    â€œWhat is it?” Agatha said, glancing back—
    â€œHurry!” Professor Dovey scolded, and the two girls scampered to follow, stooping past the Laundry, where two seven-foot, floating nymphs scrubbed sudsy blue bodices, through the Supper Hall, where enchanted pots stewed saffron rice and lentil soup, and past the Valor Common Room to the rear stairwell. Exhausted and aching from their torments in the Woods, Sophie and Agatha tried to keep up, but Professor Dovey was sprier than she looked.
    â€œWhere are we going ?” Agatha panted.
    â€œTo the only other person who can keep you alive,” her fairy godmother shot back, bustling up the stairs.
    Sophie and Agatha instantly ran faster, up five long flights to the lone white door on the sixth floor—
    â€œProfessor Sader’s office?” Agatha puffed. “But he’s dead—”
    Professor Dovey ran her fingers over the raised blue dots on the former History teacher’s door. It swung open without a sound, and Sophie and Agatha scrambled in behind her.
    A thin woman stood at the window, long black braid dangling over the back of her pointy-shouldered purple