Hii! My name is Crystal and this is my first time doing anything like this so very sorry if sucks. First I just wanted to say that a quick disclaimer I do not legally own The School for Good and Evil and this is just a fanfic. I've always wanted to make stories like this and would seriously appreciate it if anyone could give me tips or just how you feel about my writing so I could improve on it, you don't have to if you want to though it's your choice lol. My updating schedule would probs be a mess cause of school but I'll post as frequently as I can for anyone who likes this. Anyways I'll stop rambling on and let you get on to the story now. Thanks so much for reading this baiiii 3

CHAPTER ONE: Taken

The sky was a golden hue, beautiful yet hazy. She couldn't figure out whether the sun was rising or setting since it, in its orange glory, sat peacefully amongst the horizon not moving an inch. The warm, humid air that wrapped around her and made the world feel cosy and small as though it ended at the tips of those fluffy pink clouds, with the smell of the slightly wet grass under her; well, it was as if she was standing in the aftermath of a summer storm, giving way to a rainbow. Her dress of cream flowed against her dewy soft skin as she walked, her feet dragging her body up the emerald green hill. The scenery around her was amazing, to say the least; oak trees standing tall against the sky, flowers of every kind and colour dancing with the wind, small animals skittering and flying and flapping and running all in sync to Mother Nature's heartbeat. But she couldn't afford to stop to enjoy it. Because on the very top of that hill was the one thing she yearned for her whole life.

She started to go faster.

What she'd always wanted. Pacing now.

Always needed. Ignoring every helpless animal begging for her to stop.

Always dreamed of. Nearing the top of the hill, she started to see the outline of it. It was tall and hefty. Stood there in a way that looked so confident yet vulnerable, so welcoming but wary, so… beautiful. Her heart started to race as she ran towards it. The one thing she searched for her entire life. It could hear her footsteps as she bounded towards it and turned around gracefully with a loving smile. She was running so fast she could barely breathe by then. As she reached the top of the hill, she leaped into his arms.

Him.

A boy who loved her. Not her face or her body, but her mind, her heart, her soul. Who she truly was. She wanted to stay in that single moment forever, in the arms of a boy she knew she loved. Her soulmate, even though they just met.

When she slowly let go and looked up to his face she realized she couldn't make out a single feature on him, the blaring sun behind him made him seem only a figure of black, but quite frankly she didn't care. As long as he loved her, then it didn't matter what he looked like, ugly or handsome. The only thing she was able to make out was his humble, lop-sided smile flashing pearly white teeth and smell of mint that filled her nose when she hugged him…

—CRASH—

The two swerved around to see the sky crack like glass and fall apart, revealing patches of darkness. The fragments crashed into the ground causing everything to break; parts of the sky fell on to an oak tree and shattered it like it was a ceramic plate, shards of those beautiful flowers flowing through the air. The world was falling apart, darkness taking its place. The boy held the girl in his arms to protect her from getting hurt but that wasn't enough. Soon everything was falling into the darkness; the sun, the sky, the trees, the flowers, then the animals. Until all that was left was the emerald hill, surrounded by black. They held on to each other not willing to let go yet the ground below them started to cave in. Slivers of dark started to appear as the cracks in the hill got wider and wider till it broke into a million pieces and the two soulmates fell into blackness, holding to each other for life.

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Alyssa shot up, panting. The moonlight slipped through the silk curtains and shone onto her sweaty face, it was just a dream, she thought with a sigh of relief. She looked over at the cat-faced clock on the wall beside her, 3 am, huh. Quite the nightmare that was. She forced herself up from her comfortable bed and trudged her way out the bedroom door and trudged her way to the bathroom, time to get up I guess. She walked into the bathroom and looked at herself in the large mirror atop the sink. Even though she just woke up her natural platinum blonde hair that fell to her lower back had its usual sheen and her vanilla skin was still clear and soft, with her normally large and bright lilac eyes staring back at herself. Alyssa was beautiful, gorgeous some would say. Everyone wanted to be her or be with her, boyfriend or best friend. It didn't matter to them whether or not she was a person with human emotions, no. To them, she was just a shiny object, worthy only of being shown off instead of being appreciated, like expensive jewellery. But it was all normal to her, being treated like a trophy. Her thoughts started to trace back to her dream, 'A boy who loved her. Who she truly was'. Love. Alyssa gagged, she vowed to herself a long time ago that she would never fall in love, let alone with a man. "All men are selfish pigs," she said as she scolded her reflection in the mirror, "The only thing they do is try to get to your heart only to rip it into pieces just for fun, like a cruel game called love." Repeating the words someone she had admired told her long ago brought back the feelings of hate and anger that she'd always felt when hearing the word love. That couldn't be the one thing she'd wanted her whole life, it just couldn't. Alyssa stood in front of the mirror for what felt like forever reminding herself how only one man took everything she'd ever needed away from her, so how could she want to be with one. She managed to take a quick shower and brush her teeth with all that was racing through her mind and made it down the stairs of her empty cottage. The cat-faced clock, identical to the one her room, beside the fridge told her it was 5 am, two hours! Did I stand in front of the mirror for that long? She looked over at the window and saw the sun rising. Oh well, I guess I better hurry up and make breakfast before the kids wake up. Although it might sound strange, Alyssa had spent most of the last 7 years of her life alone, despite her beauty. Her father left her family to rot for another woman when she was only 6, forcing her mother to go into a state of depression and ignoring her only child; eventually dying a year later by throwing herself off a bridge, thinking only of her true love and how he left her. The townspeople all liked to joke about how her family was the living embodiment of King Arthurs, so when they called her the tragic princess when they thought she was out of earshot, Alyssa promised to herself that she never trust in true love or believe in storybooks ever again, even when new books magically showed up every year and the town would go crazy over it. Yet when the small orphanage on the edge of town offered her a home only days after her mother's tragic death, she -being only a child- accepted it. Now, 7 years later, Alyssa had lived in this small cottage across town for the past 6 months alone because the orphanage was too small to handle all the kids there so she gracefully accepted to move out. Of course, she would visit them every day and make as much food as she still could for every single one of them, being that's what she'd been doing ever since they took her in. Even if she lived half an hour away, that place was still her home, they were still her home. Forever and always. She started to prep the food she was making for the kids to eat for the day, which was a lot. Making food to last a whole day for twelve kids, teens to toddlers, took up a lot of time and effort but it didn't bother her. After doing all the prep and cooking she needed to for the day, Alyssa went back up to her room and got dressed in one of her favourite styles, with her signature simple blue dress with her hair down and pretty white heels. As the town clock tolled eight she grabbed all the containers of food, shoved them into her two backpacks, and ran over to the door. Time to go home.

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"Alyssa!" A little girl with bright red hair and lollipop pink eyes came running up to her and jumped onto her, "Whoa, careful Sara you're gonna make drop everything.", which wasn't much because when she left a few boys were 'walking by' her house at the time and offered to carry most everything for her, so she let them. Sara hugged her tight and Alyssa began to hear sniffles, "Sara? Is everything okay?" Sara looked up at her with tears in her eyes and shook her head. Alyssa motioned for the boys to go inside while she talked to Sara. "Why? What's the matter, Sara?"

"Big brother Zane and Alex are missing!"

"What! How?"

"Remember when they left to collect firewood last night,"

"Yeah…"

"Well, they never came home!"

"Oh my god…"

Zane…..Alex…..but how! The two of them are the most responsible boys I've ever met. You don't think that… You see, Alyssa lived in a very big town surrounded by woods that for the first few feet were luscious and green but after that was dark and menacing, like a warning to no not venture any further. No one ever steps foot in there because they say it's haunted. Any person who's ever actually dared to go through there disappeared, never to return. Occasionally, a few idiotic kids would venture too far in and never come back. And I know what you're thinking but this isn't Gavaldon. No, this town is called Marmora, named after its ginormous castle in the centre of town made completely out of marble and glass. Quite out of place for a small town filled with little cottages. Alyssa grabbed Sara by the shoulders and kneeled to eye level, "Sara I need you to do something for me"

The little girl in tears said through sniffles "Yes big sis?"

"You have to go inside and make sure you tell everyone that I'm going to go look for Zane and Alex and to wait at the clearance for them," Sara nodded weakly and ran inside the old building behind her. Zane and Alex where the only boys in her life that she truly trusted after her father left her in the dirt, she couldn't let them get hurt or disappear too. Alyssa ran around the rickety house and bolted into the bushels of green, further and further until she reached the clearing; one half a luscious grass and green leaves, the other a terrifying swamp of menacing purple trees and bushes. Usually, Zane and Alex collect their firewood here, so when the boys were collecting wood they must've ventured into the dark woods and gotten stuck or trapped or even hurt! I need to go find them before anything else lurking in that forest does!

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Alyssa peered into the swampy mess of the woods and started wondering if what she was doing was even a good idea; I should turn back, shouldn't I, she thought to herself. The boys probably aren't even here, maybe this was a mistake-

"HELP! SOMEBODY, PLEASE!"

A voice beyond the dark forest, Alex's. Without a second thought, Alyssa ran into the darkness trying to follow the distant voice of her friend screaming for aid. She couldn't see much when she first ran in because the humungous trees blocked most of the suns light from reaching the ground making it extremely dark but the longer she stayed, the more she could see outlines of trees, bushes, spiky flowers and fruits, yellow eyes that inched closer every time they blinked. She ran faster. She had to find her friends and get out, quick. As Alyssa followed the screams she could see splatters of purple gloop and what looked like….. Blood. The screams stopped. Alyssa's heart started to beat rapidly, was one of them hurt, or was something chasing them, or is it even their blood at all? She didn't have time to think and followed the splatters as quickly as she could, coming towards a lump of leaves on the ground, leaves? Ugh, seems it wasn't their blood at all. I don't have time to follow for whatever animal got hurt, I need to find Zane and Alex. She turned around and went in the direction she thought the scream came from when she heard a soft voice emerge from the leaves.

"help…someone…please"

Alyssa slowly turned around. "Alex?" She dropped to her knees and wiped all the mud and dirt off face. "Alex!", she bent down to hug him and saw a gash across his chest, "Oh my god, what did this to you? Where's Zane?"

"Zane he… the bird it…" His brown hair was messy and ruffled and his maroon eyes looked scared as if he saw the devil himself.

"Bird, what bird? It's fine. I'll find him, Alex, but you need to get back home. Can you walk?"

"ugh, kinda… but you have to get out of here…. it….took Zane"

Bird? Bone? Did the loss of blood make him delusional? "Alright I'll be careful," Alyssa assured him, "but you need to get to the clearing, the others will be there for you. Are you sure you don't need any help?"

"I'll be fine, just find him… and be…" Alex stopped short, horror in his eyes fixated on something in the sky coming towards them. Alyssa turned around to see what he was looking at and saw a small bird flying towards them "It's just a tiny bird, Alex. Why do you look so scared…" But as she looked closer she could see it was getting bigger as it came closer, Alyssa started to see gaps through its body of white as if it were made of bone. A bird made of bone? As the bird came closer and closer it got bigger and bigger, the two kids froze, fearing for their life. However, once the bird came right above them, it flew right past paying no mind to them on the ground below. Alyssa and Alex both let out a sigh of relief and Alyssa helped Alex up. "Try to get home safe, and I'll follow the bird to try and find Zane," Alyssa said.

"Alright," Alex said weakly "and please be careful if that thing gets you then- ALYSSA WATCH OUT!"

Alyssa shielded her ears as a blood-curdling screech ripped through the sky and she was lifted into the air in the talons of the bird who had just passed them. Alex tried to grab her but it was too late, he watched as the girl flew away screaming in the grasp of the bird of bone; just as he watched his best friend, Zane a few hours before.