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“Better get on with it, then,” a voice said as Rhian entered, barechested in black breeches, his hair wet. He glared at Japeth. “I told you I’d handle her.”
“And then you went for a bath,” said Japeth, “while she refuses to wear Mother’s dress.”
Sophie lost her breath. Not just because she had a storm of rage ready to unleash or because two brothers were dolling her up in their mother’s clothes, but because she’d never seen Rhian without his shirt before. Now as she looked at him, she saw his chest was just as ghost white as Japeth, while Rhian’s arms and face glowed a deep tan—the same tan that farmers in Gavaldon had after they wore shirts in the hot summer sun. Rhian saw her ogling him, and he gave her a cocked grin, as if he knew what she was thinking: even the tan had been part of the ruse to prevent anyone from seeing they were brothers, a ruse to make Rhian look like a golden Lion battling a cold-hearted Snake . . . when, in fact, the Lion and the Snake were perfect twins all along.
As Sophie stood there, taking in their matching smirks and sea-colored stares, she could feel a familiar fear—the same fear she’d felt when she kissed Rafal. No, this fear was sharper. She’d known who Rafal was. She’d chosen him for the wrong reasons. But she’d learned from her fairy tale. She’d fixed her mistakes . . . only to fall in love with an even worse villain. And this time, there wasn’t one of him, but two.
“Wonder what kind of mother could raise cowards like you,” Sophie snarled.
“Talk about my mother and I’ll rip out your heart,” the Snake spewed, launching for her—
Rhian held him back. “Last time. I’ll handle her.”
He pushed Japeth aside, leaving his brother stewing in the corner.
Rhian turned to Sophie, his eyes clear as glass.
“You think we’re the cowards? You were the one who said Tedros was a bad king. In fact, during the carriage ride to recruit the armies, you said I could do better. That you could do better. And here you are, acting as if you stood by your dear ‘Teddy’ all along.”
Sophie bared her teeth. “You set Tedros up. The Snake was your brother. You lied to me, you cockroach—”
“No,” the king slashed, hardening. “I didn’t lie. I never lied. Every single word has been the truth. I saved kingdoms from a ‘Snake,’ didn’t I? I pulled Excalibur from its stone. I passed my father’s test and for that, I am king, not that fool who failed his test again and again and again. Those are the facts. That speech I gave to the army in Camelot Hall: all of that was true too. It did take a Snake to bring forth the real Lion of Camelot. You loved me when I spoke those words then. You wanted to marry me—”
“I thought you were talking about Tedros!” Sophie screamed. “I thought he was the real Lion!”
“Another lie. In the carriage ride, I told you that Tedros had failed. That he’d lost the war for people’s hearts. That a real Lion would have known how to win. You heard me, Sophie, even if you don’t want to admit it. It’s why you fell in love with me. And now that everything I said would happen has indeed happened, you act as if I’m a villain because it isn’t exactly like you imagined. That’s cowardly.”
“I loved you because you pledged your loyalty to Tedros and Agatha!” Sophie fought. “I loved you because I thought you were a hero! Because you pretended to love me back!”
“Again. A lie. I never made such a pledge and I never said I loved you nor did you ask if I did,” said the king, moving towards her. “I have my brother. I have the bond of blood, which is forever. Love, on the other hand, is a figment. Look what it did to my father, to Tedros, to you—it made you foggy-eyed fools. So, no, I don’t love you, Sophie. You’re my queen for a reason deeper than love. A reason that makes me willing to risk having you by my side, despite your sympathy for an impostor king. A reason that will bond us more than love.”
“Bond? You think you and me can have a bond?” Sophie said, recoiling from him, knocking into a maid. “You’re a two-faced lunatic. You had your brother attack people so you could ride in to save them. You put a sword to my spine, you imprisoned my friends—”
“They’re still alive. Be thankful for that,” said Rhian, cornering her. “But right now, you’ve wedded your loyalty to the wrong king and the wrong queen. You’re blinded by friendship. Agatha and Tedros are not meant to rule the Woods. You and I are, and soon you will understand why.”
Sophie tried to move, but he took her damp palm in his. “In the meantime, if you behave and as long as it’s reasonable . . . ,” he said, softening, “the maids and cooks will grant any requests you have.”
“Then I request Tedros be freed,” Sophie spat at him.
Rhian paused. “I said ‘reasonable.’”
Sophie ripped her hand away. “If you are Arthur’s son, as you say you are, then Tedros is your brother—”
“Half-brother,” said the king coldly. “And who’s to say that’s true? Who’s to say he’s King Arthur’s son at all?”
Sophie gaped at him. “You can’t just mold the truth to fit your lies!”
“You think that Tedros shares our blood?” Japeth piped from the corner. “That whinging little tart? Unlikely. But maybe if you give Rhian an extra kiss tonight, he’ll poison the boy instead of chopping off his head.” He smiled at Sophie and flicked his tongue like a serpent.
“Enough, Japeth,” Rhian groused.
Sophie could see one of the maids shivering in the corner, head bowed. “I told the maids what you’ve done,” Sophie fumed. “They’ll tell the rest of the castle. They’ll tell everyone. That you’re no king. And that he’s no liege. That your brother’s the Snake. All of them know—”
“Do they?” the Snake asked, raising a brow at his brother.
“Doubtful,” said the Lion, turning to Sophie. “These were Agatha’s chambermaids, so their loyalty to me was questionable to begin with. Instead of letting them loose in the Woods, I gave them the choice between a swift death and serving me and my brother. Provided they endured one slight modification.”
Modification? Sophie couldn’t see their faces, but the five maids appeared healthy. No missing limbs or marks on their skin.
But then she saw the Snake’s eyes flash . . . that same insidious flash she’d witnessed whenever he’d done something especially Evil. . . .
Sophie looked closer at the maid nearest to her. And then she saw it. . . .
A long, thin scim sliding teasingly out of the maid’s ear, eely scales glinting in the lamplight, before it wedged right back in.
Nausea coated Sophie’s throat.
“Whatever you’ve told them fell upon deaf ears,” said Rhian. “And given that Japeth promised to restore them to their original condition only once they prove their loyalty to the new king, I’d doubt they’d listen to you anyway.”
He raised his finger towards the maids and the tip glowed bright gold. Responding to the signal, the maids quickly exited the room in a single-file line.
The same color as Tedros’ glow, Sophie thought, gazing at Rhian’s finger. But how? Only students at the school have fingerglows and he was never a student there—
As the last maid shuffled through the door, head down, the king suddenly barred her path. It was the maid Sophie had seen shaking in the corner.
“There was one maid whose ears we left alone, however. One who we wanted to hear every word,” said Rhian, hand on the maid’s neck. “One who required a different modification . . .”
He raised the maid’s head.
Sophie froze.
It was Guinevere.
A scim curled around the once-queen’s lips, sealing her mouth shut.
Guinevere gave Sophie a petrified stare, before Rhian guided her out with the others and closed the door.
Japeth’s gold-and-blue clothes magically sloughed away, returning to his shredded suit of black scims, his white chest showing through the holes. He stood next to his brother, their muscles rippling beneath the tawny lamps.
“She’s a queen!” Sophie gasped, sick to her stomach. “She’s Tedros’ mother!”
“And she treated our mother poorly,” said Japeth.
“So poorly it’s only fitting she watches us treat her son poorly too,” said Rhian. “Past is Present and Present is Past. The story goes round and round again. Didn’t they teach you that lesson in school?”
Their eyes danced between blue and green.
Our mother, Sophie thought.
Who was their mother?
Agatha had mentioned something . . . something about her former steward who they’d buried in Sherwood Forest . . . What was her name?
Sophie looked at the two boys watching her, with their twin torsos and reptile smiles, the new King and Liege of Camelot, and suddenly she didn’t care who their mother was. They’d jailed her friends, enslaved a real queen, and tricked her into being a false one. They’d forced her best friend to run and condemned Sophie to live as a stooge of the enemy. Her, the greatest witch in the Woods, who had nearly brought down the School for Good and Evil. Twice. And they thought she’d be their puppet?
“You forget that I’m Evil,” Sophie said to Rhian, her rage replaced by a chilly calm. “I know how to kill. And I’ll kill both of you without getting a spot of blood on my dress. So either you free me and my friends and return your crown to the rightful king or you’ll die here with your brother, squealing like whatever’s left of his slimy eel—”
Every last scim tore off Japeth and slammed Sophie against the wall, binding her like a fly in a web, her palms over her head, with another scim strangling her throat, one gagging her mouth, and two turning lethal sharp, poised to gouge out her eyes.
Wheezing in shock, Sophie saw Japeth leering at her, his scim-less, naked form concealed by the table.
“How about this as a compromise,” said Rhian, posing against the wall next to Sophie’s body. “Every time you behave badly, I’ll kill one of your friends. But if you do as I say and act the perfect queen . . . well, then I won’t kill them.”
“Sounds like a fair deal to me,” said the Snake.
“And besides, there are things we could do to you too,” Rhian said, his lips at Sophie’s ear. “Just ask the old wizard.”
Sophie muffled into her gag, desperate to know what they’d done to Merlin.
“But I don’t want to hurt you,” the king went on. “I told you. There’s a reason you’re my queen. A reason why you belong here. A reason why you have this story all wrong. A reason why your blood and ours are so inextricably linked . . .”
Rhian raised his hand to the two sharp scims pointed at Sophie’s pupils and took one of the scims into his hand. He twirled it on his fingertip like a tiny sword and stared right at his bound princess.
“Want to know what it is?”
His eyes sparkled dangerously.
Sophie screamed—
He stabbed the scim at her open palm and sliced across the flesh, opening up a shallow wound, which dripped small droplets of blood.
As Sophie watched in horror, the king cupped his hand beneath the wound and collected Sophie’s blood like rainwater.
Then he smiled at her.
“Because you’re the only person . . .”
He walked towards his brother.
“. . . in all of the Woods . . .”
He stopped in front of Japeth.
“. . . whose blood can do . . .”
He smeared Sophie’s blood across his brother’s chest.
“. . . this.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Sophie jolted.
Her blood had started to magically disperse across Japeth’s body in thin, shiny strands, branching and crisscrossing down his skin like a network of veins. The strands of blood deepened in color to a rich crimson and grew thicker, knotting into roped netting that sealed his body in. The ropes squeezed tighter, cutting into his skin like whips, deeper and deeper, until Japeth was corseted by Sophie’s blood, his flesh stretched raw. He clenched his whole body in agony, his muscles striating as he tilted his head back, mouth open in a choked scream. Then, all at once, the ropes binding him turned from red to black. Scales spread across them like a rash, as the ropes began to undulate and move with soft shrieks like baby eels, replicating across the gaps in his chalky flesh, scim after scim after scim until at last . . . Japeth stared back at her, his suit of snakes as strong and new as the first time Sophie had seen it.
There was no doubting what she’d just witnessed.
Her blood had restored him.
Her blood had restored a monster.
Her blood.
Sophie went limp under her own binds.
The Map Room was silent.
“See you at supper,” said the king.
He walked out the door.
The Snake followed his brother, but not before putting his mother’s dress on the table and giving Sophie a last glare of warning.
As he walked out the door, the scims flew off Sophie with piercing shrieks and chased after Japeth, the door slamming shut behind them.
Sophie was alone.
She stood amongst the torn wedding books, her hand still seeping blood.
Her mouth trembled.
Her lungs felt like they were caving in.
It had to have been a trick.
Another lie.
It had to be.
And yet, she’d seen it with her very own eyes.
It wasn’t a trick. It was real.
Sophie shook her head, tears rising.
How could something so hellish come from her?
She wanted this Snake dead in the worst possible way . . . and instead she’d restored him to life? After all she’d done to protect her friends from him? After all she’d done to change? And now she was the lifeblood of the worst kind of Evil?
Heat rushed to her face, a furnace of fear. A witch’s scream filled up her lungs, clawing at her throat. A scream that would kill everyone in this castle and crumble it to ash. She opened her mouth to unleash—
Then . . . she held it in.
Slowly she let the scream slither back into the recesses of her heart.
“Past is Present and Present is Past.”
That’s what the new king said.
That’s why he was always one step ahead: because he knew people’s pasts . . .
And Sophie’s past was Evil.
Evil that for so long had been her weapon.
Evil that was the only way she knew how to fight back.
But Rhian was too smart for that.
You can’t beat Evil with Evil.
Maybe to win a battle, but not the war.
And no matter what, she would win this war. For Agatha. For Tedros. For her friends.
But to win, she needed answers. She needed to know who the Lion and the Snake really were. And why her blood had melded magically with theirs . . .
Until she found those answers, she’d have to bide her time.
She’d have to be smart. And she’d have to be careful.
Sophie gazed at the white dress on the table, her lips curling.
Oh, yes.
There were other ways to be a witch.
AGATHA
New Alliances
After leaving Avalon, Agatha planned to sneak into a neighboring kingdom and find food and a place to sleep. She needed time to think about the Lady of the Lake’s strange drawing . . . time to stash a crystal ball that was weighing her down . . . time to plot her next moves. . . .
That all changed when she got to Gillikin.
It was past twilight when Agatha crossed into the Ever kingdom, home to the Emerald City of Oz. She’d snuck in on a wheelcart of visitors from Ginnymill who’d come traveling up the coast (Agatha stowed herself under their luggage). By the time they reached the yellow brick road on the outskirts of Emerald City and dismounted in a market jammed with noisy tourists, the sky was dark enough for Agatha to slip out and blend into the crowd.
A week ago, Agatha had read reports of Gillikin plagued by the Snake’s attacks—fairy-eating wasps, carriage bombs, and rogue nymphs—that paralyzed the kingdom. The Fairy Queen of Gillikin and the Wizard of Oz, once rivals vying for power, had been forced into a truce, both appealing to Tedros of Camelot for help. Now, with the Snake supposedly dead at Rhian’s hands, Gillikin had pledged its alliance to Camelot’s new king and its thoroughfares bustled once more, the people of the Woods no longer afraid to go about their lives.
Agatha had chosen to come to Gillikin for a few reasons: first, because it was the nearest Ever kingdom to Avalon and home to the invisible fairies who had once sheltered her from the School Master’s zombies; and more importantly, because it was a melting pot of immigrants from all over the Woods, determined to find their way into Emerald City and win an audience with the wizard. Among such a motley mob, Agatha figured she was bound to suss out news of Camelot, as well as of Tedros and her friends. At the same time, with so many people clogging the yellow streets, clamoring for a coveted “green ticket” into Emerald City (either you won one by lottery or you scalped one from a dodgy vendor), Agatha assumed she’d go unnoticed.
Which turned out to be a mistake.
Everywhere she looked, there were WANTED posters in different languages fixed to the market stalls, glowing in the torchlight—
As the wizard only granted a few meetings a day, the search for Agatha had become a manic treasure hunt. Vendors hawked magical “Agatha-Vision” goggles to spot her, luminescent Lion lassos to capture her, Tedros voice boxes that emitted the prince’s voice to bait her, faux-crystal balls to track her, even maps of Gillikin with notations where Agatha had supposedly been spotted.
“If I meet the wizard, I’m gonna ask him for a new leg,” Agatha overheard a limping boy tell a scraggly vendor as he bought one of the maps. Agatha lingered behind the boy, six or seven years old, as he unfurled the parchment and scanned the tiny cartoon Agathas with witchy hair and gnashed teeth, dotted around the map. The boy looked up. “You sure you saw her?”
“Came and bought a map from me,” said the vendor, smiling, “just like you.”
“Then why didn’t you catch her yourself?” the boy asked.
The vendor’s smile flattened. “Uh, well, because I didn’t have a Lion lasso like this one here!”
The boy peered at him skeptically . . . then started counting coins from his pocket.
Overhead, glittery floodlights scanned the crowds, projected by clouds of invisible fairies joining the hunt, the same fairies who’d once protected Agatha from Evil and now sought to deliver her back to it. The iridescent spotlights flushed across the market, about to light up her face—
Agatha dove behind a stall, crashing into a pine hedge and landing hard on the bag carrying Dovey’s crystal ball. Cursing silently, she picked pine needles out of her chin, listening to the din of the market: the conversation in languages she didn’t recognize . . . the sizzle of food carts selling “wizard” burgers (gold-dusted patties in green palm leaves) and “fairy” creams (hot buttermilk with sparkle-foam) . . . the sharp voice of a stall barker, drifting over the crowd: “Step right up! Gilly’s Ticket Hub! Best price on tickets in the Woods! Emerald City passes! Caves of Contempo tours! Fairy flights to Beauty and the Feast! Reservations available tonight! Step right up! Come to Gilly’s!”
As Agatha lumbered to her feet, she saw that the stall she’d crashed behind was selling both Wizard of Oz merchandise and King Rhian memorabilia in tribute to the new alliance, the shop packed with tourists waving bags of coins at the three vendors frantically dispensing Lion mugs, shirts, masks, bags, and candy.
“But I thought Agatha and Tedros were Good,” said a young girl to her mother, who was jostling in the crowd, trying to buy a cheap gold pen that resembled the Storian. Only it wasn’t meant to be the Storian, Agatha realized, because engraved in the gold surface was the word . . . LIONSMANE.
Lionsmane? Agatha peered closer at it. What’s that?
“You used to tell me Agatha and Tedros’ fairy tale every night before bed,” the young girl was badgering her mother, “and they ended as king and queen, remember? That was their Ever After—”
“Well, turns out Agatha and Tedros were only pretending to be king and queen, while the real king was out here in the Woods,” her mother assured. “King Rhian killed the Snake, while Tedros did nothing. King Rhian is the leader of Good now. And Sophie will be his queen.”
“He’s the leader of Evil too,” rasped a black-cloaked hag near them, who was also waiting to buy one of the gold pens. “That’s why he’s marrying Sophie. To bring us all together. Rhian is king of the whole Woods now. And Lionsmane will make sure you never hear a fake fairy tale like Agatha’s again. King Rhian’s pen is going to tell real stories.” She grinned toothlessly at the little girl. “Might even write yours.”
Rhian’s pen? Agatha thought, bewildered.
The young girl blinked between her mother and the hag.
“But why does King Rhian have to kill Tedros?” she asked. “And why does he have to kill him at his wedding to Sophie?”
Agatha’s stomach wrenched so hard she felt it in her throat.
Tedros killed at Rhian and Sophie’s—
Impossible. They couldn’t kill King Arthur’s son at a royal wedding. It could never happen. Sophie would never let it happen. Sophie would protect Tedros . . . She’d plot against Rhian from inside the castle . . . She’d never marry that monster!
Agatha tensed. Or now that Sophie was about to be Queen of Camelot, worshipped by the entire Woods, would she suddenly turn back into—
Don’t be stupid, Agatha scoffed. She’d seen Sophie’s face when Rhian had trapped her at swordpoint. This wasn’t the old Sophie, who’d betrayed her best friends for love. This time, they were all on the same team against a fake king.
A fake king who was planning to kill the real one.
Agatha expected to feel a rush of panic—
But instead a sense of calm came over her.
If she didn’t find a way to get to Tedros, he would die in the worst possible way.
There was no time for helplessness.
Her prince needed her.
She slipped out from behind the stall, past the distracted vendors, and deftly stole a hooded shirt with Rhian’s face on it as the crowd jostled for Lion merchandise. Pulling the hood low over her head, she wove her way through the wall of shoppers, the bag with Dovey’s ball tight against her shoulder as she headed towards the blinking stall in the distance.
She passed more booths thronged with people buying phony Agatha hunting gear, while she hustled past, puffing out Rhian’s face on her chest, pretending she was his biggest fan. She was approaching Gilly’s now, the barker’s voice growing louder: “Step right up! Best tickets in tow—”
Something collided with her.
Agatha looked up to see two hulking green hobgoblins in Agatha-Vision goggles, toting full bags of Lion souvenirs. They gaped at her through their goggles . . . then slowly lowered them.
“Gaboo Agatha gabber,” said the first goblin.