A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,138

light pummeled her, but less brutally than the last time, as if the portal didn’t have the same power. Even so, her chest felt packed with concrete and she could see Sophie quailing in the water, beaten by the force. Shielding her eyes from the light, Agatha clasped her friend’s wrist and dove forward, pushing past the spike in pain and slamming her and Sophie’s hands against the ball. A supernova of white light exploded, tearing the girls apart, leaving Agatha falling into a void, her awareness fractured.

Slowly her breaths settled, the glass bubble blurring into view around her.

They were inside now, two soggy heaps.

“Connection’s weak,” Agatha panted, pointing at the dim blue glow casing the walls. She pulled the vial out of her dress and unsealed Arthur’s letter to Lady Gremlaine, clean and dry. “We need to move fast—”

Silver mist whooshed over their heads and the phantom face pressed against the glass: “Clear as crystal, hard as bone, my wisdom is Clarissa’s and Clarissa’s alone . . . But she named you her Second, so I’ll speak to you too. . . .”

“Hurry, Sophie,” Agatha said, kneeling at the phantom’s edge and searching the crystals comprising its mist. “Find the one with Rhian. It was in this corner last time.”

Rubbing her chest, Agatha brushed aside familiar scenes: her and Reaper on Graves Hill, when a cat was just a cat . . . Sophie trying to kill her at the No Ball their first year . . . Sophie in the lacy, ruffled white dress, pacing by the Gnomeland stump, before getting into a royal carriage with that shadowy boy. . . .

Agatha paused, rewatching this last scene that Sophie and Tedros had fought about earlier. The scene so obviously a fake. For one thing, Sophie had already dumped that white dress and was wearing a new one. For another, Sophie was here with Agatha, helping her fight for Tedros. She would never go back to Rhian! Yet here the scene was again, Sophie whisked off in the king’s carriage, repeating on loop as if it were real . . .

Then Agatha spotted it. Out of the corner of her eye.

A glass droplet with Rhian inside.

He was asleep in the king’s bedroom, wrapped in bloodstained bandages, the sky pitch-dark through the windows.

“Sophie, I found it,” she said, holding up the crystal—

But Sophie was staring into another small crystal, her body stiff, as she watched the scene inside replay over and over.

“What is it?” Agatha asked, the ball darkening around them.

Sophie snapped out of her trance. “Nothing. Junk crystal. That’s the one? The crystal with Rhian?”

“If it’s junk, why did you just slip it in your pocket—” Agatha started.

“So I don’t mix it up with the others! Stop wasting time we don’t have!” Sophie berated, pointing at the crystal in Agatha’s palm. “Hurry! Open it!”

Sophie grabbed on to her friend’s hand as Agatha stilled her breath and peered into the glass—

Blue light poured forth and the two girls leapt inside.

Their feet hit ground in the king’s bedroom, humid and smelling of a thousand flowers, well-wishing bouquets from other kingdoms piled into corners. A slit of blue light hovered vertically behind the two girls, their portal to escape.

King Rhian lay motionless on the bed, his body trapped in plaster, his bruised eyelids closed and gashed lips oozing blood onto the pillow.

Agatha took a step towards him.

His eyes flew open, the blue-green pools locked on the two girls. Before he could scream, Sophie ripped the letter out of Agatha’s hands and jumped onto the bed, covering Rhian’s mouth with her palm, pinning him under the weight of her chest. He writhed beneath her blue-and-red dress, his blood smearing her fingers.

“Listen, darling. Listen to me,” she said, fumbling at the letter in her lap, losing hold of it a few times before thrusting it in front of his face. “I need you to read this. Do you see what it says?”

Agatha saw Rhian startle with shock, his cheeks drain color.

Sophie pulled the letter down. “The situation is clear now, isn’t it?”

Rhian lay stiff as a corpse.

“Good,” said Sophie. “Agatha seems to think King Arthur isn’t your father. This letter is her proof.” She leaned in, her nose almost to the king’s. “So I need you to tell me who your real father is. The truth, this time. I’m going to move my hand and you’re going to tell me. Understood?”

She’s moving too fast, Agatha thought. She’s forcing it—

Sophie glared into Rhian’s eyes. “3