A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,139

. . . 2 . . . 1 . . .”

“Sophie, wait!” Agatha gasped.

Sophie lifted her hand—

“HELP! HELP ME!” Rhian yelled. “HELP!”

Guards burst through the doors, armor gleaming and swords raised, but Agatha was already swooping Sophie off the bed and throwing both their bodies through the blue portal.

Agatha landed hard on the glass of Dovey’s crystal ball, her body radiating pain. She lurched up and seized Sophie by the arm: “You idiot! You fool! You acted like his friend instead of threatening him! You should have held your fingerglow to his throat or suffocated him with a pillow! Something to make him tell the truth! I could have gotten the truth out of him! That’s why I made you swear to let me handle it!”

“You were too slow,” Sophie croaked, clutching at her chest, her hand still streaked with Rhian’s blood. “I did what had to be done. I did what was right.”

“What was ‘right’? What are you talking about! That was our one chance!” Agatha cried. “Our one chance to get the truth—”

She stopped cold.

Sophie backed up in shock.

Because the spatter of Rhian’s blood was magically peeling off Sophie’s hand.

The girls watched the pattern of blood lift off Sophie’s skin and float upwards, the blood thickening and deepening in color. Slowly the pattern began to collapse, the drops of blood pooling together into a tiny sphere, swelling like a seed, the surface hardening, the edges sharpening, until at last its shape was complete. . . .

A crystal.

A blood crystal.

It drifted higher, towards the phantom mask, and took its place at the center of the mask, between the two eyeless holes.

Agatha reached up into the phantom and pulled the crystal down into her palm.

She and Sophie hunched forward and peered inside the smooth red glass, watching the beginning of a scene unfold.

The two girls exchanged tense looks.

“We need to go in,” Agatha said.

Sophie didn’t argue.

The glow of Dovey’s ball faded, the connection barely holding on. . . .

But Agatha was already grasping Sophie’s hand and glaring into the red center.

A storm of light later, they were inside the crystal of the king’s blood.

THE SCENE HAD a red tint to it, as if taking place in the haze of a blood sun.

They were inside Lady Gremlaine’s old bedroom in the White Tower of Camelot, watching Tedros’ former steward pace back and forth, glancing anxiously out her window.

Agatha almost hadn’t recognized her. Grisella Gremlaine still wore her signature lavender robes, but she was younger, much younger, hardly twenty years old, her tan face supple and radiant, her eyebrows thick and lips full, her brown hair loose to her shoulders. Lady Gremlaine stopped and put her nose to the window, searching the dark garden outside. . . . Then she went on pacing.

The glass of her window didn’t reflect the two intruders from another time nor the faint portal of light behind them.

Agatha’s hand squeezed Sophie’s harder. Not just from the eeriness of traveling back in time or witnessing a woman she’d seen murdered back from the grave, but also having proof, right here, that Lady Gremlaine was linked to King Rhian’s blood. Proof that Lady Gremlaine was indeed King Rhian’s mother.

And Agatha was quite sure that whoever Grisella Gremlaine was waiting for was King Rhian’s real father.

“You sure she can’t see us?” Sophie whispered.

“She’s dead,” Agatha said loudly.

And indeed, Lady Gremlaine didn’t break a step, pacing even faster now, her eyes darting again and again to the window.

A pebble hit the glass.

Instantly the steward surged forward and threw open the window—

A hooded figure climbed in, shrouded in a black cloak.

Agatha couldn’t see the face.

Professor Sader?

“Do you have it?” Lady Gremlaine asked, breathless.

The hooded figure held up a piece of knotted rope.

Agatha peered at the rope, her insides turning.

It looked like it was made out of human flesh.

“Where is he?” came the stranger’s low, soft voice.

Agatha reached out to lift the person’s hood, but her hand went straight through.

“In here,” said Lady Gremlaine.

Quickly the steward ran her hands along the wall and found the edge of what appeared to be a secret door. She pulled it open and the hooded figure followed her inside, through a bathroom, and into an adjoining room. So did Agatha and Sophie—

Agatha froze.

It was the strange guest room that Agatha had been in once before. Back then, she’d been struck by how out of place the room seemed, far away from the other guest rooms and poorly decorated, with a small bed pressed against the wall.

Only there