A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,93

ghost afraid to show itself.

“Do you have a fairy godmother, Professor?” Tedros asks, his face creased with stress. “Someone who saves you when you need it?”

I want to tell him to be quiet. That I’m close to something. That I need to think—

My sixth sense stirs once more.

But this time, it’s pushing me to answer Tedros’ question. To tell him my story.

Why?

Only one way to find out.

“Yes, even fairy godmothers have their own guides,” I say, glancing out the window at the lightening sky. My tone is strained, my pace rushed. “I graduated from the School for Good as a leader, but I resisted my quest assignment: to kill a nasty witch who was luring children to her gingerbread house.”

“Hester’s mother?” Nicola asks.

“Indeed. If I had gone on my quest and succeeded, Hester never would have been born. Hester’s mother didn’t give birth to Hester until much later, thanks to dark magic that let her have a child at an unusually old age. But the reason I rejected my quest was simple: I had no instinct for violence, even against a child-eating witch. It was Merlin who changed my fortune. Merlin was a frequent guest teacher at the School for Good, and my fourth year, he’d been guest teaching Good Deeds after the original professor ran afoul of the Doom Room beast. Upon taking a shine to me as his student, Merlin told Dean Ajani that there was no reason for him to keep filling in when the Dean had a perfectly fine Good Deeds teacher in me. Because of Merlin, the Dean changed my quest and made me the youngest professor at the School for Good.”

“So Merlin is your fairy godmother?” said Bogden. “Or father. Or whatever.”

“No,” I say, dipping deeper in my memory. “Because I wasn’t fully fulfilled as a teacher, it turns out. Not even as a Dean, when I received that honor years later. A piece of me knew I was meant for more. I just didn’t know what that was. Ironically, it was King Arthur who changed my fortune next.”

Tedros gawks at me, mouth full of biscuit. “My father?”

I can feel myself settling into the story. As if the past will unlock the present.

“After you were born, your father commissioned a teacher from our school to paint your coronation portrait. Arthur loathed his own coronation portrait so much that he wanted to ensure you had one he approved of, since he wouldn’t be alive when you became king. That teacher not only painted your portrait as Arthur asked, but also brought me along when he did.”

“So King Arthur was your fairy godmother?” Willam says, agog.

“Wait a second,” Tedros cuts in, heaping chocolate onto his plate. “Lady Gremlaine said a seer painted my portrait, which makes sense since he predicted exactly what I would look like as a teenager, but now you’re saying it was a teacher—” His eyes startle like rippling pools. “Professor Sader. He was the seer who painted my portrait?”

“And your father and I watched every brushstroke,” I add, remembering it had happened in this very room, spring flowers blowing in through the veranda. “Arthur had asked August to bring along the Dean who would one day teach his newborn son, no doubt to make me feel the burden of the future king’s education. Guinevere kindly let me hold you, though you were fussing and giving me trouble, even then. Your steward, Lady Gremlaine, was there too, though she hardly said a word. When your mother left with you, I sensed a sadness in Lady Gremlaine and I found myself talking to her more than the king. Idle talk mostly, about how she missed seeing her sister’s sons grow up and how I wished I’d had siblings of my own . . . but my attentions brightened her mood. Professor Sader noticed. On the way back to school, he mentioned that he was impressed with how I’d handled Gremlaine; that it took skill to connect with a person so forlorn. I had the sense he knew her well. Then August said he thought my talents as a teacher and Dean weren’t being fully used. That I might consider being a fairy godmother to those in need. I dismissed the idea at first; I hadn’t the slightest clue what it took to be a fairy godmother and it seemed like tedious work, chasing down sad saps and granting wishes. But August is persuasive and he made me a crystal ball, using a piece of