The first thing Sofia did when entering Royal Prep again was trip over her brother.

"Gah!" she said reflexively, windmilling her arms and just barely managing to keep her balance. James wasn't so lucky. The short prince lost his footing, hitting the ground, arms first.

"Ow," he groaned, slowly pushing himself back up.

"James!" exclaimed Sofia. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay, Sof," said James, getting to his feet. His eyes met Sofia's, lighting up in sudden recognition. "Sofin! You're okay!" He pulled his sibling into a big hug, Sofia returning the embrace. "I was so scared when you got carried away by that bird."

Sofia pulled away, smiling. "She was actually really friendly," explained the princess. She lightly poked her elder brother. "And I didn't know the mighty prince James got 'scared'."

"Scared?" defended James. "I didn't say scared, I said…worried! I was really worried when you got carried off by that bird. That's what I meant. I don't get scared."

Laughing, Sofia took James's hand in her own. "I'm just happy to see you again," she admitted. "How did you get down from the clock tower?"

"Well," declared James, "after the machine broke, I heroically jumped down from the tower and chased after you, as soon as I could!"

Sofia gave him a look.

James smiled sheepishly and put one hand behind his head. "Okay, I sorta cowered in the tower for a couple minutes before remembering that magic spell you used to float up there in the first place. That's how I got back down. What happened to you, though?"

Sofia opened her mouth, then suddenly remembered she had promised Samuel and Damien she wouldn't tell anyone about them. And a broken promise could never be undone. How was she supposed to explain everything to James without talking about that?

"Kalasi carried me to—" she began.

"Kalasi?" interrupted James.

"That's the thunderbird's name," explained Sofia. "She carried me to a clearing in the forest, and, um, I eventually figured out that we need to get the Orb of Winds from the—"

"The Orb of Winds?" interjected James again, confused.

Sofia bit back a wince. She was horrible at hiding details. "The energy artifact that Flora was supposed to bring to magic class. It's called the Orb of Winds, since whoever has it can control the wind, or something like that."

"Cool," responded James, "but why do we need to get it? And how do you know all this?"

Sofia looked from side to side, searching for an answer. She didn't want to break her promise to the sorcerers she had met in the woods, but she really didn't want to lie to James, her elder brother and best friend. What was more important? Keeping a promise to someone she'd just met, or telling the truth to her brother, who'd stood by her side ever since she had first come to the castle?

Sofia sighed, knowing it was the wrong thing to do but not seeing any other choice. "I can tell you," she said, "but first, you need to promise to keep it secret. I'm not even supposed to tell you."

"I promise," agreed James without hesitating.

Sofia looked down. "I met two sorcerers at the clearing in the forest," she admitted, breaking the promise she'd made to them. Her eyes drifted to the Amulet of Avalor, and she half-expected it to glow with the telltale sign of a new curse. But the gem remained unlit.

"Sorcerers?" echoed James, wide-eyed. "What were they there for?"

"They're from the far-off land of Mistavar," continued Sofia. "And apparently the Orb of Winds used to belong to them, a long time ago. They eventually tracked it to Royal Prep, and they sent Kalasi—the thunderbird—to try to retrieve the orb. She doesn't actually want to hurt any of the students, which is why she caught me. I talked to the sorcerers, and they said as long as I get them the Orb of Winds, they'll stop attacking the school. So now Kalasi has stopped crashing into the barrier—see, no thumps—and all I need to do is get the orb for them. They're good people, I know."

James looked at her, his jaw having fallen open sometime in the middle of his speech. He closed his mouth, shook his head twice, and said, "Sofin, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"It is?" questioned Sofia.

"Of course it is!" exclaimed James. "How do you know the Orb of Whatchamacallit really belongs to those guys, anyways? I bet they're just trying to get your trust so you give them the all-powerful energy artifact, cause that barrier stopped them. They tried to hit the school with that lightning bird of theirs! Good people don't do that. They didn't even try asking for the orb." He stepped up to Sofia, looking her in the eyes. "They almost hurt you," he said. "And that's not something good people do."

Sofia broke eye contact, turning away to stare at a window overlooking the forest. How was she supposed to explain to James how distraught Damien had been when he was talking about the Orb of Winds? How was she supposed to explain how Kalasi had saved her and carried her carefully to safety? How was she supposed to explain that Samael and Damien had trusted her as their only hope? She couldn't let them down. James was wrong. She was going to find that orb and give it to them, whatever it took.

"I say you take us to where those sorcerers are hiding and we drive them out of this school!" James finished, triumphant.

"No!" exclaimed Sofia, horrified. This was just what Samael had warned her about. "We need to get the Orb of Winds!"

"To give to those sorcerers? No way," demanded James.

"No, we need the Orb of Winds, to, to…" Sofia scrambled for an excuse. "To use against the sorcerers! Once they realize we figured out their plan, they're gonna come back to attack the school again, aren't they? And if we can't fight a huge thunderbird, we definitely can't fight a huge thunderbird and two sorcerers. We need something powerful to use against them. Like an artifact that can control wind."

James's eyes lit up. "Nice thinking, Sof! We can blast those sorcerers all the way back to the kingdom they came from. Come on, let's go tell the rest of the other kids." He grabbed Sofia's arm and started walking back towards the magic classroom, dragging his younger sibling along.

Sofia breathed an internal sigh of relief. James was going with the haphazard plan she'd made up. She just needed to get the orb, then slip away at the right moment to give it back to Samael and Damien. Then James would see they really weren't evil. All she had to do was lie to James up to that point, pretending she wanted to use the orb against the sorcerers. A tiny twinge of guilt settled somewhere in Sofia's stomach. She hadn't wanted to break her promise or lie to James, and here she was, doing both. But it wasn't like she had a choice.

James kept his grip on Sofia's arm all the way until they reached the magic classroom, whose door was open. Sofia stepped inside to a chorus of relieved gasps and 'You're back!'s.

Amber stepped forward from the crowd, wearing Sofia's magiocules around her eyes. "Oh Sofin, you made it back!" she exclaimed happily. "And you too, James."

James gave a smug grin. "Amber, happy to see me?" he said, sarcastically. "You must've been really worried."

The taller princess gently smacked him on the arm. "Not too happy," she admonished. "Where have you two been? What's going on?"

"It's a long story," said James, "and I dunno if we've got a lot of time to explain. But we're safe now, the fairies are holding together a barrier, and we need to find the energy artifact Flora was talking about at the start of class. Does anyone know where the school's storage room is?"

His question was met with a wave of muttered 'No's and much shaking of heads. Amber frowned. "I didn't know our school had a storage room at all, now that you mention it."

"Darn," said James. "I was hoping you would."

"It's okay," interjected Sofia, an idea springing to mind. "If it's where the school stores all the magical items, that place is probably brimming with magic. I bet we can find it with the magiocules."

James gasped. "Great idea, Sof," he said, and without even asking his twin, reached over and pulled the magiocules right off her face.

"Ow!" yelled Amber in protest, rubbing a red spot behind her ears. "That hurt, James!"

Sofia wasn't looking at the exchange too much, as she was busy searching through the crowd of students for a familiar face. "Where's Charlene, anyways?" she asked, not spying the brown-haired cheerleader anywhere. "Isn't she supposed to be the one with the magiocules?"

"You were gone for so long that she got impatient and went to look for you," explained Amber. "It was only a couple of minutes ago, but I have no idea where she is now. At least the thumps have stopped."

"If all goes well, they won't come back," said Sofia. "We'll just have to find Charlene after we get the orb. Thanks, Amber." She turned to leave, James right behind her, magiocules in hand.

"Wait!" interjected Amber. "Isn't there anything I can do to help? Sitting in this classroom does get a little tiring after a few minutes."

"You can tell the professors what's going on," suggested James before Sofia could interrupt. "I bet Professor Velova will have some ideas of what to do. Just tell her we're taking the energy artifact and using it to fight off two sorcerers and their giant thunderbird."

"Thunderbird?" gasped Amber. The students broke into worried whispers.

"It's friendly!" added Sofia, but that didn't seem to calm anyone down. She sighed, turning back to James. "Let's just get out of here and find that orb," she said, taking the magiocules from her brother's grip and putting them across her eyes.

"Yep," agreed James. The two of them stepped out into the hallway, Sofia blinking to adjust to the strange sight of seeing magic again. It was much less thick outside of the classroom, though the tendrils of light still danced in dozens of wispy threads through the open air.

"Whatcha see?" asked James.

"It's…really bright," answered Sofia, looking through the lenses of the magiocules. It was tough to make out anything that looked more magical when the magic was already everywhere. She tried squinting, to block out most of the light, and to her surprise, that seemed to work. There was one patch in her vision that stood out as a lot brighter, and thus more magic-filled, than anywhere else.

"This way," announced Sofia, taking a few steps towards the light before accidentally stepping face-first into a wall. "Oof," she said, prying herself off. "I can't see too well if I'm trying to track the light."

"I'll guide you," said James. He took both of Sofia's hands in his own, stepping in front of her to lead the way. "Which way is it?"

Sofia pointed at the bright spot in her vision, and this time James carefully led her around the wall, down a twisting series of hallways and even down a flight of stairs to the school's basement until they finally found where the most magic was concentrated. At this point, the light was so concentrated that Sofia didn't even have her eyes open at all: she could still see the blurry white light with her eyes closed. It was like looking at a second sun.

"Where to next?" asked James again, and Sofia pointed once more towards the glowing circle of magic.

James stopped. "Sofia, that's a wall."

"Huh?" said Sofia, carefully removing the magiocules and then opening her eyes. James was right. She was pointing directly at a wall. "Maybe we should go around it?" she suggested.

"We just did," said James. "We went in a circle. There's no entrance anywhere. I'm pretty sure it's just a wall."

Sofia narrowed her eyes. "Maybe it's some sort of secret door," she guessed. She tried putting her hands against the wall and pushing, but nothing seemed to give.

"Weird," said James. "Hey, can you pass me the magiocules? I wanna try looking."

Sofia handed them over. "Be careful," she warned. "It's really bright, now that we're this close. Keep your eyes closed when you wear them and only open your eyes if you're looking away."

"Got it," assured James. He put on the goggles, keeping his eyes closed, and then, to Sofia's surprise, pulled out a pair of sunglasses from his school bag, putting them over the goggles. James opened his eyes carefully, then looked at the wall, grinning in delight.

"It works!" said James, excited. "The sunglasses block out most of the light, so I can still see." He traced a finger along the edge of the wall. "Hey there are words here!"

"Really?" said Sofia.

"Mhm," confirmed James. "Uh…lemme see… 'Tall I am young, short I am old. With life I glow, wind is my foe'." He stepped back with a huff. "Only the fairies would make the entrance to a secret room a riddle."

Sofia tilted her head to one side, thinking, then looked around the hallway for clues. She spied an old oaken table nearby with a lit candle on top, and gasped. "A candle, James! That must be it!"

"Huh?" said her older brother, not following.

Sofia pranced over to the table and lifted the candleholder up. "The answer to the riddle is a candle, James," she explained. "When a candle is young, it's really tall, and when it's old, it gets short because it burns out. And candles glow with life and get snuffed out in the wind."

James scratched his head. "Candles get smaller as they grow older?"

"Well, the ones in the castle are enchanted, so they stay the same height," said Sofia. "But normal candles, like the ones back in the village, melt if they've been burning for a long time." She blinked. "I guess the fairies made a puzzle that royal princes and princesses wouldn't be able to solve."

James shrugged. "I guess so," he agreed. "But what are we supposed to do with the candle?"

That question answered itself, as Sofia lifted the lit candle to the wall and it suddenly shimmered away, disappearing into thin air right before their eyes. The two royals gasped at once, watching the real wall suddenly fade away as if by magic. Actually, it was definitely magic.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" said James, excited. "C'mon, let's go!" He dashed into the secret room, Sofia right beside him. When they entered and Sofia could finally see the entirety of the storage room, both of the royals' jaws dropped open in sync, flabbergasted.

The storage room was way bigger on the inside than the walls had made it appear. Hidden in the school was a veritable treasure trove of books, scrolls, artifacts, and all things magic. The ceiling must have been more than thirty feet up, and every inch of the circular-shaped room was filled with trinkets and trifles and mystical objects. Sofia could see wands of all shapes and sizes and potions in triangle-shaped flasks and grimoires glowing with light and tomes and spellbooks and staffs and bottles and amulets and jugs and shining armor and flying carpets and circlets and cloaks and gems and elixirs and mirrors and a million other enchanted objects.

"Woah," breathed James, surveying the packed room. "This place is awesome! I wonder what all these things do?"

"No time for all that," remarked Sofia sadly. She wanted to play with all the magical trinkets too. "We need to find the Orb of Winds."

James looked to her, frustrated. "How?" he asked. "This place is huge! There's no way we're gonna find one orb. And everything in here pulses with magic. It's like finding a needle in a stack of needles."

Sofia gasped. "James, you're a genius!"

"I am?" said James.

"Yes!" exclaimed Sofia. "You said everything around here has magic in it. But that's not true! Remember what Miss Fauna said, at the start of class earlier today? Energy and magic are two different things. And even though magical artifacts are rare, artifacts made of energy are really super-duper rare!"

James blinked, not quite following. "How does that help us?"

"Because," finished Sofia, "the Orb of Winds is an energy artifact. It doesn't have any magic at all! All we need to do is wear the magiocules and look for the one spot that isn't filled with light."

James's eyes lit up in realization. "'Cause that's where there isn't any magic, so there must be energy!" He looked up at the dizzying array of magical objects before them, spinning around twice in a circle before spying something, two dozen feet up high on a shelf. "Right there!" he said, pointing. "There's no magic at all in that spot!"

Sofia looked hard, and sure enough, there seemed to be an orb-shaped object near where James was pointing, though it was hard to tell from this far away and from the glow of everything else. "Nice spot, James!" she praised. "But how can we get all the way up there?"

James laughed. "Did you forget already? You've got that floating spell!"

Sofia blinked in surprise. "Oh, right! I really did forget," she giggled.

James held out his wand. "Hold this so I can grab the orb with both hands."

Sofia grabbed it from James's hands and stuffed it into her pocket, then readied her own wand and cast the spell on James. "Floaticus Haver Aboon!"

With a well-aimed leap, James reached the height of the orb and swooped it from the shelf, carefully avoiding hitting anything else stacked on the high shelves. He floated back to the ground, holding the orb above his head triumphantly. Now that it was right in front of her, Sofia knew it must have been what they were looking for. Just like the Heart of Atlantis, the other energy artifact she'd seen, the Orb of Winds pulsed with a strange, otherworldly green light. It was about the size of a globe, small enough to comfortably carry but not so small that it would be easily lost. It was a silver-colored metallic structure, and along its ridges and grooves Sofia could spy buttons and mechanisms that looked like they were supposed to be turned. Flashes of light flowed up and down cracks in the orb's metallic surface, illuminating the space around Sofia and James. With a triumphant smirk, James stepped out of the secret storage room and into the castle hallway, and Sofia followed.

"Alright, now we've got the orb," said Sofia, once they were both safely out of the storage room. She put the lit candleholder back onto its place on the oak table, and the wall concealing the entrance to the room shimmered back to life. "What next?"

"Well," said James as they walked together, "We've gotta figure out what this thing does and use it against those evil sorcerers!" They reached the stairwell coming out of the basement, the only one in the whole school, and started climbing the stairs, Sofia in the lead.

"Oh," said Sofia, looking away. "Right." She'd been lying to James, the whole time, that her plan had been to use the Orb of Winds against Samael and Damien. But the truth was, Sofia knew the orb really did belong to them. She just had to give it back. Guilt twisted somewhere in Sofia's stomach, but she tried her best to force it back down.

"Hey, James, can I borrow that orb for a second?" asked Sofia.

"Sure," agreed James. "Let me just figure out what this one button does, first." He paused on the staircase and pressed a button near the side of the orb. The construct suddenly froze in place and parts of the artifact shifted, revealing gaps in the elaborate machinery. Then, the Orb of Winds began to rumble ominously. James and Sofia locked eyes, both of them realizing at the same time that they might have made a huge mistake. The artifact whirred and hummed as if it was slowly building up pressure, and the stairwell around them started shaking.

"Run!" yelled James, dropping the orb, but it stayed firmly in midair, still whirring. The two siblings bolted at once, Sofia racing up the stairs to the ground floor and James running back down to the basement. The second Sofia made the last step onto the ground floor, the stairwell behind them collapsed all at once, crumbing under the force of the huge gusts of wind that had come out of the orb, straight downwards. Propelled by its own momentum, the Orb of Winds flew into the air, and Sofia caught it, at the top of the stairwell.

"James?" called Sofia, looking down towards the collapsed staircase in fear. James had run the other way, down the staircase. Was he okay? She couldn't see anything through the dust from the parts of the stairwell that had broken and fallen apart.

"Sofia?" called an equally worried voice from somewhere below. "You okay?"

Sofia breathed a silent sigh of relief. "I'm okay!" she shouted back. "And I've got the orb."

"Great!" said James from the bottom of the stairwell. The dust cleared, revealing the Enchancian prince standing at the bottom, covered in dust but unharmed. He looked at the remains of the collapsed wooden staircase. "Thank goodness, I got really scared—worried, I got really worried—when that thing went off. Never pressing that button again. At least it's just the staircase which broke. That's not a problem. You can just cast that floating spell and I can jump out of here." He looked up at Sofia expectantly.

Sofia looked back down at him without saying a word, clutching the orb in both hands, her heart churning with guilt.

"Uh, Sof?" he said, awkwardly. He patted his empty pockets. "I sorta gave you my wand. And this is the only way back up to the ground floor. You need to cast the spell on me."

Sofia stayed silent.

"Sofin?" repeated James.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, quietly.

James's smile faded away. "Sofin? You're going to help me out, right?"

Sofia's legs trembled and her hands shook. A tear began to form at the corner of her eye.

"Don't tell me you're planning on giving those sorcerers the Orb of Winds!" realized James, horrified. "Sofin, you can't!"

Sofia shut her eyes—she couldn't bear to watch any longer—and turned away, running as fast away from James as she could.

"Sofin!" came her brother's panicked shout from somewhere behind her. "Sofin, don't leave me here!"

Sofia clutched the Orb of Winds tightly to her chest and ran, tears streaming down her cheeks, not looking back.