A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,148

teeth.

Even from here, she could smell it.

The snakeskin in Subby’s hands.

Stinking of dirt and mulch . . .

And lavender.

A TOOTHLESS GRANDMA gnome sat cross-legged on the floor, tapping her fingers across the bellies of a hundred dead fireflies like they were piano keys.

“Stop there,” said Agatha.

Grandma Gnome stopped her tapping, pausing the distorted footage playing out on a glowing wall in the throne room.

Tedros, Guinevere, Agatha, and Reaper all leaned in, studying the scene on the wall.

“Any way to fill it in a bit more?” Agatha asked the old gnome.

The toothless grandma fussed with the dead fireflies, repairing broken carcasses and wings with her fingertip, which seemed to fill in the corrupted frame. “A birdie doo doo on you,” Granny Gnome warbled as she worked. “A birdie doo doo on you . . . A birdie doo doo—”

“Can you work any faster?” Tedros said, exasperated.

The grandma gave him a fetid look, punctuated by a fart. Then she went back to fussing and singing, exactly as before.

Tedros appealed to Reaper.

The cat mumbled as if to say, “Try ruling a kingdom full of them.”

“Look! That’s her!” Agatha exclaimed, studying the filled-in frame of Kiko bum-rushing the Snake, derailed by a blast of pink light to her chest. Agatha pointed at the disembodied glow. “It’s Sophie’s spell. She must have been hiding nearby.”

“There’s your proof, then. Your supposed best friend attacked Kiko to stop her from fighting the Snake,” Tedros seethed. “Your supposed best friend was helping Dovey’s and the Sheriff’s murderer.”

“Or she was trying to save Kiko from being killed,” said Agatha reflexively.

“Still defending her! Still defending that witch!” Tedros spat, angrier than she’d ever seen him. “I never thought you could be so stupid!”

Agatha fought with Tedros often. Her prince was well aware that she was as tough as he was and he loved her for it. But this time, Agatha had no ground to stand on. Sophie had deserted her friends and crawled back to the enemy. Not only that, but now Agatha recalled the way Sophie pinned Rhian to the bed when they went into the crystal . . . the rushed way she’d confronted him . . . as if trying to play out a different script than the one she and Agatha had agreed on. . . .

“I did what had to be done,” Sophie had defended after. “I did what was right.”

She botched the plan on purpose, Agatha realized.

But why?

That crystal, she thought.

The one she’d caught Sophie staring at and sneaking into her pocket.

Sophie had seen something inside of it.

Something that made her want to go back to Camelot.

“Hmm . . . if this is Sophie’s spell, then this must be Sophie,” Guinevere deduced, pointing to a wrinkle of glow in the corner of the frame. “The stump’s fireflies picked up the presence of the snakeskin. Is there any way to track this spot of light through the rest of the footage?”

Granny Gnome strummed her fingers across firefly bellies once more, scanning through images and dexterously filling in scenes, following the blip of glow as it scaled a tree, where it remained until the end of the Snake and Sheriff’s battle, when Sophie doffed the snakeskin and dragged the Sheriff into the darkness, before climbing into the royal carriage with a shadowed boy. Agatha watched as Sophie used her pink glow to light her steps into the carriage and close the door, before the footage froze on a final frame: the carriage driving off, dust kicking up from its wheels.

Tedros was about to combust. “So Sophie watches the entire fight from the safety of a tree, then cries over the Sheriff’s body like a bad actress, then dumps him in the bushes and returns to the castle to be with those two monsters. If I get back my throne—when I get back my throne—that devil minx will lose her head with them.”

He’s right, Agatha thought, still at a loss. Everything Tedros was saying about Sophie was indisputable fact.

But why couldn’t she accept it, then?

Why was her heart still defending her best friend?

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Guinevere chewing on her lip, just as conflicted.

“What is it?” Tedros growled.

“When Sophie was at the castle, she played Rhian’s side so convincingly that I believed she’d betrayed you,” said Guinevere. “But even under Rhian’s thumb, she found a way to show me her loyalty. She found a way to tell me the truth. Suppose we’re missing something?”

“Well, that was when she thought I was the