A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,140

was someone on the bed now.

King Arthur.

He was asleep, hands folded over his chest.

Light brown stubble coated his golden skin, his cheeks rosy and smooth. He was eighteen or nineteen, in the prime of his youth. But there was a gangly softness to him . . . a delicacy that Agatha hadn’t seen in her magical encounters with elder versions of Arthur. He snuffled serenely, undisturbed by Lady Gremlaine and the stranger.

“I don’t understand,” Sophie whispered. “What’s happening?”

Agatha was just as confused.

“I put hemp oil in his drink like you told me to,” Lady Gremlaine said to the stranger. “Fell straight to sleep.”

“We must move quickly, then,” said the stranger, holding out the rope. “Place this spansel around his neck.”

Lady Gremlaine swallowed. “And then I’ll have his child?”

“That is the power of the spansel,” the hooded figure whispered. “Use it and you will be pregnant with King Arthur’s heir before Guinevere marries him.”

Agatha’s stomach dropped like a stone.

“He’ll have to marry me instead,” Lady Gremlaine realized quietly.

“You’ll be his queen,” said the stranger.

Lady Gremlaine looked at the hooded figure. “But will he love me?”

“You didn’t pay me for love. You paid me to help you marry him instead of Guinevere,” replied the stranger. “And this spansel will do that.”

Lady Gremlaine watched King Arthur sleep, her throat twitching.

With a rushed breath, she turned to the stranger and took the rope into her hands. Lady Gremlaine stepped forward, holding the spansel out, her shadow stretching over the sleeping king, until she stood over young Arthur. She gazed down at him, so enamored, so possessed, that her entire body seemed to blush. Hands trembling, she reached the spansel around his neck. . . .

Agatha shook her head, tears fogging her eyes. Sophie, too, was stricken. This was how Rhian and Japeth came to be. By cold, calculated sorcery. Devoid of love.

Which meant Rhian was King Arthur’s son, after all.

His eldest son.

Rhian was the true heir.

All was lost.

Agatha pulled Sophie towards the door. She’d seen enough. They couldn’t watch what followed—

“I can’t,” a voice gasped.

Agatha and Sophie both turned.

“I can’t do it,” Lady Gremlaine sobbed. “I can’t betray him like this.”

Tears ran down her face as she faced the stranger.

“I love him too much,” she whispered.

She dropped the rope and fled the room.

Agatha and Sophie stared at each other.

They were alone in the room with the hooded figure and the sleeping king.

The stranger exhaled. Retrieving the spansel, the hooded figure traipsed towards the door to follow Lady Gremlaine out—

The stranger halted.

Time seemed to stop, the only sounds in the room the deep breaths of the king.

Slowly, the visitor looked back at young Arthur.

Smooth hands reached up and pulled away the hood, revealing the stranger’s face and forest-green eyes.

Agatha and Sophie jolted.

Impossible, Agatha thought. This is impossible.

But the figure was skulking back into the room now, step by step, towards the bed until the stranger loomed over the sleeper. The figure smiled down at the powerless king, green eyes twinkling like a snake’s. Then calmly, deliberately, the stranger hooked the spansel around Arthur’s neck. . . .

Agatha was about to be sick—

The scene stalled. Bolts of red and blue static ripped through the room. Arthur and his seducer glitched into blurry clouds. The floor under Agatha’s feet strobed and fractured, vanishing piece by piece. . . .

The crystal ball.

It was disconnecting.

Sophie was already hightailing towards Lady Gremlaine’s room.

“Wait!” Agatha choked, tripping in the slippery bathroom between the two rooms, but Sophie took a running start and dove into the portal as it started to close up. Agatha stumbled to her feet, the portal obscured by strobing static. She flailed towards it, the portal shrinking fast, the size of a plate . . . a marble . . . a pea. . . . With a flying leap, Agatha launched herself at the light—

Hot water engulfed her, filling her mouth and nose, as she sank to the bottom of Reaper’s bath. Any relief at escaping the crystal was drowned out by what she’d just seen. Panic speared her like arrows, her heart taking slingshots against her chest. It all made sense now: the twins’ evil . . . the Snake’s magic . . . the suit of spying eels . . .

“Caught your friend Sader sneaking around the castle . . .”

“Your friend Sader.”

“Sader.”

The wrong Sader.

Agatha burst out of the water, wheezing. “Her . . . It was her. . . .”

Tedros crashed through the bathroom door. “What are you doing! Scims might get through any