A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,132

mother, we thought we’d start with you,” said Nicola.

“You must be very proud,” Hort smiled. “Mind if we come in?”

Rosamund blinked. “Oh . . . I’m a-a-afraid there must be a mistake? I’m not King Rhian’s mother.”

Hort stared at her. “But King Rhian gave us your address—”

“Oh. He did?” Rosamund hesitated. “Well . . . it was a long time ago. I suppose there’s no harm in telling you now. Especially if the king gave permission. This was back when he was a boy. We had an arrangement with Rhian’s mother when Elle lived across the street. In House Number 63. She told Levya and I that she’d come to Foxwood to hide from the boys’ father. We could save her life by telling anyone who might ask that her boys were ours instead. Clearly Elle didn’t want the boys’ father to find her or his sons. Understandable, of course, now that I know she was raising the future king and liege of Camelot.”

“You said her name was Elle?” Hort asked.

“That’s the name she gave me,” said Rosamund. “But she was very private. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t her real name.”

“How long did she live here?” Nicola pressed.

“Ten years, maybe? From the last months of her pregnancy until she sent the boys off to school. Then she left and I never saw her again. It’s been ages.”

“And what did Elle look like?” Hort hounded.

“Tall, thin, dark hair. Lovely mouth and eyebrows. The last time I saw her at least,” said Rosamund. “Wish I could help, but she told me hardly anything about herself or the boys and they rarely left the house.”

Hort glanced at Nicola, reading her face. Tall, thin, dark hair . . . Elle sounded a lot like Tedros’ steward. Lady Gremlaine, Hort remembered.

He suddenly thought of something Mistress Gremlaine’s son said to her before he took his brother to the park: “Now you’re sounding like Aunt Grisella . . .”

Grisella, Hort thought.

Ella.

Elle.

Lady Gremlaine must have raised the boys here in secret and put them in Arbed House before she returned to work in Camelot’s castle.

“You said Elle lived in Number 63?” Nicola asked, turning back to Rosamund.

“Right there,” the woman nodded, pointing at a house across the street. “Been empty for a long time now. Nothing to see at all.”

A FEW MINUTES later, once Rosamund had gone back into her house, Hort and Nicola were already inside Number 63.

It had been easy to break in, given the state of the house’s doors: waterlogged and splintered, the locks long broken. But the mission was a futile one. There was little left inside: no furniture, no clothes, no junk or trash or crumbs of food. The walls and floors had been bleached or repainted, even the ceiling, as if Grisella Gremlaine had wanted to leave no trace of her or the family that lived there.

“She was right,” Hort sighed, leaning against a closet door. “Nothing here.”

They heard voices outside and Nicola peered out the window to see three Foxwood guards in red uniforms coming down the road, knocking on each house, holding up crude sketches of her and Hort to the occupants.

Nicola’s finger glowed. “Let’s go,” she said, mogrifying into a sparrow and hopping out of her puddle of clothes, towards the door.

Hort closed his eyes, fingertip glowing blue, about to morph back into a squirrel and follow Nic out—

But then he heard something.

A strange sound.

Coming from the closet in front of him.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Hort opened his eyes.

More rustling. More tapping.

Against the back of the door.

His skin went cold.

Leave, his body told him. Leave now.

Hort moved towards the closet.

“What are you doing?” Nic’s sparrow hissed. “They’ll catch us!”

But Hort’s hand was already reaching out, his heart vibrating in his chest, as his sweaty palm curled around the knob and pulled it open—

A single blue butterfly flung out from inside, skeletal, dried up, flying madly around Hort’s head with one last rush of life . . .

Then it fell at his feet, dead.

21

AGATHA

Blood Crystal

For a moment, Agatha thought she was on a cloud.

She raised her head, her body sprawled on a sea of white pillows across the floor of an elegant chamber. Through a window above her, the blue glow of King Teapea’s palace mixed with the distant lights of Gnomeland’s metropolis. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep or who had put her in warm pajamas or in this bed, but she saw now that she hadn’t been sleeping alone.

There was the imprint of a body in the