“Or a woman,” Sophie ventured.
“And you’re sure they’ve left Avalon?” Dovey pressed.
Agatha and Sophie exchanged looks. “Can’t be sure of anything anymore,” said Agatha. “But the beaver made it sound like he was long gone.”
“The Lady of the Lake would have never let him or the Snake in,” said Dovey, dismayed. “Have you gone to her—”
“Wait a second,” said Hester.
She was crouching near one of the chests. Inside it was a single, ragged gold coin. Hester held it up to the daylight.
A skull with crossbones glimmered on its face.
“Pirate gold,” said Anadil. Her rats sniffed at the chests and tittered at her. “They say all of these were filled with pirate gold. Those asps must have been protecting it.”
“Pirate numbers are growing in Jaunt Jolie,” Hester said, remembering the newspaper she’d seen in Eternal Springs. “Snake has to be paying them.”
Anadil swiveled to Hester. “Jaunt Jolie is one of the kingdoms bordering the Four Point. Didn’t the Vizier in Kyrgios mention pirates lurking about sacred land?”
“If the Snake is planning something at the Four Point, you need to head him off at once,” said Professor Dovey urgently. “The Four Point is where Arthur intervened to end a war between four kingdoms over a small piece of land. He gave his life to bring peace. Since then, the land belongs to Camelot as a symbol of its leadership of the Woods, beyond Good and Evil. Any breach would be a declaration of war on Camelot, not to mention a shattering of the truce. The Lady of the Lake vigilantly protects the Four Point, but it sounds like the Snake has his eyes on it. You must find out what these pirates are up to.”
“Then we’re off to Jaunt Jolie,” Agatha said, eyeing the vial on Sophie’s necklace. “Whose quest is stationed there?”
“Oh no,” Sophie croaked. “Beatrix.”
“And judging from the fact that some of our quest teams aren’t communicating with me, Beatrix’s team may be in danger too,” said Professor Dovey. “Make haste to your next kingdom and find her. I won’t be able to check in with you for a few days. My crystal ball only lets me use it a certain amount of time each day and tomorrow I have to use it for . . .” She didn’t finish.
“Professor, is there no way to get a new ball?” Dot prodded respectfully.
“Along with a new cooking pot, new wand, and new maid for your office,” Sophie murmured.
Professor Dovey was fading faster. “Listen, my children. Every second you spend in that cave is one more second a steadfast Ever of Good lies unburied in the cold. All I ask is that before you leave Avalon, you give him a worthy goodbye. Go to the Lady of the Lake. Find out how a boy of our own came to lie on her shores. At the very least, she must help you bury him.” Professor Dovey choked up, her face translucent. “He is worthy of a home in the same grove as King Arthur, for he was a devoted friend to his son. Chaddick was an honorable boy. He didn’t deserve to die alone. I should be there with you to pay my respects. . . . I wish I could, but I’m doing the best I can. . . .”
Tears filled the Dean’s eyes, as if she could say no more.
Then she was gone.
“Lady of the Lake? Are you there?” Sophie asked a third time, her foot dipped in the glacial gray waters.
But again the Lady didn’t answer.
A few minutes earlier, the crew had each taken a private moment with Chaddick to honor him. When it was her turn, Sophie had kneeled down and taken his rigid, chilled hands in hers.
“Thank you for being such a faithful, valiant friend to Teddy. A better friend than I’ve ever been, that’s for sure. We’ll protect him for you now, okay? And in the end, you’ll be the reason we were able to save him.”
She kissed his cheek. “Wherever you are, you’ll have no pain or bad memories anymore. Only love. And one day, me, Teddy, and all the rest of your friends will be with you again. Not too soon, of course . . . but one day. So wait for us and watch over us if you can.”
When she was finished, Agatha kneeled in front of Chaddick, then Hort kneeled, then Hester, then the others, one by one, even those who hadn’t known him. They washed Chaddick’s body clean with lake water and fitted him into Hort’s clothes, leaving the weasel pink-skinned and shivering in his underpants. (“Always lose my clothes anyway, so might as well be for a good cause,” he’d said.) The boys lifted Chaddick’s body and lay him gently on the lakeshore, the water lapping up to his side. Without the use of magic, they could do little else to adorn him, but Nicola combed his hair and Bogden smoothed his shirt as the rest watched Agatha step into the water and call out for the Lady of the Lake to help bury their friend.
The Lady didn’t answer.
And now, she wasn’t responding to Sophie either.
“Maybe if we go farther in?” Anadil offered.
“Come on,” Hester said, grabbing her and Dot and hauling them into the lake. Dot squealed, arctic water up to her thighs, but she gritted her teeth and plowed forward.
Sophie remained with Agatha, watching the witches wade deeper.
“What do you think Dovey meant when she said she’s doing the best she can?” Agatha asked.
“Before you arrived at school, she told me she couldn’t come on this quest because it was our fairy tale, not hers. But I’m starting to suspect there was another reason she had to stay behind,” said Sophie.
“Is she sick?”
“Can fairy godmothers get sick? Besides, she doesn’t look ill. She looks . . . chaotic. As if her mind is elsewhere,” Sophie said. “But what could be more important for a Dean than protecting her students? Lady Lesso lied to a deadly School Master to keep her Nevers safe. She betrayed Evil itself, a cause she’d worked for her whole life. She betrayed her own son. And though I hate saying this, Dovey is just as good a Dean as Lady Lesso. Which means there’s something else wrong with her. Something she isn’t telling us. Do you think it might have to do with that crystal ball?”
“Even if it’s broken, a crystal ball should help her, not leave her frazzled and overwhelmed.” Agatha shook her head. “I’m scared, Sophie. You heard Dovey—she’s never seen a villain like this before. And if she’s not at full strength to guide us . . .” She paused. “The Woods is under siege. Our friend is dead. Quest teams are missing. And Tedros is alone at Camelot, with this Snake plotting to destroy him. We don’t know who the Snake is. We don’t know what his plan is. All we know is we’re in a fairy tale again and this time the villain is playing games with us.” She gazed at her friend. “It’s as if there’s no such thing as a happy ending anymore.”
“Or perhaps we’ve traded in Good and Evil, black and white, happy and unhappy for a thousand shades of gray,” said Sophie.
“Hey, guys?” Hester’s voice called.
The two girls turned and saw the three witches looking back at them, chest-deep.
“There’s someone out there,” said Hester.
Sophie stepped forward, squinting past the witches across the lake. Then she saw it: a hundred yards away, a silhouette hunched on top of the water. She couldn’t see whose it was. She couldn’t even tell if it was man . . . animal . . . monster.
But whatever it was gave her a dark feeling.
“I’ll go—” Agatha started.
“I’ll go too,” Sophie said without thinking, clasping Agatha’s wrist and dragging her past the witches and Hort, who’d rushed to follow. The icy water knifed through Sophie’s dress as she swam, but she didn’t make a sound nor stop swimming, her breaths achy and shallow.
But then something curious happened.
As the two girls swam farther, Agatha sank like the others, down to her neck. But Sophie didn’t sink at all. Her body started floating, higher, higher, magically sloughing off water, until suddenly she was walking on top of the lake as if it were solid ground.
She looked down at Agatha, dumbfounded.
Agatha seemed equally stunned, as did the rest of the crew, but there was no time to
ask questions.
“Go,” said Agatha quickly. “But be careful.”
Sophie swallowed hard. Then she kept walking.
The lake felt rubbery under her heels and baffled fish ogled her from beneath the surface. Under dreary skies, the figure ahead remained cloaked in shadow as Sophie grew closer, closer. She could see its stooped back, wrapped in soaked gray robes.
The ominous churning in her stomach deepened.
“Hello?” she called out, inching nearer.
No answer.
From behind, the figure had scanty knots of white hair, a shiny skull gleaming through.
“Can you hear me?” Sophie asked.
Still nothing.
“I’m here on behalf of King Tedros of Camelot,” Sophie rasped, mouth dry. “We’re looking for the Lady of the Lake. We need her help burying our friend in King Arthur’s grov—”
An old hag spun to face her, milk-white flesh hanging over bones and ruined with warts. Her teeth were rotted away and her coal-black eyes and thick peeling lips hung open in a foul, empty gape.
Sophie ate her own scream and stumbled back, bracing to run—
“Wait,” the hag said.
Sophie froze.
The voice was low and husky . . . and beautiful.
It was a voice she knew.
Sophie inched back around. “It’s . . . you. You’re the Lady of the Lake—”
“I’m sorry for not letting the others see me like this, but they wouldn’t understand,” the Lady of the Lake said softly. “You are the only one who knows what it’s like to lose who you are. Except you found your way back to your true self. I never will.”
“This is permanent?” Sophie said, staggered. “But—but I saw you! Merlin brought us here to hide us in your waters. You were beautiful and magical and powerful! You didn’t look like . . . like this. . . .”
The Lady sagged deeper, glancing away. “He said he loved me . . . that if I protected him, he would save me from my eternal loneliness . . . and I believed him.”
“Chaddick?” Sophie said. “But he—”
“No,” said the Lady, her voice catching. “Not him.”
“Who, then? And what does love have to do with—”
But then Sophie remembered what the beaver had said when they started their tour . . . a tale of how the Lady of the Lake came to be. . . .
“You kissed someone,” Sophie breathed. “You lost your powers. . . . It’s why the gates to Avalon are open. . . .”
The Lady’s eyes were bloodshot and wet. “I thought he’d take me away from here. That’s why I gave him shelter.”
Sophie’s heart started hammering. “You kissed the Snake? You gave up your immortality . . . your magic . . . to kiss a monster? Do you know what he’s doing in the Woods? Do you know what he did to our friend—” She caught herself. “Wait a second. If you kissed him, that means you saw him. Without a mask. You know who he is—you saw his face—”
“And it was beautiful,” the Lady said, beginning to cry. “I know you won’t forgive me. For letting your friend die. But I had no choice.”
Sophie stared in horror. “You watched Chaddick get killed . . . and you didn’t help him?”
The Lady sobbed harder.
Blood scorched through Sophie’s veins. Once upon a time, she too had been willing to commit any Evil for love. But this was Excalibur’s maker! This was Good’s great defender!
“You watched him die! For a stupid kiss?” Sophie seethed. “You vowed to protect Camelot forever! You vowed to protect its king!”
“It’s not that simple,” the Lady stammered into her hands. “I—I—I had to protect him. Even Merlin would understand. I had no choice.”
“You keep saying that! I had a choice. You had a choice. We all have choices! And you let a boy be murdered inside Avalon! Why? Because the Snake was pretty?” Sophie snarled. “Chaddick was the liege of King Arthur’s son. Chaddick was Tedros’ knight. That is your first loyalty—”
“No,” said the Lady. “My first loyalty is to the king.”
“And Chaddick was the king’s best friend,” Sophie spat. “A king you promised to defend until the end of time. Chaddick had Tedros’ trust! Chaddick had Tedros’ faith! What does a Snake have?”
The Lady of the Lake slowly lifted her head. The light had gone out of her eyes, replaced by a cold, dead glare.
“He has Arthur’s blood,” she said.
Sophie bleached white, the voice ripped out of her. “Wh-wh-what?”
“I’ll take care of your friend as you ask,” the Lady said stonily, turning back around. “It’s the only power I still have.”
Sophie couldn’t breathe. “But—but—”
The Lady of the Lake vanished.
Shaking, Sophie whirled to the shore and saw Chaddick’s body vanish too. And all that was left in her blurred, darkening vision was Agatha in the water, flailing towards her as if her friend knew something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
13
TEDROS
Like Father, Like Son
Tedros was dripping blood all over the castle and he had no idea how to stop it.
It wouldn’t have happened if he’d just stuck to the routine.
He’d gotten up at half past four to exercise in King’s Cove, but as he’d snuck his way to the basement pool, he sensed that festering dread in his stomach: the dread he’d felt ever since Agatha left a week ago.
He’d lied to Lady Gremlaine and anyone who’d asked about the future queen, saying she’d suffered a bout of homesickness and taken the Igraine to Woods Beyond to see some old friends. Luckily, the newspapers hadn’t reported any sightings of her, so he’d held firm to his story, insisting she’d return any day. He couldn’t admit the truth: that Agatha was on a quest to save his kingship, while he stayed behind like a lady-in-waiting.
On their last night together, Merlin had told them their friends’ quests were all failing and that Tedros’ own failed coronation might be part of a bigger story. Any real leader would have instantly set sail for the Woods to find this story . . . to find the villain behind it . . . but Agatha had insisted she take his place and he’d gone along with it because he was afraid to leave Camelot without a king.
At the time, he was sure that remaining at the castle was the right decision. But ever since Agatha had left, he’d been having dreams about his father again, silently glaring at him with those harsh blue eyes, eyes that Tedros had gouged out of his statue in order to stop these dreams. So why did he keep having them? Was it because his father would have never let Guinevere hijack his quest the way Tedros had let Agatha? No matter how dicey the situation at home, his father would have forcefully addressed the masses, explained the threat that faced them all, and convinced his kingdom to await his return.
Tedros had done none of those things. Instead, he’d helped Agatha escape like some piddling sidekick, distracting two guards on the bridge while Agatha boarded the Igraine with Willam, silently turned it invisible, and went off to sea.
First he’d almost gotten his mother and Lancelot killed at his coronation by ignoring everyone’s advice. And now he’d put his future queen in danger by passing off his own quest to her. Both times he’d thought it was the Good thing to do. But why did Good things keep turning bad?
Tedros’ mood spiraled as he padded down the Gold Tower stairs in his black socks. For the last few days, he’d hardly been able to focus on his royal duties and kept hounding guards to see if any letters had arrived. The guards already had little respect for him, given his botched coronation and constant deference to Lady Gremlaine, but now he’d been hearing them gossip that instead of a real king they’d gotten a love-whipped pup. (That idiot Pollux had encouraged them before Tedros had him fired.) This was his comeuppance, of course: he’d spent the last six months ignoring Agatha while she was with him and now that she was gone, all he could think about was when she’d be back.
He quickened his pace towards the basement, vowing t
o lift extra heavy today. He always felt better about himself after a punishing workout. . . .
Except now he was obsessing over why he hadn’t received any letters from her. It took a day or two at most for a courier crow to deliver a note and Agatha had taken the new crow that Camelot had finally saved enough to buy. So why hadn’t she written?
Magic was no use in finding her either. He’d been crap at spells at school, preferring to win battles with a sword, so he’d plundered Merlin’s chamber, searching for a crystal ball or something that might help him pinpoint Agatha in the Woods. No luck. He’d even cast a locating spell out of the only one of Merlin’s spellbooks he could actually read, but the first time he tried it he’d summoned a bowl of grapefruits from the kitchen and the second time he’d made all of Agatha’s undergarments float around the castle for hours before guards had to shoot them down with bows and arrows.
Tedros stopped outside the Gymnasium in full panic. Where was she? Was she safe? Was she even alive? He pressed his forehead to the wall and struggled to breathe. First his mother and Lance sent off. Now his princess too. Even Merlin had disappeared again—though according to the Royal Rot, there’d been a sighting of him near the School for Good by an Ingertroll who insisted Merlin was having secret trysts with Professor Dovey in her office. (Tedros was so desperate for news of Agatha he’d succumbed to reading trash, only to stop when he saw the Rot had started labeling him “the so-called ‘King.’”)
He’d felt so alone after the coronation.
But now he had no one he trusted in this castle anymore.
Now he was truly alone.
Even worse, as he scoured the newspapers, Tedros saw it wasn’t just Camelot or his friends’ quests that were in trouble. All the kingdoms in the Woods were plagued by mysterious attacks, just as the letters he’d received from the leaders of these realms had attested. The selfish part of him was comforted that other leaders were having just as hard a time as he was. But these kings and queens from both Ever and Never lands were calling upon Camelot—on him—to take the lead in building a Woods-wide coalition and rooting out those responsible for the violence. It’s what Tedros’ father had done when wars between Good and Evil had raged out of control, threatening the Woods. And it’s what ultimately killed him: sapped and impaired by his drunken spells, Arthur had still ridden into battle at the Four Point to forge peace between warring sides and paid for it with his life. Despite Tedros pleading with his father not to go. Despite Tedros begging him to stay home as the king put on his armor.