A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,149

real king,” Tedros retorted. “But now that she thinks—” He clammed up.

Guinevere frowned. “What do you mean ‘when’? What’s changed?”

Reaper, too, looked suspicious.

Agatha and Tedros shared a harsh glance. Her prince still seemed in denial about what his princess had seen in the blood crystal. And now the thought of him sharing the possibility with his mother that he might not be the true heir . . . that her husband had been hexed to father someone else’s sons . . . that Excalibur had been correct to spurn him. . . .

Tedros turned back to Guinevere. “N-n-nothing. Nothing’s changed.”

“But why would you say Sophie doesn’t think you’re the real king—”

As Tedros deflected, Agatha found herself pondering something Guinevere said.

“She found a way to show me her loyalty.”

“She found a way to tell me the truth.”

Agatha’s eyes floated back to the final frame, paused on the wall.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, Tedros,” Guinevere strong-armed.

“Mother, I promise you—”

“Don’t promise, if it’s a lie.”

Tedros swallowed.

His mother and Reaper stared him down.

Tedros began to sweat. “Uh . . . the name Evelyn Sader doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

Guinevere’s eyes flickered. “Evelyn Sader?”

“August Sader’s sister?” Tedros said quickly. “Took over as Dean our second year at school? You and Dad wouldn’t have known her. I’m just making sure—”

“Wait,” said Agatha, cutting off mother and son.

She gestured towards the screen and the cloud of dust, stirred up by the carriage. “Can we zoom in on this?”

The old gnome brushed her fingers across the heap of dead fireflies, back and forth, widening the image on the wall until Agatha held up her hand.

“Right there,” she said.

Amongst the dust, something didn’t fit.

A small cloud of mist.

Pink mist.

“Go closer,” Agatha ordered.

The gnome obeyed, honing in on the pink dust with increasing detail, clearer, clearer—

“Stop,” said Agatha.

Tedros held his breath, peering at the wall.

Reaper and Guinevere had gone quiet too.

Agatha ran her fingers over the frozen frame . . . over the smoky pink words that Sophie had cast as she’d lit her steps into the carriage . . . an unmistakable message she’d left for her friends to find . . .

Behind the words, in extreme close-up, Sophie was glaring through the carriage’s window, right at the screen, right at Agatha, her emerald eyes shining like stars in the dark.

“What does it mean?” Tedros asked, mystified.

Agatha gazed at the message, her own eyes reflecting Sophie’s.

She turned to her prince. “It means your Devil Minx left us some homework.”

AGATHA FACED TEDROS, Guinevere, and her cat as they sat on the velvet floor of the throne room, snacking from bowls of yogurt-covered almonds, caramel-soaked figs, and sweet potato chips. She hadn’t the faintest clue what time it was, with several hours gone since Sophie escaped.

“Here’s what we know,” Agatha started. “Sophie is still on our side—”

“We don’t know that,” Tedros argued, mouth full of nuts.

“King Teapea, there’s a stranger trying to enter the palace,” a gnome guard announced from the door. “A highly suspicious stranger.”

Reaper flashed a perturbed look and followed the guard out.

Agatha still hadn’t gotten used to her cat having kingly duties, but she had bigger things to worry about. She leveled a stare at Tedros. “We know Sophie’s on our side because she left that message.”

“Agatha’s right, Tedros,” Guinevere confirmed. “Sophie’s playing a dangerous game. Just like she did when she pushed me to save you from losing your head.”

Her son scowled. “So she went back to Rhian and his monster brother . . . for me? Sophie, the saint? Sophie, the selfless? Wonder why she wasn’t in the School for Good. Oh, I remember. She was too busy trying to kill us all.”

“Sophie is unpredictable,” Agatha conceded. “And we don’t know why she went back or what she’s up to. But we know she’s trying to help us. That’s why she gave us that question. It’s the mission she wants us to focus on while she focuses on hers.”

“You got all that from a dusty riddle? Wish you could read my mind the way you read hers,” Tedros groused, grabbing a fistful of chips. “That message doesn’t mean anything. ‘Why did the Lady kiss him’? Who’s ‘the Lady’? Who’s ‘him’?”

“The Lady of the Lake and the Snake,” Agatha replied calmly. “Sophie wants us to figure out why the Lady kissed Japeth.”

“The kiss that stripped the nymph of her powers. Merlin told Tedros and me about it when he came to Camelot,” Guinevere remembered. “It was after the Snake killed Chaddick. The Lady of