A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,153

its cart now stamped with dozens of stickers of Sophie’s face, X’ed out with the warning: “BAD BHOOT!”

“Hurry!” Subby jabbed. “King’s waiting!”

Poof! The page boy morphed into a girl gnome—

“Girl Subby drives faster!” he/she pipped. “Let’s go! No time to waste!”

Agatha and the rest crammed in, sitting in each other’s laps, bottoms barely settled before Subby was off and careening up the spiral tracks, twisting around the thick glowing vines that connected the different levels of Gnomeland. She drove past gnomes haggardly returning to their houses after the all-night blockade and funeral, past shopkeepers pulling down their anti-human posters, past gnome doctors wheeling Kiko flat on a gurney into Smallview General Hospital . . . before Subby and her cart headed straight for the Musée de Gnome. She screeched to a halt at the entrance.

“Follow me!” Nicola ordered, hopping out.

“Why is the cat in a museum?” Tedros asked, but Agatha was already sprinting at full pace next to Nicola, through the Musée’s doors—

Agatha banged her head on molding. “Ow!”

“Keep your head down!” Nicola said. “It’s made for gnomes!”

Agatha rubbed her skull as she crouch-walked into the pint-sized hall, an ornate banner with “THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEAPEA” grazing her head, while Tedros and the others stooped down behind her. She tried to keep up with Nicola, passing regal portraits of her cat along with scenes of Reaper’s history, including the banishing of his father and brothers from Gnomeland, and his spectacular coronation, complete with a confetti-filled parade, a royal feast, and a city square jammed with dancing gnomes. Agatha hustled through more exhibits: a chronicle of the underground construction of Gnomeland . . . the biology of the luminescent vines wiring through the kingdom . . . a celebration of the years without human interference . . . until at last they reached a narrow, twisting staircase at the back of the museum, with a sign overhead:

HUMAN WORLD OBSERVATORY

A chain barred the stairs. “Permanently Closed.”

“He’s waiting up there,” Nicola said, face fraught.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Agatha pressed.

Nicola nodded towards the steps. “Hurry.”

Agatha jumped over the chain, as did Tedros and the others, and they scuttled up the stairs, with Hort tripping on the tiny, cobwebbed planks, nearly taking down the entire group before they reached the top—

Agatha froze on the landing, the others crowding behind her.

They were on an open-air platform, looking up into the bright-lit tracks of Gnomeland city spiraling above them like glowing snakes. In the middle of the observing platform rose a colossal telescope, the size of a grown gnome, with a wide circular eyepiece and a long white tube that disappeared into the hollow of a glowing green vine that stretched up towards the top of the kingdom.

Reaper was clasped onto this telescope like a koala to a tree, his body a quarter the size of the contraption, his pink, hairless head bowed as he peered into the eyepiece.

The cat looked up at the group.

Agatha, Tedros, Hort, and Guinevere gathered around him, each taking a sliver of the eyepiece.

The telescope magnified a long, deep view: up through Gnomeland city, up through the abandoned Flowerground tunnel, up through the stump, up through the dense treetops of the Woods . . . all the way into wide, red-lit sky and a magnificent view of the Woods at sunset, the expanse of kingdoms extending in every direction.

For a moment, Agatha was mesmerized by how beautiful it was.

Then she saw it.

Glittering in gold.

Lionsmane’s latest screed, emblazoned against the evening sky.

The wedding of King Rhian and Princess Sophie will take place as scheduled, this Saturday, at sundown, at Camelot Castle. All citizens of the Woods are invited to attend.

Slowly, Agatha raised her head.

Reaper glowered back at her. So did Tedros.

“Still think she’s on our side?” he said.

Agatha’s heart went up in smoke.

Was I wrong?

After all this?

Was I wrong about Sophie this whole time?

“But . . . her message . . . the way she looked right at us . . . ,” Agatha said. “I don’t understand. . . .”

Tedros just shook his head, less with anger than with pity, at his princess who couldn’t help but trust the one person who couldn’t be trusted.

“Saturday at sundown,” Guinevere spoke. “That’s two days.”

“And now he has Nottingham’s ring,” said Nicola, near the staircase. “Which means, unless the remaining kingdoms stop him . . .”

“Rhian becomes the One True King,” said Hort. “Rhian becomes the Storian. Sophie said it would happen at the wedding. Which means in two days, he has the