Taking advantage, the Lion glanced between Sophie and Agatha and dashed for Agatha. He grabbed a piece of smoking wood off the stage and burnt the scims off her, careful not to burn her too.
“Tedros,” Agatha breathed.
Across the stage, Sophie watched them together, feeling her own heart fill up. For Tedros to risk his life and be this courageous when his people needed it most . . . He wasn’t just a prince. He was every inch a king. Any residue of Sophie’s envy drained away, replaced by gratitude and admiration. She’d give him and his queen the best wedding two friends could ask for.
The Lion freed Agatha and gazed into her big brown eyes.
“Go,” he said. “Before the rogue comes back.”
“No,” Agatha said firmly. “We’re a team now. We’re fighting him togeth—”
The Lion pointed his gold glow and sent her flying way up the flagpole. Camelot’s flag magically came loose and tied around her waist, lashing her to the pole and out of the Snake’s reach.
“Get me down!” Agatha yelled.
The Lion winked at her and stormed back into battle—
The Snake rushed him headfirst, smashing the Lion against the pole, before the Lion delivered a vicious kick to his thigh, scattering a few scims and revealing more of the Snake’s milk-white flesh. The two masked men launched at each other, firing spells and scims, shattering two more frozen walls, the remainder of the stage collapsing under their every step, until they were on the final piece of the gallows, a small square of scorched wood. With their bodies jammed together, they could no longer rely on magic and the two set on each other with their fists, trying to knock the other off the platform and into the fiery pit below.
As the Lion clocked the Snake, a scim crawled out of a hole and snagged the Lion by the ankle, yanking him towards the edge of the stage. The Lion swiveled and stomped on the scim, crushing it. But now the Snake came from behind, hands out, about to push the Lion off the stage and face-first into the blaze below—
Sophie screamed.
The Lion whirled just in time, belting the Snake with all of his might, who staggered backwards and plummeted off the stage, landing in the fire and dispersing to a thousand shrieking scims. Wounded, the scims glowed green and rose shakily into the air, forming a massive phantom cobra in the sky. It hissed at the Lion with the promise of vengeance before spraying into the night, terrible shrieks echoing.
Covered in blood and bruises, the Lion stood on what was left of the stage, gold mask glistening in the moonlight, his chest heaving.
Slowly he raised his head to the boy pirates clutching prisoners in the field.
The Lion roared.
Pirates dropped their weapons and ran.
Students and citizens let out a raucous cry, the Four Point reclaimed and the Snake beaten back.
“LONG LIVE KING TEDROS!” someone shouted.
“LONG LIVE THE KING!” said another.
As Nicola climbed the flagpole to bring Agatha down, Hort and Dot kneeled to comfort Reena and Beatrix, who were sobbing over their lost best friend. Hester and the witches hurried to the sides of the other Evers and Nevers, many of who’d been wounded in their battle against the pirates.
Indeed, the questers were so quick to help each other that none of them noticed that inside the billows of smoke coming off the stage Sophie was still trapped on the lone wall standing.
But the Lion had.
He strode over the misty crumbles of stage until at last he reached her, his jacket ripped open and sweat soaking his light blue shirt. He burnt her scims away and squashed them under his boot, leaving a puddle of black goo. Then he looked at Sophie through his mask.
“Thank you,” he said. “If you hadn’t screamed to warn me, I’d be dead.”
“Can’t have you dying yet, Teddy,” Sophie sighed, rubbing at her sore wrists. “I’m your wedding planner.”
“Are you?” he said.
His eyes reflected mischief, like a hall of mirrors.
Something flooded inside Sophie. Something hot and stormy in the deepest swells of her heart.
It was something she’d never felt with a prince.
Slowly she reached up and pulled the mask off the Lion’s face.
Sophie staggered back.
It wasn’t Tedros.
The boy had tanned skin the color of amber and copper-brown hair cropped close to his head like a soldier’s helmet. He had a strong brow bone, a long, straight nose, sensual lips, and thick dark brows that ran flat over his eyes like two streaks of paint. Beads of sweat dotted his coat of brown stubble and his eyes seemed to change colors with the intensity of his stare, from blue to hazel and all the shades in between.
He looked her age. Perhaps a bit older.
One thing was for sure, though. She’d never seen such a beautiful boy in her life, masculine, sultry, and smelling of salt and sand, as if he’d been dewed from the mouth of a desert flower.
“Who are you?” she choked.
“A humble servant of Camelot,” he said, calm and commanding. “Come to protect the king and his princess.”
Sophie shook her head. “But . . . but . . .”
“I suppose that isn’t the whole truth,” said the boy. “My loyalty is to Camelot and I will fight until my dying breath to make sure the rightful king weds his rightful queen. But I’ve also come to find someone else along the way. Someone I saw in a storybook and haven’t been able to stop thinking about since. Someone who in my quest to protect Camelot . . . perhaps I can protect too.”
“Who?” Sophie asked, confused.
From inside his shirt, the boy pulled a red rose.
“The girl who’s already protected me,” he whispered.
He leaned in and kissed her, slowly and deeply, his hands taking her by the waist. Sophie heard herself gasp, his breath filling her mouth, her body lighting up in his grip. She closed her eyes, lost in the softness of his lips, his hot-spice scent, and the impossibility of this moment in the wake of all that had come before. . . .
His lips slipped off hers.
She opened her eyes and the Lion was gone.
Sophie stood there in the fading smoke, her heart throttling.
A delusion.
A dream.
Something.
But then she felt a drizzle on her neck.
She raised her fingers and pulled down the perfect red rose, dripping with his sweat, that he’d slid into her hair as he kissed her.
But that wasn’t all that the Lion had left behind.
Because across the stage, as the last smoke cleared, she saw a girl wrapped in Camelot’s flag watching her . . . her pale, big-eyed face as shell-shocked as Sophie’s had been once upon a time, when another red rose had dropped into their story just like this. . . .
A rose from a boy who was never supposed to be in their story at all.
PART II
21
TEDROS
Allies and Enemies
He dreamed of his father again.
Staring at Tedros through harsh, peacock-blue eyes.
But this time, King Arthur was taller than he’d been in real life. As tall as the statue of him that Tedros had desecrated.
They met on the rooftop of the Blue Tower under gold night clouds. Tedros was in pajama shorts, no shirt, and his feet were bare and wet. He looked down and saw the roof was flooded with water an inch thick, mirroring formless clouds. Only the clouds had a different shape in the water’s reflection. They looked like lions.
His father wore the crimson robes in which he was buried, his bearded face ruddy and fresh, the way Tedros remembered him in the prime of his reign. Camelot’s crown glistened on Arthur’s head and Tedros found himself reaching up to make sure his own crown was still there.
It wasn’t.
“They say he’s your son,” Tedros accused. “They say you know who he is.”
Arthur grew taller.
“Who is he!” Tedros shouted.
Higher and hig
her Arthur grew, reaching for the clouds.
“TELL ME THE TRUTH!” Tedros cried.
King Arthur roared, shaking the earth with his fury.
He bent down like a giant and glared into his son’s eyes.
“Unbury me,” he said.
Then the clouds pounced down and devoured Arthur into the night.
Tedros woke in a pool of sweat on a cold floor.
He pried open his eyes and saw he was at the top of the dungeon staircase, curled up in front of the stone door.
How could I fall asleep!
He had to get to the Four Point. He had to find this Snake now—
“KEI!” he screamed, pounding on the door again.
But the dream had felt so real, his father’s roar reverberating through him.
For months, he’d been haunted by his dad, but this was the first time he’d been given an order from the grave.
An order that didn’t make sense. How could there be answers in a heap of bones and dust? All he was left with was the riddle of a dream.
But what happened with the advisors wasn’t a dream.
They’d hinted that the Snake was his father’s son.
Which meant he’d be Tedros’ brother.
Impossible.
He would have known. Someone would have told him. His mother. His father. Anyone. No secret like that could be kept for so long.
“KEI!” Tedros blared, bludgeoning the door.
Faint shouts echoed beyond it, as if they were miles away.
He’d attacked the door for hours last night, shouting himself hoarse, waiting for someone to open it. It didn’t make any sense: his guard, Kei, had left through the very same door—
Tedros’ heart stopped. Unless Kei locked me in.
He thought back to their heartfelt conversation on these stairs.
Why would Kei seal me in the dungeons?
An oily dread coated Tedros’ throat.
Did Gremlaine give Kei her key before she left?
Have Kei and Gremlaine been working with the advisors all along?
Tedros’ blood went hot.
What were they doing while I was trapped?
He battered the stone with renewed force—
Shouts amplified outside the door, as if multiple voices were yelling at once.
Tedros flattened onto his stomach and put his ear to the razor-thin slit at the bottom.
“Tedros!” the voices called.
“Get me out!” he yelled.
“KEY!”
Immediately Tedros fumbled his key ring from his pocket and pried the black key off it. He tried to slide it under the door, but it got stuck beneath the thick slab of stone. Tedros pressed his little finger through the crack, trying to flick the key to his rescuers. No luck. He put his mouth to the opening and tried to blow the key across—
A piece of wire surged through the slit, stabbing his chin. Startled, Tedros watched the wire hook the top of the key and scrape it out the other end. The lock snapped and the door pulled open, revealing the shadows of Lancelot and Guinevere.
“You know how long I’ve been in there!” Tedros spat, storming past them. “Find Kei and lock him in the jail until I return! I’m riding to the Four Point right now—”
“Snake attacked the Four Point last night,” said Lancelot.
Tedros whirled, midstride.
“Almost killed the leaders of the four kingdoms,” Lancelot snarled, “along with Agatha, Sophie, and more than twenty other questers from your school while they were waiting for you to arrive.”
Tedros spluttered: “Wait. Agatha was at the—”
“You should have been there! I don’t care what the old wizard said! Should have just gone myself when I got word we were attacked!” Lancelot seethed. “But then we couldn’t find you—we’ve spent hours pounding on that door, with no idea if you were inside or hurt or—”
“Dead!” Guinevere cut in, relief boiling to anger. “Do you know what you put us through!”
“Is Agatha okay?” Tedros asked, paling.
“I told you not to go into the dungeon without me! I told you to ride with me to the Four Point and be a king!” Lancelot harped. “Your father would have listened to me and not that old wizard! Your father would have trusted me! But you had to do things your way—”
“Is Agatha okay!” Tedros demanded.
“Your classmates, your fellow rulers, your princess could all be dead because of your carelessness, Tedros!” Lancelot flayed. “Luckily, someone else came to their rescue.”
Tedros felt like he’d been slammed over the head. “What? Who!”
“Ask the leaders that were saved,” said the knight, pulling Guinevere away. “They’re all here.”
Five minutes later, Tedros sat at the Round Table in the Map Room, surrounded by twenty Good and Evil leaders.
“So let me get this straight,” said Tedros, crown askew and smelling like dungeon. “The Snake staged an execution at the Four Point to bait me into fighting him. A Snake who says he is my father’s son and Camelot’s rightful king. And then a Lion shows up in a mask and defeats him in battle.” Tedros leaned forward. “A Lion who is not me?”
The onslaught came from every direction—
“The Snake says he’s Arthur’s eldest son!” cried the King of Jaunt Jolie.
“He says he can pull Excalibur! That he’s the true heir!” added the Fairy Queen of Gillikin.
“Is that why Excalibur is stuck in the stone? Because it’s waiting for him, not you?” the Ice Giant of Frostplains asked.
“Even if he is the true heir, you can’t let him get near that sword!” the Queen of Jaunt Jolie gasped.
“Nearly killed my dear friend and her little boys!” said the Duchess of Glass Mountain, touching the queen with her translucent hand. “If he pulls the sword and becomes king, nothing will stop him from murdering us all!”
“If my sons had died because you failed to intervene—” the Queen of Jaunt Jolie said to Tedros, before she broke down.
“Thank goodness for that Lion chap,” said the eight-armed Queen of Ooty. “He beat the Snake off!”
“And here we thought you were the Lion,” the King of Bloodbrook growled at Tedros, swatting his paw at the floating maps that kept bumping into his head.
“For weeks, we’ve begged you to intervene,” said the Queen of Ravenbow. “Instead, many of us were almost hanged on Camelot land while the king sits at home!”
“Though, according to the Snake, you may not be king at all,” noted the Vizier of Kyrgios, stroking his gold-flecked beard.
Tedros was about to implode. They were all right: he’d ignored them . . . he’d failed them . . . he’d let the Snake go unchallenged . . . but not because he’d been sitting on his bum and eating cake. Ever since he stepped foot in this castle, he’d tried to make the right decisions: from encouraging the people to forgive his mother and Lance at his coronation . . . to prioritizing Camelot’s problems over those of other realms . . . to staying behind and serving his kingdom while Agatha went into the Woods. . . . Even last night, he was sure he’d chosen the right course. He’d followed Merlin’s and Dovey’s advice. He’d met with the advisors, trying to get answers. He’d done precisely what a king should do! And it had led him right into a trap: a trap that nearly killed his princess, killed his friends, and made him look like a coward.
His whole life he’d thought being king was about doing Good.
But now that he was king, Good kept leading him astray.
Tedros could see Lancelot standing with his mother near the door. He’d told them to stay away from this meeting—that it was too dangerous revealing themselves when there was a bounty on their heads. But Guinevere hadn’t listened, insisting her son might need her. Nor had Lance, who was glowering at him, clearly still miffed and surely enjoying the sight of the young king spit-roasted by half the Woods’ leaders.
“If the Snake pulls Excalibur, we’re dead!” the Empress of Putsi pressured.
>
“How could Arthur have a secret son!” the Duke of Hamelin demanded.
“How do we find this Lion! He’s the one we need!” urged the Queen of Jaunt Jolie.
Tedros tried to quell his rage, spewing in all directions. He needed to think.
Last night, those three shrews had warned him what was coming.
“At the Four Point, the real story begins.”
Somehow, they’d plotted with the Snake from prison to trap Tedros last night while the Snake attacked Tedros’ princess, his friends, and his allies.
What must have Agatha thought, waiting at the gallows for him to come?
And who was this Lion who had saved her?
All he’d gleaned is that it was a boy his age who’d fought off the villain, then promptly disappeared. No one knew who he was. He’d asked no reward for his efforts. He hadn’t been seen since.
So who could he be, then? In Agatha and Sophie’s world, beyond the Woods, heroes came out of nowhere, riding in on white horses to save fair maidens from Evil. But not here. Heroes had motives in the Woods. Heroes had a history. And this hero seemed to have neither. He certainly hadn’t come at Tedros’ behest. So why would he risk his life to save a bunch of strangers? Had he been rejected from the School for Good and was trying to get his name in a fairy tale? Had he read about his and Agatha’s troubles and was making a move on his queen?
Don’t be a Never, always seeing the worst, Tedros thought bitterly. Maybe he’s just like you, trying to do Good in this world.
But no matter how much he told himself to be grateful, Tedros hated this boy for playing the part he should have played. For trying to do Good and actually succeeding. For showing him up like a fool. How was he supposed to prove himself the rightful king when there was a Snake in the Woods saying he wasn’t king and now an impostor Lion doing his job? He could feel his anger stoking again like wildfire while more voices shot at him from around the table, sharp as arrows, heckling and questioning—