Tedros pulled something from his coat. Agatha anticipated a dagger, a sword—
Instead, the prince produced a dirty mirror.
“That’s your plan?” Agatha gasped.
“Consider it a detour,” said Tedros.
Japeth raised his sword to kill them. Both of them—
Tedros flashed the glass at the Snake.
Moonlight reflected between Japeth’s eyes, his startled face caught squarely in the mirror.
Then Agatha felt herself falling, her prince’s arms wrapped around her, like two rabbits down a hole.
22
TEDROS
Snake Eyes
“Where are we?” Agatha asked.
Tedros couldn’t see anything, his arms still around his princess. There was no sun-gold light this time. They’d fallen straight into darkness before sliding into dry, scratchy earth. It smelled oily and rank, like fish gone bad.
“We’re inside his secrets,” said Tedros.
Agatha pulled away. “What?”
She sparked her glow, casting it around—
They were in a tunnel.
Made of scims.
The ceiling, the floor, the walls . . . all of it was a mass of dead, desiccated eels, black and briny, packed like mulch.
Tedros rose, shining his own glow behind them. No visions or clues. No window into the Snake’s heart. Just more endless tunnels. More darkness and scims.
Is something wrong with the mirror? Tedros worried. Did it not work outside the cave? Was that the genie’s revenge? Trapping them inside someone else, with no way out? A someone else that just happened to be their nemesis?
“How are we inside his secrets?” said Agatha, still in a fog.
“A magic mirror I picked up from the genie’s cave,” Tedros said quickly, masking his panic, trying not to tell his princess that he just locked them inside the Snake’s soul. “Supposed to show you a person’s greatest secrets. Things they want to hide.”
“Supposed to?” Agatha said, eyes narrowing.
“Like it showed me the genie’s secret word to escape his cave, and it showed me my mother so happy with Lancelot that she never really wanted me back in her life,” Tedros rambled. “Explains a lot, actually—”
“But where are his secrets, then?” Agatha pressed. “According to you, we’re supposed to be seeing the Snake’s, but there’s nothing here.”
Tedros swallowed. “Right.”
“So how do we get out?”
“Uh . . . not sure.”
Agatha waited for him to say something else.
He didn’t.
Her cheeks flushed, as if about to unleash on him, for his foolishness, for his failure to think through things, a big, fat I-told-you-so speech that she surely was holding in about his impetuousness and poor instincts and all his other shortcomings as a man, the same speech Tedros had waited so tensely for his dad to give him before he died, the speech that never came, but instead lived in the prince’s own head day after day, now at last to be spoken out loud by his princess . . .
Instead, Agatha smiled at him. “Still alive, aren’t we?”
Tedros watched her sleuth around the cave. “How did you see your mother’s secrets?” she asked.
“They were just there, clear as day—”
Her gaze fixed past him. “What’s that?”
Somewhere, at the end of the darkness, a tiny green light beamed.
Agatha moved towards it, but Tedros cut her off. “Stay behind me.”
His princess hesitated, then followed. Tedros could hear her holding her breath. If there was one thing about Agatha, she really didn’t like being led.
“The others,” she panicked. “They’re still up there—”
“When I went in the mirror before, I returned without losing time. The same way time stops in the Celestium. Which means our friends are safe as long as we’re here. Speaking of which, Japeth looked like he’d been boiled to a pulp. Your doing?”
“Sophie’s. He tried to kill me . . . and she screamed.”
Tedros simmered. That Japeth tried to kill Agatha and he wasn’t there to save her, leaving Sophie to do the job . . . He forced a light tone. “Vintage move! Not surprised she still had it in her. Once a witch, always a witch. Wonder what would happen if we went inside Sophie’s secrets. Better not. Might find out she’s still in love with me.”
“She’d rather marry Japeth.” There was no levity in Agatha’s voice. Instead, she looked crestfallen. “We were so close to killing him, Tedros. To all of this being over.”
“It wouldn’t be The End, even if you did,” said the prince. “Killing Japeth might have made you the hero, Agatha. You and Sophie. But it wouldn’t have made me king. You said it yourself at the palace. I need people to believe I’m the Lion. There’s only two ways to do that: win the tournament or expose Japeth as a fake. Thought I could win the tournament, but I’m trapped at the second test. So we need to expose Japeth. To make him give up the throne. That’s the plan the knights and I came up with. But maybe there’s an easier way . . . Which is why I brought us here, inside his secrets. Hoping to find the secret that can show the Woods who he really is.”
“Makes sense,” said Agatha flatly.
“What are you really thinking?” Tedros asked.
“Both of us are being fools, thinking there’s an easy way out. Your father made the tournament for a reason. He wants you to finish the tests, not find some way around them.”
“But I can’t get past the second test—”
“Why would your father make a test you can’t pass?” Agatha pushed. “You who he gave his ring to? You, his true heir?”
Tedros thought about this. “What if these tests aren’t just meant to prove I’m king? What if they’re meant to make me a better king than my dad? The first test was about the Green Knight. Why? To learn there were two Japeths and a connection between them, yes. That strange vision of Evelyn you saw in the pearl. But the test was more than that: to see that the Green Knight was one of my dad’s mistakes. He lost his brother to anger and pride. He lost Merlin too. He knew I could be just as angry and prideful, like when I refused to hear the story of the Green Knight. He feared my emotions would get the best of me. So the test was a lesson. Swallowing Merlin’s beard meant swallowing my pride and letting the grudges against my father go. It meant accepting him as fallible and forgiving him for it. The first test of being a good king.”
“Only I messed it all up,” said Agatha.
“Did you?” said Tedros. “Or did Dad want the second test to be about you? Maybe Dad had a glimpse of the future, like you and Sophie guessed. The more I think about it, the more I think he wanted to put you to the test. The next Queen of Camelot. Because Dad chose the wrong one. My mother ruined him and nearly brought down the kingdom. Everything that’s gone wrong in Dad’s story can be traced to the Guinevere Mistake. Dad wanted her to die for the pain she caused him. He even put a death warrant on her head. Not because he truly wanted her to die. Because he wanted her to come back to him. That death warrant was his last cry of love. So now he’s putting the same warrant on your head. Daring us to find a way out. Maybe this is his way of forgiving my mother—if I can learn from her sins. If I choose the right queen because of her. That’s why I think Dad moved the bounty to you. To test our love. To redeem Guinevere. To finish his and my mother’s story.”