A SHORT TIME before, the bride had been in her last fitting, poised on a pedestal in Good Hall as tall, floating nymphs poked her with pins and clips and measuring sticks. The groom lay on his back on the blue marble, sweaty and shirtless from a workout, eating chips out of Merlin’s hat and reading the Royal Rot.
“You shouldn’t be here, you know,” Agatha warned him, as the neon-haired nymphs hovered over her. “Bad luck for you to see the dress before the wedding.”
“Bad luck for me to get my head cut off too, but here I am,” said Tedros, his nose in the paper. “Besides, I can’t see anything with all those overgrown pixies around you. Listen to this hogwash: Tonight, King Tedros and Princess Agatha will be married at the School for Good and Evil by their own choosing, even though every king of Camelot has married at Camelot Castle since the founding of the realm thousands of years ago. In an exclusive interview, King Tedros insisted this is because he wants to ‘show unity between the School and Camelot,’ after Rhian and his brother sought to overthrow the school and the Storian kept within. But privately, sources tell us King Tedros moved the wedding because the castle is under repair, due to a ‘de-Snake-ification,’ which the king ordered to rid Camelot of every last vestige of Rhian and Japeth’s reign.”
“Um, that’s all true,” said Agatha, but Tedros barreled on—
“We at the Royal Rot will keep a keen eye on the king’s expenditures, now that the Camelot Beautiful funds have been unfrozen. Word is he’s also spending a pretty penny to revive the Camelot Courier with a new staff, so the Rot isn’t left ‘unchallenged,’” Tedros scoffed.
“That’s true too,” said Agatha.
“Don’t encourage them,” Tedros growled. He grabbed more chips from the hat and kept reading.
His bride sighed. “There will always be people looking over our shoulder. But that’s why I wanted the wedding here,” she said, the nymphs finishing their work. “This world is powered by its stories. Stories that are real to those who live them, but stories that also inspire and teach and belong to every last soul in these Woods. And this wedding is about our story: a prince from this world and a girl from beyond it, brought together by an unlikely education.” Agatha looked out the window into the golden afternoon, my steel edges glinting high in the School Master’s tower, writing the words she was speaking at this very moment. “Camelot might be our Ever After,” said Agatha. “But this is where our fairy tale began.”
“See? Why didn’t they write that?” Tedros asked, mouth full, finally looking at her—
He dropped Merlin’s hat, his eyes wide.
Agatha smiled down, the nymphs parted. “Because they only talked to you.”
The dress was as white as a summer cloud, a three-quarter-sleeve gown with a plunging neck and a cascade of shimmering tulle from the waist sweeping out across the floor, catching the light of the hall’s torches and casting sparkles on Agatha’s face. Her hair had been pulled into a delicate twist and wrapped in a wide white-silk band, her makeup fresh and light with a peach sheen on her lips. Diamond studs shined in her ears, a matching bracelet on her wrist. As for the shoes . . .
“The nymphs had their ideas,” said Agatha, lifting her dress to reveal two silver clumps, covered in crystals. “And I had mine.”
Tedros had no words, his skin so pink in his neck and chest that Agatha thought he might burst into flames.
Luckily the nymphs needed the dress for final adjustments and stripped Agatha of it, along with the hairband and jewels and shoes, leaving her in the unfussy blue frock she had on underneath. She wiped away her lipstick, hopping off the pedestal—
“Can you please wear your wedding dress every day?” Tedros asked.
“Can you please wear clothes in public?” Agatha replied, sprawling onto his chest.
They were alone in the vast hall, the half-dressed king and his barefoot princess, like two first years who’d snuck out after curfew. Neither spoke for a long while, Tedros running his fingers through her hair, their breaths falling in synch.
“Only a few hours now,” said Agatha. “They’ll start letting guests in soon.”
Tedros didn’t say anything.
Agatha rolled over, her chin on his chest. “Something’s bothering you.”
“No, no. I mean . . . it’s just strange, isn’t it? Not having anyone to give us away?” said Tedros. “No mom. No dad. For either of us. Dad’s at peace now, his ghost finally at rest. But still . . . No Dovey or Lesso. No Robin or Sheriff or even Lance. Not even Tink. None of them lived to see the end. But we did. We made it somehow. Through the tests. Through the darkness. I just wish the others had made it with us.”
Agatha saw the emotion in his eyes, the elation and sadness of everything that had happened, and she, too, felt it in her throat. “I wish the same thing, Tedros,” she said, lying back and holding him. “We do have Merlin, though.”
Tedros smiled. “Nineteen-year-old Merlin who we’ll get to watch grow old, day by day.”
“Where is he? Haven’t seen him since we got to school.”
“In the Gallery of Good,” said Tedros, fidgeting with his ring. “They have an exhibit there with some of his old spellbooks and things. Probably wants to break the glass and get them all back.”
Agatha laughed. “Doesn’t seem happy to be young again, does he?”
“Merlin’s happy as long as he has a pupil to badger and nitpick,” said Tedros. “Thankfully, he’ll be badgering me for a very long time.”
He fell quiet, turning the ring round on his finger, studying its carvings. “On our carriage ride here, he asked me what I was going to do with it. The last of the Storian’s rings. He said all the leaders look to me as the Lion now. If I burn Camelot’s ring, I’ll be the One True King, with the power to write others’ fates. The power to claim the Storian’s magic and remake our world as Good as I want.”
Agatha sat up. “And what did you tell him?”
“That I will never be the One True King,” Tedros answered calmly. “Because a true king knows there is more than one king. I will be followed by another and another, each protecting this ring, each leading the Woods for as long as we are alive. And with my time on the throne, I’ll be the best leader I can, while knowing that the Storian is the true master of our fate. I can’t stop new tests from arising, but I can will myself to conquer them. Man and Pen in balance. Me and the Pen. The Storian has a larger plan for all of us. I am only one part of it.”
Agatha held her breath, looking at him, the boy she once knew, become a man.
High in a tower, I paint this in their storybook: Agatha and the King. The last swan in my steel goes calm, my days of writing out of turn at an end, a Pen returned to its familiar rhythms . . .
Tedros shrugged. “But then Merlin’s hat bit him, insisting it was time for Merlin’s nap, and M said he’s not a child anymore and they had a holy row. That’s how I ended up with his hat. M said he wanted to be left alone for once—”
He saw Agatha still staring at him. “What?”
She traced the faint pink scar on his neck, Excalibur’s mark. “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine . . .”