Chapter 1
“Excuse me?”
“You fucking bastard-”
They speak over one another, both of them gaping at the pen that seems to be, somehow, despite being inanimate, smirking.
“You have got to be–”
“What the fuck do you mean by–”
“I suppose this means that we’ll have to–”
“STORIAN!” They exclaim as one. Lesso has to stop herself from rolling her eyes when Dovey turns to glare hard at her.
The pen ignores them both, and turns back to the damned book to continue writing. Lesso steps up next to it, intending very much to wretch the pen away from the blank pages and feed it to her wolves. She catches a glimpse of the words the Storian is writing before she can do so, though, and her expression must be murderous because Dovey takes one look and starts backing away with her hands raised in surrender.
“No. No, no, no. I will not- I cannot-”
“I don’t think that’s really up to us, princess,” Lesso comments dryly, still reading over the Storian’s metaphorical shoulder.
“I have classes to teach, Lesso,” Dovey nearly growls, sounding almost in tears. “I have students to tutor and Good to spread. I have no time for this nonsense.”
Lesso turns to look her square in the eye, intending to rip one in her, but she stops. Dovey’s shoulders are heaving, her eyes red-rimmed, and if Lesso didn’t know the Good Dean better, she’d say Dovey was having a panic attack.
Dovey sinks to the ground, plants her face in her hands, and doesn’t look up. From the sounds of her breathing, she is fully hyperventilating.
Scratch knowing better, Dovey is definitely having a panic attack.
Lesso has a split second to decide what to do. Plan A is she leaves Dovey alone, continues to read whatever heinous criminal story the Storian has set up for them, and watches Dovey suffocate on whatever is running through her pretty little golden head right this moment. Plan B is she goes to Dovey. That’s where the plan stops. Lesso has very little experience trying to prevent, instead of cause, suffocation.
She gives the Storian one last wistful look, and shuffles to move closer to Dovey. She can’t have Dovey dying before the Storian is finished coming up with whatever it is coming up with for them. Who knows, she might need Dovey.
“Dovey?” Fuck, she really has no idea how to do this. “Princess, breathe. Breathe.” She lays a tentative hand on Dovey’s heaving shoulders.
“Breathe?” Dovey gasps out, sounding hysterical. “Breathe? The Storian wants- The- Us- To go, what, alter past fairy tales? Breathe? You want me t-to breathe?”
Lesso’s mouth works before her brain. “Aren’t you the one who always says the Storian knows best?” She regrets it the moment she finishes speaking. Surely she shouldn’t be aggravating Dovey right now if the purpose of her doing this is to not kill Dovey, right?
“That’s because the Storian used to always be Good!” Dovey explodes, straightening as the energy of her outburst quite literally forces her to uncurl from herself. “The Storian and the Schoolmaster were Good!”
Lesso lets the silence sit for a moment as anger rushes to her own ears. At least Dovey’s breathing is relatively back to normal now, even though she’s pretty sure it’s still a little too quick to be actually good for her heart in the long run. That might be an advantage, Lesso muses.
Dovey squirms in the silence once she’s calmed down. “Sorry.”
“And here I thought we were both all about maintaining the Balance,” Lesso sneers quietly.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You’re a terrible fucking liar, Dovey.” Lesso gets up from where she was kneeling on the ground, pushing herself off the ground with her cane and ignoring the way Dovey shifted as though to help her up. The Storian’s intense scratching fades behind her, so she dusts her hands and turns around.
“You can’t actually be considering this, Lesso.” Dovey implores, her voice slightly closer to Lesso than before. “You and me, changing fairy tales? I don’t understand why the Storian would even ask us to do this.”
“Blame the damned Readers.” The Storian pauses in its writing, then picks up again.
“This is all because of Sophie and Agatha? So because they proved that we can be Good and Evil, we have to go back and change our entire history? That doesn’t make sense, Lesso!”
Lesso’s fuse reaches its end. “Then ask the fucking pen!” She screeches as she spins around, not caring that Dovey flinches away from her. “How the fuck am I supposed to know, Dovey? You think you’re the only one with students? You think you’re the only one with courses to teach? I’ve got five hundred Evil kids back there waiting for me to tell them what the hell is going on, so why don’t you take your pretty little head out of your ass for a moment and try to see that this isn’t all about you?”
Dovey has the good grace to look admonished, and it is a lot quieter after that. In fact, she doesn’t say anything at all until the Storian finishes writing, and a copy of the instructions it wrote down appears in each of their hands.
It goes something along the lines of, ‘to illustrate the dedication of the school to the new Balance’, blah, blah, blah, ‘Deans Professor Clarissa Dovey and Lady Lesso will embark on a journey to change the black and white of the past stories’, blah, blah, blah, and something about the two of them working together. Lesso scans the instructions too quickly to really comprehend most of it, but she gets the general gist: they’re leaving the school for a while.
The Storian’s words are set in stone, and she isn’t eager to be on the receiving end of Fate’s flames, which means that she needs to find a substitute and begin to prepare for her absence. She frowns absently. Who knows how long she’ll be gone? The paper in her hand doesn’t say anything about the duration of the quest, nor does it answer any of the million questions that are racing in Lesso’s head.
Bilious. Bilious will have to suffice. She doubts Bilious will be as amenable to the new combined schools as she is, but she’s sure Dovey will choose Anemone. The Beauty teacher against the Uglification teacher? Oh, she wishes she would be here to see that.
At least the Storian had the good graces to give her this quest before the beginning of the school year. Bilious will have plenty of time to learn the curriculum. She checks the paper in her hand again. Right, she’ll be leaving tomorrow. Plenty of time for her to make sure he doesn’t get any thoughts about her absence.
She turns on her heels to go find him.
“Where are you going?” Dovey’s voice asks from behind her. She doesn’t sound like she’s about to have a panic attack anymore, sounds much more like the snarky Dean Lesso has long since learnt to deal with. Thank the Storian.
She pulls open the door to the Schoolmaster’s office without pause, tossing over her shoulder, “Someone needs to make sure my Nevers don’t burn down your palace of gold while I’m away.”
Dovey doesn’t call after her again.
Bilious is in the woods conducting the annual cleaning when Lesso finds him.
“Bilious!” She bellows. The reaper in front of him turns to ashes as he turns around. “We need to talk.”
He is much less excited about the news that he’s about to be interim Dean than Lesso expected after she tells him that she’ll be gone for a while. She gives no explanations, and he is wise enough not to demand any of them. She had expected him to pounce at the chance to take back what was once his, but he’s strangely demure. That puts Lesso on her guard more than anything else he does.
“How long will you be gone?” He asks, his accent muffling any of the emotions that he might hide in the syllables. His eyes are appraising her, although his hands don't stop. Another reaper falls to the ground in a pile of ashes.
She didn’t mention who she was leaving with, but he will know who when Anemone shows up in place of Dovey. Both Deans being gone? There will be gossip swirling around the schools. She’ll have to tread carefully if she wants to ensure her position is still hers when she returns.
Lesso shrugs, off-handedly spearing a wolf with the tip of her cane. She chooses her words carefully. “When has the Storian ever given straight answers?” She wipes the blood from the wolf off her blade and turns to Bilious. The bloodthirsty glint in his eyes has dimmed. He knows as well as she that if she is gone on the Storian’s orders, there is very little he can spin to his own advantage. She continues, “You won’t have the pleasure of preparing my funeral.”
“So I have to deal with the little freaks on my own, huh?” His finger glows in time to rip another launching wolf’s head off. The blood splatters over his face and he licks it off his lips. The bloodthirsty glint in his eyes returns tenfold. “How many do I have to keep alive?”
“You know the rules. Just because we’re combined with Ever After over yonder doesn’t mean that you get to kill the students.”
“The Schoolmaster’s dead. Who’s going to stop me?”
Lesso cocks her head to the side, and her finger glows. The wolves baring their teeth and growling just a moment ago around them drop dead just as she spins her cane around and presses the sharp tip of the blade to Bilious’ throat before he can move. She raises an eyebrow.
Bilious grunts, the sliver of fear in his eyes not going unnoticed by Lesso. It’s outshined, though, by the fierce glint of respect that Lesso knows is a much greater guarantee for his allegiance than any of his words. “Fine.”
“We might be combined with the Good school now, Bilious,” Lesso says, not lowering her cane but instead stepping closer so that the sharp blade breaks skin, just a little, “But I wouldn't forget what we are.”
He swallows hard, and with the slight movement pushes Lesso away from him with his own finger glow. His knife comes down in the same move, but Lesso is ready and blocks him easily. Her finger glows, and this time he is pushed up against a tree, the bark digging into his back. She steps close again, pushing him deeper into the tree. He gives a grunt of pain.
“Do you understand?”
Bilious’s ugly face is nearly unreadable, but Lesso isn’t worried. She believes him when he says, however unwillingly, “Yes.” Evil is about cost and benefit, and she’s just given him enough assurance that she is still powerful enough to wrangle whatever cost she wants out of him.
He will be a good interim Dean.
“Good.” She releases him. “Come by my office after you clean out the rest of the wolves. You need to be re-familiarized with the curriculum.”
She stalks away, and pretends that she doesn’t hear Bilious grumble a curse to her back. She’s heard worse for less from him. All things considered, he is being more cooperative than she had expected.
There is a tentative knock on her door once Bilious leaves. Lesso considers shouting something obscene, her aching head already protesting at the idea of having to sustain another coherent conversation after Bilious’ a million and one asinine questions. But the only people who would knock before entering her office are students and Dovey, and considering the suspicious lack of soot or odors, she’d place good money on the fact that it is Dovey standing outside of her door.
She sighs, and waves her finger glow in the direction of the door, removing the locking spells she had placed. She might as well get this out of the way.
“What?” She barks when Dovey steps in, looking relatively unfazed by her less than welcome opening phrase.
“You chose Bilious?” Dovey asks, her eyes widening as she takes in the clean decorum of the office. They very rarely visit one another in their office, preferring to keep their interactions in the public eye. Or, failing that, in Dovey’s offices and chambers. Dovey wandering back to her side of the bridge after a midnight meeting is temptation the wolves guarding the castle don’t need.
Lesso smirks, “Aw, is he too much of a burden on the eyes for your beauty teacher?”
“I just meant-” Dovey cuts herself off, looking frustrated already. It is one of the few joys Lesso allows herself in this life, ruffling the Good Dean’s feathers. “How did you know I would choose Emma?"
"Evil never gives its secrets away."
Dovey waits another minute, but when it's clear Lesso isn't about to give her more information, she sighs. "We need to work together on this. The Storian sent us out on a quest together for a reason. Can you at least try to cooperate with me?”
“So you’re my sidekick.”
“What?” Dovey sits down across from her, her brown eyes flashing with annoyance.
“Evil only works with greater Evil or sidekicks. And since you’re clearly not a greater Evil, you must be my sidekick.” She smirks. This is too much fun.
Surprisingly, though, Dovey doesn’t fight her on this. She just sighs and rubs her temples with an exhaustion Lesso recognizes. She sees it every time she looks in the mirror. “Sure, if it makes you happy. Now, can we talk about what we’re supposed to do? I mean, I didn’t understand a good half of what the Storian was going on about.”
Lesso pretends to think about this for a moment. “Why don’t you sing a little song and call your birds and mice and talking teapots to come help you solve this issue?”
“Lesso.”
Sometimes, Lesso forgets that underneath the bouncy gold curls and the extravagant gold crowns and the ridiculous diadem resting on said curls is a woman who is powerful enough to turn a pumpkin into a carriage. Other times, when Dovey fixes her with a look that tells her she is pushing too far, Lesso remembers why the Evil school has mostly respected the boundaries of the Good school for the past few centuries.
“Fine.” She says with a sigh. “What don’t you understand? We’re supposed to go back and change the fairy tales, make them more fitting to our new standard of not separating Good and Evil, blah blah blah.”
“Right, but isn’t that us altering history? If we succeed, will we even come back to the world that we know now? The Storian is asking us to rewrite history, Lesso, I don’t know how you’re so calm about this.” Dovey has clearly thought much more about this than Lesso had. In her defense, though, Bilious had the most odious time understanding the most simple instructions.
Lesso rolls her eyes. “You princesses are always so dramatic. Didn’t you say something about the Storian knowing what it’s doing? Just trust that your little pen isn’t going to hurt you.”
“That’s not helpful!”
Lesso raises an eyebrow. “How Evil of me,” she drawls.
Dovey groans, putting her face down in her palms. Her arms push up her ample bosom, and Lesso nearly looks away until she realizes that Dovey won’t see her ogling her anyway. She still looks away. She might be evil, but let no one say she is lecherous. “We’re supposed to change Snow White. How do you even change Snow White? The story is perfect as it is!”
“I was thinking of a simple stabbing.”
Dovey snaps her head back up to gape at her. “Stabbing the Evil Queen? Lesso! Have you completely lost your mind? We can’t kill!”
Lesso stares at her. “The Evil Queen? What did she ever do to you? I was talking about stabbing Snow White. Stab her, she dies, bibbidi bobbidi boo, we’re back before the school year even begins.”
“Are you kidding? Kill a baby, an infant?”
Lesso shrugs, completely unbothered. “She’ll be defenseless. It’ll be easy.”
“Oh Storian above, I’ve been partnered with a baby-killing monster.” Dovey raises her eyes skyward. “Save me.”
“Well, then, what’s your solution?” Lesso is getting aggravated by the amount of time this is taking. She presses her pounding temple, and tries not to grumble. “You have a better idea?”
“What if we were just, I don’t know, nice to the Evil Queen so she doesn’t hate Snow White?”
Lesso turns her face skywards as well. “Fucking hell, you’re going to make this unnecessarily hard, aren’t you? That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me, and you once told me that mice are nice.”
“They are.” Dovey says, defensive.
“They spread the literal fucking plague!” She has to forcibly make her hand flat again and lower her voice. Dovey, of course, looks unimpressed after her initial flinch. “They might be nice to you, princess, but they’re vermin to the rest of the world.”
“So you want us to kill a baby. An actual infant that was just born.”
“It’s the most effective way for us to change the story.” She silently dares Dovey to tell her otherwise.
“I’m Good, Lesso. I can’t stand by and let you stab an innocent, defenseless infant.”
“Okay, so turn around when I do it.”
Dovey glares harder. “The Storian said we needed to change the stories so that they fit in more with the ideas of our combined schools, and stabbing an infant is one hundred percent not Good at all.”
Lesso considers this. She really doesn’t want to have to go on another quest with Dovey if this one fails, and she’s willing to bet money that the Storian wouldn’t hesitate to send them both on another one if they don’t do this one correctly. She heaves an exaggerated sigh. She didn’t really want to stab the baby anyway. “Fine.”
“Thank you.”
They sit in silence for a while. Lesso assumes that Dovey is trying to figure out how they’re going to deal with the issue at hand, but Lesso is just thinking about dinner.
“What if we tried to encourage the Evil Queen to hate Snow White for something other than her beauty?” Dovey suggests.
Lesso raises an eyebrow. “Not trying to convert the Evil,” she adds a slight emphasis on the word just to mess with Dovey, “Queen to your cult of Goodness anymore?”
Dovey just sighs. “The Storian wants us to have Good and Evil, right? So it’d be Good for us to encourage her to find something more substantial to hate, and Evil for us to continue to encourage her hatred.”
Lesso blinks. She blinks again. “That’s actually not stupid.”
Dovey’s voice is incredibly dry when she replies. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
Lesso just smirks in response. She pushes herself up from her desk, and reaches for her cane. “So when are we leaving? I assume you’re going to need the entire morning to pack your dresses and jewelry?”
Dovey stands as well. “I’ll be ready at six.”
“In the afternoon?” Lesso moves around her desk towards the door, but she turns to frown at Dovey. “It takes you that much time to–”
“In the morning.”
Lesso blinks again. She’d assumed Dovey would need a good three hours to get her face together. She narrows her eyes. Maybe the flawless skin wasn’t a trick of cosmetics. Maybe Good is really just blessed with beauty. She shrugs. “Great.”
The office door is nearly ripped off of its hinges as she stalks out. She’s long since given up trying to make sure the office door stays on tight. She realizes, belatedly, that she's stormed out of her own office, and already the notion of working with Dovey is getting on her nerves.
“Hello, sidekick." Lesso says as she approaches the Good Dean. Dovey is wearing something that looks distinctly less breakable than what she usually does, and for a minute Lesso has to acknowledge the fact that this isn't Dovey's first rodeo. Then she looks behind Dovey, and her eyes bug out. "Are you planning on bringing the entire school with you?” She watches the seemingly never ending flow of trunks the fairies carry to the Schoolmaster’s office and decides it might be better for her mental health if she doesn't keep count.
“Are you planning on wearing rags?” Dovey retorts, looking pointedly at Lesso’s one handbag.
Lesso lets that one slide as an Evil idea begins to take root in her thoughts. “You know,” she muses aloud, tapping her long nails against her cane, “If you look good enough, maybe the Evil Queen will take a liking to you instead of poor Snow White.” She smirks. “That would be fun.”
Dovey steps closer to her to move out of the way of a fairy carrying another trunk, this one heavier by the looks of the struggling creature. “Weren’t you classmates with her at some point?”
Lesso hums in acknowledgement. “I wonder if she’s still a screamer.” She positively cackles at the gasp of surprise on Dovey’s face. She bends to say, so close to Dovey she can only smell the scent of her perfume, “Unfortunately, you aren't her type, princess. She likes redheads.”
This might not be so bad after all, she muses as she watches the blush spread across Dovey’s face. Satisfied with her work, she backs away and starts directing the fairies into chaos.