Agatha #1 and Agatha #3 prowled forward, each looming towards the Agatha that had just answered.
Agatha #4.
Then, in tandem, as if they were one and the same, the first and third Agathas drew something from their cloaks. Something each of them had been hiding.
A sharp-bladed star.
Agatha #4 began to retreat, her twin assailants closing in.
In a flash, Sophie understood.
Agatha #1 and #3 were Tedros and Japeth. Or Japeth and Tedros.
Together, they were about to kill Agatha #4.
Because each thought they knew who this Agatha was.
Tedros thought it was Japeth.
Japeth thought it was Agatha.
Agatha #4 stepped back, hands up, her clumps teetering at the edge of the cloud. She looked at her star-armed hunters. “Caught me,” she said.
Her assailants raised their stars like daggers.
Sophie realized what was about to happen. So did Agatha #2, the last Agatha left. “No!” the two girls gasped.
Agatha #4 turned to jump—
Steel-edged stars impaled her back and neck.
She collapsed onto her cloud.
Twin Agathas rushed towards her, both believing they’d won, both believing they’d slain their enemy . . .
. . . only to recoil in shock.
Guinevere lay on the cloud, blood soaking the cotton softness at her wings.
Agatha #3 melted back into Tedros’ body, the prince lunging to her side.
Agatha #1 reverted to Japeth, the stunned Snake swiveling to Agatha #2, the real Agatha, already far away in the sky, rescued by Sophie’s magical dress.
“Mother . . . ,” Tedros breathed.
“One more test left.” His mother held on to him. “You killed your princess.”
Tedros’ eyes widened.
Guinevere smiled weakly. “You had your plan and I had mine.”
“This can’t be the end . . . ,” Tedros wept.
“Make no mistake. You won this test, Tedros,” his mother said. “By getting us here. By loving Agatha so strongly. Somewhere Arthur must have known. That your love would set all of us free.” Her grip loosened. “Your father and I will meet again. And he will forgive me. Because we made you. Our son. The King. This is how it’s meant to end. It always was. With me finally a mother to you . . . With Lance waiting for me . . .”
She drew a breath and let him go, the cloud swallowing her up, staining red, like a rose dipped in color. Tedros hunched over, head in hands, letting out a ravaged howl. He raised raw eyes to the Snake, the prince breathing fire. Japeth’s face hardened, his scims turning to spikes. Both boys surged for the other, enemies primed for war—
From within the cloud, red smoke shot up into the sky, smashing the two apart. The red smoke roiled higher, thicker, as if the once-queen’s blood had become air, expanding into a storm cloud over the Celestium, taking the shape of a Lion. Arthur’s voice thundered:
“You have done what I asked.
Both of you.
The second test done.
One more test remains,
Two kings still in the race.
The final trial awaits.”
Beneath the clouds on which Tedros and Japeth lay, the sky broke open like a portal, revealing a familiar landscape.
The royal gardens of Camelot.
A mountain of rubble where a statue used to be.
Arthur’s sword trapped in the stone.
“Excalibur,” spoke the king. “The Lion’s Grail.”
The blade glowed gold with magic, vibrating faster, harder, before it shattered the stone with a thunderous crack! and vaulted high into the night like a beacon. But then another Excalibur appeared next to it . . . then another . . . glowing just as gold, just as brightly, then more and more and more, repeating infinitely across the sky, again and again, until the galaxy was nothing but the king’s sword.
“Find the grail,” Arthur ordered.
“Find Excalibur.
Free it once and for all.
He who does will be king.
He who fails . . . will pay with his head.”
A million Excaliburs shined in the dark, each perfection, each the same.
Lording over five small shadows.
One who would be King.
The Lion roared—
Swords stabbed down like Pens to a page, slashing open the sky with blinding light and swallowing all of Man’s fate with it.
25
TEDROS
Game of Swords
“How are you going to propose?” Lancelot had asked him. They were swimming in the ice-cold sea a few miles from the castle, just the two of them, while Guinevere accompanied Agatha to dress fittings for the coronation. It had only been a few days since they’d all come to Camelot from the School for Good and Evil. Only a few days since the war against Rafal had ended with the School Master dead and a new alliance between Camelot and the School, the Woods’ two greatest powers. The future seemed filled with hope and promise. So much so that when Lance had barreled into Tedros’ chambers at the crack of dawn, demanding the prince come swim with him, for once Tedros decided to be agreeable and tagged along.
“Well?” Lancelot pressed, now that they were deep in frigid waters, the winter sun doing nothing to warm them. “If you’re going to ask her to marry you, you better have a plan.”
“A plan I’ll keep to myself, thank you,” the prince replied, trying to stop his teeth from chattering, given Lance looked perfectly comfortable. “I hope now that you and Mother are going to live with us, it won’t make you think I care about your opinion. You’re not my father and you never will be.”
Lancelot grinned a dirty smile. “Haven’t thought about how you’re going to do it, have you.”
Tedros glanced at the wild-maned brute with a hairy chest, all leathered and brawny where the prince was smooth and lean, his skin pinking at every stab of cold. “What do you care? You never asked my mother to marry you.”
“Your mother had the choice to marry me, but chose Arthur instead. In the end, it wasn’t what she was looking for,” Lancelot replied. “So we had to find something else to call what Gwen and I have.”
“Like what?”
“Love.”
Tedros looked at him.
“That’s why it matters how you propose,” said the knight. “Because if it’s marriage you’re trying to get her to agree to, well, then that’s easy enough. Any king can make an offer a girl can’t refuse. The pull of duty and honor, the promise of riches and fame, the carving of a name into history. It’s why Gwen couldn’t say no to your father and why any girl won’t say no to you. But if it’s love you’re offering, love bigger than marriage, love that will last forever . . . well, that’s a very different proposal indeed. Because a girl can only say yes to that once. Like your mother did to me.”
Tedros took this in, so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t see Lancelot’s big, meaty hand reach up behind him and dunk his head into the sea.
“Why are you such an ass?” Tedros spewed, spitting salty water.
“Someone needs to teach the cub how to be a lion, don’t he?” Lance chuckled.
By the time they swam back to shore, Tedros had scrapped his original plan for asking Agatha to marry him. Soon, a new proposal brewed in his heart: one that he didn’t second-guess. He didn’t share it with anyone. Not Lance. Not Merlin. Not his mother. Not a soul, until his princess on the day he chose. Since that day, neither he nor Agatha had spoken of it to each other or anyone else. What had happened was too sacred, too private to live outside their own hearts.