First published in the United States of America by HarperCollins Publishers in 2020

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

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Text copyright © Soman Chainani 2020

Illustrations copyright © Iacopo Bruno 2020

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Source ISBN: 9780008292232

Ebook Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008292249

Version: 2020-05-13

For all the Readers, Good & Evil

IN THE FOREST PRIMEVAL

A SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL

TWO TOWERS LIKE TWIN HEADS

ONE FOR THE PURE

ONE FOR THE WICKED

TRY TO ESCAPE YOU’LL ALWAYS FAIL

THE ONLY WAY OUT IS

THROUGH A FAIRY TALE

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

1. The Coven: Bad Candy

2. Sophie: The Girl with No Past

3. Tedros: Secret School

4. The Storian: Altar and Grail

5. Agatha: A Snow of Scrolls

6. Sophie: Good Little Girl

7. Tedros: Mahameep

8. Agatha: Wizard Wish

9. The Coven: The Cave at Two O’Clock

10. Agatha: Think Like Me

11. Sophie: Vault 41

12. Sophie: Back to the Beginning

13. Tedros: Pride and Princess

14. Agatha: Fatima Finds a Friend

15. Sophie: Trust Is the Way

16. The Coven: The Knights of Eleven

17. Agatha: Never Trust a Princess

18. Sophie: Love. Purpose. Food.

19. Tedros: Secret Weapon

20. Agatha: Conversations with Friends

21. Agatha: The Second Half of the Plan

22. Tedros: Snake Eyes

23. Agatha: Flesh and Blood

24. The Storian: The Agatha Quartet

25. Tedros: Game of Swords

26. Sophie: Don’t Talk to Strangers

27. Tedros: Ask the Lady

28. Sophie: Beasts and Beauty

29. Agatha: Chateau Sugar East

30. Agatha: The Sword and the Lion

31. Merlin: Return to Ender’s Forest

32. The Storian: Samsara

Keep Reading . . .

About the Author

Read the full series

About the Publisher

1
THE COVEN
Bad Candy

Some stories are spoiled from the very beginning.

Some stories are rotten to the core.

Like the one that killed her mother, Hester thought, as she hustled through the dark forest. Her mother was minding her own business in her candied house, when two young vandals ate through her roof. Alone in her crib, Hester had woken from a nap and stared into the faces of two ogreish children, fat cheeks slathered in candy and crumbs. They’d taken one look at the baby they’d just orphaned and fled like cowards, leaving a family and home broken. And they’d been rewarded for it, hailed as heroes and legends, while her mother burned in an oven. Ever since that day, whenever Hester sensed an injustice, a story gone wrong, she smelled the sick, sour rot of candy.

Just as she smelled it now.

The story in question was a short one, a statement of simple fact, but Hester’s whole body bristled, like a cat amongst snakes. She didn’t know how long it had been up there, high over the Endless Woods. But after days of traveling underground from Gnomeland, Lionsmane’s message was waiting when she’d resurfaced.

The wedding of King Rhian and Princess Sophie will take place as scheduled, this Saturday, at sundown, at Camelot castle. All citizens of the Woods are invited to attend.

It was penned in gold like King Rhian’s other messages, set against the clouds. Rhian was a proven liar and every one of his screeds a trap. But this message had none of the pomp of his others. This was stark and simple . . . yet slithery in a way she couldn’t put a finger on. . . .

A shadow appeared at her side.

“This is stupid, Hester. We need to turn back now,” said Anadil in a black hood that shadowed her white hair and red eyes. “Sophie’s betrayed us. She’s marrying Rhian at sundown. Tonight. That’s what the message says. And the sun’s going fast. Either we get back to Camelot and stop this wedding or we all die.”

Hester ignored her, spotting the lights of Borna Coric ahead. Once she and her friends entered this new kingdom, they’d need to be careful. Like all citizens of the Woods, those of Borna Coric would be hunting students from the School for Good and Evil.

A second shadow flanked her—

“Ani’s right,” said Dot, also hooded in black. “Plus, there’s no way we’ll get inside those caves: it’s impossible. But if we turn back now, we can sneak onto a Flowerground train from Ravenbow. It can take us back to Camelot in time to stop the wedding—”

“And leave Merlin?” Hester said. “That was the assignment Reaper gave us. Rescue the wizard from the Caves of Contempo. Rescue our best weapon. A wedding is not our mission. Sophie is not our mission. Merlin is our mission. And if there’s one thing our coven abides by, it’s doing as we promised.”

She powered forward, but Anadil blocked her path.

“Our promise is pointless if Rhian becomes the One True King!” said the pale witch. “He needs two things. Make all hundred kingdoms burn their rings. And marry Sophie as his queen. Do both and he claims the Storian’s powers. If the wedding is at sundown, that means all the rings are already gone! Rhian marrying Sophie is the last step. That’s what Sophie told us in Gnomeland. Once she’s Rhian’s queen, Lionsmane will become the new Storian. Rhian can write anything he wants and make it come true! He can erase kingdoms, kill our friends, kill us with a penstroke! Our story will be over—”

“All the rings can’t be gone because Nottingham still has a ring. Dot’s father has a ring,” Hester noted coldly. “And the Sheriff wouldn’t burn his ring for King Rhian. Hates him more than we do. Even if the Sheriff were to die, his ring would go to Dot. And we’ll go to the ends of the earth to protect Dot and that ring. Just like we’re going to do for Merlin.” Hester shoved past them, pulling her hood tighter.

“Don’t you get it? Sophie’s marrying him!” Anadil said. “Either to save herself or to be Camelot’s queen—”

“You really think Sophie would marry Rhian?” Hester challenged. “After helping us escape him?”

“That’s what Rhian wrote!” Dot argued. “That’s what his story says!”

“His story,” said Hester, glaring at the sky. “There’s something fishy about that message. And until I figure out what it is, we’re sticking to our plan. Besides, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Sophie, it’s that she’s a better witch than all of us. I’m sure she has the king right where she wants him.”

“Hester, the sun will set within the hour—” Anadil hounded.

“More reason to find Merlin fast. He’s our best chance to defeat Rhian. That’s why Rhian trapped him in the caves.”

“Then why didn’t he just kill Merlin? For all we know Merlin’s already dead or used his Wizard Wish and this is a wild goose chase to get us killed too.”

“Wizard Wish?” said Dot. “Is that the wish you make in Aladdin’s cave?”

“That’s a Genie’s Wish, you idiot. No wonder you failed Lesso’s class,” said Anadil. “Wizards all have one wish. They use their Wizard Wish to choose how and when to die—”

“And no way Merlin would have used his wish while we’re still in danger,” Hester scorned, approaching the gates of Borna Coric. “Merlin’s out there. And he needs our help.”

“You’re not thinking, Hester. Let’s say he is in those caves,” Anadil granted. “Caves of Contempo are time traps. Even a few seconds inside and you come out years older. Merlin’s been in there for weeks.”

“Go back without me, then,” Hester dared, crossing through the gates—

She stopped short.

So did Anadil and Dot.

The forest floor had disappeared, replaced by the sky instead. No longer were the witches on a dirt path: they were standing on the sunset, a canvas of purple and pink. Lionsmane’s message had moved from high above to down by their feet, paving the way ahead. Each gold letter was the size of a house, carved into the horizon beneath their boots, the announcement of King Rhian’s wedding become the new path. As the witches inched across it, confused into silence, Hester smelled bad candy again, her eyes cast downwards, searching Rhian’s words for the rot at their core. . . .

“Hester?” Dot said, gaping upwards.

Hester blinked.

It wasn’t just the sky that had turned upside down.

The whole kingdom of Borna Coric was upside down.

She’d known of this topsy-turvy land, where the world swung on its head, but it was quite another thing to see it in real life. Here, the earth was high up in the sky, a ceiling of dirt, and the sky was anchored where the ground should be. Purple beanstalks sprouted downwards from this roof of earth, stretching towards the flat floor of clouds.

Capsized cottages nestled along the beanstalks, the dwellers inside also inverted, together with their furniture and belongings, freed from the laws of gravity. Purple vine ladders and pulleys connected the beanstalks like roads, with a toppled bridge of flowers linking the village to the main square. The witches moved towards this busy arena with levels of overturned shops built between huge upside-down statues. Royal statues, Hester saw now, the stone heads of Borna Coric’s king and queen and their children moored to the skyfloor, the statues’ feet reaching high over the kingdom. Up close, Hester noticed the king’s and queen’s sculpted faces looked oddly young. Almost as young as their children.

“Creepy,” Anadil murmured. As people bustled above, wrong side up, the two witches stayed hidden in the statues’ shadows. “People are going to notice us, Hester. We’re the only ones with our heads on straight. Plus, the caves are supposed to be surrounded by a poisonous sea. I don’t see water, let alone a sea, do you?”

“Must be behind all this,” Hester said on tiptoes, glimpsing nothing but more shops and statues ahead. “We have to sneak through without anyone recognizing us.”

“And then cross a poisonous sea that we can’t even find,” Anadil added. “Not to mention trespass into cursed caves.”

“If you had your rats to scout, you’d be useful instead of a ball and chain,” said Hester.

“One is dead. One is missing. The other found Merlin and told Dovey where he is. My rat is the reason we’re here. So who’s the useful one?” Ani snapped back.

But Hester was already prowling forward, craning up at the floors of upside-down storefronts. Inside Borna’s Bread, upturned shoppers filled carts with baguettes and brioches and bottom-up cakes, while inside Toppled Tailors, flurries of purple moths flew mended clothes from reversed racks to waiting customers. Next door, in Sylvie’s Salon, men and women sat in upended chairs, perusing newspapers, as floating sylphs cut their hair, none of the patrons’ faces the slightest bit swollen, as if their bodies were born to live in the wrong direction.

“Isn’t the world upside down enough without it actually being upside down?” Anadil marveled.

“Maybe they see things clearer that way,” Hester said.

“Eh, I’d say this group is as blind as the rest,” said Anadil.

Hester followed her friend’s eyes to a domed theater hanging from the tip of a purple beanstalk like a Christmas bauble—the “Borna Bowl,” said the marquee—with the dome inverted and a full audience seated downside up, watching a spellcast of King Rhian’s coronation replaying in phantoms of gray light. As the spellcast rehashed the familiar scene, Rhian clutching Sophie, his princess clad in a prim, ruffled dress, the spectators hung on the king’s every word, while heads-down vendors hawked Lion memorabilia: mugs, shirts, hats, pins. . . .

“Is this what they do for entertainment? Watch that scum’s coronation again and again?” Hester asked, unable to hear Rhian’s speech from this far away.

“Probably plays every hour on the hour,” said Anadil, tilting her head for better viewing. “Strange, though. I don’t remember them spellcasting the coronation.”

A brown-skinned family in colorful smocks passed by on the skyroad, heads up like the witches, ogling the Borna Bowl and the rest of the upside-down realm. Drupathi tourists, Hester thought, she and Ani forcing smiles, which the family returned before giving Dot weird looks. Dot, who was lurking behind, sucking morosely on vine leaves she’d turned to chocolate with her lit finger.

“People will notice your glow!” Hester hissed, pulling her into the shadows. “And stop sulking!”

“It’s just . . . what you said back there . . . ,” Dot puled. “If Daddy dies, Nottingham’s ring doesn’t go to me. He changed his will after I freed Robin Hood. Don’t think he ever changed it back.” She turned more leaves to chocolate, her lit finger trembling. “If Rhian’s marrying Sophie, maybe Rhian already got Daddy’s ring. Because of me. Because Daddy didn’t trust me with it. Which means, because of me, Daddy might be . . . might be . . .”

For the first time, Hester’s cold facade softened. “That’s not how this coven thinks,” she said, cupping her hand over Dot’s glow and snuffing it out. “Focus on everything we’ve done to get here. Each of us did our part. Wolves wouldn’t have helped us if you hadn’t bribed them with chocolate snow. That magic carpet wouldn’t have snuck us through tunnels if Ani hadn’t threatened it with an unspooling spell. We’re still alive, Dot. We’re almost to Merlin. Whatever your Dad thought of you when he changed his will, he doesn’t think of you that way now. He loves you, Dot. Enough to join forces with Robin Hood—his own Nemesis—to keep you safe. Wherever he is, he’d want you to finish our mission.”

Dot mulled this over, gazing at her shoes, before she took a deep breath and tossed her chocolate away. “For the record, I still think Sophie went back to Rhian. Just like the message says. Same story as when she went back to Rafal. Spends too much time around Agatha and Tedros together, gets jealous and desperate and ends up kissing any boy who’ll have her, even a lying, murdering pig.”

“Could be worse,” said Hester. “Could be kissing a Snake.”

Dot snorted.

A chill gusted through the square, huddling the witches deeper into their hoods and shivering the spellcast in the dome. Then Hester smelled something on the breeze . . . something that made her muscles tense and her demon twitch. . . .

“The sea,” she said, pivoting to her friends. “It’s close.”

She led them ahead, the three girls gliding along the darkening skyfloor like bats, careful to avoid the glow of overturned lanterns sparking to life along the beanstalks. Hester navigated the coven past the Borna Bowl, hearing Rhian’s voice grow louder, the salty scent of the sea burning stronger and stronger. . . .

“Wait! Look at her dress!” Dot blurted.

“Shhh!” Ani whispered.

“But that’s not what Sophie wore at Rhian’s coronation,” Dot pressed. “You sure it’s a replay?”

Hester stopped cold.

So did Anadil.

They cocked their heads in unison, studying the inverted spellcast as Rhian held Sophie in close-up, the king’s and princess’s figures translucent.

“Citizens of the Woods, I did not expect a day like today to come. This morning, I learned that Japeth of Foxwood, my brother, my liege, has been in league with Tedros and Agatha, plotting against my throne,” spoke Rhian. “I thought my brother was the Eagle to my Lion. Instead, he was just another Snake. But the Lion always wins. By the time you view this spellcast, Japeth will be sealed in the dungeons and shall never be seen again. Our Woods is under siege by rebels and even my own blood can’t be trusted. I alone can protect us. I alone shall punish our enemies. I alone will keep these Woods safe.”

“Dot’s right. This isn’t from the coronation,” said Anadil. “This is . . . now.”

“Ding Dong, the Snake is gone,” Dot chimed. “At least Rhian did one thing right.”

But Hester was still studying the king: the chill of his voice, the void in his eyes, the shudder of threads on his jacket like sliding scales. . . . Next to him, Sophie wore a blank smile, like a puppet pulled by strings. The king clasped her tighter.

“But a traitor cannot stop our kingdom from glory,” he said. “And though I have lost a liege, soon I will gain a queen. My wedding to my true love will proceed as scheduled, and we shall spellcast it for the Woods to see. I make this promise to you all. With Sophie and I united, everything in our world will be possible.”

He looked at Sophie, who maintained her perfect smile and spoke directly into the spellcast.

“Long live the Lion!” she proclaimed. “Long live the One True King!”

The scene froze on their image before words magically imposed over it.

THE WEDDING OF KING RHIAN AND PRINCESS SOPHIE

Live Spellcast will begin in 30 minutes

“See, we were right!” Dot whispered to Anadil. “Sophie is marrying Rhian!”

But Hester was fixed on the frozen image of Rhian, honing in on the black holes of his pupils, the serpentine curl of his lips. . . . Slowly Hester’s gaze moved to Sophie, trapped in his arms, the light in her eyes extinguished, the witch dead and gone.

Suddenly Hester smelled it again.

That sour, sick rot, overwhelming her.

Bad candy.

“Snake is the Lion . . . Lion is the Snake. . . .” Hester realized softly.

Anadil frowned. “Hester?”

“What is it?” Dot pushed.

The tattooed witch turned to them, face pale.

“The world really is upside down.”

2
SOPHIE
The Girl with No Past

Sophie no longer wanted to kill the boy she was about to marry.

Nor could she make sense of the fleeting thought that she’d wanted to kill him in the first place. From what she could tell, he was gorgeous, eloquent, and cocksure, just like a king should be. And soon, she’d be his queen. The queen.

Not that she had the slightest clue how it had happened. The past was fuzzy now, her memories elusive. Any attempt to penetrate them spawned a spearing headache, as if there was an iron spike through her brain, before she’d jolt straight back to the present, the ache gone, as if she’d been born this second, again and again and again. Efforts to recall why she’d ended up like this—a girl with no past—only brought on stronger pain, and it wasn’t long before she stopped trying to find her memories altogether.

All she knew was that she’d woken in this prim white dress and tonight she would marry King Rhian, the Lion of Camelot, keeper of Lionsmane, and savior of the Endless Woods. She’d yet to have a private moment with her betrothed: their only time together spent recording a spellcast, which she’d struggled to follow . . . about a brother gone rogue and rebels in the Woods, ending with her pledging allegiance to the Lion, her husband-to-be, just as he’d instructed. . . . But even from this, she knew she loved him, body and soul. Sitting next to him, she’d inhaled his frosty scent and basked in his tan glow, almost too perfect. When the spellcast finished, he stroked her cheek with cold fingers and gave her a snake-eyed smile: “See you at the altar, my sweet.” Sophie’s heart fluttered like he was her fairy-tale prince.

Any girl would die to be in her shoes, she thought now, powdering her nose in the queen’s boudoir and peering in the mirror at her crown of gold braids and the fussy white dress that hijacked nearly every inch of her skin. She had no inkling of where this dress had come from or who had made it, but now that she was about to convene with the Woods-wide press and answer their pre-wedding questions, she wished the dress had a bit more panache . . . straps instead of sleeves or a dash of color around the waist—

On cue, the dress shape-shifted, as if her thoughts were commands, the sleeves whittling to thin strands over her shoulders, while a slash of blue cut across her hips, forming a belt of silk butterflies. Sophie hardly flinched. For something so strange, there was no surprise in the dress’s magic, as if she’d had this happen before but couldn’t remember when. She glanced into her own eyes in the mirror and saw a flash of sparkle, an emerald gleam, like a light in a tunnel. . . . Then it was gone, as quickly as it came.

“Press is waiting for you, Princess,” a voice said.

Sophie turned to the captain of the guard standing at the door to her bedroom, the gold of his jacket specked with dried blood. Kei, he said his name was when he’d woken her from sleep. Handsome as anything, with hawkish eyes and a square jaw, but a glum, tortured expression, as if haunted by a ghost.

They walked towards the ballroom, Kei tight at her side. She noticed him peeking at her, like he was waiting for her to say something. As if they shared a secret. It made Sophie uncomfortable.

A guard cut in front of them, scanty-haired and pockmarked: “Cap, the map inna Map Room’s been burnt ta nothin’—one witha rebels’ wherebouts!”

Kei flexed his jaw. “Could be one of the maids or cooks. I’ll question them.”

“But that wazza king’s map! Should I tell ’im—”

“Get back to your post,” the captain ordered, guiding Sophie past him.

Sophie was mystified by this map business, but whatever it was, it made Kei even more sour than before.

He caught Sophie looking at him.

For the first time, Kei’s face changed, replaced by a sharp gaze that seemed to drill into her mind. . . .

“You there?” he whispered.

Sophie stared into his big, dark eyes . . . then snapped from her trance. “Of course I’m here! Where else would I be?” she scolded. “And stop scowling and giving me strange looks. You’re the captain of the guard. The king’s new liege. Act the part or I’ll tell the king to find someone who will.”

Kei hardened to stone. “Yes, Princess.”

“Good,” said Sophie. “And clean your jacket while you’re at it. Unless there’s a coup unfolding in the castle, there’s no reason to be flaunting your blood as part of your uniform.”

“Rhian’s blood,” said Kei.

“Excuse me?” said Sophie, stopping.

“It’s Rhian’s blood,” Kei repeated, with that drilling gaze again.

“Then kindly return it to him,” Sophie quipped, strutting ahead.

She smiled, her white dress puffing up like peacock feathers.

Rhian would be proud of her.

She was settling into the role of his queen already.

“PRINCESS SOPHIE, WHAT’S your reaction to the imprisonment of the king’s brother?” asked a blue-haired reporter with a badge labeled The Pifflepaff Post. “Are you confident that all traitors have been rooted out from the kingdom?”

“I hardly knew Rhian’s brother,” Sophie replied, perched on an elevated throne beneath a massive Lion’s head. “And I have full confidence in King Rhian to keep Camelot and the Woods safe. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m here to answer your questions about tonight’s wedding. That is all I wish to speak about. The rest I leave to the king.”

As the reporters packed into the Blue Ballroom clamored for the next question—“Princess Sophie! Princess Sophie!”—Sophie glanced at two identical women hidden in shadows at the back, barefoot and dressed in lavender robes, who gave her a curt nod of approval. With high foreheads and long noses, they wore the same blithe grin, as if all was going to plan. The Mistral Sisters, they’d called themselves when they briefed her before letting reporters in (“Just answer their questions,” said the one called Alpa. “Everything will take care of itself,” said the other, named Omeida).

A reporter’s voice broke through the din—

“And what of the evidence that King Rhian has enlisted the Kingdom Council to reject the Storian’s power?” said a man from the Netherwood Villain Digest. “Our reporting suggests that in the past week, 99 of the 100 founding kingdoms have destroyed their rings, with these leaders disavowing the Storian and pledging allegiance to King Rhian instead. Does King Rhian believe in the legend of the One True King? Is he seeking to claim the Storian’s powers for himself? Is that why kingdoms are burning their rings for him?”

“It’s obvious that the Pen has failed our Woods,” Sophie replied as reporters furiously transcribed. “The Storian is supposed to tell tales that inspire us and move our world forward. But these days, it fixates only on the students of a school that has become self-indulgent and obsolete. It’s why I left my post as Dean. The Pen no longer represents the people. It’s time for a Man to rise in its place. A King. Someone who can give everyone a chance at glory.”

The words slipped effortlessly out of her, as if they had a life of their own.

“The last ring left belongs to the Sheriff of Nottingham, who hasn’t been seen since the attack on Tedros’ execution,” prompted a reporter tagged Nottingham News. “Any information as to his whereabouts or the security of his ring?”

“Haven’t you heard? The Sheriff is marrying Robin Hood,” said Sophie archly.

The press brigade laughed.

“But do you yourself believe in the myth of the One True King?” asked the Hamelin Piper. “The legend that the Storian depends on the balance between Man and Pen. A balance protected by our leaders wearing their rings. As long as they wear these rings, Man and Pen share control. Each plays an equal part in writing fate. But if Man forsakes the Pen, if all 100 rulers burn their rings and swear loyalty to a king instead . . . then the balance is gone. The Storian would lose its powers to this new king.”

“And it would be about time!” Sophie tossed off. “Men should worship a Man. Not a Pen.”

“But what happens when Rhian is this One True King?” the Ooty Observer pushed. “Lionsmane would become the new Storian. King Rhian’s own pen. With the Storian’s powers, he could use this pen like a sword of fate. He could write anything he wants and have it come true. He could wipe out anyone who challenges him. He could wipe out entire kingdoms—”

“The only thing King Rhian might wipe out is a meddling press,” Sophie teased with a wink. “Besides, like you said, he only has 99 rings. Not 100.”

The press chuckled once more.

“What can we expect from the wedding?” a toothy woman asked from the Royal Rot.

“For Rapunzel’s wedding, I heard she floated ten thousand lanterns into the sky, and for Snow White’s, the bride rode in on a parade of forest animals.” Sophie grinned. “Mine will be better.” She rose off the throne. “On that note, I’ll take my leave—”

“Princess Sophie, any comment on the fact that the rebels sacking kingdoms were not students of the school but paid mercenaries of King Rhian? And that the attacks were King Rhian’s ploy to trick leaders into burning their rings?”

The Blue Ballroom went quiet. Slowly the throng of reporters parted, revealing a teenage girl sucking a red lollipop. Her badge was handwritten, dotted with a heart.

“Tell Agatha that Bettina says hello,” the girl smiled.

Sophie felt a command fly from her mouth like an arrow: “Arrest her!”

Kei and four guards streaked for Bettina, swords out—

The young girl vanished into thin air, leaving only her red lollipop, which fell to the marble and fractured to pieces.

Reporters eyed each other tensely, a chill seeping through the ballroom.

“Apparently local journalists are magicians now,” Sophie cooed, untroubled. “We’ll see how our little sorceress fares when she and the rest of the Courier’s staff are arrested for lies and treason. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a wedding to prepare for.”

She sashayed out of the room. The second she stepped into the hall, she was joined by the two Mistral Sisters, hewing to her sides like sentinels, leading her back to the queen’s chambers. Little by little, Sophie felt her gait loosen, her head lighten, her sense of direction and purpose disappear. All the words she’d spoken to the press slipped away like smoke out of a chimney. Suddenly, she had no memory of where she was coming from and where she was going, as if time was resetting itself.

She could hear the sisters tittering: “reporters seen in Putsi” . . . “where Bethna is” . . . “the girl used a disappearing hex” . . . “someone must be helping them” . . . “tell Japeth . . .”

Sophie’s brain itched.

Japeth . . . I know that name. . . .

But it vanished into the fog with everything else.

What’s happening to me? Sophie searched her mind, fumbling for an anchor to hold on to. Who am I? What am I doing here? A prickle went up her spine. Then a tingling in her nose. She smelled lavender . . . and cucumbers. . . . For a moment, she could see clearly, as if she’d crossed through that emerald light she had glimpsed within her eyes. . . . Again a skullcrushing headache assaulted her, but this time, Sophie fought back, clawing at her memories, trying to hold on—

“That girl, Bettina. What was she saying?” Sophie breathed. “About Rhian plotting the attacks . . .” The pain radiated into her teeth and jaw. Sophie dug in harder. “And Agatha. . . . She told me to say hi to Agatha. . . . Rhian said that name during the spellcast . . . Agatha. . . . She isn’t a rebel at all! She’s my friend—”

At once, the sisters raised their hands, twisting them sharply in midair as if to turn a screw—

The pain in Sophie’s head exploded, a stabbing blow so deep that she buckled, about to pass out.

The Mistrals caught her, moving her forward.

“You need rest,” said Alpa. “Focus on the wedding, my sweet. Once you wed the king, your work will be done.”

“You can rest forever after that,” said Omeida.

The sisters gave each other shrewd looks.

“Just focus on the wedding,” Alpa repeated.

The wedding, Sophie thought.

Then I can rest.

Focus on the wedding.

The stabbing pain eased, flooding her with glorious relief.

Yes . . . the wedding would fix everything.

3
TEDROS
Secret School

Tedros and Agatha stood between two graves.

The light of the fading sun caught the ring on the prince’s hand, the silver surface glinting with carved symbols that matched the Storian’s.

“That ring belongs to Camelot,” said Agatha, stunned. “Your father wouldn’t have left it to you if it wasn’t yours by right. Which means you’re the heir, Tedros. Just like he raised you to be.”

Tedros blinked at the ring, taking this in, before his eyes sharpened and rose to Agatha’s. “Then who’s sitting on the throne?”

“Not the heir, that’s for sure,” said his princess in her rumpled black dress. “We need to get to Camelot and show the people they’ve been duped by a Snake. And save our best friend from marrying him while we’re at it.”

“She deserves to marry him,” Tedros muttered. “Got herself into this mess going back to Rhian.”

“To help us—”

“We don’t know that.”

“I do,” Agatha said firmly. “We’re going back to Camelot. For your throne. And my friend.”

Tedros gazed at the grove’s two graves, each marked with a glass cross: one his father’s, dug up and empty; the other Chaddick’s, untouched in the shadows. Tedros’ shirt clung to his chest, soaked with his sweat, his breeches smeared with dirt from his father’s grave. Pain rattled his body, the exhaustion of the journey and the wounds he’d suffered against his enemies soothed by knowing now that his dad was on his side. He’d followed his heart to Avalon, trusting in his father’s last message—“Unbury Me”—which brought him here, to King Arthur’s tomb, in the Lady of the Lake’s secret haven. But there was no body to find. Instead, Tedros had encountered his father’s soul, magically preserved by Merlin so that he could appear to Tedros one last time and bequeath his son the ring that would save him. And Camelot. For as long as Tedros wore this ring, the Snake couldn’t be the One True King. The Snake who had killed his own brother to claim the Storian’s power. But it was in vain. With this ring, Tedros’ father had ensured that a Snake would never take the Storian’s place. That Lionsmane would never replace free will with Japeth’s will. That Man would never become Pen. With this ring, Tedros’ father had given his son one last chance at his throne.

A king’s true coronation test.

The prince noticed Agatha peering edgily at the sky, her black clumps shifting.

“Sun will set soon,” she worried. “How will we get there in time? We need to mogrify into birds . . . or use Tinkerbell and the school fairies to fly. . . . They’re waiting with your mother at the lake—”

“Still won’t get there by sunset,” Tedros pointed out. “We’re half a day’s journey, at least, even by flight.”

“Maybe the Lady of the Lake knows a way—”

“The Lady who’s lost her magic and almost killed me. Twice. We’ll be lucky if she lets us out of this cove,” said Tedros, his lit finger about to cast a flare for the Lady. “Let’s find my mother and use the fairies to fly back to school. Then we can plan our attack.”

“I’m not leaving Sophie with the Snake!” Agatha blistered, her eyes watering. “I don’t care if it’s just me, up against every one of his thugs. I’m getting my best friend back.”

Tedros clasped her palm. “Look, I know what Sophie means to you. Which is why I’ll go to the ends of the earth to keep her safe, even if she and I make better enemies than friends. But there’s no way to Camelot in time. There’s no way to shrink a hundred miles.”

Agatha pulled her hand away. “Does your mother know a spell? Or Hort or Nicola? They’re with her! Maybe they have a talent that’s useful—”

“Hort’s talent is busting out of his clothes. Nicola’s is reminding us how smart she is. And my mother’s is an unhelpful mix of cluelessness and evading responsibility. What about your talent? You’re the one who saved us from that spitfire camel.”

“By hearing its wishes, and you can’t use that as a means to teleport across half the—” Agatha’s eyes sparked. “Wishes!”

She bolted past him. “Hurry! Before it’s too late!”

He watched Agatha weave between trees, disappearing into the darkness of the grove. Tedros knew better than to ask. Standing between his dad’s and his knight’s graves, the prince let his fingerglow dim before he sucked in a breath and summoned what strength he had left in his legs to chase her.

HE FOLLOWED THE sounds of Agatha’s steps pattering across the forest floor, crackling on fallen branches. But the deeper Tedros drew through the oaks, the more he began to remember his way. Soon, he saw his princess kneeling at the edge of a pond, hidden within the thicket. Just as he’d seen her the first time he’d been here.

Back then, it was Hort who’d led Agatha to the pond, when they’d been hiding from Rafal at his mother and Lancelot’s safehouse. Tedros had concealed himself behind a tree, listening as the weasel berated Agatha for not following her heart, for sacrificing Tedros instead of fighting for him: a revelation that made Tedros realize just how much Agatha needed him and how much he needed her, right when both of them were doubting it the most. It was here at this pond, only a short distance from two graves, that their love was sealed. The love that would never be broken again, no matter what Evils lay ahead.

Tedros crouched beside her, the mud soft under his boots. Beneath the heavy veil of trees, the pond glistened with embers of sunset. Agatha met her prince’s blue gaze in the water’s mirror.

“Where are they?” he asked, searching the surface.

The pond stayed still, its inhabitants gone.

Agatha’s lips trembled as the sun shimmers faded in the reflection. “But . . .”

Tedros stroked her hair. “Let’s get back to the others—”

But then the shimmers changed color, from gold to silver, nuggets of glow pulsing in rhythmic synch. All at once, the glows began to move, rocketing through the pond in crisscrossing patterns like underwater fireworks, rising towards the prince and princess, closer, closer, brighter, brighter, until they splashed through the surface, a thousand tiny fish, spitting tails of water like fountains of light.

“Not gone after all,” said Tedros, watching the Wish Fish crowd towards his princess as if they knew her well. “Your secret little school.”

“If I put my finger in the water, they’ll paint my soul’s greatest wish,” said Agatha breathlessly. “And my wish is to find a way to rescue Sophie before she marries the Snake. If there’s a way, the fish will show it to us!”

Agatha slipped her finger in the water.

Instantly, the Wish Fish dispersed, flickering different colors as they joined fins like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. At first, Tedros had no clue what he was seeing, with the fish switching hues and rearranging feverishly, as if they were still debating Agatha’s wish. But little by little, the fish committed to colors and then to their places, and a painting came into focus across their smooth, silky scales. . . .

A royal garden gleamed beneath a sunset, Camelot’s castle silhouetted against the pink and purple sky. Masses of well-dressed spectators gathered, the people and creatures of the Woods watching something attentively, something neither Tedros nor Agatha could make out, since the crowd was obscuring it. But there was something else in the painting, foregrounded and sharply clear, floating over the mob: a pair of watery bubbles, each the size of a crystal ball, two tiny figures enclosed within.

“Those are us,” Agatha said, peering at the bubbled clones.

“Those are not us,” Tedros rejected. “You and I are full-grown, we live on the ground, and we breathe air.”

Agatha turned to him. Her distraction snapped the spell, and the fish splintered, colors draining from their scales.

“Not all that surprised, though. First time I tried Wish Fish after Dad died, it showed me crying in Lancelot’s arms. Lancelot, who destroyed my Dad,” said Tedros. “Wish Fish are batty.”

“Or your soul craved a new father and Lancelot was the closest you had to one at the time,” Agatha disputed. “Wish Fish aren’t batty. That painting meant something. And this painting is how we get to Sophie.”

“By levitating in body-shrinking bubbles?” the prince repelled. “And I would never wish to cuddle with Lancelot—”

But Agatha wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking at the fish, which had rearranged into a stark-white arrow, pointing directly, unmistakably at . . . Tedros.

“Your turn,” said Agatha.

Tedros grimaced. “Next thing you know, they’ll show me baking cookies with the Snake.” He thrust his finger in the water.

Nothing happened.

Instead, the fish clung tighter to their arrow, pointing insistently at Tedros’ hand.

“Told you. They’re addled, these fish,” Tedros carped.

“Wrong finger,” his princess said. “Look.”

The Wish Fish were pointing at another finger of Tedros’ hand.

The one with King Arthur’s ring.

Tedros’ heart beat faster.

Without a word, he dipped the finger in, warm water filling the cold, steel grooves of the ring—

A shockwave of light detonated across the pond.

Prince and princess stared at each other.

“What was that?” said Tedros.

But now the fish were gluing into a silver mob, fastening hard around the steel circle, trying to kiss the ring with their bobbing little mouths. With each kiss, the fish flashed with light, as if a secret power had been transferred. Soon they were strobing like stars in the dark, faster and faster, this power magnifying, charging their bodies with mysterious force. Tedros waited for them to disperse, to paint his wish, like they’d done with his princess, but instead, the fish gobbed tighter, a ragged mass, sucking wet and tight to his ring. Then slowly they slid up his palm . . . his wrist . . .

“Wait!” he rasped, yanking at his hand, but Agatha held him in place, the fish surging out of the pond, gripping his elbow, his bicep, his armpit—

“Let go!” he cried, fighting Agatha.

“Trust me,” she soothed.

The swarming school was at his shoulder, his throat . . . his chin . . . their interlocked bodies turning clear as glass, revealing small throbbing hearts. Then, all at once, the fish began to swell. Inflating like balloons, they amassed into a clear, gelatinous globe, expanding in every direction, pressing into Tedros’ face.

“Help!” he yelled, but the warm, slobbery bubble laminated his mouth, his nose, his eyes, suffocating him with a salty smell. He could feel Agatha’s arms on him, but he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see anything. He closed his eyes, his lashes lacquered in itchy scales, his chest pumping shallow breaths, leaking last bits of air—

Then it stopped. The pressure. The smell. As if his head had separated from his body. The prince opened his eyes to find himself inside the fish bubble, floating above the pond.

Agatha was in the bubble with him.

“Like I said,” she smiled. “Trust me.”

Then his princess began to shrink. And now, so did the prince, his whole body pinching down, inch by inch, to the size of a tea mug. The bubble closed in, too, its watery edges leaving just enough room around them.

Tedros glanced at his pants. “This better not be permanent.”

Instantly the bubble split in two, each sealing up whole, separating prince and princess in their own orbs.

“Agatha?” Tedros called, his voice bouncing against liquid walls.

He saw his tiny princess call back, her lips moving but only a squeak coming through.

Rays of light refracted against the bubbles and Tedros watched the pond opening up like a portal, revealing a familiar castle and a pink-purple sky . . . the scene of a Wish Fish painting he’d mocked, now come to life. . . .

“Trust me.”

Tedros looked up at Agatha, eyes wide—

He never had time to scream. The two balls plunged into the portal like they’d been shot from a cannon, vanishing into the glare of a faraway sun.

4
THE STORIAN
Altar and Grail

The Pen that tells the tale is just that: the teller, with no place in the story. It should not be a character or a weapon or a prize. It should not be lionized or persecuted or thought of at all. The Pen must be invisible, doing its work in humble silence, with no bias or opinion, like an all-seeing eye committed only to unspooling a story until its end.

Yet here we are: things once held sacred are sacred no longer.

The Pen is under siege.

My spirit is weakened, my powers fading.

I must tell my own story or risk Man erasing it forever.

Man, who despite thousands of years of trusting in my powers . . . has now come to take them from me.

NO ONE KNEW where in the gardens the wedding would take place, for there was no stage or altar or priest and no sign of a bride or groom. But as the sun dipped into the horizon, guards continued to let guests in—men, women, children, dwarves, trolls, elves, ogres, fairies, goblins, nymphs, and more citizens of the Woods—all dressed in their finest as they crammed through the gates of Camelot’s castle.

After King Arthur’s death, the gardens had fallen to blight, but under a new king, they’d been revived to glory, a sprawling wonderland of color and scent. Packed hip to hip, the people flooded the groves of the Orangerie, the paths of the Sunken Garden, and the lawns of the Rosefield, all of which orbited the long Reflecting Pool crowned with a marble statue of King Rhian hammering Excalibur into the masked Snake’s neck. Muddy shoes stained the grass and flattened the willows; restless children tore branches and ate the lilacs; a family of giants broke an orange tree. But still guards continued to let guests in, even as the setting sun halved and quartered and the smell of sweaty bodies clogged the air.

“Is there no end to this?” the Empress of Putsi growled, holding her nose as people jostled against her, nearly knocking her and her goose-feather coat into the Reflecting Pool. “Putsi butchers and millers and maids given the same treatment as their Empress! Ever and Never royalty thrown to the masses and left to fend for ourselves! After all we’ve done for King Rhian? After we burned our rings in his name? Who ever heard of commoners at a royal wedding!”

“It is the commoners who have made him king,” said the Maharani of Mahadeva, watching a mountain troll pee in the tulips. “And now that we’ve burned our rings, our voice has no more weight than theirs.”

“We burned our rings to save our kingdoms. To earn the king’s protection,” the Empress of Putsi argued. “Your castle was attacked like mine. Your sons might be dead if not for you giving up your ring. Your realm is safe now.”

“Is it? How are we protected if the Kingdom Council no longer has a vote against the king?” the Maharani pressed. “A king who my advisors believe seeks the power of the Storian.”

“The ‘One True King’ is an old wives’ tale spread by that Sader family. But even if any of their flimflam was true, you of all people should welcome it. The Storian did nothing for Evil kingdoms like yours or for the Nevers of the Woods. If Rhian had the Storian’s power, he might do Evil a world of Good.” The Empress stood straighter. “King Rhian is a worthy king to both sides. He’ll listen to us, whether or not we have our rings. King Rhian will always put us above the people—”

Something smacked her face, and she looked up at a chubby boy high on a staircase, pelting people with gooseberries.

“Like he’s done today?” the Maharani asked, stonefaced.

The Empress went mum.

As for the berry-pelting boy, he found himself swatted by his Dean and yanked into place with the rest of her students, who’d traveled with the Dean from Foxwood.

“Behave, Arjun! Or I’ll tell King Rhian to throw you in the dungeon with his brother,” Dean Brunhilde scolded, swiping her student’s ammunition. “And I assure you, you won’t last a half second in a cell with RJ. Not an ounce of Good in that boy’s body.”

“Thought Rhian’s brother was called ‘Japeth,’” Arjun peeped.

“Even that name sounds Evil,” the Dean murmured. “I shortened his birth name to ‘RJ.’ Came to Arbed House because he, like you, couldn’t get along with his mother. I tried to make him Good. Did everything I could. Even his brother thought he could be fixed. But in the end, it seems Rhian learned what I did: some Evil can’t be fixed.”

“Still don’t believe we’re here. A royal wedding!” piped an older boy with sunken eyes. “A kid like us now the king!”

“And marrying a girl as pretty as Sophie,” said a bald boy, his collar littered with dandruff. “Don’t forget that, Emilio. That’s why I’d want to be a king.”

“Think I’ll get to be a king someday, Dean Brunhilde?” Arjun asked. “Or at least a prince?”

“I don’t see why not,” Dean Brunhilde said. “Things are different now. Most royal weddings don’t allow ordinary citizens. But King Rhian knows to respect every soul, Good or Evil, boy or girl, young or old. All of you have a chance at glory while he’s king. Taught him myself, just like I’m teaching you.”

“Can we meet King Rhian? Can I get his autograph?” Emilio asked.

“I want to meet him!” another boy prompted.

“Me too! Me too!” clamored the rest of the group.

The Dean blushed. “I’m sure Rhian remembers me fondly. . . . Jorgen! Stop pinching fairies!”

Meanwhile, Arjun pulled a few last gooseberries from his pocket and aimed them over the rail.

“Quit it!” Emilio hissed.

“But if I hit that spellcast bubble roving around, everyone watching in the other kingdoms will see me!” said Arjun. “I’ll be famous! Like the king!”

“What bubble are you talking about?” Emilio asked, confused. “The spellcast comes from the shield over the garden. The pink fog up there. That’s what beams the scene to everywhere in the Woods.”

“Then what’s that?” Arjun said, pointing down.

Emilio squinted at a watery orb flitting between bodies in the crowd, nearing the edge of the reflecting pool—

But the last light of the sun vanished, and the bubble could be seen no longer, lost in the white mist rising over the lake.

AS NIGHT SETTLED, the mist spooled thicker, rolling over the waters in snow-colored waves. Behind the pool, Kei marched the Camelot guard into formation, the armored bodies silhouetted in fog. Standing on a staircase behind were Alpa and Omeida, the two Mistral Sisters, hooded amongst the crowd, eyes locked on Rhian’s statue, each muttering the same incantation under their breaths. On cue, the statue began to glitter a radiant gold, casting rippling light on the king’s carved face and the Snake crushed in his arms. The mist over the Reflecting Pool dissipated, revealing the surface had magically frozen, the ice strewn with blue and gold rose petals, the pool now a stage.

Soft music began to play in a strange key, the melody of a wedding march that sounded more like a funeral’s.

Then a blur of movement reflected in the ice.

Wedding guests raised their heads.

The sky had bloomed with constellations, Lions repeating endlessly as far as the eye could see, changing pose with every blink of stars. Against these celestial patterns, two more stars appeared: the bride and the king, floating down on the wings of a thousand white butterflies beating across the bride’s gown. Her shoes were made of glass, her throat collared with rubies, her face shrouded in a delicate veil. Her groom wore a white fur soaring behind him like a cape, belted with a chain of gold lions. Excalibur’s hilt gleamed at his waist. The crown of Camelot fit securely on his head. He made a fine King Rhian, this boy, with his tight copper hair, amber tan, and aqua-green gaze. . . .

But we know better.

“Rhian” was only playing the part of his brother, his wild hair hacked short, his skin painted tan, his eyes dyed by magic. His bride, too, seemed to be playing a role, her smile vacant, her hands clasping him the way she once clasped another boy she’d intended to marry: a young, frost-haired School Master who she thought she loved with all her heart. But now, in her wide green eyes, there was no love. There was nothing but the reflection of her groom, pleased with the emptiness of her gaze.

The young couple floated down towards the statue, “Rhian” gripping Sophie as tightly as the stone Rhian gripped the Snake. They neared the ground, bathed in the statue’s light, the Woods’ eyes upon them. The king loomed over his bride, placing a hand on her throat, and pulled her mouth to his. The crowd suspended in silence as he kissed her, time standing still. Look closer, the way I can, and one could see the chill in Sophie’s cheeks . . . the shudder in her legs . . . the hardness in the groom’s lips, repelled by the taste of his bride. . . .

Their feet touched down to the frozen pool.

The mob stayed hushed.

Then King Rhian’s statue began to rattle and quake. The edges of the ice pool splintered, shards of ice spraying into the sky, the glassy stage vibrating beneath the bride’s and groom’s feet. All at once, Rhian’s statue lifted out of the ground, taking the Reflecting Pool with it, the thick, frozen lake floating into the air, up, up, up, the bride and groom now high above the gardens, like toy figures on a cake.

Cheers burst out across the land, the crowd unleashing all they’d held back.

The wedding of the king had begun.

Orbiting the grounds, the spellcast shield strobed, recording every moment and beaming it to the Woods. Listen well and you might hear the cheers from kingdoms beyond, echoing on the wind . . .

“Rhian” turned from his bride and a flash of gold glowed beneath his cape, pulsing where his heart should be. He reached under the silk and drew out a cocoon of light. Only I know what is hidden within: a black scim disguised as Lionsmane—the king’s Pen, my so-called rival—which now rose out of the light, sharp at both ends and gold as the sun, into the night sky over the king’s palm.

From its tip came a shimmering dust, the color of pure ore, shapeshifting into the outlines of cuddling puppies, kissing lovebirds, arrows shot through hearts. Children hopped up in the crowd, reaching hands skyward, trying to touch these valentines before they broke apart and golden ash rained down, dusting their hair with sparkles. Sophie, too, clasped her hands to her chest, as if charmed by the sight of happy young souls. (Perhaps the clearest sign yet that this Sophie was as fraudulent as her groom.)

Meanwhile, “Rhian” spoke from the floating stage. “The Storian was the balance of our Woods. The Pen trusted with telling the stories that moved our world forward. That is, until it gave you the last Ever After. Tedros the ‘king.’ Or as you knew him: Tedros the coward, the fraud, the snake. He is no king, regardless of what that Pen says. You learned that the hard way. But this is what happens when we give the Storian free rein. Fate leaves us vulnerable and out of control. Fate leads us to false idols. But the Storian is no longer our future. And neither are the winds of fate. Man’s will is the future. Man’s will can bring glory to all. And tonight, Man becomes Pen. My pen. I will write the stories of the future. I will reward those who deserve to be rewarded and punish those who deserve to be punished. The power is with me now. The power is with the people.”

The crowd roared as Lionsmane rose higher in the sky, throbbing brighter like a north star. Sophie clapped along, not a wick of understanding in her gaze.

The king held her closer. “But as long as the Storian exists, it is a threat. Empower it and it will lead us astray. To more Tedroses, and more like him. So we must not only reject it . . . but destroy it. All but one kingdom in the Endless Woods has renounced faith in the old Pen. All but one of a hundred founding realms has broken their bond with it. Tonight, as a preface to our wedding, the last kingdom breaks its bond too. The 100th realm burns its ring, stripping the Pen’s powers and giving the power over Man’s fate to me. Tonight, you not only gain a queen.” His eyes pierced through the dark. “Tonight, the One True King lives.”

Lionsmane spawned flames from its tip: a ball of blue fire that lobbed high in the dark . . . then shot down, blasting past exuberant guests before catching to a halt in front of the Camelot guard. An armored soldier next to Kei stepped forward, the fire lighting up the wrinkles around his greedy eyes and the filthy hair spinning out from his helmet. A discerning Reader would recognize him quickly: this guard who wasn’t a guard at all. It was Bertie, the Sheriff of Nottingham’s once-steward, now the keeper of his ring. And in Bertie’s hands was this very ring, glinting atop a black pillow, the carved steel reflecting the contours of the flames.

I still feel the heat from here.

Little by little, the crowd quieted, sensing the magnitude of the moment, realizing that they too were now pledging loyalty to Man over me. Sophie seemed to stir from her daze, as if deep inside, a kernel of the past had shaken loose in her memory.

“The last piece of the Storian’s power,” the king declared, fixed on Bertie’s ring. “The last tether between Man and Pen.”

Bertie stepped forward, his eyes on the king.

“Rhian” nodded.

My spirit cries out in its shell—

The Sheriff’s old friend opens his palm. Nottingham’s ring falls into the fire.

Crackle! Whish! Pop!

The ring is no more.

All that’s left of me is a whisper.

For the first time, the king’s face softens, the regal facade falling away, as if he too had dipped into memory. “With my Pen, I vow to write these Woods as they should be. To give all your stories the endings they deserve.” His gaze fell on Dean Brunhilde in the crowd. “Including mine.”

The Dean locked eyes with “Rhian,” a cold tingle worming up her spine. She peered closer at him—

“He sees you!” Arjun blurted, grabbing her. “Rhian remembers!” By the time the Dean turned back, the king had regained his poise, his focus on his bride.

“No more rings left. No more pledges to make,” he said, touching Sophie’s cheek. “Except one.”

Slowly his eyes lifted.

From Lionsmane’s tip birthed two golden rings.

One floated into the king’s hand.

One into his bride’s.

Lionsmane glowed brighter in the sky, the witness to this moment, both altar and grail.

“With this ring, I thee wed,” the king said to Sophie.

He slipped his ring onto her finger.

What power I have left dwindles, my words fainter on the page, as if they cannot sustain another blow.

Sophie stayed lost in his eyes.

“With this ring, I thee wed,” she repeated.

No hesitation: she slid her ring onto his finger.

“Then by the power of the Pen, Man’s Pen,” the boy proclaimed, looking up into the sky, “I ask Lionsmane to seal the bonds of this marriage. To crown Sophie my queen. To name me, Rhian of Camelot, the One True King of these Woods!”

Lionsmane burned brighter, brighter, drinking in all the force I have lost. Suddenly, it is alive, becoming me, my powers stolen into the hands of this king. Against the night, his pen paints a queen’s crown, five ribbons of jewels topped with a ring of fleur de lis—

Instantly, the crown came to life, a dazzling tower of diamonds, as if the king’s wish had made it true, before the crown set down upon Sophie’s head. Sophie touched its grooves, the blinding glare of jewels casting sparkles on her hands. A strange bubble of light streaked past her, and she swiveled her head to follow it before she remembered what she was supposed to focus on: the crowd chanting her name . . . her wedding to the king nearly sealed. . . .

As for this king, his focus was only on the pen, alive with the power of a hundred flames. His eyes quivered with triumph.

The rings had been destroyed.

The queen had her crown.

The prophecy was complete.

Raising his hands, he reached up for Lionsmane, the Pen he’d pillaged and betrayed and murdered for, the Pen that could now bring his deepest wishes to life. He claimed its warm gold in his palm, seizing its powers, seizing immortality, a roar rising into his throat and unleashed to the sky—

The light of the pen snuffed out, its metal turned cold in his hands.

The crown vanished from Sophie’s head.

So did the crown on the king’s.

Their wedding rings disappeared, too.

Across the gardens, the crowd stood stunned.

Sophie startled from her trance, looking to her groom.

“Rhian” was frozen, his teeth clenched.

Here in my school tower, a bolt of heat lights up my steel.

There is one ring left, you see.

A ring which precludes full transfer of my powers. A ring this king does not know of.

And it is closer than he thinks.

Now the last swan in my steel pumps its wings, harder, harder, as if to make up for all the other swans lost, all the other kingdoms who’ve surrendered their rings.

Over Camelot’s castle, silver lightning lashed through the sky, imploding Rhian’s statue, and the whole of the frozen stage came plummeting down. People in the mob screamed, diving for cover—

The iced pool shattered to the ground, launching bride and groom in opposite directions. Chunks of ice hailed around them, bashing into spectators.

“Watch out!” Kei yelled, tackling Sophie—

The remnants of Rhian’s statue cratered into the dirt behind her, a mountain of rubble.

All went quiet in the gardens, thick with the smell of fire and ice.

Slowly, adults, children, creatures inched out of their hiding places.

Kei lifted his head, Sophie curled up beneath him, her eyes quivering with the blankness of someone who didn’t know where or who she was. She spotted the king, flat on his stomach near the statue’s ruins, Lionsmane clenched in his fist. Seeing “Rhian” centered her—

But suddenly, from the king’s belt, Excalibur rocketed out of its sheath by its own power, flying high over the castle, swordtip gleaming like the point of a pen, before it came axing down into the statue’s rubble. It landed blade-first at the top of the heap, its hilt high and standing, like a cross out of a grave.

The hilt magically opened, a scroll rising from inside. As the king and his princess watched, the crowd shellshocked around them, the scroll unfurled in midair, revealing a parchment card, filled with faded words, stamped with Camelot’s seal.

Moonlight illuminated the decree.

King Arthur’s voice thundered from beyond.

“The first test was passed.

Excalibur pulled from the stone.

A new king named.

But two claim the crown.

The sword returns to the stone,

for only one is the true king.

Who?

The future I have seen has many possibilities . . .

So by my will, none shall be crowned until

the Tournament is complete.

The Tournament of Kings.

Three trials.

Three answers to find.

A race to the finish.

My last coronation test.

Excalibur will crown the winner

and take the loser’s head.

The first test is coming. Prepare . . .”

The card crumbled and blew away, like sand in the wind. The hilt of Arthur’s sword sealed up, leaving Excalibur in moonlight at the peak of piled stone.

A new altar.

A new grail.

For a moment, there was utter silence, strangers and friends gawking at each other in the gardens. The students of Arbed House looked to their Dean, but she had no words. So too were the leaders of the Woods tongue-tied—the Empress of Putsi, the Queens of Mahadeva and Jaunt Jolie, the Kings of Foxwood and Maidenvale and Bloodbrook and more—scattered across the ice-strewn fields and unsure of what they’d just heard. Even Sophie’s vacant sheen had cracked, her eyes narrowing, her soul closer and closer to breaking through. . . .

But now all of them caught sight of a figure rising out of the ruins, climbing the stone heap: the king, crownless and dirt-smeared, Lionsmane cold in his hands, his cheeks a violent red. Slamming a foot onto the highest stone, he seized Excalibur with a single fist, and pulled it hard.

It didn’t move.

He shoved Lionsmane into his furs and yanked the sword again, this time with both fists, only to suffer the same result. Sweat soaked his forehead. He raised his eyes to the sky, where King Arthur’s voice had spoken. . . .

“Two kings?” he shouted mockingly. “What dirty trick is this? I pulled Excalibur from the stone. I am the king! Who dares to claim a second?”

A watery orb slammed into the king, then another, bashing him off the stone. The bubbles expanded, two tiny figures growing taller within, rising to full size before they thrust out their hands, peeled their way through watery walls, and left the bubbles behind. Tedros strode atop the stone mountain, muscles clinging to his wet shirt, his princess at his side.

“Me,” he declared. “And the only trick is how that sword ever came to a Snake in the first place.”

Arthur’s son raised his hand into the moon’s beam, the silver ring stealing its light.

“The last ring lives. Camelot’s ring. My father’s ring,” he thundered, resounding across the castle grounds. “I am the heir. I am the king.”

The people of the Woods held their breath, their heads whipping between two defiant kings. Sophie, too, stayed still, even though her body told her to run to her groom’s side . . . to her king. . . . On her knees in shredded roses, she glanced at Kei, who had that same haunted look he’d had in the castle. Slowly, Sophie’s eyes went back to Tedros atop the stone. Kei knew this boy . . . and so did she. . . .

Tedros glared his rival down. “You heard the king. Excalibur is returned to the stone. The crown no longer belongs to you,” he slashed. “Three tests. The sword crowns the winner. No more games. No more lies. . . . Let the tournament begin.”

Flat on his stomach, “Rhian” peered up at the prince, a hint of fragility in his face. A sliver of fear.

Then it was gone.

He spun to Kei.

“Kill him,” he ordered.

Kei’s gaze hardened. He and the pirates launched for Tedros—the ring on the prince’s finger shot a blast of light, reforming the protective bubble, trapping Tedros inside. The prince whirled to Agatha: “Get Sophie!”

But Agatha was already gone from his wing, surging for her best friend and tackling Sophie into her arms. White and black dresses coalesced, like the intermingling of two swans. The girls’ eyes locked, dark and light, an eternal connection made. Good and Evil. Boy and Girl. Old and Young. Truth and Lies. Past and Present. Sophie gasped, the color in her cheeks returning, the fire in her eyes pouring forth—

It dampened, like a door slammed shut. Sophie grabbed Agatha by the neck and threw her to the ground.

Lifting her head, Agatha saw the two Mistral Sisters on a staircase behind Sophie, directing their hands, puppeteering her best friend’s moves. Sophie grabbed a slab of frozen ice, jagged like a dagger. Grinning, the Mistrals swung their palms. Sophie pounced for Agatha, the ice knife plunging for her best friend’s chest—

The ice knife trapped in a wall of water, a hair’s width from Agatha’s heart.

For a moment, all Agatha could hear were her own shallow breaths, the hammer of her blood. She felt her prince’s arms drag her back, the two of them safe in the Wish Fish bubble, Arthur’s ring glowing on Tedros’ hand like a talisman. Behind the bubble, a portal opened, revealing the gray waters of a lake . . . its vast, snowy shores . . . three shadows in the distance. . . .

But Tedros’ gaze was still on Sophie through the bubble, her teeth bared like a rabid animal’s, her fist tearing the ice knife into the watery wall again and again, yielding only the tiniest crack.

“Rhian” gently clasped her from behind, staying his princess’s hand. Sophie gazed up at him, starry-eyed with love once more, fully under his spell.

Tears rolled down Agatha’s cheeks. “What have you done to her! You monster! You creep! What have you done to my friend!”

The boy ignored her, his eyes on Tedros. An eel curled off his wedding robe, so small that no one in the audience noticed as it slithered through the crack Sophie had made in the bubble—

Tedros instantly snatched it into his fist.

But now the eely scim was speaking with the Snake’s voice, so only the prince and Agatha could hear. . . .

“Your weak magic can’t protect you from what’s coming,” the scim taunted. Outside the bubble, his master leered at Tedros. “You sniveling coward. You pretty-faced fool. You’re no one’s leader. No one in the Woods is on your side. And now you think you can win a fight against me?”

“A fair fight, yes,” Tedros flared, glowering back at his nemesis. “As for the Woods, soon they’ll know that their ‘king’ isn’t who he says he is.”

“Oh?” said the scim. “Let’s see if they believe anything you have to say. Tedros the rebel. Tedros the Snake.”

“I don’t need to say a word. They’ll know when Excalibur takes your head,” the prince seethed, crushing the eel harder. “I’ll finish the tests first. I’ll win the tournament. The sword will crown me.”

“Like it did last time? It will never let you be king because you have nothing in you that is a king. Nothing.”

Tedros vibrated with anger. “I am Arthur’s son. I am his heir.”

“There is only one ending to your tale,” said the eel coolly. “You dead and forgotten. That ring in my hands. The Storian’s powers mine. You and those you love . . . erased.”

“Catch you at the finish,” Tedros vowed.

“Rhian” didn’t flinch. “I’ll kill you long before.”

Tedros glared into his black pupils. “I see you, Japeth. Like your brother surely did before you murdered him and stole his name. I can believe Rhian was Arthur’s son. At least he had a soul. At least he wanted to do Good. But how can a beast like you be my brother? How can filth like you be my father’s child?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” the scim replied.

The Snake grinned, his face pressing to the prince’s against the slim ball of water, his voice inside a poisoned whisper. . . .

“I’m not.”

The words slammed Tedros like a kick to the chest. He killed the scim and smashed it to goo as he choked out a breath—“Who are you?”—but Agatha was pulling him back through a portal, lake water flooding his lungs, the prince’s question echoing again and again into the dark, dark deep.

5
AGATHA
A Snow of Scrolls

Her best friend had tried to kill her before.

Their first year at school.

And again during the third.

Sophie was a witch, after all, and Agatha a princess.

But this time was different, Agatha thought, clawing through water, running out of breath. Because whoever just tried to kill her on the other side of the portal . . . That wasn’t Sophie.

Agatha tore through the surface, gulping air. She searched the lake for Tedros, her eyes flooding with water before she spotted three shadowy figures on Avalon’s shore, shouting out to her—

But Agatha was already back under, prowling through gray depths for her prince. She’d been gripping on to him . . . then suddenly she wasn’t, distracted by her fears for Sophie . . .

She squinted in every direction. No sign of him, the lake vast and still. She resurfaced, fueling more air—

“Tedros!” she called across the lake.

“Agatha!” Nicola returned from the shore.

“Where’s Tedros!” Agatha gasped at her.

“Don’t see him!” said Hort.

“He’s not with you?” said Guinevere anxiously.

Agatha dove under. Panic squeezed her throat. Had she left Tedros behind? In worrying about Sophie, had she doomed her prince? She whirled around, limbs flailing—

Flashing gleams winked ahead, like an explosion of pearls.

A swarm of Wish Fish cannoned towards her, Tedros caged within, the school of fish swallowing Agatha too, before they crashed out of the water and spewed the prince and princess to the snow-mounded shore. The two landed in each other’s arms, soggy and chilled, as the fish pirouetted in the air and speared back into the lake.

Relieved, Agatha clasped her prince, Tedros still questioning: “Who is he? Who?”

“We heard what he said,” Hort said, rushing in. “The Snake—”

“Huh? How could you hear him?” said Agatha, confused.

“We both heard him,” said Nicola, joining her boyfriend. “That he’s not your brother. That he’s not Arthur’s son.”

“But whose son is he, then?” said Hort, ignoring Agatha’s perplexed look. “The blood crystal told us Rhian and Japeth were the sons of Evelyn Sader and King Arthur. Rhian’s blood can’t lie. So what are we missing? Did Japeth say anything else? We couldn’t hear it all—”

“Because you kept tilting the mirrorspell to Sophie,” Nicola scorched.

“Mirrorspell?” Tedros asked, mystified.

Hort sighed impatiently. “We saw the Lady of the Lake open her portal when the crystal ball shattered. The portal that let you into her secret haven. Before the portal closed, I mirrorspelled inside of it, like Hester taught us. That spell let us follow you, as if we were by your side. We watched everything: from when you went to your father’s grave to when you found the Wish Fish to when the sword announced the Tournament of Kings.”

“Amazing we watched anything except Sophie’s face,” Nicola piled on.

“Amazing you can’t give me credit for thinking of the spell in the first place,” Hort shot back. “I was trying to see what the Snake did to my friend. She’s possessed by a curse. I could see the Mistral Sisters controlling her when she attacked Agatha.”

“I didn’t know the Mistral Sisters could use magic,” said Agatha, her heart settling down enough for her brain to catch up. She looked up at the weasel, his hair dyed blond, his skin pale, standing beside his girlfriend, her black curls dusted with snow. “They’ve never used magic before. If they could, wouldn’t they have been able to skip the dungeons when Tedros put them there?”

“Can’t use magic in Camelot’s dungeons,” Guinevere reminded, arriving with Tinkerbell on her shoulder, the fairy lighting up at the sight of Tedros. “Though I’ve known of the sisters for a long time and don’t remember them having powers either.”

“How could they control Sophie, then?” Agatha pushed.

“How could Arthur gift Tedros his ring so long after his death? How did he know Tedros would need it? How could Excalibur return to the stone after it was pulled?” the prince’s mother replied, bending down and touching the carved steel around her son’s finger. “From the outside, these things seem impossible. But magic has its own rules. Its own secrets. So if the three sisters are controlling Sophie, then we have to find what that secret is.”

“I only saw two sisters,” said Hort.

“Me too,” Nicola confirmed.

“Third must be up to something,” Guinevere suspected. “The Mistral Sisters stick together unless there’s good reason.”

Tinkerbell nuzzled Tedros lovingly, but he was focused on Agatha. “Sophie would have killed you,” he breathed, still haunted. “Nothing would have stopped her.”

“Lucky the portal opened,” Agatha admitted, glancing at her friends. “Knew we could get back once we saw you.”

Guinevere blanched. “You could see us? From Camelot?”

“Why does it matter?” Agatha asked.

Tedros’ mother stood up. “The Snake was inches from you. If you could see this place through the portal, then so could he. You heard him: tournament or no tournament, he wants you dead. We need to leave. Quickly.”

“Won’t Camelot’s ring protect Tedros?” Hort asked. “Like it did back there? Snake would have killed him otherwise.”

“You don’t think I can take that scum?” Tedros scorned. “That I need a ring’s protection?”

“Um, that’s not what I was saying, but now that you’re asking . . . yes,” Hort replied.

“Whatever powers the ring has, the Wish Fish knew how to access it. We don’t,” said Guinevere, moving towards the staircase. “But I wouldn’t put our faith in the ring. It’s surely bonded by the Storian, like all the other rings—and though we are the Pen’s last defenders, it cannot tilt the tale in our favor. That’s not how the Storian works. It’s why Japeth seeks to replace it with a Pen he can control. Besides, even if the ring could protect Tedros, it can’t protect Agatha or the rest of us.”

“She’s right,” Tedros said tensely, pulling Agatha towards the stairs, Hort and Nicola scrambling behind them.

As Tedros helped his princess up the steps, his father’s ring warm against her palm, Agatha glanced down one last time at the lake, the shores quiet and deserted, the waters dead calm.

Then she saw her.

The bald-headed silhouette beneath the glass of the water, watching as the intruders left her kingdom. The Lady of the Lake met Agatha’s gaze for a long moment, her black eyes wide and frozen . . . before she towed back under and disappeared.

Agatha’s hand went cold in her prince’s.

She’d never seen that emotion in the Lady’s face before.

An emotion Agatha knew well.

She was feeling it right now.

Fear.

“CAN’T THEY FLY faster?” Agatha whispered to Tedros, the two of them shrouded inside a fairy cocoon with Hort, Nicola, and Guinevere.

Tinkerbell retorted with angry squeaks, the light of her wings dimmed like her fellow fairies’ to camouflage the cocoon against the night.

“Tink says she let the fairies go feasting while she waited for us,” Tedros explained. “Only food in Avalon are those green apples. Must all be drunk on sugar.”

The fairy hive stuttered away from Avalon’s gates, jostling their concealed passengers like cats in a barrel.

All five members of the team had agreed that they should get far away from Avalon, though each person had competing ideas of where they should go next.

“Living Library,” Tedros proposed.

“In Pifflepaff Hills?” said Hort. “Cotton candy land?”

“We can get answers there,” Tedros insisted, turning to Agatha. “The scroll that announced the tournament . . . We watched my father write it, remember? When we jumped into the crystal ball and went back in time. Dad was at his desk. He wrote two cards. One with my original coronation test. The second must have been the secret one! My second test! Which means—”

“Wait. How did he know he’d need a second test?” Nicola interrupted. “How did he know you’d fail the first one?”

“I had the same question,” Agatha mulled, eyeing Nicola. “Except . . . that line when he announced the tournament . . .”

“The one that didn’t make sense?” Nic caught on. “‘The future I have seen has many possibilities . . .’”

“Maybe he knew somehow,” Agatha guessed. “Maybe he knew all of this would happen.”

“Arthur wasn’t a seer,” Guinevere dismissed.

“Doesn’t take a seer to know you have a secret son snaking about,” Hort surmised. “Someone who might challenge your other son for your throne.”

“But the Snake just said he isn’t Arthur’s son,” Nicola reminded.

“Look, all that matters is Dad had that second card ready,” Tedros plowed on, trying to make his point. “The one with the tournament. We don’t know what the trials are yet, but the Living Library in Pifflepaff Hills has a whole archive about Dad’s history—his years at school, his training with Merlin, even his time with Sir Ector and Sir Kay, before he pulled the sword from the stone and became king. Dad kept the archive up to date, so I’d have a place to go if something happened to him. A place where I could still feel close to him . . . The library could give me clues to what the tests might be. So I can be ready for them. It’s as good a place as any to start.”

“Too risky,” his mother countered. “The King of Pifflepaff Hills and his guards will be on Japeth’s side. And they keep the ancestry files in the Living Library well protected. Besides, if you have questions about your father, I’m as good a resource as any archive. Arthur confided in me.”

“Was that before or after he put a death warrant on your head?” Tedros mumbled.

“Enough, Tedros. I’m trying to keep you alive,” said Guinevere sternly. “If you don’t want me here, tell me and I’ll go.”

“Your mother’s right,” said Agatha, touching her prince. “Library will be a death trap.”

“So I’m still a fugitive, then,” Tedros blistered, pulling away. “Even after Excalibur went back into the stone. Even with Japeth’s crown disappearing. Even with Dad’s voice rising from the grave and telling people I have a claim to his throne.” Pink spots colored his cheeks. “Surely some kingdoms will question who the king is now? Surely some leaders will figure out he’s the Snake? Surely some will come to my side—”

A blast of light scorched over the Savage Sea like a comet.

Lionsmane’s new message lit up the sky.

“Surely not,” Hort said.

Agatha, too, had the same sinking feeling as she read the pen’s screed.

Tedros thinks he can steal the crown. But the people know better. There is only one king. Your Rhian. The People’s King. Together, we will win the Tournament. For the Lion. For the Woods!

“‘We’?” said Tedros.

“He’s keeping the people on his side,” Agatha realized. “Before the tournament starts.”

“People don’t decide the winner. It’s a race. Someone finishes first,” her prince dismissed. “That’s who Excalibur will crown.”

“We don’t know the tests, Tedros,” said Agatha. “If the people are on his side, they might be able to help him with them. Then it’s not just you against Japeth. It’s you against the entire Woods.”

“But that’s cheating!” Tedros said. “Excalibur won’t crown a cheater!”

“It did once before,” his princess pointed out.

Tedros glared up at the Snake’s screed. “So I could play these tests honest and fair and act the king . . . and still lose my head.”

“Japeth might have the Woods, but you have us. Your family. Your friends. People with real loyalty to you,” Agatha encouraged. “We’ll find a way to win.”

“We just have to keep you safe until you do,” Nicola said to Tedros. “Tournament or no tournament, the Snake’s coming for your head.”

“So many ways to lose a head,” Hort quipped.

Tinkerbell bit him.

“Good girl, Tink,” said Tedros.

With the prince’s safety in mind, the weasel proposed returning to Gnomeland’s underground hideout—

“—where we will have to stay forever, because the Snake’s scims will track us like last time and surround the stump over Gnomeland until we come out,” said Nicola.

“Must you poo on every one of my ideas?” Hort harrumphed. “What’s your idea?”

“To go back to the School for Good and Evil, where we can join the students and teachers and at least have the semblance of a defense,” his girlfriend replied.

“No,” Agatha rejected. “First place Japeth’s men will look. And this time, there’s no Sheriff or enchanted sack to save us.”

A sharp rumble thundered behind them—

Between the lattice of fairies, she watched a cavalry of twenty horses, mounted with armed guards, streak across the snow towards Avalon’s gates.

The sugar-drunk fairies sprung alert, flying higher and smoother, their wings going dark to conceal their passengers.

“Few more minutes and we’d have been dead,” Tedros breathed.

Agatha felt no relief. Japeth’s men were already on the hunt. Which meant Tedros didn’t just have to win three tests against an insidious Snake. He had to survive long enough to finish them. Her heart seized tighter. If only she could do the tests instead of him . . . if only she could protect him—

She squashed the thought.

Hadn’t she learned her lesson about hijacking his battles?

These were his tests. Not hers.

Tedros needs a princess, she told herself. A sentinel at his side. Not a nag or a worrywart or a second-guesser. Besides, there were signs it could all end well. They were alive, for one thing. They were still together. And Sophie’s wedding to the Snake hadn’t been sealed, their rings disappearing before she was his queen. And somewhere out there, the rest of their friends—the witches, Beatrix, Kiko, Willam, Bogden, and others—were hopefully alive too. Tedros still had a chance. Agatha had to let his fate unfold the way it was supposed to. She had to let her prince become a king.

Giving Tedros full command, though, would have to wait. They wouldn’t be going to the Living Library like he wanted. Far too dangerous, she insisted. Instead, it was her plan that won out: to fly to Sherwood Forest, the densest part of the Endless Woods, enchanted by magic and impervious to the Snake, his men, or his scims. They could camp there until the first test was revealed, though Agatha hadn’t the slightest clue how that would happen. (Would Arthur’s voice boom from the sky again? How do you win a race if you don’t know when it starts?) All they could do for now was wait, and Robin Hood’s lair was the best place to do it. Plus, they’d be able to reunite with Robin, their last possible protector, since Lancelot and the Sheriff were dead, along with Agatha’s mother and Professor Sader, Dovey and Lesso too, while Merlin had yet to resurface. Adults didn’t fare well in her fairy tale, Agatha thought grimly, glancing at Guinevere, one of the few left, nestled against her son as the fairies flew them over Foxwood. And yet Guinevere didn’t quite seem like an adult. To Agatha, she was less sturdy somehow, more precarious, as if all those years with Lance in paradise had left the once-queen unprepared for real life.

“Sorry about pooing on your ideas,” Agatha heard Nicola whisper to Hort. “It’s just . . . once you saw Sophie in the mirrorspell, you got all lit up. And you never look that way with me.”

“Sophie doesn’t want me,” Hort chortled, then saw his girlfriend’s face. “No, I don’t mean it like that. I’m abysmal with words. It’s why I made a crap History professor at school. How ’bout this: when the Snake has you in a wedding dress and under some terrible spell, I’ll get lit up too.” He winked at Nic.

“You really are abysmal with words,” she laughed.

“With everything, really,” said Hort, kissing her.

Agatha couldn’t help but smile . . . then noticed Guinevere gazing at her.

“What is it?” Agatha asked.

“I’m just thinking . . . Arthur gave Tedros his ring. Arthur had his second will ready. Arthur wants Tedros to win. So why have this tournament at all?” said the old queen. “Why not just tell the people Tedros is the heir?”

“Because the people wouldn’t believe him,” spoke Tedros quietly. “They know I failed as king the first time. They know Excalibur rejected me for a reason.”

“They only know what they’ve seen,” said Agatha.

Her prince looked up at her.

“I know who you are,” Agatha expressed. “All of us do. But you’re right: the people don’t. The people never got to know the real Tedros the first time you wore the crown. You were too preoccupied trying to hold on to your place as king to actually stand up and be the king. This time is different. There is a Snake on your throne posing as the Lion and you need to save your people from him. Only the true king can make it through that kind of trial. Only the true king can prove he is the real Lion, with everything against him. This is your second chance, Tedros. Excalibur is back in the stone. But the sword can’t choose you until you’ve passed your father’s test. All of his tests.”

Tedros gazed deep and hard into his true love’s eyes.

“And even then Excalibur might not choose you,” Nicola pointed out. “The Snake could win the race. And, even if he doesn’t, Rhian likely pulled Excalibur the first time because he and his brother tricked it. Same trick that made the Lady of the Lake kiss Japeth, thinking he was king. How do we know Japeth can’t trick it again? In which case, the sword will never pick you.”

“Thanks for that,” Tedros grunted, glancing at Hort. “Your dates must be loads of fun.”

“It’s not like you’re marrying Miss Sunshine, either,” Hort pipped.

The fairy ball lurched and Tinkerbell flung back a hissy squeak.

“Stay still, she says,” Tedros whispered, looking down. “Foxwood hawks. Royal collars. Must be on king’s business.”

Carefully the fairy hive floated upwards, while Agatha watched a gang of hawks, fitted with red-and-gold neck cuffs, surf low over the Foxwood vales below. They scanned the houses, until their leader gave a winged signal and the hawks dove, ripping through an open window and interrupting a young fairy godmother at work peering into her crystal ball, before the birds swiped the ball from her. The hawks flew to a forest a few miles ahead, where they dumped the ball into a mound of others, birds arriving with various royal collars and dropping more orbs into the pile, as guards in Camelot armor bashed the crystals to pieces with clubs and melted down the shards.

“Only one reason Japeth would be destroying crystal balls,” Nicola said to Agatha once they were safely hidden in clouds. “That history you witnessed in Rhian’s blood crystal. About Arthur and Evelyn Sader. Clearly Japeth doesn’t want you to see anything else.”

Tedros bit down. “The way he grinned at me. The way he said it . . . ‘I know.’ He got away with making us think he’s my brother. Making us think he’s my dad’s son.”

“But he has to be Arthur’s son. The blood crystal couldn’t have lied,” said Agatha. “I was inside Rhian’s blood. His real past. I saw Evelyn Sader put the spansel around Arthur’s neck while he slept. She enchanted him to have his child. From what I saw, Arthur was Rhian’s father. Evelyn Sader was Rhian’s mother.”

“And yet Japeth just told us that Arthur isn’t his father,” said Nicola. “And Arthur giving Tedros his ring proves it. Camelot’s ring can only go to the heir.”

“Maybe Arthur ignored that rule,” Hort offered. “Knowing Evelyn had tricked him, I mean. Maybe he skipped the real heir and gave the ring to the heir he wanted.”

“No,” said Tedros and Guinevere together, trading looks.

“It’s the law of the Woods,” the prince added. “Dad would never flout that, no matter the circumstances.”

“So we’re back where we started,” Agatha muttered. “Rhian’s blood says Japeth and Rhian are the sons of Arthur and Evelyn Sader. All other evidence says they aren’t. We still have no idea who the Snake is.”

“Hmm, could Rhian have one set of parents and Japeth have another?” Hort asked.

“They’re twins!” Tedros barked, expecting the others to scoff too, but Agatha was thinking about this, and so, it seemed, was Nicola, who was gazing right at the princess, having clearly remembered all the details of The Tale of Sophie and Agatha. Twins could have very strange histories, indeed . . . no stranger than the history of Agatha and her best friend . . .

“Maybe the answer has something to do with Sophie,” Agatha wondered, thinking of that friend now. “It’s her blood that healed the Snake. And it’s Sophie he needs as queen. Why her? What’s special about her blood? Why does Japeth need Sophie to become king?”

“You’re the Sophie expert,” said Tedros.

Agatha sighed. “Wish we had the witches here. They know magic better than any of us.”

“The witches are better off looking for Merlin,” said Guinevere. “If Merlin hasn’t been killed already. Or used his Wizard Wish.”

“Wizard Wish?” Agatha asked.

“A single wish every wizard keeps tucked away where only they can find it,” said the old queen. “A wish that can be made for anything, as long as it’s said out loud, but usually saved by a wizard to choose the precise moment of his death.”

“Merlin’s been threatening to use it since I was a kid,” Tedros murmured. “Any time I had a tantrum: ‘Don’t make me use my Wizard Wish, boy!’”

Guinevere looked at her son. “Let’s hope the witches find Merlin alive.”

“And in time to help me with my first test, whatever it is,” said Tedros.

“Maybe it’ll be something stacked in your favor,” said Hort. “If it was my dad, he’d make the first test something I’d do well. Like picking locks. Or spying on girls.” (Nicola frowned.)

“Dad kept a lot of secrets from me,” said Tedros, shifting. “Not sure how well we really knew each other.”

Agatha waited for Tedros to elaborate, but he put his head between his knees and curled up tighter. Guinevere peered at Agatha expectantly, as if hoping his princess might press the point . . . but Agatha let Tedros be, thinking about how she herself never knew her own father, even if he was there all along.

But there was no more time to think. The fairies were starting to descend.

They’d made it to Sherwood Forest.

AT TEDROS’ INSISTENCE, the fairies had landed them near Beauty and the Feast.

“It must be six in the morning. Won’t be anyone there. Even if there was, they’re not going to let us in like this,” Agatha said, surveying the group’s slovenly appearance, as they slid between tight-packed trees.

“They can give us food in a bag for all I care,” said Tedros, combing a hand through his thick gold hair. “But I need to eat.”

Agatha had learned not to argue with a hungry boy, letting Tedros lead the group towards the dark green cottage hidden in the thicket ahead. She smelled the hot dew of dawn, the sweet scent of leaves brushing her neck . . . then realized it was her prince, slipping his hand around her waist and planting a sly kiss on her cheek.

“I love you,” he whispered.

She peeked back and saw his ravenous pace had left the others behind. Raising her eyes to his, Agatha let Tedros pull her to his chest as he kissed her, his warm, minty taste filling her mouth. He pulled her behind a tree.

“I promise you,” he whispered, his blue eyes afire. “We will be married. You will be my queen, Agatha. Because you deserve a happy ending. And I will find a way to get us there. Trust me. That’s all I ask. I need you to trust me.”

Agatha had lost her breath, taken by the heat of his gaze, a passion she’d never seen in him before.

“You must be very hungry,” she said, kissing him again.

Tedros guided her out from behind the tree, just in time to join the others.

Agatha was still tasting Tedros, her skin hot, her hair a mess . . . For a second, she’d forgotten why they were here. She’d forgotten a monster had stolen her best friend and was trying to kill them. All she could think about was the look in her prince’s eyes.

The sound of loud banging broke her trance. Tedros and Hort pummeled the door of a green bungalow with a terra-cotta rooftop, the two boys practically drooling. Agatha expected the door to fly open and Masha Mahaprada, the Master of Dining, to appear in a storm of gold feathers and give them each a slap.

Instead, the door popped open.

The prince pushed in, the group crowding behind him. “Let me do the talking—”

Agatha stopped cold. So did the rest of them.

The ballroom of Beauty and the Feast, once glittering with magical chandeliers, peacock-feather tablecloths, singing hummingbirds, and spreads of golden-goose egg fondue, fairy-churned butterbread, and chocolate waterfalls . . . was now completely hollowed out.

“Out of business, loves,” said a voice from the corner.

Agatha turned to a matronly fox in a white apron, sweeping the floor, two baby foxes clinging to her.

“Impossible,” Guinevere spurned. “How can the most famous restaurant in all the Woods be out of business?”

“No one comin’ to Sherwood Forest anymore, love, that’s how,” the fox replied, going on with her sweeping. “Not since Robin Hood teamed up with the Sheriff. Everyone afraid Sheriff’s gonna come and make ’em pay the piper. Why’d you think they loved Robin ’round these parts? Long as Robin and the Sheriff were at odds, no one here paid their taxes, did they? Been goin’ on for years. Hoity-toity types takin’ shelter in the Forest. There’s a reason the last line of Beauty and the Feast’s song was ‘Always pay in cash’ . . .” The fox chuckled. “Moment Masha heard Sheriff might be in cahoots with Robin, he whisked elsewhere, along with everyone else. Not payin’ taxes ain’t the only sneak happenin’ in Sherwood, if you know what I mean. Had to stay meself ’cause of the pups. Can’t be movin’ ’em ’til they’re older. Suppose I could rustle up somethin’ for you lot if you’re desperate?” She looked up—

But there wasn’t anyone there.

“NEED TO GET to Robin,” Agatha insisted, Tedros jogging at her side, the two of them clearing low branches.

“No wonder we haven’t seen any people,” said her prince.

“The place was a den of vice. Robin’s job was to keep the Sheriff away,” his mother added, catching up. “Arthur came here too. Mostly right after he was crowned, to escape the pressure. That’s how he and Robin became friends. Whole forest was a sinful hideaway, where people could do as they liked. Even the King of Camelot.”

“What happens in Sherwood stays in Sherwood,” said Hort.

“Until the Sheriff comes. Then no one stays in Sherwood at all,” said Nicola.

Agatha bit down. “There’s a Snake ruling the Woods and all people care about is their taxes?”

Tedros gripped her wrist, stalling in his tracks.

Agatha followed his stare.

The treehouses were torn down. Robin and his Merry Men’s homes, all bashed to filth and strewn to the ground, the paper lanterns that once connected their rogue village ripped apart too, the pieces floating in the morning light like confetti.

Agatha found a handwritten poster tacked to a tree:

WANTED

ROBIN HOOD

DEAD OR ALIVE

BY THE PEOPLE

For ruining their fun!

Agatha pivoted to the others. “Marian’s Arrow. Now.”

By the time they made it to the clearing, Agatha’s heart was in her throat.

Then came the smell.

A putrid scent of rotten eggs and dung that made them hold their noses and gulp for breath.

Marian’s Arrow had been pelted with refuse, the familiar painting of a young Robin Hood kissing Maid Marian on its outside wall now vandalized to have Robin Hood kissing the Sheriff instead. The motto of the place—“Leave All Ye Troubles Behind”—had been scrawled over to read:

YOU ARE OUR TROUBLES

More graffiti littered the door.

SHERIFF LOVER

ROBIN OF NOTTINGHAM

MERRY TRAITORS

Fists clenched, stifling her breath, Agatha pried the door open. A charred, acid smell overwhelmed her, instantly making her eyes water. She heard Hort and Nicola coughing, their footsteps hugging hers as they made their way into Robin Hood’s late-night haunt, now burned to ash. Agatha lit her fingerglow, Hort’s sapphire glow and Nicola’s soft-yellow beaming around hers, illuminating blackened table stumps and toasted fragments of chairs. Shattered beer mugs and plates crunched under their shoes, chunks of a chalkboard hawking daily specials—the Blue Plate Robin, Marian’s Mead—

“Wait . . . ,” said Nicola.

Agatha followed her glow to a singed countertop, where Maid Marian used to tend bar. Only there was something embedded in the ash . . . something that made a pit in Agatha’s stomach . . .

A feather.

A green feather.

Agatha’s knees buckled.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Hort quietly.

Agatha’s shaking fingers touched the feather, thinking of the man who’d sacrificed his friends, his home, his life to help her. Not Robin, too. Another grown-up cut down by her fairy tale. Another one killed because they’d taken her side. Agatha held the feather closer. Would Readers come to know the real Robin Hood? Would the Storian survive to tell the tru—

Robin’s feather shimmered.

Something slipped off it.

A green powder that sprinkled onto the countertop, rearranging into a pattern in the ash.

The crest seeped into the cinders and vanished.

Agatha gaped at the scorched bar.

Did that happen?

Am I imagining things?

Pitter-patter echoed on the roof. Plip. Plip. Plip. A dance of rain, a storm blowing in.

Agatha was still staring at the bar, trying to remember the details of the message Robin left behind—

Then she heard it. Under the rain.

The sharp rustling from the back of the pub.

A closet door vibrating . . . shaking.

“Not opening that,” Hort said.

Nicola didn’t hesitate. She stepped in front of Hort, sucked in a nervous breath, and threw the door open—

“Holy hell,” Hort blurted.

Inside the closet were three of Robin Hood’s Merry Men, bound with rope and gagged with napkins, their faces and chests painted with red, raging words.

SHERIFF MEN

Instantly, Hort and Nicola were on them, untying their ropes, yanking out their gags, helping them to their feet.

Agatha’s neck seared red, anger seizing her like a collar. Merry Men, hog-tied like pigs? Merry Men, once the heroes of this place? All because people wanted Robin and the Sheriff to stay enemies so they could hoard more money? Once Tedros was king, she’d find those responsible and punish them—

Tedros.

“Where’s Tedros?” she breathed.

Her prince and his mother had never entered the bar.

Panic ripped through her. Through the cracked-open door, Agatha caught a glimpse of movement outside: falling slashes of white . . . like stones . . . or arrows . . .

Plip. Plip. Plip.

It wasn’t rain.

She threw aside a crumbling chair, running so hard she lost a clump, and crashed against the front door, sliding outside into the dirt. “Tedros!”

He was there.

Exactly where she’d left him.

Standing beneath the trees with his mother.

Surrounded by thousands and thousands of scrolls, blanketing the forest.

Each was identical: a single sheet of parchment, tied with a silver string, stamped with the seal of a Lion.

King Arthur’s seal.

Agatha looked up as more scrolls snowed from the sky, whiting out the floor of Sherwood Forest, catching in its trees, the magical storm extending beyond the wood, through the pink-and-gold sky, to kingdoms near and far.

Slowly, she looked back at Tedros, her eyes wide.

Then she saw the opened scroll in his palm, limp at his side, his fingers specked with wax from his father’s seal.

Tedros blinked at her, ghost-pale.

“Looks like we found my first test.”

6
SOPHIE
Good Little Girl

Excalibur.

That was its name, Sophie thought, gazing at the sword hilt rising out of the mountain of scrolls that swathed the garden.

They’d fallen from the sky at dawn, waking Sophie with their plip-plop into the flowers. She heard a boy’s voice from the garden, a spew of shouts. By the time she’d run to the window, hair a mess, last night’s makeup smudged, the snow had abated, a few last scrolls drifting into the sea of thousands more, reaching far beyond the castle, past the church and stables, to the hills of Camelot.

Sophie’s eyes stayed on the sword, glinting in the scroll-covered stone. She could hardly remember anything that happened last night, her brain foggier than ever . . . but she knew a few things for sure.

I’m not married.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

The sword’s name is Excalibur.

A headache attacked her as if trying to erase these facts, as if determined to clear the slate again, her mind squeezing from both sides like a vise . . .

But Sophie was on to the pain now. There was a crack in it. Things had slipped through.

I’m not married.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

The sword’s name is Excalibur.

Sophie peered closer at the sword.

Maids shuffled into the garden, marched there by guards. Armed with brooms and buckets, the women in white dresses and bonnets swept the scrolls away, the guards watching them stony-eyed. “King wants every last scrap gone,” growled one. “Don’t want the princess seein’ ’em.”

Sophie could feel her gaze hardening, overriding the fog of her mind.

What doesn’t he want me to see?

The king had ordered her to stay in her chamber and locked her door. She knew not to disobey him. Until now, her body didn’t even know how.

But then the snow happened.

Something had changed.

Her chest thumped faster, hotter.

I’m not married.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

The sword’s name is Excalibur.

Pain bashed her like a hammer, but Sophie was already moving for the door.

She needed to escape this room.

She needed to find out what the king was hiding.

Her finger glowed pink, aimed at the lock.

She needed to know what was in that scroll.

WITH THE GUARDS supervising the maids, Sophie slipped through the hall undetected, ignoring the stabbing in her head getting worse with every step. Her blood slapped so sharply at her temples that she nearly missed the voices, coming from the Blue Tower foyer below. Sophie peeked through the railing.

“I have an appointment with her,” said a woman with braided butterscotch hair, thin eyebrows, and stern brown eyes. She wore a cream-colored dress, a crystal tiara, and carried a pearly clamshell purse. “And seeing that I’ve come here at your demand, on a moment’s notice, to help you win your first test, I expect that appointment to be honored—”

“Princess Sophie is ill,” said a tan boy, standing at the open door, where outside, that sullen Kei was saddling two horses. Inside, the tan boy glared harder at the woman as he fit a riding coat over his blue-and-gold suit. “Did you bring what I asked for?”

My prince, Sophie recognized, with a swell of love. My king.

And yet the king had no crown.

A vague memory snaked through her: crowns vanishing . . . a wedding incomplete . . . a dagger of ice in her fist . . .

She looked down at her hand, no ring on her finger.

What happened last night?

She peered closer at her beloved, taking in the alien green of his eyes, the color not quite real . . . the serpentine lankness of his body . . . the milk-white rim around his ear, as if his tan had missed a spot . . .

That unsettled feeling deepened inside her . . .

Something in the king’s eyes flickered. He glanced up to the second floor. Sophie ducked, a new pain shearing her head, pushing her backwards, as if hell-bent on returning her to her room. Suddenly she couldn’t remember why she’d left her room to begin with. She couldn’t remember why she had this anxious feeling or what she was doing hiding under a rail. But she stayed in place, trusting the moment. Trusting whatever had brought her here.

Slowly she peeked back out.

“The people are in shock, of course,” the woman was saying to the king. “Excalibur returning to the stone. Arthur’s voice from beyond the grave. A tournament to decide the king when they thought they already had one . . . But the Woods is on your side. For now. Betting has Tedros at 100 to 1 odds.”

“Too generous,” the king sniped.

“Tedros has his defenders. And many more who are seeing him in a new light,” the woman observed. “They wonder if he is the true king that Arthur spoke of. The Lion instead of the Snake you make him out to be. My advice to you: win the first test quickly. Because if Tedros wins the first test . . .” Her eyes drilled into the king’s. “Then people will really start to wonder.”

“Which is why you’re here to help me,” the king said icily. He held out his palm. “Give it to me.”

“Princess Sophie looked well enough last night,” the woman replied, ignoring the king’s outstretched hand. “Unless she too is disturbed by the vanishing of your crown. Unless she questions how Tedros has Camelot’s ring instead of its king. Unless she wonders why Arthur’s ghost would declare a tournament when his heir already sits on the throne. Perhaps the sum of it left her feeling queasy. Like it has me.”

“Sophie’s not seeing visitors,” said the king.

“Sophie’s the one who requested a meeting,” the woman answered.

“Impossible,” said the king.

“Why’s that?” his guest asked. “Is it impossible your queen would reach out to a fellow queen? Is it impossible she wants to control her own life?”

“Give it to me, Jacinda.”

“Queen Jacinda to you,” the woman parried. “I think it perfectly fitting that the Queens of Camelot and Jaunt Jolie be friends. That’s a queen’s job: diplomacy. I myself had meetings this morning with leaders from the Kingdom Council, whose realms were blizzarded by scrolls with Arthur’s first test. Naturally, the other leaders still favor you in the tournament over Tedros, given you saved their kingdoms from attacks.” She smiled. “Too bad they’re not the ones who crown the winner.”

“I’m leaving for Putsi,” the king intoned. “Did you bring it or not?”

“Will Sophie meet with me or not?” the woman returned. “Just a meeting, King Rhian. That’s all.”

The boy’s eyes cut into her.

Rhian, Sophie thought. That’s his name. Rhian. My king.

As for the Queen of Jaunt Jolie, Sophie couldn’t remember her in the slightest. She certainly didn’t recall making an appointment. Nor did she recognize much of what this woman had said to the king: Arthur? Tedros? Tournament of Kings? None of it penetrated the pain in her head, worsening by the second. Everything she’d gleaned had slithered back into its cracks.

“So much for diplomacy,” the queen sighed, relenting under Rhian’s glare. “I will help you with the first test, King Rhian. For the same reason I agreed to burn my ring. Because you saved my children from being hanged by the Snake. But the debt is repaid now. After this, you cannot lord yourself over me anymore. Understood?”

She snapped open her purse roughly, thrusting a hand in. The queen drew out a spotted black-and-white key that seemed to quiver in her palm like a newborn pup. Sophie squinted closer at it through the rail. The key was made of . . . fur.

Rhian seized it, pocketing the key into his coat. “We can reschedule your appointment with Sophie. Once Tedros is dead and you’re feeling less queasy about my place on the throne.” He guided the queen towards the door. She pulled from Rhian stiffly, closing her purse—

That’s when Sophie noticed it.

The scroll inside the queen’s bag.

Sophie homed onto it, a moth to a flame.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

The pair were almost through the door—

“Jacinda! Sweetie, darling!”

Queen and king froze. Both looked up at the bedraggled girl in her nightgown.

“My apologies, Jacinda. I was feeling quite poorly this morning, but I’m turned around now,” Sophie chimed, forcing words through the pain. “Shall we keep our appointment? The king will be relieved I’m well enough to sit with you. Won’t you, pumpkin?”

Sophie smiled down at Rhian, her hair like a wild animal’s, her lipstick smeared like a clown’s.

The king gave her a stare so cold she thought he’d turned to stone.

SOPHIE BET THAT whatever business lay in Putsi was too important for the king to be waylaid by his princess’s sudden appearance. She’d bet well, the king having ridden off with his captain as planned, unable to supervise her meeting with Jaunt Jolie’s queen.

What she hadn’t accounted for was that he’d leave someone to supervise her in his place.

Now, as she cozied up to Jacinda in a Blue Tower sitting room, laid out with ginger tea and pastries, she endured the watchful eyes of the Mistral Sisters, seated on couches in the corner, notepads and pens in hand.

“Would you prefer to speak . . . privately?” the Queen of Jaunt Jolie asked Sophie, who’d cleaned herself up, her white dress reshaped to its prim, ruffled form. “Perhaps we can meet in your chambers—”

“This is a scheduled meeting between dignitaries, is it not?” said Alpa from the corner.

“And all scheduled meetings must be recorded,” Omeida added. “Besides, there’s been mischief in the castle of late. A precious map burned to ash. An intruder at the press gathering. We have to keep our eye on everyone. Queens included.”

The Queen of Jaunt Jolie turned to them. “When King Rhian pursued the powers of the One True King, I believed he had noble intentions. Now that I know it’s the Mistral Sisters advising him, I’m relieved that pursuit came to naught.”

“Still holding grudges, are you?” cooed Alpa.

“All because Arthur wouldn’t betroth your eldest to his son,” said Omeida.

“You took advantage of Arthur when he was grief-stricken and alone. You isolated him and poisoned his mind. You made him believe he was the One True King,” the queen shot back. “Suddenly, he wouldn’t let Tedros and my Betty have their usual playdates. He wouldn’t meet with me or any other leaders. Arthur lost respect in the last months of his life because of you. Which is why no one trusts you.”

“Until now,” said Alpa, with a thin smile. “Seems like we found the One True King after all.”

“And yet there’s one ring still left,” the queen replied. “Worn by a son of Arthur who reminds me more of the Arthur I knew than the one you currently advise. If there is such a thing as the One True King, perhaps it’s Tedros.”

Alpa’s face darkened. “We’ll let King Rhian know the next time your children are in danger, he should leave them to their fate.”

For the first time, the queen looked shaken.

Sophie hadn’t the faintest clue what they were prattling on about. All she knew was she needed that scroll in the queen’s bag. Everything else had sloughed away in the pounding thud of her head. Indeed, she’d almost forgotten who the woman seated in front of her was.

The scroll, she reminded herself, clawing the thought back from the brink. I need that scroll.

But new thoughts were coming, thoughts not hers, pushing words onto her tongue. Behind the queen, Sophie could see the Mistrals, subtly moving their hands over their notebooks . . .

“What did you want to discuss?” Sophie asked Jacinda, pouring tea into the queen’s cup.

Her brain felt like it was axed in two: one part ramming words and actions through her body; the other trying to hold on to the reason she was here.

The scroll.

She started losing the thought . . .

What scroll?

More words flooded through, the pain in her head evaporating, everything running smooth as milk.

“How is your eldest daughter?” Sophie said, confident and controlled, the way she’d been when she briefed the press. “I wish she and I could have had a chance to be friends at school.”

“Betty wasn’t taken,” Jacinda replied bitterly. “Another from Jaunt Jolie was kidnapped instead. This stultifying Beatrix girl who kept trying to be Betty’s friend, hoping it would ingratiate her in royal circles. But it’s all worked out in the end. Betty doesn’t need that school or the Storian. She’s found her own way to tell tales . . .”

“Aren’t you glad you burned your ring, then? If Betty doesn’t need the school or Storian, the rest of the Woods shouldn’t either,” quipped Sophie brightly, without a clue what she was saying.

The queen searched Sophie’s face. “Something’s not right with you,” she said quietly. “Tell me what’s going on. Even if those two witches are listening. I’ll take you to Jaunt Jolie. My Knights of the Eleven are fierce warriors and will keep you safe. And I have the ear of other leaders, Good and Evil. I have the power to protect you, Sophie.”

Jacinda looked back at the Mistral Sisters, as if expecting them to revolt or attack, but Alpa and Omeida said nothing, their hands fidgeting over their notebooks.

“Would you like a rum baba?” Sophie offered, on cue, holding out a cream-topped cake. “The new chef here is marvelous.”

“Didn’t know you were one to eat pastries,” the queen said tartly. “And it looks soggy and ill-made.” Jacinda locked eyes with Sophie. “I saw you at Tedros’ execution. I saw you and your Dean. I know whose side you’re really on.”

Sophie’s mind went stiff, the script aborted.

Behind the queen, the Mistral Sisters mirrored her pause.

“Me and the Dean?” Sophie asked, using her own words now. “Which Dean? What execution? I’m sorry . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .”

The queen stared into the void of her gaze. “What’s happened to you?” she whispered, clasping Sophie’s wrist. “Why are you here instead of with Agatha?”

The warmth of touch.

The comfort of skin.

The sound of a name.

Agatha.

It slashed through the fog of Sophie’s mind like a lightning bolt to a lake.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

Scrolls should not fall from the sky.

She saw the Mistral Sisters’ hands moving again, their faces tight, but Sophie was already short-circuiting the script.

“I’m feeling a bit ill,” said Sophie, standing up—

As she did, she knocked over the queen’s purse, which fell to the floor. “Oopsy,” said Sophie, reaching for it, only to punt it farther under the couch.

“Let me—” the queen started.

“I’ve got it,” said Sophie, already on her knees, reaching beneath the couch. “I certainly gave it a good kick . . . oh, here it is . . .” She stood and handed the purse back to the queen. “My advisors will see you out.” Sophie smiled at the Mistral Sisters, who looked more at ease now, as if Sophie had steered things back on track.

Jaunt Jolie’s queen studied Sophie one last time. “I wish . . .” She shook her head, trying to finish the thought—

Sophie kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Then before anyone could say another word, the princess ushered herself back to her chambers, like a good little girl.

SOMETHING WAS INSIDE her head.

Something was controlling this pain.

Sophie had figured it out while sitting with the queen. First, there were those sisters, pretending to take notes. But every time they moved their hands, she lost control, someone else’s words coming out of her mouth, someone else’s thoughts usurping her mind. And if she tried to reclaim her thoughts, to think for herself, the pain came to hurt her.

Yet the pain attacked even when the Mistrals weren’t there. She could feel it now, slithering around her mind, waiting to strike.

Which meant the Mistrals might be able to control the pain . . .

But they weren’t its source.

The source was her head. Inside her head.

She didn’t yet know what was causing this pain, exactly. But she knew how to keep it at bay . . .

Don’t think.

So rather than thinking about the scroll in her fist, Sophie focused on the sounds of her feet: plip, plop, plip, plop, like the patter of rain, pulling her towards her chamber. Her white dress itched at her skin, surely suspecting something, but the dress stopped short of anything more as she slipped into her sun-drenched room and closed the door.

Quickly she tried to lock it, but the latch was broken. Her fault, of course. She’d burned through it to leave this room. Already her head was starting to throb harder, sensing mischief afoot.

She could hear footsteps coming down the hall.

Voices growing closer.

But then something strange happened.

A ribbon of white lace fluttered off her dress, fully alive. For a moment, Sophie thought it might attack her: this dress, which had a mind of its own. Instead, it slid through the broken lock and morphed into a white-stone bolt, jamming the door.

There was no time to think about why the dress was helping her.

The pain was already coming like an alarm.

Sophie flung open her fist, yanking the crumpled scroll out and matting it against a mirror on the wall, the bold, black ink slick in the sunlight—

So it begins, the first test arrives

Two kings race to stay alive

For a king cannot rule if he is dead

Or lead a kingdom without his head

But once upon a time, a man came to my court

Who gave up his head, just for sport

He wanted one thing, this headless knave

Tried to claim it and dug his grave

What did he want? Only my true heir will know

Now go and find it, where wizard trees grow!

Sophie couldn’t make any sense of it, not with her head about to pop like a balloon. Headless knights . . . wizard trees . . . ? The pain intensified, about to rip open her brain. She shoved the scroll into her pocket. It had to mean something. Something the pain didn’t want her to figure out—

Loud knocks attacked the door.

“Sophie!” Alpa said.

Hands jostled the lock, blocked by the ribbon of stone.

“Don’t do anything stupid!” Omeida harassed. “The king will know! He’ll see you! Wherever he is, he’ll come back and punish you!”

Sophie stared at the door, pain blotting out all thoughts but one.

“See” me?

Fists pummeled harder, but the stone held tight.

“Open this door!” Alpa demanded.

How can the king see me if he isn’t here? Sophie thought. Unless . . .

She peered at the scroll’s poem, flattened against the mirror.

Then, slowly, her gaze shifted to her reflection.

She heard guards coming now, the sisters ordering them to bash down the door . . . but Sophie was lost in her own eyes, studying her electric-green irises and big black pupils, the pain cleaving through her head, harder, angrier, as if it knew she was getting close. She couldn’t breathe, her mind impaled from every direction, her vision dotting with lights, her body seconds from passing out. But Sophie didn’t yield, glaring into the gems of her eyes, mining deeper, deeper, searching the darkness and light for something that wasn’t hers . . . until at last she found them.

Hiding like two snakes in a hole.

Guards bludgeoned the door with axes and clubs, the wood splintering.

Sophie had already lit her finger.

Pink glow reflected in her pupils like a torch in a cave.

She could hear their screams, the scaly eels, as they stabbed harder and harder behind her eyes, trying to regain control.

But the truth was in her sights now. Pain had become pleasure.

Sophie raised her finger and slipped it into her ear.

She grinned in the mirror like a devil facing itself.

This is going to hurt.

STONE SHATTERED IN the lock.

The door burst open, guards and Mistrals coming through.

A breeze sifted through the room, rippling across the blood-soaked curtains, the window wide open.

On the windowsill lay two scims crushed to filth.

But it was outside where the real message had been left.

Dripped in crimson across the white snow of scrolls, across the white dresses of maids, lying stunned by a spell.

Five bloody words.

The remnants of a princess.

The warning of a witch.

ALL OF YOU WILL DIE

7
TEDROS
Mahameep

“Your first test to become king . . . ,” said Hort, mouth full of cotton candy, “and you don’t know what it means?”

Tedros ignored him, kicking away scrolls that littered the cotton-candy grove just past the border of Sherwood Forest. He didn’t have to answer to the weasel. He didn’t have to answer to anyone. He was the heir. He was the king.

Yet he’d failed his first test before it had even begun.

The Green Knight. Why did it have to be about the Green Knight?

It was the one part of his dad’s history he’d never learned. On purpose. And his dad had known it.

Is that why Dad made it a test? To punish me?

Tedros shook it off, trying to find clues in the poem: “He wanted one thing, this headless knave . . .” “Tried to claim it and dug his grave . . .” “Now go and find it where wizard trees grow . . .”

He couldn’t focus, his thoughts spiraling—

What did the Green Knight want?

Why didn’t I ask Dad!

Does Japeth know?

Suppose he finishes before me? Is he already on to the second test? What if I’m too late—

A hand squeezed his.

Tedros looked up at Agatha, her hair dotted with blue and pink cotton candy.

“I’m sure Japeth doesn’t have the answer either,” his princess assured, her lips dusted with sugar. “How could he?”

“Well, we can’t just loaf around the Woods until I figure it out,” said Tedros, watching Hort and Nicola pluck trees and feed each other candy. “This forest is the path into Pifflepaff Hills. Where the Living Library is. We need to go to my dad’s archive there. It’s the only place where I can find out what the Green Knight wanted.”

“Tedros, we decided it’s too dangerous—”

“You decided. And it’s more dangerous for me to lose the first test!” said Tedros. “If Japeth doesn’t know the answer, the Living Library is the first place he’ll look. We should have gone when I suggested it instead of wasting time back there with Merry Men!”

“They were starving and homeless!” said Agatha. “We got them scraps from Beauty and the Feast and helped fix their houses. It was the Good thing to do.”

“Even I know that and I’m Evil,” Hort said behind them, mouth stained blue.

“We’re going to the Library. My orders,” Tedros said firmly, walking ahead.

He glanced up at school fairies tracking him from above, keeping a lookout over sugar-spun trees, while Tinkerbell squeaked at any who snuck down for a bite. Behind him, he could hear Agatha reassuring his mother that she would protect her prince, no matter how dangerous the new plan was.

Having a princess wasn’t supposed to be like this, Tedros thought. In all the stories he knew, princes protected their princesses. Princes were in charge and princesses followed. Yes, Agatha was a rebel, which is why he loved her. But sometimes he wished she was less rebel and a little more princess, even if he felt like an ogre for thinking it. Tedros flung aside a pink bough, barreling ahead. One thing was for sure: Agatha couldn’t win the first test for him. From here on out, they’d do things his way.

A short while later, the prince peeked between a last cluster of sweet-cotton branches.

The Pifflepaff Pavilion was painted pink and blue and nothing in between. There were blue “boy” shops—the Virile Vintner, the Hardy Folk Furriers, the Handsome Barber—and there were pink “girl” shops: Silkmaid’s Stockings, the Good Lady’s Bookshop, Ingenue’s Combs & Brushes. In the morning rush, men in blue stayed apart from girls in pink, including the pink-clad sweepers, who cleaned the pavilion of leftover scrolls. (Tedros’ dad had left no kingdom untouched in announcing the first test.) Then there were the trees dotting the streets, like the ones in the forest, blooming with bell-shaped tufts of cotton candy, the trees either blue or pink, from which only the appropriate sex could eat. Pifflepaffers tore off candy as they walked, men inhaling blue, women sucking on pink, as if they lived on nothing but their assigned clouds of color. There was no crossing of lines, no blurring of boundaries. Boys were boys and girls were girls. (Maybe it would rub off on Agatha, Tedros thought grouchily.)

At a coffee stand, a merchant had his blue stall divided into two sides: TEAM RHIAN and TEAM TEDROS, hawking themed drinks for each. Team Rhian’s side offered a Lion Latte (turmeric, cashew milk, cloves), a Golden Lionsmane (horchata, chocolate ganache), and the Winner’s Elixir (espresso, maca root, and honey) . . . while Team Tedros’ side sold a Snake Tongue (matcha powder, hot oat milk, ghee), a Cold Storian (iced coffee, cinnamon), and a Headless Prince (hazelnut, mocha, goat milk). The Rhian aisle was packed with men making orders, picking up drinks, catching up with friends. The Tedros table was deserted. “Who Will Win the Tournament?” read two tip jars, one with Rhian’s name, overflowing with copper and silver coins, the other with Tedros’ name, toting a few farthings.

Tedros’ blood flowed hot.

The Woods thought he had no chance.

Even though Excalibur had returned to the stone. Even though his father spoke from the grave and gave him a claim. These people still thought he would lose.

Why?

Because they’d seen Rhian pull the sword from the stone, while Tedros failed. Because they’d seen Rhian quell attacks on their kingdoms, while Tedros failed. Because Rhian’s pen told them what they wanted to hear, while the pen Tedros fought for told them the truth, even if it hurt. All of it was a Snake’s tricks, but the people didn’t know that. That’s why no one was betting on him. To the Woods, Tedros was a loser.

Which is why he had to win this first test.

Tedros peered harder through the trees.

The Living Library, a colossal acropolis, stood tall on a hill over the pavilion, its blue pillars and domed roof glowing in afternoon sun. On the stairs, flanking the entrance, were Pifflepaff guards, who despite their comical blue hats, shaped like muffin-tops, came armed with loaded crossbows, Lion badges over their hearts, and small pocket-mirrors, which each guard flashed at anyone who entered or exited the Library.

“Six guards,” said Tedros, turning to the others. “And they have Matchers.”

“Matchers?” asked Agatha.

“Living Library keeps ancestry files on every soul in the Woods,” Tedros explained. “Matchers track those going in and out, in case anyone tries to doctor or steal a file. Those mirrors tell the guards our names and what kingdom we’re from.”

“So if they’ll know who we are, how are we supposed to get inside?” Nicola asked.

Tedros glanced off. “Haven’t gotten that far.”

“And there’s no other way to figure out what the Green Knight wanted?” Nicola pressured, eyeing the scroll peeking out of the prince’s pocket. “There isn’t something you aren’t remembering or something your dad told you—”

“No, there isn’t,” Agatha defended, “otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

“It’s his dad,” Hort snapped at Agatha, then pivoted to Guinevere. “And your husband. How can neither of you know a crucial part of King Arthur’s history? Even the village idiot knows the story of the Green Knight. Terrorized the Woods because he wanted something from King Arthur. Something secret. We know what happened to the Green Knight but no one ever found out what the secret was. Except Arthur, of course. And now you’re telling me you two don’t know what it was, either? How can King Arthur’s own family not know? Didn’t you talk to each other? Or have family dinners or holiday jaunts or the kinds of things Ever families are supposed to have that make them feel so superior to Never ones? If it was my dad, you bet your bottom he woulda told me what the Knight was after, even if it was a secret.”

Guinevere grimaced. “I wasn’t at the castle when the Green Knight came.”

“So much for you being a ‘resource’ on Arthur,” Hort scorned, then glared at Tedros. “And your excuse?”

“He doesn’t have to excuse anything—” Agatha started.

“Yes, I do,” said Tedros, cutting her off.

He needed to say it out loud.

The reason his dad chose this as the first test.

“The Green Knight came in the weeks after my mother ran off with Lancelot,” the prince explained. “I’d stopped talking to Dad. At first, I held him as responsible as I’d held her. For letting her leave. For not keeping her happy. For breaking up our family.” He looked at Guinevere, who struggled to hold his gaze. “Eventually I started talking to him again. And only after he came back from defeating the Knight. But we never spoke about his victory. It was a great feat, of course. He tried to bring it up again and again, baiting me to ask the details. Eager to share what happened. And I wanted to know. I wanted him to tell me what the Green Knight came for. But I never did ask. It was my way of punishing him, reminding him that Mother was gone and it was his fault. I wouldn’t be the son he could confide in. Not anymore. That’s why he made this the first test. Because I failed it when he was alive. Because I chose anger and pride over forgiveness.”

Even Hort went quiet.

Tedros suddenly felt the chill of loneliness. Agatha and his friends could only take him so far. In the end, it was him that was on trial. His past. His present. His future.

“We can’t change what’s already happened. What matters is finding the answer now. What matters is winning the first test,” Agatha said briskly. Tedros knew that tone: whenever his princess felt helpless or scared, she grasped for control even more than usual. Agatha pushed past her prince and squinted out at the Library. “If the Green Knight was unfinished business between you and your dad, he would have left you the answers. And you’ve said all along those answers would be here. You’re right, Tedros. It doesn’t matter if it’s dangerous. We need to get past those guards.”

“And their Match things,” Nicola reminded.

“There’s no ‘we,’” Tedros corrected Agatha. “I’ll go alone.”

“I’m coming with you,” Agatha insisted.

“It’ll be impossible enough getting me past the guards. How can both of us get past them?” the prince argued.

“Same way I broke into Camelot’s dungeons. Same way Dovey freed us from the execution,” said Agatha. “With a distraction.”

“And my mother?” Tedros peppered. “Can’t just leave her in the middle of the Woods with the weasel and a first year—”

But Guinevere wasn’t paying attention.

She and Nicola were watching something else in the forest: a squirrel with a royal collar, carrying a round walnut in its mouth, huffing and puffing past trees, as if it had already come a long way.

The old queen and first year gave each other narrow looks.

“Actually, Nicola and I have other business to attend to,” Guinevere said.

“Mm-hmm,” said Nic.

The two of them went after the squirrel.

Hort blinked dumbly. “Well, if you’re going into the Library and they’re going after a rodent, what am I supposed to do—”

He turned to see the Tedros and Agatha staring right at him.

“Oh no,” said Hort.

AT THE LIBRARY entrance, there was a lull in the flow of patrons. A guard disguised a yawn, his crossbow limp at his side; a second picked his nose with one of his arrows; a third spied on pretty women with his Matcher—

A blast of blue glow shot it out of his hands, dashing it on the Library steps.

Another blast took out the next guard’s Matcher.

The guards looked up.

A blond-poufed boy with no shirt, no pants, and a cotton candy diaper leapt in front of them, wagging his bum—

“Singing, hey! Laddie, ho!

Laddie, laddie, ho, ho

Same old shanty,

Sing it front and back,

Ho, ho, laddie, laddie, hey!”

The boy waited for the guards to attack.

They gaped at him dumbly.

The boy cleared his throat.

This time, he tap-danced too.

“I’m a pirate captain

Hoo ha, hoo ha

My ship is named the PJ Frog

Hoo ha, hoo ha

With a lass named Nic and a friend named Soph,

Ho, ho, laddie, laddie, hey!”

The boy shimmied his hands. “Olé!”

Guards still didn’t move.

Hort frowned. “Fine.”

He burst out of his diaper into a seven-foot-tall, hairy man-wolf.

“Roar,” he said, half-heartedly.

The guards charged.

“Never fails,” Hort sighed, upending trees as he dragged the men on a chase.

Meanwhile, a boy and girl hurried up the blue library steps, keeping their heads down. Tedros had smeared his shirt with cotton candy, giving it a splotchy blue tint, and hidden his blond locks under a mop of blue spun sugar, so he looked less like a prince and more a homeless elf. Agatha, for her part, had beaded her black gown with pink cotton candy and capped her hair with a towering hive of pink fluff. Together, they motored through the library doors, only to see a large sign.

BOYS ENTRANCE ONLY

By Law of Pifflepaff Hills

“Separate but Equal”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Agatha.

But ahead, there was a line of blue-dressed men waiting to get past a librarian—an old goat name-tagged GOLEM—who was checking each entrant with a Matcher, affixing them with their own name tag and letting them through, before he turned his attention to the line of women coming from another entrance.

“I need to use the girls’ door,” Agatha whispered, heading back outside—

But now the Pifflepaff guards had returned to their posts, Hort’s werewolf nowhere in sight. Just as they were about to spot Agatha, Tedros yanked her into the boys’ line. He could see the men in line were glaring at her, cracking knuckles and curling fists.

“I know, right?” Tedros chuckled. “Seems like a girl . . . but you’d be surprised.”

Agatha frowned at him, but the men glared harder now, prowling towards her.

“Go ahead. Look for yourself,” the prince shrugged, offering Agatha up.

His princess gasped, about to clobber him, but the men had stopped in their tracks. They peered at Agatha, weighing Tedros’ offer. Then they shook their heads with a collective grunt and went back to their business.

“Told you to trust me,” Tedros whispered to his princess.

“Thanks for that,” Agatha snapped as they neared the goat, scanning and name-tagging more entrants, “but how we gonna get past him?”

Behind the goat’s desk, more Pifflepaff guards with Lion badges were stationed on staircases to the library stacks. Tedros’ chest clamped. Guards in here, guards out there. The moment the goat matched their names, he and Agatha were dead.

“It’s too risky,” he said, grabbing Agatha’s wrist, pulling her towards the door. “We need to sneak out—”

“Wait. Not yet,” Agatha resisted, studying the old goat as he stamped more names.

“He’s going to catch us!” Tedros hissed.

But Agatha’s focus stayed on the freckle-faced man in front of them, who was having an argument with the goat. “Trust me,” she said to her prince.

Those magic words, Tedros thought.

“I’m called Patrick,” the freckled man protested, pointing at the stamp on his chest. “This says . . . ‘Poot.’”

“As it should,” said Golem, swiveling to the girls’ line. “Welcome, Hatshepsut!”

“It’s Hanna,” said a lady.

But the goat was already back to Tedros and Agatha, next in the boys’ line.

Tedros held his breath as he and Agatha approached, the patchy-furred goat eyeing them through thick glasses.

“Good to see strapping boys in a library instead of making mischief,” said Golem, his voice hoary and high, honing in on Agatha. “Though at first glance, one might mistake you for a girl, which isn’t allowed. Boys must be boys and girls must be girls, through and through. So I really should report you, dear boy. The guards behind me are no doubt itching for my verdict on the matter . . .”

Tedros felt Agatha’s palm go clammy.

“But that’s to presume we should call you a ‘boy’ at all,” the goat mused. “Because if a boy likes to dress as a girl, one might say he’s still a boy, in which case he should use the boys’ entrance. But if the boy feels like a girl, well, he should use the girls’ door, shouldn’t he? Because what you feel often contradicts what ‘is’ and you can’t change what ‘is’ until you know what you feel. It’s rather complicated, isn’t it? If only we had a reputable princess to consult. The best princesses can find answers in a way we ordinary goats cannot.” He looked at Agatha, as if hoping she could resolve the matter.

“I think the question of which door to use should be left to the one using it,” said Agatha, eyeing the Matcher on the desk.

Tedros could see the back of her neck rashing red, anticipating the mirror’s scan.

“Must be school aged, you two,” the goat rambled, the line of men restless behind them. “My younger brother works as a librarian at the School for Good and Evil. Is that where you went to school?”

“No,” said Tedros and Agatha, too forcefully.

The goat gave them a long stare. “No?” He raised his Matcher to reflect them, his whiskers twitching. “Let’s see who you are, then . . .”

Tedros’ stomach surged into his throat. Why hadn’t they run for it? Surely there were other ways to find the answer to his dad’s first test . . . to what the Green Knight wanted . . . There was no way of tricking a Matcher! Agatha had put them in a death trap—

“Arise, young Teedum of Coomat!” the goat boomed, stamping him with a tag, before plastering one on Agatha. “And welcome, young Agoff!”

Tedros and his princess gaped at Agatha’s name tag.

AGOFF OF WOODLEY BRINK

“May I suggest the exhibit on Floor 5, about Notable Chaplains,” the goat prattled. “The one at Camelot happens to be a good friend. Pospisil, his name is. Not that you two would know the slightest thing about Camelot, since Teedum is from Coomat and Agoff from Woodley Brink. Then again, I’m a doddering old bag who’s been mixing up my names lately, or at least that’s what everyone in Pifflepaff says . . . Imagine if condemned criminals entered my library. I’d hardly notice them.”

He gave them a smile.

Tedros saw Agatha grin too, she and the goat locking eyes.

“If only we had a reputable princess to consult on the matter . . .”

Tedros’ heart beat faster.

“Dearest Golem,” the princess said, keeping her voice low, “might you tell Teedum and I where to find answers about King Arthur’s reign?”

“Thought that’s what you might be here for,” the goat replied keenly. “Floor 3, East Wing. But I’m afraid the Pifflepaff King has closed Arthur’s archive for renovation. There’s no way inside, unless a trespasser just happened to use the broken door in the south stairwell. But can’t imagine anyone would be foolish enough to do that . . .”

“Can’t imagine,” said Agatha.

Golem winked and waved them away before swiveling to the girls’ line: “Next!”

Agatha pulled Tedros towards the stairs ahead.

“How’d you know to trust him?” Tedros whispered.

“Always trust librarians,” his princess whispered back.

They heard the goat stamp his book and slap another name—

“Hail, Methuselah!”

THE DOOR TO the south stairwell was indeed broken, letting Tedros and his princess steal up to the third floor without the slightest sign of a guard.

As they pushed through the door, Tedros had his first view of the Living Library’s halls, he and Agatha stopping short to marvel.

The floor, the walls, the high ceilings were all made of alternating squares of blue and pink mosaic, each tile the size of a biscuit. At first, Tedros thought the mosaic an extension of Pifflepaff’s obsession with sex, the alternating pastel colors so relentless that it felt like they’d been stuffed inside a birthday cake. But then Tedros noticed the legions of white mice, wheeling carts loaded with cubes of paper, across the floors, up the walls, along the ceiling, while a large bat supervised from a corner. Each mouse checked the numbers on their cubes, then found a corresponding tile, before popping open the blue or pink square like a safe box and slipping the scroll inside.

Following their lead, Tedros pressed a random pink tile, feeling it pop under his fingers. He pulled out the small cube of paper, labeled “1851,” then gently pried open the thin sheet of parchment, crammed with elaborate calligraphy.

Prince Kaveen of Shazabah

Age: | 23
Parents: | Sultan Adeen of Shazabah, Mumtaz Adeen of Shazabah
Current Address: | Shazabah Prison
Schooling: | School for Good (Leader)

A long ancestry description followed, marking Kaveen as the great-grandson of Aladdin. Another familiar name caught Tedros’ eye: “Prince Kaveen was briefly married to Princess Uma, now a teacher of Animal Communication at the School for Good—”

A mouse ran over Tedros’ foot with a cart, before it noticed him and Agatha and peered up with pearly, black eyes.

“Moop moop mop mip mip,” it meeped.

Tedros and Agatha exchanged baffled looks.

The mouse held up a sign.

WHOSE FILE ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

Agatha began: “Actually, we’re looking for King Arthur’s archiv—”

“Japeth of Foxwood. We need his file,” Tedros cut in sharply. He glanced at Agatha. “Since we’re here, I mean.”

The mouse whipped out a notebook, scanning through it.

“Good thinking,” Agatha whispered to Tedros, with a smile. The kind of smile princesses gave dashing, quick-thinking princes in the storybooks that Tedros loved growing up. The kind of smile his princess almost never gave him. Maybe this kingdom was rubbing off on her, Tedros thought . . . He wasn’t sure if he liked it.

“Japethee,” the mouse piped, pointing at its ledger: “Matoo cuatro matoo matoo.” Humming a tune, the mouse wheeled its cart up the wall, feet knobbing onto the edges of the tiles, as it scaled columns and slid across rows, until it landed high on a blue tile near the upside-down bat. “Matoo cuatro matoo matoo,” the mouse double-checked.

Tedros glanced at Agatha hopefully, then back at the mouse, who popped the tile open, pulled out a file, and dropped it, down, down, down, into the prince’s waiting palm. “2422,” the cube face read. Tedros spread it open, nearly tearing the thin paper—

Sir Kay

Parents:
Sir Ector of Foxwood, Lady Alessandra of Camelot

Deceased
(Buried in Vault 41, Bank of Putsi)

Sir “Kay,” as named by his father, was Arthur’s foster brother at the home of Sir Ector, where Arthur grew up before becoming King of Camelot. Kay was later made King Arthur’s first knight, only to leave the Round Table after a few weeks. According to the Camelot registry, Kay was Sir Ector’s only child, his full name registered as—

Tedros crumpled it. “Wrong file,” he groaned. “Japeth. We wanted Japeth’s file. Not my dad’s foster brother’s.”

The mouse skidded down the tiles and yanked the file from him, clearly distressed by Tedros’ handling of it before unleashing a barrage of squeaks as it wheeled away: “Matoo cuatro matoo matoo. Mip moodoo mop!”

Tedros side-eyed his princess.

“It was worth a try,” she sighed, pulling him ahead.

“Mouse?” Tedros called out.

The mouse stopped its cart.

“What about Rhian of Foxwood?” Tedros asked.

The mouse grumbled sourly at the prince, slapping open the ledger once more. It continued grouching as it rifled through pages until it came to the one it wanted. The mouse frowned at it intently, then snapped the book shut.

“Mahameep,” said the mouse.

Tedros shook his head, not following.

The mouse scrawled on the back of a sign and held it up.

MISSING

“Mahameep,” the mouse repeated, stalking off.

Tedros mumbled: “More dead ends.”

“Don’t give up yet,” said Agatha, peering ahead.

The prince followed her gaze.

Past more mosaic walls and mice scurrying about with carts and scrolls, a flurry of black curtains and yellow rope walled off a wing, the marquee at the entrance hanging askew.

THE HISTORY OF KING ARTHUR

Curated by King Arthur of Camelot

& August A. Sader of Glass Mountain

“August Sader?” Tedros asked, surprised.

Agatha turned to him. “If Professor Sader helped your father . . .”

“He could have helped Dad see the future!” said Tedros, understanding.

“Which means maybe your dad knew we’d come,” his princess said, breathless. “You were right, Tedros! He had a plan to help you and it starts here!”

The prince locked eyes with her, both of them swelling with hope—

Then they heard the hammering.

8
AGATHA
Wizard Wish

Behind the curtains and rope, a crew of beavers in blue overalls and yellow hard hats sat on a white floor, alternately passed out or eating ham sandwiches.

Most of the massive East Wing had already been dismantled—busts of Arthur bagged up, tapestries folded away, exhibit walls stripped. All that was left were stenciled plaques: ARTHUR’S ROUND TABLE, THE WEDDING TO GUINEVERE, THE BABY TEDROS . . .

But now Agatha spotted two more beavers ahead, standing on ladders, paint buckets in hand.

“Oh no,” she breathed. Tedros followed her eyes to the workers, repainting stencils—

RHIAN’S RISE

THE FOUR POINT RESCUE

THE DEATH OF THE SNAKE

Beneath the ladders, busts of Rhian lay wrapped in tissue and bronze Lion heads waited to be hung up, along with painted scenes from the new king’s coronation, his claiming of Excalibur, his battle with the Snake.

More hammering detonated and Agatha craned up to see the first team of beavers off their lunch break, walloping at the marquee over Arthur’s archive, poised to replace it with a new one.

SON OF ARTHUR: A NEW LION RISES

A Tribute to King Rhian of Camelot

Dust and paint flakes rained down on Agatha’s and Tedros’ heads. Wary of being spotted, Agatha tried to pull her prince back towards the stairs, but Tedros wouldn’t move, his big blue eyes scanning the ruins of his father’s archive: portraits strewn, relics dumped in a pile, histories whitewashed over, soon to be replaced with those of his rival.

“You heard the goat. King of Pifflepaff Hills ordered this renovation,” said Tedros. “Sucking up to Camelot to earn a king’s favor. Same reason he burned his ring. Same reason the others did too. They’re all sheep now.” The prince’s face reddened. “Dad built his archive here so it’d be safe. Merlin told him to keep it in the Gallery of Good at school, like Merlin’s own relics, but Dad thought the school was more vulnerable; that no one would ever desecrate the Living Library . . . let alone in the name of his ‘son’ . . .” He looked at Agatha. “We’re too late. Whatever clues he might have left for us . . . they’re gone.”

But Agatha was squinting down a dark corridor, away from the beavers.

“What is it?” Tedros asked.

She moved into the hall, ears piqued, eyes narrowing.

With every step, the sound grew louder.

The sound of an unmistakable voice.

A voice she knew as well as her prince’s or best friend’s.

“The Green Knight came on a Sunday, stalking into the Woods and heading straight for King Arthur’s castle—”

The voice glitched, resuming a second later.

“‘I’ll make you a deal,’ said the knight to the king—”

Again the voice glitched.

It was coming from behind a black wall, the surface shiny and smooth, painted with white letters.

ARTHUR AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

With Tedros close behind, Agatha entered the black-painted room, the walls covered in fluorescing green, five-pointed stars, each studded with small silver dots.

Agatha recognized these dots. They’d blanketed her history textbooks at school instead of words . . . her favorite professor’s way of making the past come alive . . .

She counted twenty dot-covered stars on the walls now, with a painted numeral next to each one, ordering them in sequence. “START HERE!” it said near the first.

Meanwhile, two beavers in hard hats were ripping the stars off the wall, their paws activating Professor Sader’s narration.

“Arthur launched from his throne and—”

“The sword came down upon—”

“It was a poor decision—”

The beavers dumped more stars in their filthy bucket.

Agatha blushed with fury. She’d already had enough of this sexist kingdom and now these idiots were trashing the clues to Tedros’ first test! She charged the beavers, Tedros scrambling too late to stop her—

“You dead-eyed, half-brained fur puppets!” she barked, shoving them. “Go away!”

The two beavers froze, as if no human had ever touched them before. They gave Agatha pursed looks, their noses twitching. One squeezed the Lion badge on his overalls, which flashed gold, before he whispered something into it. Then the beavers went back to stripping stars.

“We need to leave,” Tedros warned, pulling Agatha away—

Then they heard a yelp.

The beavers were stuck on the last star, the only one left on the bare black walls. But the harder they pawed at it, the more stubbornly it remained, spewing a few bright sparks, which singed the beavers’ fur. Only there was something else happening, Agatha realized: the more they jostled the star, the more its green surface rubbed off, the silver dots shedding, revealing a glowing white star beneath.

Agatha’s heart jolted.

That star.

It looks just like . . .

With twin growls, the beavers yanked the star as hard as they could. It exploded with sizzling currents, shocking both rodents to the floor.

Tedros gawked at the comatose beavers, then at the lone white star on the wall. “Is that . . .”

“Only one way to find out,” said Agatha, holding her breath.

Down the hall, bootsteps rose, along with the sound of voices.

Human voices.

Quickly, Agatha tugged Tedros to the wall, feeling his chest pound under her grip. If the star was Merlin’s, it could hold answers. If it wasn’t, then they’d be drooling on the ground with the beavers. Agatha didn’t know which outcome to bet on. But she knew one thing for sure: it was worth the chance.

Agatha blinked at her prince. “Ready?”

“Ready,” said Tedros.

Both of them thrust hands at the star, slamming their palms against it—

The star went dark.

Instantly the room’s walls hopped forward as if they were alive, the black slabs bounding closer, closer, until they pinned to the couple’s fronts, backs, sides, sealing them in like a coffin. Agatha felt the cold stone on her nose and bum, her prince’s sweaty arm jammed against hers.

“What’s happening?” Tedros choked.

The black box upended at lightning speed, knocking them off their feet. It happened so fast Agatha swallowed a scream, the box flipping ninety degrees, leaving her and her prince flat on their spines, the top wall still pinned to their faces.

All of a sudden, the white star reappeared deep in the darkness over their heads, like a light down a tunnel, as if the star was somehow beaming from beyond dimension.

A voice echoed, calm and clear.

“Hello, Tedros. Hello, Agatha. If you’re hearing me now, then you’ve already come a long way. It must be strange to hear your old Professor Sader from beyond the grave, but I assure you it is just as odd for me. Because it is not I who knew you might be hearing this message. As I once told you, I cannot see your future beyond your time at school. In my mind’s eye, your fairy tale ends the night Rafal comes for your heads. My sight offers me no further clues as to whether you survive the encounter or what becomes of you.

Instead, it is King Arthur who believes your story will continue long after I’m gone, to a time when Tedros must prove his claim to Camelot’s throne. And in pursuit of this proof, you will come here, to this very room, searching for answers to his father’s history. Answers the public do not know and which I do not have permission to share with them. Indeed, this particular exhibit in Arthur’s archive remains woefully incomplete. As with most fairy tales, the people will only know the beginnings of the tale of Arthur and the Green Knight.

But not you. You will learn more. You must know the full story.

This was Arthur’s dying wish to me: that I leave you these answers in a way that only you could find. Since Merlin is as much a part of this story as the king, I turned to the wizard for help in hiding what I have to tell you; it is his magic that allows me to be here with you now.

Before Arthur died, I asked him why he wouldn’t tell Tedros the story himself. The king replied that his son should learn the facts from someone he trusted. Facts Tedros didn’t care to hear from his father. And yet, I suspect there is another reason the king wanted me to tell this story instead of him. Arthur knew that history should not be conveyed by its participants. Man is too emotional, too bound to his ego. Truth only comes with perspective and time.

With the blessing of both wizard and king, then, it is I who will give you the answers you seek. So lie back, clear your mind, and witness the Tale of Arthur and the Green Knight . . .”

In darkness, a phantom history appeared, like one of Professor Sader’s textbooks come to life. As the prince and princess floated, a lush forest appeared around them, occupying every dimension, at once richly detailed and yet porous, like a simulation of reality that hadn’t entirely been filled in. Trampling through this forest came a tall, mountainous man with bright green skin, the color of young grass or a garden snake. The Green Knight had big black eyes, a high, smooth forehead, and a thick, dark beard that matched the wavy hair on his head. Veiny muscles bulged from his bare green chest and tight green breeches. A gold-plated axe hung from his belt.

“By now, you know the beginnings,” Professor Sader’s voice narrated, “about the mysterious Green Knight who appeared in the Woods and made his way to Camelot, insisting on a private meeting with its king. Arthur was not in the practice of humoring nameless strangers—especially demanding ones with axes—but the Green Knight had arrived only a few days after Guinevere had abandoned the king for his best friend. That the Green Knight would come so soon after the queen’s disappearance couldn’t be a coincidence . . .”

The scene evaporated, replaced with King Arthur’s throne room. There were no guards or advisors or members of the court. The king had honored the knight’s request to meet alone, with Arthur now hunched on his gold throne, his bloodshot eyes creased with wrinkles, his gray-flecked hair unkempt. There were crumbs in his beard, stains on the collar of his robes. Excalibur leaned against the throne, mottled and dull. Agatha was reminded of the way Tedros once looked when she’d tried to end their relationship and pair him off with Sophie. Her prince had disappeared for days, returning with this same childlike stupor, as if both he and his father were truly alive only when they had the security of love. And just like Tedros had welcomed Agatha when he thought he might get her back—bone-tired, but renewed—now his father looked down at his green guest the same way.

“Do you know where she is?” Arthur asked, breathless. “Take me to her at once . . . I’ll pay you any price . . .”

The Green Knight seemed bemused. “Most kings would be suspicious of a green stranger. Especially the Lion of Camelot, whose kingdom is founded upon his victory over a Snake. But instead, the mighty Arthur asks me for help, convinced I’m a friend.” He peered harder at the king. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Quite sure I’d remember a green hulk of a man,” said Arthur swiftly. “If you are indeed man and not monster.”

“More man than most kings, I’d say,” the knight replied, his stare unwavering. “As to your question, let’s say I could find your wife. How would that change anything? Would that make her love you? Would that make her come running back to your side?”

Arthur didn’t know what to make of this.

“Poor Lion. It won’t be long before you call me a Snake,” the Green Knight spoke. “But just remember: the real Snake was in your bed.”

The king’s eyes flickered. “Why have you come here, then?”

“To gain your permission,” the Green Knight replied.

“My permission for what?”

“To kill Merlin,” said the knight.

The answer was so unexpected that Agatha let out a shocked laugh—a laugh that the king himself echoed, rocking forward on his throne.

Then he saw the knight was serious.

“May I ask why?” said the king.

“May I ask why you couldn’t keep your wife?” said the knight.

Arthur’s mood darkened. “You have three seconds to be out of my sight.”

“No, that’s not how this goes,” the Green Knight said. “If I leave now, I will punish your realms and inflict terror like you have never known until you beg me back, seeking a deal. The same deal I will offer you today. If you wish to spare your people, I suggest you take it.”

Arthur looked startled that this creature was now issuing him orders.

“The terms are simple,” said the Green Knight. “You may strike me a single blow with your sword. Right here. Right now. And in exchange, I will return tomorrow and give the same blow to Merlin.”

“If I give you a blow, you won’t be returning anywhere tomorrow,” Arthur spat, launching to his feet.

“A true king would do more than boast,” the Green Knight taunted.

“You want a blow, do you?” Arthur sneered, drawing Excalibur. “As you wish.” From the throne’s platform, he pointed the sword down at the knight. “You are lucky there are steps between us. I am offering you mercy, insolent cur. I suggest you take it.”

“I see,” the knight spoke. “You don’t think my terms are real. So lost in arrogance you ignore the threat in front of you. So insulated from your people you’d let a Snake run free, because you’re too cowardly to strike the blow. Actions have consequences, Your Highness. Non-action has consequences as well.”

Agatha could see Tedros from the corner of her eye, his cheeks red, his jaw clenched. This was the same charge people leveled at him. The same trap that gave rise to the new Snake that imperiled him now.

“I’m giving you the right to strike me,” the knight reminded. “It is also your right to turn a blind eye, of course. To let me leave and wreak havoc in your name. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just as I’m sure your wife warned she didn’t love you and you turned a blind eye to that too.”

Arthur lowered his sword. Blood flushed his face. He steamed hot through his nostrils. “You know nothing of my wife.”

“I know more than you do, it seems,” said the knight. “You’re the one who still thinks you can get her back.”

Agatha could see the king racked with tension, fighting to resist the bait.

“Get out,” Arthur seethed. “Get out now.”

“Pity your young wart of a son,” said the knight.

“Don’t talk about my son—” Arthur lashed.

“Mother gone. Father weak . . .” the Green Knight jabbed. “Brother hidden away.”

The king went dead cold.

So did Tedros next to Agatha.

“What did you say?” his father breathed.

The knight grinned back. “Long live the true heir. Long live the king.”

“You snake,” Arthur hissed, already moving. “You LIAR!” He slashed down the stairs, robes aflight, like a murderous angel, his sword sweeping up over his head. With a primal roar, he swung it through the shadows, catching a last glint of sun—

It cut clean through the Green Knight’s neck.

Agatha and Tedros froze, watching the green head roll across the carpet, waiting for the slain knight’s body to fall . . .

But then something strange happened.

Something that made Arthur drop his blade in shock.

The knight’s body didn’t fall.

Instead, it ambled a few steps backwards, picked up the severed head, and tucked it under his arm.

“Same time tomorrow,” the knight’s head spoke. “Bring Merlin.”

Then he strolled out of the throne room, head in hand, leaving Arthur stunned and alone.

The scene faded to darkness.

Slowly Agatha looked at Tedros, who was staring into the void, rock still.

“His head,” she croaked. “How do you live with no head?”

But her prince had something else on his mind. “Doesn’t make sense,” he said, shaken. “Dad gave me the ring because I’m the heir.” Tedros turned to Agatha. “So why did the Green Knight imply that I’m not?”

“The knight lied,” Agatha argued. “You heard your dad—”

But Professor Sader’s voice had returned, a new panorama filling in.

“Needless to say, the king had no intention of delivering his wizard to the knight and blocked the entrance to his castle with a thousand guards. Yet, to the Green Knight, he and the king had made a deal. The king had taken his cut; now it was the knight’s turn to strike Merlin. And as long as Arthur refused to honor these terms, then his people would pay the price.”

Around Tedros and Agatha spawned a montage of destruction: the Green Knight, head restored, setting fire to castles and carriages; slashing through armies with his axe; launching avalanches to crush villages; terrorizing the streets of kingdoms, Good and Evil. Every arrow that pierced his green chest, every sword that drew blood, he easily swatted away, his skin healing instantly, his force invincible. Mobs gathered in Camelot’s square and at the castle gates, jeering the blockade of guards, shouting slurs at Arthur, demanding the king come out and kill this green monster.

Instantly Agatha was reminded of Japeth and his brother, slithering into the Woods and terrorizing the people to turn them against Tedros. They had succeeded just as the Green Knight had.

“Past is Present and Present is Past,” the Snake’s brother once said. “The story goes round and round again.”

Coincidence? Agatha wondered. Or did Rhian and Japeth have ties to the Green Knight? Ties that made this first test as significant to Japeth as it was to Tedros? Was the Green Knight the key to solving who Rhian and Japeth really were?

But now the scene in the black box was changing: this time, to King Arthur’s chambers, as the king stood at his window, watching smoke rise over distant kingdoms, along with the protests at his castle gates.

“Should have let him have me,” said a voice.

Arthur turned to find Merlin at the door, the wizard in his purple cape, dented cone hat, and violet slippers, his long, thick beard scragglier than ever.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Arthur, turning back around.

“A deal is a deal,” said Merlin.

“Our knights are having no luck against him,” Arthur confessed stiffly. “Then again, Lancelot left them in quite a state. Gone without warning: their captain revealed to be a traitor, adulterer, deserter. No wonder they can’t find the strength to take down this green fool. I’ll have to ride into battle against him myself.”

“You’ll die and he’ll have me in any case,” Merlin replied.

The king said nothing for a moment.

“Why does he want to kill you?” Arthur asked.

“We have history,” the wizard answered.

“What kind of history?”

“Personal history.”

Arthur kept his eyes out the window.

“He believes I owe him something,” the wizard sighed. “Something he can only take if I’m dead.”

“And what is that thing? What is it that he wants?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

Arthur whirled around. “I am inflicting pain on the whole of the Woods, in your name, and you can’t tell me?”

“What I can tell you is to stop your martyrdom and deliver me as agreed,” said Merlin. “This is between me and the knight.”

“Then go, you doddering prat!” Arthur exploded. “Go like Gwen did! Go like Lance! You and your personal history. Settle your business without me!”

“I would have done that from the beginning, but he made the deal with you,” Merlin answered. “You must deliver me. Or his terror will not stop.”

“Why am I a part of this? This has nothing do with me!” Arthur assailed. “He’s acting like I should remember him. Like I should know who he is.”

“Do you?” Merlin asked.

“Clearly not!” the king snapped. “So why me? Why do I have to deliver you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Merlin, quietly. “He would like to see us both suffer.”

Arthur stared at him.

“Merlin? Is that you?” said a soft, young voice.

A young boy pulled in, eight or nine years old, with sleepy blue eyes, floppy gold hair, and rumpled pajamas. “Can you make me a toddy, double marshmallow and candy cream, like usua—”

The young prince caught his dad at the window. “Oh. Thought you were alone.” The boy started to leave.

“Tedros, wait—” Arthur began.

Young Tedros spun around. “Why are you still here? Go find Mother! You promised! Just like you promised to keep the Woods safe. But you’re not doing that either! You’re not doing anything!”

He stormed out of the room.

Arthur didn’t go after him, pain clouding his eyes, looking even more the child than his son.

Next to Agatha, the grown Tedros was breathing raggedly, reliving this very moment, watching Merlin step towards his dad.

“You’ve lost your wife, Arthur. You’ve lost your best friend,” the wizard said gently. “Don’t lose him too.”

A tear rolled down the king’s cheek.

“I’ll send word to the Green Knight,” said Merlin, touching the king. “Tomorrow at dawn in Ender’s Forest. Where no one will see us.”

The king gazed off into the distance . . . then turned. “Ender’s Forest? No one knows how to find that except you and me—”

But Merlin was already gone.

As the scene vanished, Tedros looked more confused than ever. “We still don’t know what the Green Knight wanted from Merlin. The secret he came for. Which means we still don’t know the answer to my first test.”

“The story isn’t over yet,” said Agatha, watching colors begin to fill in the darkness once more.

Tedros exhaled. “Was your family this messed up?”

“You have no idea,” Agatha said, forcing a smile.

Cramped close in the black box, she held her prince’s hand.

“We know the end to the tale,” Tedros said. “Merlin survives. Dad does too. The Green Knight dies.” He looked at his princess. “So why do I feel like something terrible is about to happen?”

This, Agatha had no comfort for.

Because she had the same feeling too.

A purple forest melted into view around them, the leaves and flowers of every tree, bush, and shrub spanning shades of plum, violet, orchid, amethyst, and lavender.

“Tedros will know Ender’s Forest well, of course, for it’s where Merlin used to give him lessons,” Professor Sader spoke.

“When I could find it,” Tedros murmured.

“If the Celestium was the wizard’s place to think, then Ender’s Forest was the wizard’s place to practice—a forest that appeared only to Merlin whenever and wherever he wished, his space to workshop new spells and hexes and disguises away from prying eyes . . .”

Merlin and Arthur heard the knight before they saw him, his resounding steps rattling the tree beneath which wizard and king waited, the dust of dawn rippling through darkness.

“Right on schedule,” said the wizard, combing his beard with his fingers.

“Took me ten tries to find this place the first time,” said Arthur. “How did he know how to get in?”

Merlin didn’t answer, the knight’s footsteps growing louder.

Arthur instinctively touched the sword on his belt—

“Whatever happens, you are to stay out of it,” Merlin ordered the king, his voice sharp. “Our trust has been strained of late, Arthur. You broke into my quarters. Stole my gnome potion so you could snoop after Guinevere. By betraying me, you only hastened her departure. But the stakes now are even higher. You have delivered me to the Green Knight, per the terms of the agreement. You are to play no further role.”

Arthur looked distressed. “Merlin, you can’t expect me to stand here and let him—”

“Remember why you are here,” Merlin retorted, stone-eyed. “To be a good king. To be a good father. Do not undo what is right with what feels right. Promise that you will do as I say. Promise that you will trust me to handle myself.”

“But—”

“Promise me.”

The wizard’s tone left no doubt, no room for bargaining.

Arthur could see the shadow of the invincible savage approaching, his boots crushing the lilac beds, his golden axe spattered with blood. The king held back tears, faced with the inevitability of what was to come and no recourse to stop it.

“I promise,” he said emptily.

Merlin faced the knight.

“No tricks, Merlin,” his green nemesis flared, a hot flush already in his cheeks. “You have too much dignity to cheat me. I expect you to honor the terms.” He glanced at Arthur. “You, too. Though I can’t say the same about your dignity.”

Arthur reached for his sword—

He saw Merlin glaring.

The king drew back.

“Let us finish our business, then,” the wizard resumed, stepping towards the knight. “Come, Japeth. Strike your blow.”

Agatha gripped Tedros so hard she almost broke his hand. Tedros choked on his spit—

Japeth? Agatha screamed in her head.

JAPETH?

The Green Knight hadn’t moved, his sad, dark eyes on the wizard. “How could you choose him over me, Merlin? How could you put your lot in with that?” He stabbed a meaty finger at Arthur. “This coward. This cuckold. When you could have had me. When the Woods could have had me.”

Arthur looked between them. “What is he talking about, Merlin?”

The wizard’s gaze stayed with the knight. “I didn’t choose Arthur over you, Japeth. Arthur was destined to be king.”

“Don’t. Lie. No lies,” the Green Knight spat, his voice sounding younger, uncontrolled. “You favored him over me from the beginning. Even though I was Ector’s real son. Even though Father brought you to be my tutor. I was always stronger and better than that . . . wart. That’s what everyone called him, remember? Wart. A blemish on our house. A foster brother no one wanted. And still, you shined your light on him. Only him. That’s why he could pull the sword out of the stone. Because you helped him—”

“Not true, Japeth.”

“I should have been king,” the knight said, his eyes welling. “I should be him!”

Agatha’s hand went cold in her prince’s.

“Your wart of a son . . .”

The pieces slammed together in Agatha’s head: the knight’s taunts to the king, that wrong file in the Library, the one the mouse said was Japeth’s—

The Green Knight wasn’t a stranger at all. The Green Knight was . . .

“Kay?” Arthur gasped, big-eyed.

“Don’t call me that, Wart,” the knight snarled. “I’m not Kay anymore. I’m Japeth, the name my mother gave me, not the puffed-up name Dad thought would be better for a knight. ‘Sir Kay,’ the bold and strong, fated for glory. Until you stole my destiny. Until the Storian made you legend and me the footnote. Sir Kay, the buffoon brother. But you know that wasn’t the truth. So you offered me a place as your first knight to make amends—only to mock me by giving Lance all your attention and love, the same way Merlin chose you over me. Not just Sir Kay, the idiot now. Now Sir Kay, the joke. Sir Kay, the Runt of the Round Table. That’s why I left Camelot. That’s why I waited to take my revenge until the time was right. Until the Woods could see the failure that was their king. I bet that’s why your wife left you? Because she knew the Wart I knew? Lancelot, too. He didn’t just steal your wife, he abandoned you, your choice to love him as wrong as Merlin’s choice to love you. You must wonder why everyone leaves you . . . Guinevere, Lancelot, soon Merlin, no doubt. Even Sir Kay has gone. A relic of your fairy tale. It’s Japeth, now. Mother named me right. A name fit for a Snake.”

He turned on Merlin. “As for you, old man, I only want what you promised me as a boy. You swore when Arthur pulled the sword that I would go on to a destiny even bigger. That I would have a life I’d be proud of. That I wouldn’t resent that wart becoming king.” His cheeks burned a darker green. “And if I didn’t have a good life, a great life, if you were proven to have lied to me, then I could claim your Wizard Wish. The one wish every wizard keeps hidden away where only he can find it. A wish that can grant any desire said out loud, but one you save to choose when to leave this world, like all wizards do. Only it’s not your wish anymore, Merlin. Because you said if I didn’t find my destiny like you promised, then I could take your wish for myself. I could wish for anything I wanted to make up for what you deprived me of. Well, Merlin . . .”

He prowled towards the wizard, gripping his axe.

“I wish for a death.”

Merlin showed no fear, no remorse. “I said you would live a great life if you allowed yourself to have it, Japeth. But you held on to your bitterness towards Arthur. Envy is a green snake that swallows the heart whole. Look at what it’s done to you. It’s swelled inside you, this green poison, devouring your soul, consuming your humanity, until it’s become bigger than you. Jealousy has no bounds. It cannot be quenched, even by death. You will live forever this way. Invincible, immortal . . . but eaten alive by the green snake of your heart. Unless you learn to let it go. Unless you learn to forgive. Not just me and Arthur, but yourself too. Only then can you begin again. Only then can you have the life you were meant to, the life I said you could have if you chose it.”

“More lies! More excuses!” the Green Knight cried, his lips trembling. His towering form loomed over the wizard’s. He smeared at his eyes, forcing composure. “Kneel, you dog. My turn for a blow.”

“As you wish,” said Merlin.

He slipped off his hat and bent to the ground, laying his head against a fallen tree, tilting his long beard to the side and bearing his white, scrawny neck.

Chills raced up Agatha’s spine, seeing Merlin so vulnerable, remembering the wizard was as mortal as she—

“Wait,” Arthur choked out, rushing forward, sword in hand. “Don’t do this, Kay!”

Merlin shot a spell, pinning Arthur against a tree, the king’s chest invisibly bound, his fist with Excalibur flailing in vain.

“Take your blow, Japeth,” the wizard spoke, his cheek to the log. “Do what you’ve come to do.”

Agatha could see the Green Knight quaking harder as he stared down at Merlin’s neck, the axe unsteady in his palms.

“Why, Merlin?” he whimpered. “Why didn’t you love me?”

The wizard lifted his eyes. “I love you as much as I love Arthur. As much as I love any of my wards. But love has to be received as much as it is given.”

Tears spilled across the Green Knight’s face. “Tell me I would have made a better king . . . Tell me you made a mistake . . . That I should have been the Lion. Instead of the Snake.”

Merlin gave him a warm, loving smile. “I hope you find peace, Japeth.”

The knight let out a sob. “Curse you, Merlin.”

He raised the axe.

“No!” Arthur screamed, thrashing against the spell.

The Green Knight swung the blade down, cutting through Merlin.

With a cry, Arthur flung his sword across the forest—

Excalibur impaled hard in the knight’s chest.

The green-skin hulk glanced down as blood gushed out of him . . . only to flow back in neatly, the wound closing around Arthur’s sword, the knight’s immortal skin healing once more.

But Arthur wasn’t looking at the Green Knight anymore.

He was gaping past him . . . at the wizard over the log . . .

“Agatha . . . ,” Tedros said.

Tedros was pointing at Merlin . . . Merlin, who Agatha couldn’t bear to look at because he’d have no head . . .

Only he did have a head.

Because the axe hadn’t cut through it.

The knight hadn’t aimed for Merlin’s neck at all.

He’d aimed for Merlin’s beard, shearing the long, raggedy patch of hair from the wizard’s chin.

Arthur froze as the Green Knight calmly retrieved the wizard beard from the dirt, the gash in the knight’s chest sealed around the blade.

Slowly, Merlin raised his head, surprised to be alive. He watched the Green Knight hold up the shorn beard, a deep steel in the knight’s eye. Only then did Merlin understand his plan.

“Listen to me, Japeth. Let’s talk first,” he said. For the first time, the wizard looked scared.

The Green Knight noticed. “So it is still here. You told me you hid it in your beard when you promised it to me. All these years. You could have moved it somewhere else . . .”

“Don’t do it, Japeth,” Merlin begged.

“Thank you for giving me your Wizard Wish, Merlin,” said the knight, his voice steadying. “I know you wanted me to be happy. But I need this wish now. More than you.”

“There are other ways—” Merlin insisted.

The Green Knight pressed the wizard beard to his heart. “I wish to give up this bitterness, this envy, this hate. I wish to feel love and forgiveness and peace. I wish to be restored to the man I’m meant to be.” He looked right at Merlin. “I wish to be . . . free.”

“No!” the wizard cried.

Instantly the green started to fade from the knight’s skin. His muscles deflated, his veins shriveled, his sculpted cheeks sagged, until the Green Knight was nothing more than a soft-bellied, pallid, middle-aged man, out of place in an enchanted wood. Sir Kay took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling, his focus lifting to the sky.

“So this is what it’s like . . . ,” he whispered.

He closed his eyes, the last tints of green draining.

The sword in his chest quivered.

The wound reopened, blood flooding his chest.

Kay opened his eyes as bright as the sun.

“Goodbye, Merlin,” he said.

Then he fell down dead.

Merlin ran to his side, scooping him into his arms.

But it was too late.

The wish granted.

The deed done.

Not Merlin’s death chosen . . . but the knight’s own.

The wizard wept softly, cradling Kay like a child.

His spell trapping Arthur broke, dropping the king face-first into dirt.

Arthur scraped himself to his elbows.

The wizard wouldn’t look at him.

“Merlin—” the king appealed.

The wizard thrust out a hand, silencing him. When he spoke at last, it was in a cold, harsh voice. “Kay could have had a second chance at life. I would have convinced him. I would have helped him. He might have finally had a path to become the man he was meant to be. But your sword gave him a way out. You gave him a way out instead of letting me fight for him.” Merlin paused, his back to the king. “People will say you killed the Green Knight. That you are the hero of this tale . . . But we both know the truth, Arthur. You broke your word to me. A king’s word.” The wizard’s voice crackled with anger. “Too many trusts broken between us. Too much gone wrong.”

Slowly Merlin lay Kay down and rose into the light.

“I no longer have a Wizard Wish or the choice of when to end my days. But I can choose to end this. I’m leaving you, Arthur,” he said, standing over the king. “Our time together is done.”

Ender’s Forest went silent and still.

Merlin and Arthur gazed upon each other for the last time . . .

The scene evaporated into darkness.

So too did the box around Agatha and Tedros, the prince and princess floating back down in the black room, a dim, cold star on the floor between their feet.

“Merlin’s beard,” said Tedros, choked with emotion. “That’s where Merlin hid his wish. That’s what the Green Knight wanted. Merlin’s beard is the answer to my first test.”

Agatha looked at him, lost in a fog. “We have to get Merlin’s beard?”

“To show Dad I know the truth,” said Tedros. “‘Three tests. Three answers to find.’ He wanted me to learn that slaying the Green Knight wasn’t a victory. It was his greatest mistake. A mistake I have to learn from.”

Voices amplified in the hall. Footsteps clattered closer.

“Beaver saw ’em. Said the girl was that rebel Agatha,” a guard echoed. “Apparently she slayed the beaver’s cousin in a camel attack. Traveling with that traitor prince. If we kill ’em, imagine the reward—”

Tedros dragged Agatha into shadows.

“How can we get Merlin’s beard?” the prince questioned, still clammy and pale. “Merlin’s trapped in the Caves of Contempo—”

“Where the witches are supposed to be,” Agatha remembered. “They have to rescue him before Japeth figures out the test, before he gets to Merlin . . .”

The guards’ voices were nearing the exhibit, their steps closing in.

“We need to get in touch with the witches,” Tedros said urgently. “We need to know if they have Merlin!”

“We need to get out of this library first!” Agatha pressed.

Frantically, they searched for a door, a window—

But it was too late.

Five guards turned the corner, Matchers reflecting in Tedros’ and Agatha’s faces, crossbows aimed at their necks.

“No, don’t!” Agatha screamed.

Guards cocked their triggers, arrows poised to fly.

“Fire!” the leader yelled—

The wall bashed in behind him, crushing the guards in a heap of rubble.

Agatha and her prince gaped as the dust cleared, sunlight filling the giant hole.

A big, hairy man-wolf peeped through, Nicola and Guinevere on his back.

“What’d we miss?” Hort chimed.

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