A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,162

hid us in Foxwood, not allowing us to leave the house or go to school, as if she was afraid someone might find us out. Then one day, a woman showed up at our door: a woman I recognized from the Camelot Courier as King Arthur’s steward. I couldn’t hear her and Mother’s conversation, but why would King Arthur’s steward come see our mother? Yet if I tried to ask questions about the king, Mother would shut me down. And any mention of Queen Guinevere would draw a black glare and mumbles about ‘that uppity shrew.’ It was obvious my mother and King Arthur had a history. That something happened between them. And both Japeth and I seemed to have Arthur’s looks . . . or at least I did. A little bit of sun and I match his complexion. Put Japeth in the sun and he looks like burnt ham.”

“But that’s absurd! Why wouldn’t your mother tell you who you were? Why not tell the whole Woods she’d borne Arthur’s sons?” Sophie asked. She thought of the way Evelyn’s eyes gleamed triumphantly before she looped the spansel around the king’s neck. “That was the point. To claim Arthur’s heirs—”

Rhian opened his eyes, peering at her.

He doesn’t know, Sophie realized. He doesn’t know how he was made.

“I think she tried,” said Rhian. “I heard her crying once, cursing my uncle August for siding with ‘him.’ She must have told Arthur she was pregnant with his child. But Arthur had a queen by then. He had Guinevere. Maybe he threatened my mother to keep her quiet. Maybe my uncle August helped him. That’s why she was hiding us.”

“But what about after Arthur died?” Sophie pushed. “Surely then she would have told people—”

“Who would have believed her?” said Rhian. “What proof did she have?”

“And your brother? Did he suspect that King Arthur was your father?”

Rhian batted away a fly. “Tried to talk to him about it, but he wouldn’t listen. He said he was quite sure who our father was.”

“Who?” Sophie pushed.

“‘Not King Arthur,’” said Rhian, mimicking Japeth’s hard tone. “He thought I was a fool about all of it, so enamored with the king that I’d convinced myself I was his long-lost son. But truth be told, Japeth and I never really saw eye to eye about anything. We’re twins, but total opposites. Two halves of a whole.”

Sophie resisted a smile. Rhian and his brother weren’t so different from she and Agatha. Finding the wedge between brothers might be easier than she thought. . . .

“So your mother was closer to Japeth?” she asked. “He seems quite attached to her.”

“Too attached,” said Rhian crisply. “It’s why Mother loved me more.”

Sophie looked at him. “Go on.”

“Japeth couldn’t share my mother with anyone. Including me. If my mother showed me even the slightest bit of attention, he’d have terrible rages. When I made her a cake for her birthday, he put something in it that made her ill. When she showed our cat too much love, it disappeared. After every incident, he’d be sorry; he’d cry and vow it would never happen again. But it always did. And worse each time. Mother and I were prisoners of his rage. It’s what made us so close.”

Sophie tensed, still unused to feeling sympathy for the boy she’d come to kill. “And there was nothing you could do? You couldn’t send him away or . . .”

“My brother?” Rhian said, stone-cold. “My twin?”

“But from what you’ve said—”

“Every family has problems. Every single one. You find a way to right the wrong. To heal the rot at the core.”

“You speak about family the same way you speak about the Woods,” Sophie said cynically. “But Evil can’t just be erased.”

“Well, here I am, still at my brother’s side, our relationship stronger than ever. Tells you what I’ll be like as king, doesn’t it?” Rhian boasted. “I never gave up on him. Unlike my mother.”

Sophie raised her brows, but Rhian anticipated her question.

“The rages got worse,” he explained. “Nearly killed my mother and me a few times. She used her butterflies to spy on him. To pin him down during his fits. Thankfully she was more skilled with her magic than he was with his. That’s how we stayed alive.” Rhian paused. “Then she wrote the School Master about him.”

“The School Master? Why?”

“My mother taught there once. My uncle August had gotten her a job as Professor of History. She and the School Master grew close—too close, I hear,