Perhaps this was one of the reasons why Tedros now ignored these calls for help from other kingdoms and refused meetings with any of its leaders. But the new king also had no help to offer them. Camelot had no money, no knights (Chaddick was still missing), and no army. Plus, Camelot had yet to be attacked like the rest of the kingdoms and its people didn’t seem to care about what was happening in realms beyond its own. Camelot could no longer be the Woods’ policeman. They were too busy with their own problems. Like growing poverty and a bankrupt treasury and rising crime—
And a so-called king.
Tedros’ eyes opened. Looking past the wall, he could see Excalibur’s empty case lit up by gem-blue moonlight.
That sword.
Everything, everything, everything was going wrong because of that sword.
Tedros never made it to King’s Cove. He’d turned back and gone straight to the Blue Tower balcony, dismissed a listless guard, and launched himself at Excalibur once more with no other strategy than beating out his own fury . . . until he wrenched the hilt so brutally he split open a blister on his left hand.
Now blood was spurting off his palm, trailing him everywhere like a shadow.
He hustled through the Blue Tower, past the famous Map Room, where the Round Table had once met, but now lay cobwebbed and dormant. He could hear worried stewards calling to each other, having seen his blood. He didn’t want to talk to them. He didn’t care if they thought he was wounded or dead. He wanted it to be like school, where he could lock himself in a dorm room or bathroom to be alone and if he missed class, he’d be punished with detention or kitchen duties, neither with any real consequence.
His father had been like this after his mother left. Arthur would slip off without a word and shut himself in the White Tower guest room, to which the king had the only key.
It was where Tedros was headed now.
Merlin was right. Maybe I’m more like Dad than I thought, Tedros thought mordantly.
He could hear his stewards filing into the White Tower, but he was already upstairs, gliding in his socks towards the door at the end of the hall. He pulled out his cramped key ring, finding the gold-toothed key next to a small black one, slipped it into the lock, and swung into the room, latching the door behind him.
The room was dark.
He slid down and plopped on the warm marble, feet splayed in front of him. Blood leaked from his hand onto the skin of his thigh. He stripped off his shirt and wrapped it around his palm like a tourniquet, but that only seemed to make it bleed more. Out of ideas, he thrust his hand in the pocket of his gym shorts and leaned against the door.
The room smelled like musk and earth and sweat. His father had it built as a private guest suite that he could invite his most personal friends to stay in, but Arthur had never used it for guests as far as Tedros knew. His father didn’t even allow maids in this room when he was alive, let alone his wife or his son—though Tedros had broken in once as a child, having picked the lock during a game of hide-and-seek with the fairies. When the king found out, it was the one and only time his dad had given him a thrashing.
It’s why Tedros hadn’t come back to this place before today.
It reminded him of his father’s disappointment in him.
Using his good hand, Tedros lit his fingerglow like a torch, suffusing the room with soft gold. It still looked the same as it had then: a patterned brown-and-orange rug, a sunken leather sofa, and a modest bed in the corner. It didn’t seem royal at all, let alone fitting for a “guest suite.” Felt more like something you’d find at a seedy Netherwood inn, Tedros thought, scanning the bare beige walls with his glow. Why had his father built a private room so common and far away from the better parts of the castle? A guest room that guests never used—
Two green eyes speared through the torchlight. Tedros lurched back, bashing his head against the door.
Reaper moseyed out of the shadows, batting at fleas.
“Oh, it’s you,” Tedros grumped, rubbing his skull. He felt woozy, though he didn’t know whether it was because of the head bump or his hand, which was still spewing a profuse amount of blood. “How’d you even get in here?”
Before Agatha left, he’d told her to take her unholy cat with her, but she’d brushed him off. “Someone has to watch over you,” she’d quipped.
He’d assumed it was a joke. This was the cat that had bitten him, spat at him, peed in his shoes, and once carved heathen symbols into his bathroom mirror. But now that Agatha was gone, the heinous little imp had been following Tedros everywhere he went and even sleeping outside his chambers.
Reaper prowled closer and poked at Tedros’ injured hand with his paw, nudging it out of his pocket. Grunting ominously, the cat sniffed the blood-soaked bandage. Then he climbed on Tedros’ thigh and slashed the cloth open with his claw.
“Hey!” Tedros said.
But now Reaper seized Tedros’ hand in his mouth, tongue to his skin, teeth starting to sink in—
Tedros kicked him hard, sending the cat flying into the wall.
“You little cretin,” he gasped.
Reaper hobbled away whimpering and slunk under the bed in the corner.
Shaken, Tedros studied his hand to see the damage—
“Huh?”
He lit it up with his glow.
His hand wasn’t bleeding anymore. And the wound looked . . . smaller.
Slowly, he lifted his head and saw Reaper’s dim, wet pupils under the bed frame.
“You were trying to help me, weren’t you?” Tedros asked. “That’s why you’ve been following me all week. You’re watching over me. Just like Agatha said.”
Reaper hissed weakly and receded into darkness.
Tedros lay on his bare stomach at the foot of the bed and peeked underneath. “I’m sorry, little fella. I’m the cretin, not you. I can’t do anything these days without hurting someone. Not even a cat.”
He rolled onto his back. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be a half-king. My people don’t deserve a half-king. But how can there be order and progress when I can’t prove I’m fully king?” He roared in frustration and slung his keys at the ceiling, cracking the plaster. “I’m Arthur’s son! It doesn’t matter what Agatha finds in the Woods. It doesn’t matter what’s happening to my classmates. This is Camelot! The crown is mine. It’s always been mine. So why won’t that cursed sword move?”
“I never did think that girl was the homesick type,” a voice said.
Tedros sprung up to see Lady Gremlaine’s shadow in the open doorway.
“But then again, I never took you for a liar,” she said, glaring at him.
“I came here to be alone,” he retorted, eyeing his keys on the floor. “I thought the king had the only key.”
“He does,” Lady Gremlaine replied. “Only he forgot to lock the door.”
Tedros stared at her. “But I did lock it—”
“Shall we walk?” his steward said, holding open the door. “The Treasury Master wants to see you, you’re hardly dressed and bleeding, and to be honest . . . I’m not particularly fond of this room.”
“I don’t make it a habit of lying, but where Agatha went is between me, her, and Merlin,” Tedros asserted.
“So you met Merlin too?” frowned Lady Gremlaine, clacking ahead into a big, circular white hall.
“I told you. I don’t care who my father banished—”
“Your caring is irrelevant. Until your coronation is sealed, you cannot withdraw your father’s decrees. Not Merlin’s banishment, not the bounty on your mother’s head.”
“Look, there are things happening you wouldn’t understand,” said Tedros, shirtless and shoeless as he chased her lavender silhouette. “You’re my steward and here to help me with whatever I ask. Anything outside of that is my domain.”
“I see,” Lady Gremlaine said, facing him. “So what you’re telling me is even though I was your father’s right hand, even though you’ve asked me to supervise your every decision,
and even though I’m the only reason this kingdom is in one piece . . . you still don’t trust me.”
Tedros couldn’t meet her eyes.
They were standing on a floor of cracked mosaic that depicted the Camelot seal. (Given his crap morning, Tedros found it fitting he was straddling Excalibur’s blade.) The circular walls were covered in dozens of framed paintings, reminding him of the Legends Obelisk at the School for Good, decorated with portraits of famous alumni. He’d been in this hall only a few times as a child, since the White Tower was far away from the others and used mostly for knights’ meetings, arms-making, and staff quarters. Tedros had never paid much attention to the walls back then, but now one of the paintings caught his attention, since unlike the others, it had no other paintings near it. He stepped towards it, eyes wide. . . .
“It’s me.”
He was wearing his father’s coronation robes, though most of the portrait was a close-up of his face. His hair was angelic blond, his eyes unnaturally blue, his skin as pure as gold dust. Everything about the Tedros in the painting seemed more Tedros than the real him, including his piercing, omniscient gaze. This Tedros was strong, mature, unflappable. . . . This Tedros looked like a king.
“Who drew it? I didn’t sit for a royal portrait—”
“That’s because it was painted sixteen years ago,” Lady Gremlaine answered, cinching her turban. “Your father commissioned it from a seer after you were born. In his will, he said it was to be put up on your coronation day in the Hall of Kings.”
Looking around, Tedros noticed the art was arranged in chronological columns, with each king’s coronation portrait surrounded by smaller paintings of triumphant moments.
“One day your wall will be complete too,” said Lady Gremlaine.
Tedros honed in on his father’s column. While Tedros’ coronation painting was beautiful and inspiring, Arthur’s portrayed him as a scrawny, timorous, red-faced teenager who didn’t look capable of brushing his own teeth, let alone running Camelot.
“This is Dad?” Tedros said.
“Painted by the Palace Artist on the morning of his coronation, per tradition,” Lady Gremlaine confirmed. “Given the result, your father fired the artist. And to ensure your coronation painting would be to his liking, he solicited the seer to imagine yours upon your birth. A portrait that would capture the essence of your soul and future.”
“But if Dad hated his so much, why would he leave it up?”
“Oh, he made us take it down again and again. But in time, it would always mysteriously return, most likely by his own hand. It became quite clear that though your father loathed the painting, he also couldn’t part with it. Perhaps it reminded him of the ‘real’ Arthur, before his time at the School for Good and Evil changed him.”
Tedros looked at her, puzzled. “He was crowned before he went to school? But he wouldn’t have been old enough—”
“How little you know of your father,” his steward said drolly. “Back then, Camelot was so in need of a leader that they crowned Arthur even though he wasn’t yet sixteen. Which meant he attended school as a legitimate king and an instant celebrity. No doubt you endured this yourself as a famous prince, with girls desperate to be your queen. . . .”
“You have no idea,” Tedros murmured, thinking of Sophie.
“The difference is that you spent your whole life knowing you would be king, while Arthur was an ordinary boy who accidentally found himself the most powerful ruler in the Woods. One morning he’d gone out feverishly seeking a new sword for his master—Arthur had been punished for losing the old one—and he stumbled upon Excalibur, trapped in an anvil in the village square. He pulled the sword easily, without a second thought, intending to return it to the stone at a later date. What he didn’t know was that Excalibur had been placed in that stone by the Lady of the Lake to settle the question of who would rule Camelot after a violent period of chaos and anarchy. Thousands had come from all over the Woods to try their hand at the sword before Arthur freed it from the stone without any knowledge of the consequences. So when he sat for this portrait, he was still very much a scared young boy. But also sensitive and whip smart. It’s why Merlin took so strongly to him. As did I. Perhaps it’s the only area where the wizard and I ever agreed.”
Tedros looked back at his father’s face, so lost and overwhelmed . . . and for a moment, it felt like Tedros was looking at his own. Unnerved, he shifted to another painting: this one of his mother and Arthur playing with their baby son, while a young, dark-haired female stood in the shadows. His father was holding the baby up in the air as his mother tickled the boy’s stomach. Tedros found himself smiling before he remembered everything that happened between his parents once that baby grew up.
“Did your father really never mention my name to you?” Lady Gremlaine asked.
“Not even once.”
Lady Gremlaine took this in with a wry grin. “Like father, like son.”
Tedros furrowed, not understanding.
“When Agatha was pressing to see you, I pointed out that you too never mentioned her name to me. Not even once,” said Lady Gremlaine. “Taking the women in your life for granted seems a shared trait.”
“Well, Agatha and I are very different from you and my father, obviously,” Tedros snorted. “How long did you even know him?”
His steward paused before answering. “Arthur and I grew up together. I’m not so much older than he was. We met because I was a housemaid to Sir Ector, Arthur’s master, when Arthur was brought from the orphanage. Arthur and I soon became friends, for we were both treated quite poorly as children. So when he was crowned and needed a steward, he brought me to Camelot even though I was hardly capable of managing a king. But somehow we muddled through together, bucking his Council of Advisors and forging our own path, until he went off to school. I almost felt like his queen. . . .” Lady Gremlaine seemed off in another land now. “I remained his steward until after you were born. See, that’s me right there.”
She was looking at the painting of Arthur and Guinevere with baby Tedros.
Tedros stared closer at the young female in the corner, with wild black hair, nut-brown skin, and deep red lips.
“But—but—you were beautiful,” Tedros blurted.
Lady Gremlaine burst into laughter. “Don’t act so surprised!”
It was the first time he’d ever heard her laugh.
“I loved being with your father,” she said, smiling at the painting. “I only wish I’d been here to help him raise his child. Perhaps you would have trusted me more if you’d known me the way he did.”
Tedros peered at her. “So why did he let my mother fire you?”
Lady Gremlaine’s smile vanished, her eyes still on the painting. “When it comes to women, men can be quite weak.” She turned to him, a chill settling in. “In any case, when she returns, you’ll no longer have use for me. Your mother will make sure of that.”
“Well, I’m the king, not her,” said Tedros. “And though I hate to admit it, I need your help like you helped Dad when he first started. Especially with Agatha gone now. My mother will respect my wishes.”
“Your father promised the same thing once,” Lady Gremlaine returned. “But when the time came to stand up to his wife, he stayed silent. I left the castle without him even noticing.”
“I’m not like my father,” Tedros said. “For worse and for better.”
“And yet you break the same promises and tell the same white lies,” said Lady Gremlaine.
The words hit Tedros hard.
He looked down at the Camelot shield on the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his steward’s shoes inch closer. He could smell her powdered rose perfume.
“You know why I’ve been so harsh with you and Agatha?” Lady Gremlaine said quietly.
Tedros lifted his head.
“You reminded me of Arthur and Guinevere when he brought her here from school,” she confessed. “We were all so naïve then, blinded by youth. We had n
o idea of what was to come. And then all these years later, to be steward to his son and his new princess . . . perhaps I let old feelings get the best of me.”
Tedros felt a twinge of guilt; this wasn’t the frigid dragon lady that he and Agatha had made her out to be. She was a real human with real emotions.
“I’ll stand up for you. No matter what my mother says,” Tedros vowed. “You have my word.”
His steward searched his face. Slowly her pose softened as if she saw she could trust him even if he didn’t trust her.
“I’m sorry,” said Tedros.
“It was a long time ago,” Lady Gremlaine sighed.
“No, I mean for being so rude when you came to find me. You were trying to take me to our Treasury meeting. You were doing your job.”
Lady Gremlaine’s face clouded.
“What is it?” Tedros asked.
“That wasn’t the only reason I was trying to find you,” she said.
From her pocket, she pulled a folded piece of newsprint. When he took it, her skin was clammy.
Tedros opened it.
It was a clipping from the Camelot Courier.
DECEASED: CHADDICK OF FOXWOOD
LOVING SON and brother and fourth-year student in the School for Good. While on a quest to serve King Tedros of Camelot, Chaddick was killed on Avalon Island, as reported by an unnamed mongoose. He was 16 years of age and is survived by his mother, father, and two brothers, aged 12 and 17.