It was deep within this palace that Agatha found herself now, imprisoned with her friends, looking out their cell’s only window at the royal camel pastures, where the camel that had turned them in was now happily grazing, reunited with its family.
“Still trust that thing?” Tedros growled from Agatha’s right, the two crouched in the dark cell.
Agatha couldn’t speak. As soon as they’d reached the palace, the guards had stripped Merlin from her. She had no idea where they’d taken the five-year-old wizard. With each passing second, her skin went clammier, her stomach sicker. “Mama!” Merlin had cried. Again, the wizard was prescient. Because she felt like she’d lost her child.
Despairing, she appealed to the camel through the window, but it offered her only the calmest of nods, as if everything was as it should be. As if it hadn’t betrayed her. As if this was the way to Tedros winning the second test. For a moment, Agatha wondered if she should still have hope . . . if the camel had a larger plan in motion . . .
Then she saw Hort glaring across the cell. “To answer your question, Tedros, yes, she totally still trusts that thing. Same way Sophie trusts guys whose names start with ‘R.’”
Sophie let out a long sigh. “You know, Aggie, normally I shield you from boorish boys, but I did warn you about that camel. Animals aren’t our friends. Especially ones with humps.”
“Only a Never would say something so foolish,” Princess Uma muttered.
“Oh?” Sophie retorted, nursing her bandaged wrist. “Then why can’t you do one of your bird whistles or wolf calls and summon your friends to help us?”
“Not in Shazabah,” Uma said vaguely, looking away.
“Well, someone better help us,” Hort said, standing up. “We’ve been dumped in jail a million miles from home and Rhian and the Sultan were chums, so the Snake’s surely on the way to kill Agatha, win the second test, and then kill the rest of us.” The weasel paused. “It’s that last part I care about.”
“Hort’s right,” Agatha confessed, still thinking about Merlin. “Maybe the camel betrayed us. Maybe I was wrong. But we can’t just wait to die.”
“What should we do, then? Wish the Snake away? Stick a doll with pins? He’s out there and we’re in here,” Tedros said, clearly frustrated.
“We’ve gotten out of prison before,” said Agatha.
Tedros shook his head. “We shouldn’t have tried to run away. I knew it was cowardice. Dad doesn’t want me to hide from my own test.” He slouched against the wall. “They’ll probably give Merlin to the Snake too.”
The thought of Japeth claiming Merlin chilled Agatha’s blood—
“Sounds like Aladdin’s Cave is your only hope now,” a voice chuckled.
Agatha and Tedros flashed their gold fingerglows to the back of the cell.
No one there.
“Up here,” said the voice.
Agatha cast her glow towards a ceiling pipe—
Hanging by his boots was a young man, with smooth brown skin, thick eyebrows, and a strapping physique, doing stomach crunches upside down.
“Too bad only my father knows where to find the Cave of Wishes,” he said.
Princess Uma rose slowly. “Kaveen?”
“Thought you’d promised never to return to Shazabah, Uma,” said Kaveen, hanging like a bat. “Wasn’t that part of our divorce agreement?”
“Your father handled that, just like he handled every other piece of our marriage,” said Uma.
“You had a habit of not listening to me,” said Kaveen, “and yet you always listened to the Sultan.”
“Because if I didn’t listen to your father, I would have been thrown in here,” Uma fired back, “so clearly it’s you who didn’t listen to him in the end.”
“Well, we’re both here now,” said Kaveen, dropping onto the floor. He walked towards Uma. “The cursed Pen pulled us apart. And now it brings us back together.”
Agatha watched the distance between them shrink, unsure if they were going to kill or kiss each other—
“Hold on.” Tedros stepped in the middle. “You two . . . were married?”
Princess Uma, Agatha reminded herself. Because Uma had wed a prince. Prince Kaveen of Shazabah. Aladdin’s great-grandson. That’s what Kaveen’s ancestry scroll had said when she and Tedros had come across it in the Living Library. And yet, Agatha had known of Kaveen before. Years ago, Uma had confided to Agatha about the prince she’d fallen in love with at the School for Good and married soon after. But then the Storian chose Uma for its next fairy tale—the story of a princess whose animal friends rescued her from an Evil warlord when her prince was too late. Uma became famous for her friendship with animals, while Kaveen became a laughingstock for failing to save his true love. Their marriage curdled. But it wasn’t their divorce that surprised Agatha now. It was the part about the Sultan being Kaveen’s father. Because if the Sultan was his dad . . .
“Why would your own father put you in jail?” Agatha asked.
Kaveen’s black eyes set upon her. Agatha’s neck rashed from the heat of his stare. When Tedros looked at her, there was often a note of uncertainty, as if he was never quite sure of himself. But this prince had no questions about himself, nor was he willing to endure any from her.
“Don’t make men like that in Gavaldon, do they?” Sophie whispered in her ear.
Kaveen glowered at Sophie. “Girls like you two are the reason I’m here.”
“Excuse me?” Sophie bristled.
“I know your fairy tale. Girls who didn’t need a prince to find a happy ending. Same story as Uma’s. Same rancid ending. The Storian makes fools of the best men. Just look at what it’s done to him.” He pointed his finger at Tedros. “My advice to you, lad: never trust a princess. Not yours, not anyone else’s. Not if you want to become the man you’re meant to be.”
Agatha saw Tedros stiffen slightly, as if this resonated somewhere inside him.
She and her prince certainly had their issues with trust, too. Is this how they would end up? Like Uma and Kaveen? Tedros seemed to be wondering it . . . He caught Agatha looking at him. The prince cleared his throat, addressing Kaveen. “Um, you mentioned a cave that could help us. A cave of wishes?”
“Aladdin’s Cave,” said Kaveen. He lit a red fingerglow and cast a stream of dust in the dark, which took the shape of vast desert dunes. “The only place where any wish can come true.”
The golden sands shifted as if they were alive, opening up the mouth of a cave, the light within a radiant purple.
“The wishes I speak of come from the magic lamp inside the cave. And every soul in the Woods has longed to have this lamp since Aladdin found it. Aladdin, an ordinary slumdog who stumbled upon the cave and the lamp and used his three wishes from the genie within to become the Sultan of Shazabah.”
Kaveen’s glow conjured this magic lamp . . . a massive half-man, half-tiger unspooling from its tip . . .
“Some accounts suggest that there is no genie or magic lamp anymore. That Aladdin freed him with his last wish. But the genie knew my great-grandfather’s secret—that he’d become Sultan by magic and deceit—and no one with such a secret would ever set its keeper free. But Aladdin was grateful enough to the genie to give him peace. He returned the lamp to the cave, vanishing it deep into the desert . . .”