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the lake. She ran faster, following the trail, but soon the globs turned smaller and smaller and then sprayed to specks in every direction. As Agatha hesitated, searching for another sign to guide her, the men reached the lake, racing east around the shore towards her. But there were three figures across the lake, hunting her from the west. In their torchlight, she saw the shadows of three long cloaks and beards—
    Elders.
    They’d kill her.
    Agatha spun, waving her torch in front of her, as both sides converged. Sophie , where are you—
    â€œKill him!” she heard a man’s voice cry from the mob.
    Agatha swiveled in shock. She knew his voice.
    â€œKill the assassin!” the man screamed again as his mob ran towards her.
    Panicked, Agatha stuttered forward, swinging the torch at the trees. Something heavy whizzed past her ear, another past her ribs—
    A sparkle flared ahead and she froze her flame on it.
    The empty honeycream pouch lay at the forest edge, snakeskin scales glinting.
    A hard, cold blow smashed her back. Agatha buckled to her knees and saw a jagged rock on the ground besideher. She turned to see more men aiming stones at her head, less than fifty feet away from the east. Rushing in from the west, the Elders held up their torches, about to glimpse her face—
    Agatha hurled her torch in the lake, plunging her into pitch darkness.
    With confused cries, the men whisked torches wildly to find the assassin. They saw a shadow sprint past them for the trees. Like lions to a kill, they charged in a grunting, vengeful mob, chasing faster, faster, one breaking from the pack, and just as the man who screamed for blood caught the assassin by the neck, the shadow whirled to face him—
    Stefan gasped in shock, long enough for Agatha to press her lips to his ear.
    â€œI promise.”
    Then she was gone into the labyrinth, like a white rose into a grave.

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    HarperCollins Publishers
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4
Red Hoods Ride
    A gatha heard the men’s shouts recede with the light of their torches. Kneeling against a wet, crumbly tree trunk in darkness, she folded her shivering arms into her black dress.
    A few distant hoots and skitters muffled to silence. Agatha didn’t move, her spine throbbing where the rock hit her. All this time she had focused on rescuing her best friend and going back. Back to what? Murderous Elders? More assassin attacks? A village that wanted Sophie gone?

    She thought of innocent women burned publicly in a square, not so long ago, and her stomach turned over. How can we ever go home? Their future in Gavaldon was just as dark as the Woods around her now. To go home, she couldn’t just rescue Sophie. She had to defeat these assassins—whoever they were—and stop their attacks once and for all.
    But she had no idea how to even begin looking for her friend. For hundreds of years, the villagers had stormedinto the forest, seeking its lost children—only to come out the other side, right where they started. Like all the missing children, she and Sophie had seen what lay beyond the forest: a dangerous world of Good and Evil that had no end. They had been the lucky ones to return, sealing the gates between reality and fantasy forever . . . or so she’d thought. One wish, and the gates had reopened.
    Wherever Sophie was, she was in terrible danger.
    Rising from a crouch, Agatha stepped into the Endless Woods, clumps crunching on dead leaves. Inching forward, she probed blindly with her hands, feeling splintered bark, cobwebbed branches. . . . Her head smacked into a tree and a shadow flung out, spewed something wet at her face, and vanished with a hiss. In response came a chorus of grunts and groans, all through the woods, like a sleeping enemy called to arms. Dazed, Agatha scraped the goo off her face and pulled Radley’s dagger from her pocket.