A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,175

dark, as fairies clustered around each one, hiding them in starry cocoons. Then they whisked them back towards Avalon, five comets against the night.

27

TEDROS

The Unburied King

In the mists of dawn, the gates of Avalon, two mangled heaps, resembled twin jaws about to swallow them up.

Tedros heard the others in a pack behind him, the grunts of their frozen breaths, their feet crushing fresh-fallen snow. The fairies from school flocked around Tinkerbell like their queen, the only member of the League of Thirteen they’d managed to find. Peter Pan’s favorite nymph landed on Tedros’ shoulder, awaiting instructions—

“Keep watch for us outside the gates, Tink,” said the prince.

Tinkerbell replied with twinkly gibberish. Alongside her fairies, she burrowed for warmth into the bright green apples hanging off vines, the one sign of life in Avalon’s endless winter. Tedros, meanwhile, led his group through the gates, crossing into the Lady of the Lake’s domain. The crash of the Savage Sea against rock echoed like a slow-beating drum. Over his head, Lionsmane’s promise of Sophie’s wedding glinted in the sunrise, a dead man her supposed groom. All this time, he’d been so obsessed with Rhian, thinking him the real threat, instead of paying attention to what was actually happening. Rhian had been a pig. But Japeth was a monster. A boy of no conscience, the murderer of his friends, a black hole of Evil. If Japeth could kill his own brother, his own blood, then with the Storian’s powers, he’d tear the Woods apart without mercy. He’d bring back the worst Evil from the dead and write Good out of existence. He’d watch the world burn with a smile.

The prince took a deep breath, trying to settle himself. The End wasn’t written yet. They’d gotten here alive. That was the first challenge. Now they had to convince the Lady of the Lake to let them cross her magical waters and dig up King Arthur’s grave. Tedros could feel oily nausea filling up his stomach. When he was a boy, he’d leaned in and kissed his father goodbye before they’d closed his coffin. To open that coffin back up like a graverobber . . . to ransack his father’s body and disturb his peace . . . His hand clamped at his throat. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t. And yet . . . he had to. He tried to focus on the next obstacle, on getting to his father’s tomb, step by step—

A hand stroked beneath his shirtsleeve in just the right way.

“You’re brave to do this, Tedros,” said Agatha. “Your father would have done the same to protect his people. It’s why you’re his son. The son he raised to be king.”

Tedros wanted to hold her and never let go. He knew what she’d said was the truth. Agatha never lied. That’s why he loved her. Because she didn’t just want him to be king. She wanted him to be a good king. And he wanted to be a good king for her. One day he hoped to tell her all this, when this moment was just a memory. . . . But for now, he could only nod, unable to speak anything in return. He glanced back at his mother, walking with Hort and Nicola. She, too, looked stricken, but more self-conscious and meek, as if questioning this entire endeavor or whether she should be here at all.

Still, she followed as Tedros walked the path around Avalon’s castle. The bone-white spires were connected in a circular palace, overlooking a maze of staircases leading down to the lake. Snow fell harder, covering the prince’s bootprints the second they formed. Somewhere here, Chaddick had died, killed by the animal who’d just taken the throne. Now his friend’s body lay in the grove beside his father, a grove Tedros wanted to desecrate. Emotions reared like a tidal wave, too high for the prince to wall in. He couldn’t do this. Not even with Agatha at his side. He needed Merlin. He needed a father.

“Shouldn’t we have heard from the witches by now?” he rasped to Agatha. “Shouldn’t we know if they’ve found Merlin?”

His princess heard his desperation, because she clutched his palm gently. “The Caves of Contempo are difficult to get to. That’s why Reaper trusted the witches for the job,” she said, guiding him down the steps towards the lake. “But they will get there. They’re probably closing in as we speak.”

“Or they’re dead,” murmured Hort.

“Unlikely,” said Nicola. “If we’re still alive, then Hester’s alive,