The genie’s mist went redder, his eyes poisonous yellow. “We had a deal! You made a promise!”
“Which we fulfilled,” Tedros pointed out.
“You think you’ll get away with this!” the genie shouted. “You cheat! You thief!”
“Says a genie who makes a sport of stealing men’s lives,” Tedros reproached. “The genie who thinks he can cheat his way to love.”
The genie lunged for him, but Uma’s bug bounced onto his face and the genie recoiled in horror. He smacked her away, except the ladybug kept scuttling towards him, cornering him against the lamp, choking him with her mere presence as he contorted with pain. Desperate to stay alive, the genie pulled back into his lamp, leaving only his scared face exposed . . . Then his expression changed, a triumphant leer growing, as he extended his neck like a snake’s and confronted Tedros, eye to eye.
“You’re forgetting something, failed prince. You don’t know the secret word. You’re trapped here forever. You idiot. You arrogant fool!”
“I don’t know the secret word,” Tedros confessed. “That is true.”
He looked up at the genie.
“But you’re forgetting something too.”
Tedros pulled Aladdin’s mirror out of his pants and held it up, reflecting his stunned opponent.
In a flash, the prince was falling through tiger eyes . . .
But only one secret played in the genie’s soul, again and again and again.
A single, shining word, carved in darkness, like a wish against the night.
Tedros yanked himself back into the cave, just as the genie surged out of his lamp with the last of his strength, claws out for the prince—
Tedros put his nose to the genie’s. “The secret word is . . . human.”
“NO!” the genie screamed, dragged back into the lamp.
All at once, sand swelled under Tedros’ feet, lifting him and his mother out of the cave, Uma’s bug scrambling after them. Soaring upwards, Tedros smelled the heat of the desert above him, sweat beading on his skin. He could hear the confused cries of Japeth’s army, the first part of the plan surely complete—
His mother snatched at the mirror, still in his hands.
“Leave it!” Guinevere said. “Bad things happen to thieves!”
Tedros ignored her, gripping the glass, the desert surface coming closer. Taking the mirror wasn’t part of the plan, but no way was he leaving it behind.
Not because he was a thief.
Because he was the king.
And the mirror his new weapon.
Secrets this time, instead of a sword.
Tedros grinned, rising out of the cave.
Oh yes.
There were more souls he’d be looking into.
20
AGATHA
Conversations with Friends
Ten minutes earlier, Agatha panicked as Tedros and his mother disappeared inside the Cave of Wishes.
The moment the door sealed, Agatha whirled to face Merlin.
“Merlin. What ‘big job’ did Tedros give you to do?”
The six-year-old clasped his hands under his bottom, as if unsure how much to share. Then he pointed at the armies charging across the dunes. “Tee Tee said wait ’til horseys.”
“Wait ’til horseys?” Sophie frowned, sidling beside Agatha.
“Then what?” Agatha hounded the wizard.
Merlin beamed up at them. “Choo-choo! Choo-choo!”
Agatha and Sophie exchanged looks, while Hort, Princess Uma, and the Knights of Eleven clustered together, the Snake and a thousand men storming closer, closer . . .
“Are we really going to stand here and let him kill Agatha?” Sophie demanded, her dress morphing into white armor, mirroring the steel in her voice. “Didn’t you all say you had a plan?”
“We do,” clipped Maid Marian, nodding pointedly at Merlin.
“Knights, take your position!” Jaunt Jolie’s queen ordered, eleven armored females fanning into a frontline.
Sophie grabbed Merlin. “You little brat, tell Auntie Sophie exactly what Tee Tee told you—”
“Choo-choo!” the young wizard repeated.
“I’d give him a spanking but we’re about to die,” Sophie growled. Both girls sparked their fingerglows, pink and gold strobing weakly, fear the only emotion fueling their magic. Over Sophie’s shoulder, Agatha watched Japeth riding for her, an arrow to a target. “How could Tedros just leave you here?” Sophie hissed, sheltering her friend. “He should have taken you into the cave instead of his useless mother! What kind of prince is that?”
“He said to follow the others. That he had a plan,” Agatha insisted as Japeth drew closer. But deep down, she had the same questions about Tedros, while also feeling guilty about them, as if it wasn’t a boy’s job to play bodyguard for his girl. And yet . . . if their positions were reversed, she never would have left her prince alone to fight. Nor would she have trusted him to survive Japeth without her. Then again, it was exactly this lack of trust that had put them in this mess to begin with.
“Well, he has a plan and we don’t,” Sophie conceded, squinting back at the cave. “For once in our lives, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt.”
But she didn’t look convinced.
Neither did Agatha.
“Remember this . . .” Hester exhorted her fellow knights, her eyes glinting through her pearlescent veil. “None of those bastards touches Agatha.”
The Knights of Eleven grabbed swords off their belts, brandishing them to fight.
“Because that’s how you beat an unkillable Snake. Swords,” Hort groused, exploding out of his clothes into a hulking man-wolf. “Not just Agatha we have to keep him away from. Keep him from Sophie too.”
“But by all means, let him kill me,” Nicola snapped.
“Not being your boyfriend means your bad attitude is your problem now,” Hort retorted, cocking his massive biceps as he shielded Sophie. “And you missed my point. We can’t let Japeth get Sophie back. Her blood heals him.”
“Not anymore,” said Sophie, feeling safer now that wolf-Hort was protecting her. “Rhian told me of a pen’s prophecy. About him and Japeth. One would marry me and be king, the other would be healed by my blood. But not both. Once Japeth killed Rhian and stole the crown, he lost my blood’s powers.”
“Pen’s prophecy?” said Agatha, the trampling horses and camels so loud she could hardly hear herself. “Which pen? Lionsmane or the Storian?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sophie dismissed. “What matters is Japeth’s mortal now. He can be killed.”
“Plus, the Sultan’s army still thinks Japeth is Rhian, so Snake can’t use his scims. Not without giving himself away,” Nicola surmised. “This is our best chance to beat him.”
“Only thing standing in our way is a thousand pirates and armed soldiers and fire-spitting camels,” said adult Dot, fatally.
“And our best weapon is a six-year-old,” Anadil echoed, “who seems to have disappeared.”
Agatha scanned the desert. “Where is he?”
“30 seconds . . . ,” Dean Brunhilde called as Japeth led two armies straight at them.