Chaddick was.
The true heir to the throne.
Tedros looked at his hand. The carved silver ring cold on his finger. His voice was a whisper: “Dad gave it to me. Why?”
“For the same reason he made the tournament. He saw the future and all its possibilities,” said the Lady. Her tears had ceased. Behind her, the rain abated over Avalon’s shores. She turned to Tedros, a light growing in her eyes. “And despite all the darkness in that future, he saw one hope. That hope was you becoming king. Not Chaddick. Not anyone else. You. Because it’s you who were the Lion. Only you who could have had the strength and will to rise out of the ashes of Arthur’s mistakes and build a better Woods. It’s why Arthur didn’t fight death when it came for him. His story was the beginning of yours and your story the completion of his. Father and Son. King and King. Two fates intertwined. The true End of Ends. This was the future Arthur believed in. And he was willing to bet everything on that future.” In the glow of Lionsmane’s message, she looked at him like a flame against the night. “But now it’s your turn, Tedros. You must finish the last test. Excalibur didn’t see a king in you before. Will it see one now?”
Tedros walled off his feelings like a knight shielding dragon fire: a blast of rage, horror, shame, all the emotions of his father not being the father he knew, his liege now his brother, the throne he believed so rightfully his not his at all. But in the siege of these feelings, he sensed another wave, light and cool, washing them all away.
Relief.
As if at last he had the answer to what made a king. Not blood. Not birthright. But something deeper: faith. Faith his father had in him. Faith Tedros never had in himself. Until now. Because he was a better man than his father, loyal to his princess, loyal to his heart. Because he’d be a better king, having chosen not the queen who would compensate for his shortcomings, but would love him for them. Because of who he was deep in his soul, rather than what he thought should be. He was free. Finally free. As if in being told he wasn’t a king, he found the reason to be a king.
His blood burned hot. The veins of his neck throbbed, a roar licking at his throat. He raised his eyes to the Lady.
“I’m ready.”
Agatha’s hand wrapped around his, the princess at his side. Young Merlin flanked the prince, his hand on his back.
The Lady smiled at Tedros, an inscrutable smile like the Lady of old . . .
Suddenly the glow on her face darkened, like a candle blown out.
She spun to the night sky—
Lionsmane’s message.
It was gone.
For a moment, no one seemed to understand.
But the prince did.
His blue eyes knifed the dark.
“He’s found it.”
28
SOPHIE
Beasts and Beauty
Arthur certainly hadn’t been subtle about it.
Marking the house with a sword through the roof, like Zeus hurling a thunderbolt.
The house of the true heir to Camelot.
Sophie remembered the first time she ever saw Chaddick of Foxwood, strutting into the Welcoming with the rest of the Everboys, flaunting his swordplay and puffed chest and flirty gray eyes. And yet, all her attentions had gone to Tedros, even though Chaddick was handsome, charming, capable . . . But Tedros was the prince. Camelot’s future king. That’s why all the girls wanted Tedros. That’s why all the boys wanted to be Tedros. What would have happened if they’d known the truth? Where would Chaddick and Tedros be now? Where would Sophie be—
The carriage hit a snag and her head thumped the roof. Sophie looked down at her rope-tied hands and the metal cuff around her neck attached to a chain, held by three women sitting opposite, with long gray hair, hawkish eyes, and bare feet snaking out from lavender robes. A single scim hovered in front of Sophie’s heart with a fatally sharp tip. Through the window, she could see at least fifty Camelot guards protecting the prisoner’s transport, the guards sealed in armor and carrying crossbows, marching with the carriage through the twilit Woods, dappled with copies of Excalibur.
“Is all this really necessary?” Sophie growled.
“You escaped once under our watch,” Alpa pointed out. She twisted her fingers and the eel at Sophie’s chest pinned closer. “We’ll return you to Camelot and seal you in the dungeons until it’s time for you to wed the One True King.”
“I always wondered how you could control his eels,” said Sophie coolly. “Until I realized: you have his blood, too. Rafal’s sisters. Japeth’s aunts. You have access to his magic. Too bad magic can’t save you. Not from what’s coming.”
She summoned the wickedest grin she could, but the Mistrals saw through it.
“Sent word to the king that you’d been found in Foxwood prowling around a house hit by a sword,” Bethna said. “Didn’t take long for him to figure out which house it was.”
Outside, Sophie could see Lionsmane’s message vanished from the sky.
“He’s on his way to the Gremlaine place now,” said Omeida. “Fitting, isn’t it? Tedros once thought Excalibur was his by right. Now it’ll lop off his head. But what to do with that head?”
“Auction it to the highest bidder,” Bethna proposed.
“Mount it in the king’s chamber,” Alpa offered.
“Send it to Agatha in a box,” said Omeida.
Sophie swallowed her nausea.
“Once Tedros is dead and the last ring in the king’s hands, then the wedding will resume,” said Alpa. “King Rhian and Queen Sophie, finally united. Queen for a night at least, then a return to the dungeons, where you’ll never again see the light of day.”
“There’ll be no wedding, you hobbit-footed trolls,” Sophie snarled. “And with no wedding, there’s no One True King. That’s the Snake’s only path to the Storian’s powers. My blood with his. Me as his queen. Like his father Rafal needed me. And just like Rafal, he’ll never get me.”
“Don’t think you’ll have a say in the matter,” Alpa replied.
The scim floated up from Sophie’s chest to her head, cleaving into two eels, then three, then four, poised to spear into her ears, her mouth, her nose . . .
“This time, we’ll use more than two,” said Bethna.
The scims rejoined, aiming back at Sophie’s heart.
She pursed her lips and returned her focus outside the window, projecting an unruffled calm. But inside, her bones had gone cold. Japeth was on his way to Chaddick’s house to win the third test. Tedros was in Avalon with Agatha, likely without a clue where the sword was. Sophie was their only hope—and yet here she was, back in the hands of her old captors. Think, Sophie. She was trapped in a carriage at scimpoint, walled in by soldiers, outnumbered a hundred to one. But every fairy tale had a moment like this, with Good beaten by Evil . . . until Good found a way to escape by the grace of true love. But Sophie wasn’t Good. And no one was coming to save her, because she didn’t have a true love. She peeked at her dress, praying that it might help, the way it had so many times, but it shrank from the scim, as if Evelyn’s spirit was on her son’s side.
So why had it helped Sophie before?
She thought about the moments the dress had come to her rescue: breaking her out of Camelot, hiding her in the Woods, thwarting the Empress’s geese . . . all times when the Snake was far away. Then she thought about the instances the dress failed her: when the Snake killed the Sheriff or when the Snake attacked her in the wizard tree or now, when a scim held her hostage . . . all times when the Snake or his eels were near.