And yet, Agatha wouldn’t be distracted like he was. She’d be thinking about those who escaped the cave . . . the ones like Aladdin, who’d made their three wishes and gotten out alive . . .
The wishes, Tedros realized.
Agatha would tell him to focus on the wishes.
He looked up at the genie. “What were Aladdin’s three wishes? Consider that my one question.”
The genie’s eyes flickered in surprise, before he answered: “His first wish was to be Sultan of Shazabah. His second wish was for Princess Asifa, the Sultan’s daughter, to fall in love with him. And his third wish was for that mirror over there,” he said, nodding at the cracked slab of glass against the wall.
The prince picked up the mirror, a piece of misshapen glass, veiled in dust. Aladdin had used his last wish to have this. And he hadn’t even taken it with him. Not a surprise: magic mirrors had pitiful powers. Even the queen who hunted Snow White could only use hers to assess her rivals’ beauty from afar. Yet Aladdin had invested his last wish to have a mirror of his own. Why?
Tedros took a deep breath. Only one way to solve this mystery. He blew the sand off its surface and was faced with his own reflection.
Instantly, the eyes of his mirror twin glowed yellow, like the genie’s—
Then Tedros was falling into them like a hole.
He could see the Tedros left behind in the cave, as if he’d split into two selves. Gold light blinded him, like he’d dropped into the sun, before he came out the other side, floating without gravity through a hall of mirrors, each mirror playing a scene from his life.
Young Tedros, writing a message to his mother . . . then stuffing it into a bottle and setting it into the Savage Sea.
Tedros, crying alone in his dorm room at school.
Tedros, stiffening as Aric came towards him in a prison cell, a whip on his belt.
Tedros, lost in Filip’s gaze on a window ledge, he and the boy about to kiss.
Tedros, gouging out the eyes of his father’s statue in King’s Cove . . .
These weren’t just scenes, Tedros realized.
These were his secrets.
Suddenly, he was back in the genie’s cave, turning away from his reflection, sucking in air.
“Tedros?” his mother asked behind him.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t think.
Instead, he held up the mirror and reflected her.
In the glass, Guinevere’s eyes burned yellow and now Tedros was falling into them.
Into her secrets.
Guinevere in her wedding veil, walking down the aisle towards Arthur . . . but behind the veil, she looked racked with doubts . . .
Guinevere, embraced with Lancelot in a forest, the two disguised by the night.
Guinevere, in a dark hood, sneaking into young Tedros’ room . . . kissing him goodbye . . . then seeing him wake . . . and hurriedly closing the door to lock him in.
Guinevere, on the shores of Avalon’s lake, receiving Tedros’ message in a bottle . . . and crumpling it as she saw Lancelot coming, clutching freshly picked flowers.
Guinevere, years later, glimpsing teenage Tedros arrive with his friends on the moors of Avalon . . . her face clouding over . . .
Tedros ripped himself out of his mother’s secrets, reeling from the mirror—
“What’s wrong?” said Guinevere, as if she’d been frozen in time. “What are you seeing?”
“You never wanted me to find you, did you?” her son asked. “After you ran off with Lancelot. You would have been happy never being with me again.”
The flush in his mother’s face told Tedros all he needed to know.
This mirror spoke the truth.
The darkest truths, locked away in each person’s heart.
And his mother’s was what he’d known all along: her heart was with Lancelot, only Lancelot, whether the knight was alive or dead. That’s why Tedros felt that empty feeling around her. She was here in body, but no longer in soul.
Hooves pounded the desert outside, shaking the cave harder.
He was running out of time.
Tedros focused again on the mirror, keeping his face out of its reflection. What had Aladdin used it for? How did it help him get out of this ca—
Of course.
Slumdog, street rat . . . but a legend for a reason.
The prince tucked the mirror into the back of his pants. Then he gazed up at the genie, his blue eyes aflame.
“I’d like to make my first wish, please,” said Tedros.
THE GENIE GAVE the mildest swish of his hand.
“Done,” he declared. “Won’t last more than an hour. Even my magic has limits.”
Tedros inspected his body, unchanged on the outside. But inside, his blood tingled with bubbling heat, as if his veins were growing wider. His skin felt looser on his bones, more elastic. He held up a hand and with a simple focus of mind, he watched the hair on the back of it recede, the skin turning paler, more feminine . . . Then he stopped the transformation just as he’d started it, his hand reverting to a golden, sinewy fist.
“An hour is all I need,” said Tedros.
He glanced at his mother, who was surely thinking the same thing as her son. That the genie had given Tedros precisely what he’d asked for. But whether this first wish was well-used . . . only time would tell.
“And your second wish?” the genie asked.
“Same as the first,” Tedros answered. He pointed at his mother. “But do it to her.”
TEDROS COULD SEE her clutching her arms over her chest, as if trying to block the sensations she was feeling inside. Mother and son shared the same powers now. But where these powers emboldened Tedros, they seemed to make his mother shrink deeper into her skin.
Will she be able to do the job when the moment comes? the prince wondered. Did I make a mistake in picking her?
“And your third wish?” the genie asked.
Tedros’ heart thumped harder, drowning out the sounds from beyond. This last wish was the rub. He kept his face steady, trying to give nothing away.
But his mother had no such restraint. He could see her chewing on her lip and picking at her nails, glancing worriedly at him.
The genie noticed.
“And your third wish?” he repeated, with suspicion.
The prince looked hard into the genie’s eyes. “My third wish is that you become deathly allergic to ladybugs.”
“What?” the genie snorted.
From the ceiling of the cave, a big pink ladybug dropped onto his shoulder.
Instantly, the genie broke out into bright pink pox and clutched his throat, gagging for breath. He flung the beetle to the ground, about to stomp on it—
“Wouldn’t do that, considering it’s your princess,” said Tedros.
The genie ogled him, confused. Then he looked down at the pink bug, blinking up at the genie with almond-shaped eyes, before it began skittering around him, making him erupt in a fresh riot of blisters. Panicked, the genie punted the bug across the cave, straight into Tedros’ hands.
“You said to deliver your princess to you. You didn’t say in what form,” the prince smiled, petting the beetle. “And it turns out a teacher of Animal Communication enjoys mogrifying into the precise insect that now kills you to be near. Doesn’t sound like this tale will end in Happily Ever After, will it?”
The ladybug whispered in Tedros’ ear.
“Besides, Uma says she might be your true love but you’re certainly not hers,” he relayed.