“Don’t be a fool,” Tedros scoffed, chasing her. “No way you’re going alone—”
Agatha turned. “I won’t be alone.”
The way she said it.
So sharp and clear that by the time he’d regathered his wits, she was lost in the dark.
“I won’t be alone.”
I won’t be alone?
Then it hit him.
That cry.
The one that echoed as the wizard tree sprung over the land . . . The one that made Agatha’s eyes spark before she had taken control of their plans.
I won’t be alone.
The shine in her eyes.
That hint of a smile.
Agatha could only mean one person.
That’s why she’d driven Hort so hard on the ride here.
That’s why she’d left the prince and man-wolf behind.
Agatha was after more than Merlin’s beard.
Agatha was after her own grail.
Sophie.
Sophie, who she’d heard out there, crying for help.
Sophie, always the witch between him and his princess.
Tedros’ gut twisted tighter.
Where Sophie went, Evil followed.
He fished Tinkerbell out of his pocket and shook her until she woke up. “Follow Agatha and keep her safe. The moment she’s in trouble, send a flare. Understood?”
Tinkerbell yawned and jingled back.
“No, I will not kiss you in exchange,” Tedros retorted.
Tink argued her case—
“I don’t care if Peter kissed you,” said the prince. “Go. Before I feed you to Hort.”
Grumbling, the fairy flitted off to find Tedros’ princess.
And this is how he’d gotten here: pent-up and frustrated, saddled with a baby, while his princess went after her best friend. Again.
“Now you know how I felt with Sophie all those years,” a voice groused.
The prince looked up at Hort.
“Always second best,” the man-wolf sighed.
Tedros sucked in a breath.
Hort was right.
This was The Tale of Sophie and Agatha.
It always would be.
Until he had the courage to make it his story too.
Light flashed through the darkness, a flare of gold.
Tedros and Hort spun—
Flames bounded towards them.
For a second, Tedros thought they were under attack.
Then he saw the blaze had a face.
A fairy, wings afire.
“Tink?” he breathed.
Burning up, Tinkerbell choked out a single squeak.
A word that shook Tedros’ soul.
“Snake.”
The flare swallowed her.
She was gone.
HE WAS TOO poisoned by rage to have a plan.
Throttling towards the wizard tree, his boots skidding across the forest, Tedros thought only of his true love, out there against an enemy who burned fairies alive.
This was the clarity of Evil. Its humiliation of your weaknesses, its savaging of your mercies. Every time Tedros hesitated, the Snake was there to punish him. Japeth was more than a Nemesis. He was his shadow, like the Green Knight to King Arthur, a curse that had been with him all along and yet one he was fully unprepared for.
Hort had tried to come too, but Tedros had repelled him with orders to stay and protect Merlin. (He made no mention of Sophie; if the weasel knew she might be out there, he’d bring the baby into battle.) But without the man-wolf, Tedros had no weapon or shield against someone he still wasn’t sure how to kill. Stumbling over a stick, he kicked it into his fist, using his fingerglow to whittle it to a stake.
Soon he heard sounds of war: cries, human and animal; clashes of steel; the groans of a tree under siege. He sprinted out of the Woods, onto open land, the ruins of the bank covered in ghostly white leaves.
As Tedros drew nearer, he saw spatters of blood.
The corpses of geese.
Twelve, he counted.
Then the body of a bank guard, his limbs twisted, as if he’d fallen from a great height.
Closer and closer Tedros came to the tree, the silhouettes in its branches sharpening, two pearls of glow flickering at the top, pure gold and hot pink—
He stopped short.
High in the wizard tree, Agatha and Sophie clung to branches, fending off a storm of scims, the girls’ fingerglows strobing in the night. From this far down, Tedros couldn’t see their faces or a sign of Japeth himself, but he heard their shouts—“Sophie, watch out!” “Behind you, Aggie!”—before they disappeared behind white leaves. Eels stabbed in and out of these leaves, Agatha’s and Sophie’s screams getting louder, prompting the prince to shove the wood stake into his pants and start climbing.
Only now did he see the war in his way.
Geese and guards swarmed branches, angling for the girls but were held off by a team of familiars: Willam . . . Bogden . . . Robin Hood? Plus a female, with brown hair, who looked like . . . Betty? They’d been playmates once upon a time. What was she doing here?
Questions could wait.
Right now, his friends needed him.
Tedros plunged into the fray, head-butting geese aside, before hurling himself at the first guard in his way. She lunged at him with a yell, slashing his shirt open, roping her legs around his throat and squeezing tight. Above, Bogden was in his own fight, pinned to a branch by two guards punching him as the stout first year thrashed. The guard girl crushed Tedros’ neck harder. He tried to suck in air, but it made him lose more. The girl bared her teeth as she strangled him, surely imagining the bounty the dead prince would fetch. Tedros had no move to make. Princes didn’t hit girls. Those were the rules. He weakened in her grip, choking on saliva, his mind fogging black—
Tedros gritted his teeth.
Times change.
He jammed one foot into the girl’s face, then the other behind her ear and slammed her face against a branch. Dazed, she came at him again, but his boots were around her neck as he launched his body upwards, flipping her headfirst into Bogden’s attackers, who crashed backwards, the three guards plummeting out of the tree. Wheezing, Tedros grabbed Bogden like a buoy, the bloodied first year blinking at the prince, before his eyes focused past him: “Willam!”
Tedros spun to the red-haired boy above, jerking against a branch as geese attacked.
“Don’t . . . love . . . geese . . . ,” Willam gagged, shielding his face.
Instantly Tedros was in full flight, bludgeoning geese with his fists, throwing them off Willam. Now the flock came for the prince, flogging him with wings and beaks, shearing through the last of his shirt, before Bogden leapt next to Tedros, clubbing them aside. Again Tedros tried to be Good; killing animals was a villain’s work. But these geese wouldn’t stop until he was dead, their beaks crisscrossing his chest with blood, getting closer and closer to his heart. He struggled to fend them off, blinded by feathers in his face, batting futilely with his wood stake. Through the flurry, he glimpsed more geese pummeling Willam, the boy starting to go limp. Next to him, a bird vised Bogden’s neck, about to spike its bill through his skull—
“Help!” Bogden squeaked.
Tedros bared his teeth.
Chivalry was over.
He ripped through the wall of birds, flew up over Bogden’s goose, and with a primal snarl, stabbed through it with his stake, separating head from body. He whirled around, prepared to kill more, but the flock gawked at him, then fled into the night.