A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,142

king. Which meant Sophie could be queen of Camelot. The real queen. And Tedros knew nothing came between Sophie and a crown.

Agatha would try to defend her, of course. Agatha would search for some kind of sign that her best friend was still on their side.

But Aggie wouldn’t find any. Not just because Sophie had no time to leave one . . . but because if she’d let Agatha in on her plan, her best friend would have come after her, right back into Rhian’s hands.

Which meant Tedros would win for now. Sophie would be branded a soulless, two-faced fink. The same girl who left them for Rafal and had played them for fools once more. Sophie, who had no loyalty. Sophie, who only cared about herself.

She didn’t blame Tedros. If she were him, she would think the same things.

But losing her friends’ trust was the price she had to pay.

Because this had nothing to do with Evelyn Sader.

This had to do with what Sophie had seen in a crystal.

Not the blood crystal.

Another crystal.

A crystal she’d found on her own.

The crystal Agatha had caught her staring at before she’d pretended it was junk and slipped it into her pocket.

But it wasn’t junk.

That crystal was the reason she was abandoning her friends in the middle of the night.

And this is what she’d seen inside . . .

Her own self.

Cowering in the corner of the king’s bedroom, her cheek gashed, her white, ruffled dress soaked with blood.

Rhian was across the room, in his blue-and-gold king’s suit.

So was Japeth, in his gold-and-blue liege’s suit.

They were fighting.

More than fighting.

A Lion and Snake, going for the kill.

Hands clawed at eyes and hair. Teeth sank into skin. Punches landed, spewing blood from mouths, their faces mangled to crimson pulps. The twins battled onto the bed, each straining to get to Excalibur—

Rhian got there first.

The blade swung through the air, the edge catching the light like a sunflare—

It impaled Japeth’s chest.

Clean through the heart.

Rhian drew the sword out and his brother fell.

Slowly, Rhian kneeled over Japeth’s body, watching him take his last breath. The king bowed his head, holding his brother’s corpse.

Excalibur lay abandoned behind him.

Rhian didn’t see Sophie move from the corner.

The fear was gone from her face.

Replaced with intent.

She raised the sword over Rhian’s back—

The crystal went dark.

Sophie had watched this scene play out silently in the glass droplet, again and again and again.

Rhian kills Japeth.

Sophie kills Rhian.

That’s how this fairy tale ended.

Or it’s how she wished this fairy tale ended.

The crystals were unreliable, Reaper had warned.

Especially hers.

But it didn’t matter.

This was her future.

She’d make it her future.

She drove the rickshaw faster, her teeth grinding hard.

Dovey said something to her once: “This is about whether you are capable of growing from the snake of your own story into the hero of someone else’s.”

Deep down, Sophie never thought it possible.

At her core, she was a villain, not a hero.

Agatha and Tedros were the heroes.

The best she could do was to help them.

The witch turned sidekick.

And yet, joining forces with Good hadn’t worked.

The son of Evelyn Sader sat on Camelot’s throne.

Evelyn Sader! Sophie thought, still stunned.

Her bastard son from Arthur, born of black magic.

It didn’t matter what Agatha and Tedros did.

This Evil was one step ahead.

This Evil was beyond Good’s reach, a two-headed dragon scorching every shield.

This Evil was seeded so deep in the past that only Evil in the present could undo it.

Agatha and Tedros were the wrong heroes for this war.

But Sophie?

Evil was her blood.

She was the hero to slay this dragon.

And she had the crystal in her pocket to prove it.

Not that she could watch it again, since only Agatha had the power to make a crystal work. But just having it on her body gave her a cold-blooded resolve. All she had to do was follow the script of what she’d seen. The script of a murder. It’s why she’d changed back into this repellent white dress. The future told her to.

As Sophie ascended through Gnome City, the lights of the kingdom blinked and beamed, but it was quiet now, not a gnome in sight, except a toothless grandma filling street lanterns with glowing fireflies and sweeping out the dead ones. Grandma Gnome glanced up at the ghost rickshaw, then shrugged and went back to work. Sophie heard a buzz growing as she pedaled higher, towards the top of the track, like she was a bee outside the hive.

With one steep push, she found the track’s end, a landing pad beneath the ceiling