Agatha Harkness's Arc

Chapter 1 of 21

Agatha Harkness had killed three royal courts with a single lie, and now she could not silence a forest. She sat in her grand manor, a house she had spent forty years decorating and which chose for itself who could find it. She wanted one thing: quiet. Instead, every few minutes, a chime rang through her walls. Her wards were screaming. Somewhere in the trees, magic was dripping like a cracked faucet, and each drop tripped her defenses. She had not slept in four days. Her tea sat cold. The chime rang again, and a candle guttered. "I broke kingdoms for less than this," she said to the empty room. She pulled her shawl tight and walked into the forest. She would find the leak and plug it. She followed the pull of loose magic past a tower wrapped in stone, past a straw cottage, past a gingerbread house glazed with icing. The trail led her to a squat wooden building. A carved sign read Silent Dining Hall. Lanterns burned in round windows shaped like ship's portholes. Inside, the hush pressed on her ears. Empty tables. Dust on the plates. And near the rafters, a light darted and sparked. A pixie. Her wings shed glowing dust with every beat, and each mote of it flared with wild, leaking magic. The dust drifted through cracks in the walls and out into the trees. This was her drip. This tiny creature had cost Agatha her rest. "You," Agatha said. The pixie zipped down, hovered at eye level, and jingled a stream of bell-sounds Agatha could not parse. She only caught the tone: bright, careless, unbothered. "I don't care what you're saying," Agatha said. "Your dust is tripping my wards. Every spark. All night. For days." The pixie crossed her arms and blew a raspberry. Agatha had spent centuries learning that force made enemies and cleverness made servants. But she was too tired for cleverness. She raised one hand. Purple light gathered at her fingers. "I could snuff you like a match," she said. "I won't. That would take effort I no longer spend. Instead—" She closed her fist. A glass jar bloomed out of the air around the pixie. The dust could not escape it. The little wings battered the walls. No dust reached the cracks. No magic reached the trees. Agatha felt it at once. The pull went silent. Somewhere far off, in her manor, the wards stopped their chiming. For the first time in four days, the forest held still. She tucked the jar under her arm. The pixie glared and pounded the glass. "Peace," Agatha said, and smiled. "Finally." But the pixie was not alone in Neverland's absence, and the one who owned her would come looking. Trapping his pixie had bought Agatha silence. It had also stolen something a very old king would want back.