She’s moving too fast, Agatha thought. She’s forcing it—
Sophie glared into Rhian’s eyes. “3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .”
“Sophie, wait!” Agatha gasped.
Sophie lifted her hand—
“HELP! HELP ME!” Rhian yelled. “HELP!”
Guards burst through the doors, armor gleaming and swords raised, but Agatha was already swooping Sophie off the bed and throwing both their bodies through the blue portal.
Agatha landed hard on the glass of Dovey’s crystal ball, her body radiating pain. She lurched up and seized Sophie by the arm: “You idiot! You fool! You acted like his friend instead of threatening him! You should have held your fingerglow to his throat or suffocated him with a pillow! Something to make him tell the truth! I could have gotten the truth out of him! That’s why I made you swear to let me handle it!”
“You were too slow,” Sophie croaked, clutching at her chest, her hand still streaked with Rhian’s blood. “I did what had to be done. I did what was right.”
“What was ‘right’? What are you talking about! That was our one chance!” Agatha cried. “Our one chance to get the truth—”
She stopped cold.
Sophie backed up in shock.
Because the spatter of Rhian’s blood was magically peeling off Sophie’s hand.
The girls watched the pattern of blood lift off Sophie’s skin and float upwards, the blood thickening and deepening in color. Slowly the pattern began to collapse, the drops of blood pooling together into a tiny sphere, swelling like a seed, the surface hardening, the edges sharpening, until at last its shape was complete. . . .
A crystal.
A blood crystal.
It drifted higher, towards the phantom mask, and took its place at the center of the mask, between the two eyeless holes.
Agatha reached up into the phantom and pulled the crystal down into her palm.
She and Sophie hunched forward and peered inside the smooth red glass, watching the beginning of a scene unfold.
The two girls exchanged tense looks.
“We need to go in,” Agatha said.
Sophie didn’t argue.
The glow of Dovey’s ball faded, the connection barely holding on. . . .
But Agatha was already grasping Sophie’s hand and glaring into the red center.
A storm of light later, they were inside the crystal of the king’s blood.
THE SCENE HAD a red tint to it, as if taking place in the haze of a blood sun.
They were inside Lady Gremlaine’s old bedroom in the White Tower of Camelot, watching Tedros’ former steward pace back and forth, glancing anxiously out her window.
Agatha almost hadn’t recognized her. Grisella Gremlaine still wore her signature lavender robes, but she was younger, much younger, hardly twenty years old, her tan face supple and radiant, her eyebrows thick and lips full, her brown hair loose to her shoulders. Lady Gremlaine stopped and put her nose to the window, searching the dark garden outside. . . . Then she went on pacing.
The glass of her window didn’t reflect the two intruders from another time nor the faint portal of light behind them.
Agatha’s hand squeezed Sophie’s harder. Not just from the eeriness of traveling back in time or witnessing a woman she’d seen murdered back from the grave, but also having proof, right here, that Lady Gremlaine was linked to King Rhian’s blood. Proof that Lady Gremlaine was indeed King Rhian’s mother.
And Agatha was quite sure that whoever Grisella Gremlaine was waiting for was King Rhian’s real father.
“You sure she can’t see us?” Sophie whispered.
“She’s dead,” Agatha said loudly.
And indeed, Lady Gremlaine didn’t break a step, pacing even faster now, her eyes darting again and again to the window.
A pebble hit the glass.
Instantly the steward surged forward and threw open the window—
A hooded figure climbed in, shrouded in a black cloak.
Agatha couldn’t see the face.
Professor Sader?
“Do you have it?” Lady Gremlaine asked, breathless.
The hooded figure held up a piece of knotted rope.
Agatha peered at the rope, her insides turning.
It looked like it was made out of human flesh.
“Where is he?” came the stranger’s low, soft voice.
Agatha reached out to lift the person’s hood, but her hand went straight through.
“In here,” said Lady Gremlaine.
Quickly the steward ran her hands along the wall and found the edge of what appeared to be a secret door. She pulled it open and the hooded figure followed her inside, through a bathroom, and into an adjoining room. So did Agatha and Sophie—
Agatha froze.
It was the strange guest room that Agatha had been in once before. Back then, she’d been struck by how out of place the room seemed, far away from the other guest rooms and poorly decorated, with a small bed pressed against the wall.
Only there was someone on the bed now.
King Arthur.
He was asleep, hands folded over his chest.
Light brown stubble coated his golden skin, his cheeks rosy and smooth. He was eighteen or nineteen, in the prime of his youth. But there was a gangly softness to him . . . a delicacy that Agatha hadn’t seen in her magical encounters with elder versions of Arthur. He snuffled serenely, undisturbed by Lady Gremlaine and the stranger.
“I don’t understand,” Sophie whispered. “What’s happening?”
Agatha was just as confused.
“I put hemp oil in his drink like you told me to,” Lady Gremlaine said to the stranger. “Fell straight to sleep.”
“We must move quickly, then,” said the stranger, holding out the rope. “Place this spansel around his neck.”
Lady Gremlaine swallowed. “And then I’ll have his child?”
“That is the power of the spansel,” the hooded figure whispered. “Use it and you will be pregnant with King Arthur’s heir before Guinevere marries him.”
Agatha’s stomach dropped like a stone.
“He’ll have to marry me instead,” Lady Gremlaine realized quietly.
“You’ll be his queen,” said the stranger.
Lady Gremlaine looked at the hooded figure. “But will he love me?”
“You didn’t pay me for love. You paid me to help you marry him instead of Guinevere,” replied the stranger. “And this spansel will do that.”
Lady Gremlaine watched King Arthur sleep, her throat twitching.
With a rushed breath, she turned to the stranger and took the rope into her hands. Lady Gremlaine stepped forward, holding the spansel out, her shadow stretching over the sleeping king, until she stood over young Arthur. She gazed down at him, so enamored, so possessed, that her entire body seemed to blush. Hands trembling, she reached the spansel around his neck. . . .
Agatha shook her head, tears fogging her eyes. Sophie, too, was stricken. This was how Rhian and Japeth came to be. By cold, calculated sorcery. Devoid of love.
Which meant Rhian was King Arthur’s son, after all.
His eldest son.
Rhian was the true heir.
All was lost.
Agatha pulled Sophie towards the door. She’d seen enough. They couldn’t watch what followed—
“I can’t,” a voice gasped.
Agatha and Sophie both turned.
“I can’t do it,” Lady Gremlaine sobbed. “I can’t betray him like this.”
Tears ran down her face as she faced the stranger.
“I love him too much,” she whispered.
She dropped the rope and fled the room.
Agatha and Sophie stared at each other.
They were alone in the room with the hooded figure and the sleeping king.
The stranger exhaled. Retrieving the spansel, the hooded figure traipsed towards the door to follow Lady Gremlaine out—
The stranger halted.
Time seemed to stop, the only sounds in the room the deep breaths of the king.
Slowly, the visitor looked back at young Arthur.
Smooth hands reached up and pulled away the hood, revealing the stranger’s face and forest-green eyes.
Agatha and Sophie jolted.
Impossible, Agatha thought. This is impossible.
But the figure was skulking back into the room now, step by step, towards the bed until the stranger loomed over the sleeper. The figure smiled down at the powerless king, green eyes twinkling like a snake’s. Then calmly, deliberately, the stranger hooked the spansel around Arthur’s neck. . . .
Agatha was about to be sick—
The scene stalled. Bolts of red and blue static ripped through the room. Arthur and his seducer glitched into blurry clouds. The floor under Agatha’s feet strobed and fractured, vanishing piece by piece. . . .
The crystal ball.
It was disconnecting.
Sophie was already hightailing towards Lady Gremlaine’s room.
“Wait!” Agatha choked, tripping in the slippery bathroom between the two rooms, but Sophie took a running start and dove into the portal as it started to close up. Agatha stumbled to her feet, the portal obscured by strobing static. She flailed towards it, the portal shrinking fast, the size of a plate . . . a marble . . . a pea. . . . With a flying leap, Agatha launched herself at the light—
Hot water engulfed her, filling her mouth and nose, as she sank to the bottom of Reaper’s bath. Any relief at escaping the crystal was drowned out by what she’d just seen. Panic speared her like arrows, her heart taking slingshots against her chest. It all made sense now: the twins’ evil . . . the Snake’s magic . . . the suit of spying eels . . .
“Caught your friend Sader sneaking around the castle . . .”
“Your friend Sader.”
“Sader.”
The wrong Sader.
Agatha burst out of the water, wheezing. “Her . . . It was her. . . .”
Tedros crashed through the bathroom door. “What are you doing! Scims might get through any second and you and Sophie are . . .” He took in the scene. His cheeks went scarlet. “Have you lost your mind! You went into the crystal withou—”
“Evelyn Sader,” Agatha gasped. “Evelyn Sader is Rhian and Japeth’s mother. She hexed your father. She had his child. Rhian is the son of King Arthur and Evelyn Sader. Rhian is your father’s eldest child. His rightful heir. Tedros . . . Rhian is king.”
Her prince looked at her. For a second, he smiled stupidly, as if he thought this was all a joke, a ruse to distract him from being angry with her.
But then he saw it in her eyes. In the way she was shivering despite the steam.
She was telling the truth.
Tedros shook his head. “You’re talking nonsense. My father didn’t even know Evelyn S-S-Sad . . .” He backed against the wall. “You didn’t see it right. . . . Whatever it was, you misunderstood. . . .”
“I wish I did. I wish it was a lie,” Agatha said, anguished. “I saw everything, Tedros.” She lifted out of the bath to touch him, to hold him—
“Wait,” Agatha said, stopping stiff. A new panic ripped through her. “Sophie,” she breathed, searching the room. “Did she make it back . . .”
Her voice trailed off.
Small, wet footprints led out of the bathroom into the hall.
Agatha raised her eyes to Tedros. “Did you see her?”
Tedros was still shell-shocked. “You’re wrong. You have to be wrong. She has nothing to do with my father! E-E-Evelyn? The Dean?”
But now he caught the fear in Agatha’s eyes.
The fear about something else entirely.
“Sophie,” Agatha rasped. “Did you see her?”
Tedros gazed at her blankly.
Then his face went cold.
He was already running. Agatha chased him, water flying off her as she and her prince hurtled down the hall, checking each chamber, following the trail of footprints until they ended in the last room, the one sprayed with white pillows across the floor, where she and Sophie had slept—
Sophie wasn’t there.
The window was open, two wet footprints gleaming on the windowsill.
Agatha’s scream reverberated through the palace.
Because it wasn’t just Sophie who was missing.
Her white dress was gone too.
22
SOPHIE
Script of a Murder
Evelyn Sader, Sophie thought, steering the rickshaw up the spiral track.
A name from the past. Now a curse in the present.
Evelyn Sader: imperious and milky-smooth, with that wicked dress made out of butterflies. Evelyn Sader, Dean of the School for Girls, who’d brought the School Master back from the dead to show her love for him. But Rafal never loved Evelyn. He’d loved Sophie. He wanted Sophie as his bride. So he’d killed Evelyn Sader to get her out of the way. That was supposed to be the end of Evelyn’s story. Her dark, devious schemes of love had borne no fruit.
But somewhere earlier in Evelyn’s story, those dark schemes had borne fruit.
Because Evelyn had hexed King Arthur to have his sons. That much was clear. (Unless the scene was a fake . . . Not possible, thought Sophie. It had come from Rhian’s blood, not his mind.)
But there were still so many questions. How had Evelyn Sader met Lady Gremlaine? Did Gremlaine know Evelyn had used the spansel she herself had disavowed? Did Gremlaine know Evelyn had borne Arthur’s sons? Was that Lady Gremlaine’s terrible “secret”? And had the School Master, Evelyn’s true love, learned of it?
Sophie was so distracted, she was driving the rickshaw straight towards the side of the track—
She corrected course, holding down her panic.
She’d stolen the rickshaw from that noisy page boy (Snubby? Smarmy? Sauron?), who had parked his cart outside the window of the bedroom where she’d slept. She’d tiptoed past his snoring body, slumped against a tree, and found the snakeskin in the rickshaw’s front seat. Wheels screeched against stone, and the gnome bolted awake to see his cart scuttling away, no driver in sight. “Bhoot!” he brayed. “Bhoooot! There’s a ghost in my cart! Bhooooot!” Sophie guessed that bhoot meant ghost in Gnome, so she did her best to play the part, swerving menacingly as the page boy chased. Soon his rickshaw was long gone, cruising upwards into the bright lights of the city.
She pedaled harder now, past Teapea’s Temple and the Musée de Gnome, stress wrenching at her ribs. Tedros would hate her for leaving. He’d think Evelyn Sader being revealed as Rhian’s mother and Arthur as his father had sent Sophie running back into the king’s arms. Because now Sophie knew that Rhian was the true heir. Rhian was king. Which meant Sophie could be queen of Camelot. The real queen. And Tedros knew nothing came between Sophie and a crown.
Agatha would try to defend her, of course. Agatha would search for some kind of sign that her best friend was still on their side.
But Aggie wouldn’t find any. Not just because Sophie had no time to leave one . . . but because if she’d let Agatha in on her plan, her best friend would have come after her, right back into Rhian’s hands.
Which meant Tedros would win for now. Sophie would be branded a soulless, two-faced fink. The same girl who left them for Rafal and had played them for fools once more. Sophie, who had no loyalty. Sophie, who only cared about herself.
She didn’t blame Tedros. If she were him, she would think the same things.
But losing her friends’ trust was the price she had to pay.
Because this had nothing to do with Evelyn Sader.
This had to do with what Sophie had seen in a crystal.
Not the blood crystal.
Another crystal.
A crystal she’d found on her own.
The crystal Agatha had caught her staring at before she’d pretended it was junk and slipped it into her pocket.
But it wasn’t junk.
That crystal was the reason she was
abandoning her friends in the middle of the night.
And this is what she’d seen inside . . .
Her own self.
Cowering in the corner of the king’s bedroom, her cheek gashed, her white, ruffled dress soaked with blood.
Rhian was across the room, in his blue-and-gold king’s suit.
So was Japeth, in his gold-and-blue liege’s suit.
They were fighting.
More than fighting.
A Lion and Snake, going for the kill.
Hands clawed at eyes and hair. Teeth sank into skin. Punches landed, spewing blood from mouths, their faces mangled to crimson pulps. The twins battled onto the bed, each straining to get to Excalibur—
Rhian got there first.
The blade swung through the air, the edge catching the light like a sunflare—
It impaled Japeth’s chest.
Clean through the heart.
Rhian drew the sword out and his brother fell.
Slowly, Rhian kneeled over Japeth’s body, watching him take his last breath. The king bowed his head, holding his brother’s corpse.
Excalibur lay abandoned behind him.
Rhian didn’t see Sophie move from the corner.
The fear was gone from her face.
Replaced with intent.
She raised the sword over Rhian’s back—
The crystal went dark.
Sophie had watched this scene play out silently in the glass droplet, again and again and again.
Rhian kills Japeth.
Sophie kills Rhian.
That’s how this fairy tale ended.
Or it’s how she wished this fairy tale ended.
The crystals were unreliable, Reaper had warned.
Especially hers.
But it didn’t matter.
This was her future.
She’d make it her future.
She drove the rickshaw faster, her teeth grinding hard.
Dovey said something to her once: “This is about whether you are capable of growing from the snake of your own story into the hero of someone else’s.”
Deep down, Sophie never thought it possible.
At her core, she was a villain, not a hero.
Agatha and Tedros were the heroes.
The best she could do was to help them.
The School for Good and Evil #5: A Crystal of Time Page 36