A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,180
Agatha that had made it this far. As much as he loved his mother, his father wouldn’t have wanted her here—
He broke out of his thoughts.
Merlin’s white star. His shadow in it.
It was still moving.
Only he wasn’t.
He glanced back at Agatha, her glow burning away more and more earth.
“They must have buried the coffin deep,” Agatha murmured, tense with concentration.
Tedros turned back to the star and leaned closer, the shadow inside receding from him, as if to lead him somewhere.
“This doesn’t make sense . . . ,” Agatha’s voice rasped.
The prince reached for the star. His fingers brushed the warm white surface and sank right through—
“Tedros, the grave is empty. There’s nothing here.”
By the time Agatha turned to her prince, he was halfway in.
She lunged in horror, grasping her hand for him, but all she found was a cold star, the light snuffed out, like a sun fallen into a sea.
TEDROS TASTED CLOUDS in his mouth, feather-soft, dissolving like spun sugar, with the sweet tang of blueberry cream. He lifted his eyes to see a silvery five-pointed star shoot past him across a purple night sky, lit by a thousand more of these stars. The air was toasty and thick, the silence of the Celestium so vast that he could hear the drum of his own heart, like it was the beat of the universe.
A rustle of movement . . . then an intake of breath.
Tedros grew very still.
Someone else was on the cloud.
He looked up.
King Arthur sat on the edge of the cloud in his royal robes, his hair thick and gold, his beard flecked with gray, a Lion locket sparkling around his neck.
“Hello, son,” said his father.
Tedros was ghost-white. “Dad?”
“Merlin kept this place a secret from me when I was king,” said his father, gazing up at the sky. “I understand why now.”
“This . . . this is i-i-impossible. . . .” Tedros reached out a shaking hand towards the king. “This isn’t real . . . this can’t be real. . . .” His palm touched his father’s face, quivering against Arthur’s soft beard. The king smiled and pressed his son’s hand into his.
Tedros stiffened. “But you’re . . . you’re supposed to be . . .”
“Here. With you, just as you need me to be,” said his father, his voice soothing and deep. “In the way I wish I’d been for all the days I had with you, up to the very last. Our story didn’t have the ending we wanted.” Gently, he brushed Tedros’ hair out of his face. “But I knew long ago that there might come a time when you needed me. A time beyond the Present and your memories of our Past. Yet how can a father see his son beyond the Rules of Time? That’s where it helps to have a wizard as your dearest friend.”
“So you’re a . . . ghost?” Tedros asked.
“When most kings die, they embalm the body to preserve it,” King Arthur replied. “But no one can truly preserve a body against time. In the end, all graves are raided or neglected or forgotten. It is the nature of things. Leave it to Merlin, then, to suggest getting rid of my body entirely. To preserve the soul instead. This way you could find me when the time came. The magic was limited, of course. My soul could only reappear to the living once, for the briefest of meetings, before it dispersed forever to the source from which it came. Until then, I would live amongst the stars, waiting patiently for the Present to catch up with the Past.”
Tears grew in Tedros’ eyes. “How brief a meeting?”
His father smiled. “Long enough for you to know how much I love you.”
Tedros panicked. “You can’t go! Not after I’ve found you! Please, Dad . . . You don’t know the things I’ve done . . . the mess I’ve made. . . . A Snake sits on the throne. A Snake that’s your son.” His voice cracked, his posture sinking like he was weighed down by a stone. “I failed your test. I never became king. Not the king you wanted me to be.” Sobs choked out of him. “Only I didn’t just fail the test. I failed Camelot. I failed Good. I failed you—”
“And yet, you’re here,” said King Arthur. “Just as I asked you to be.”
Tedros lifted his wet eyes.
“You passed a test far greater than pulling a sword,” said his father. “A test that is only the beginning of many more.”
Tedros swallowed, barely able to speak. “But what do I do? I need to know what to do. I need to know how to fix this.”
King Arthur reached out his hand. He put it to his son’s heart, pressing firm and strong, its warmth filling Tedros’ chest.
“A Lion roars within,” he said.
Tears slid down Tedros’ cheeks. “Don’t leave me. I’m begging you. I can’t do this alone. I can’t.”
“I love you, son,” his father whispered, kissing his head.
“No . . . wait . . . don’t go . . . ,” Tedros gasped, reaching for him—
But the prince was already falling through clouds.
“TEDROS?” A VOICE said.
The prince roused to the smell of rich, dense earth and the comfort of a deep bed.
He opened his eyes.
Agatha looked down from high, oak branches swaying above her, dappled by the sun.
Then Tedros understood.
He was in his father’s grave.
He was in his father’s grave.
Instantly he was on his knees, scrambling out of the hole Agatha had dug, dirt crumbling beneath his hands and boots, crashing him back down, before he finally managed to claw himself out. He collapsed against his father’s glass cross, the white star cold against his cheek as he heaved for air.
“What happened?” Agatha hounded, dropping to his side.
He couldn’t answer. How could he answer? He’d seen his father. He’d smelled him and touched him and felt his dad’s hand upon his heart. Tedros thrust his palm under his shirt, where his father had left his mark. But now the moment was gone, his father lost forever. And Tedros was left with only the memor—
The prince paused.
Beneath his shirt, something brushed against his hand. Something that wasn’t there before.
“Where were you?” Agatha asked, her arm around him. “Where did you go?”
The prince rose to his knees and pulled down his shirt. A Lion locket hung around his neck, lit by a stream of sun.
Agatha let go of him. “But that’s . . . that’s your father’s . . .”
Tedros fingered the gold Lion head at the end of the chain, its two sides fused together. All those years as a child, he’d tried to get it open, day after day, testing any trick he could think of, failing every time, until one day . . . he didn’t fail. His dad had given him the most assured of smiles, as if he’d known it was only a matter of time.
Slowly Arthur’s son slipped the Lion’s head into his mouth like he had that day, a long time ago. . . .
“I don’t understand,” Agatha pressed—
He felt the gold magically soften, his teeth prying at the crease between the two sides at just the right angle . . . until the locket popped open. Bit by bit, his tongue probed the inside of its case, searching for something from his father, a note or a card or—
His eyes froze.
Or that.
He lifted it onto his tongue, tasting the cold, hard surface, savoring the deep grooves along its side, holding it in place as he let the locket slip out of his mouth.
“Only three swans left,” Hort’s voice echoed. “Or was it four.”
“Tedros?” Agatha asked, seeing his face. “What is—”
He kissed her.
So softly, so delicately, he saw her eyes widen as it moved from his mouth to hers. A glow sparked like a flame in her big brown gaze, the two of them silent and still, sharing this moment as one.
Carefully Tedros drew his lips from hers. Agatha kept his stare as she reached shaking fingers and pulled it out.
The ring.
The ring with the Storian’s symbols.
The ring that had never been burned, but instead gifted across time.
Blood rumbled through the prince’s veins, from the forgotten corners of his soul, pounding at the door to his heart, harder, harder, demanding to be let in.
His princess held out the ring, shining like a sword.
“Now it begins,” Agatha vowed.
The prince’s eyes reflected her steel. “Now it begins.”
He took the ring onto his finger, the door to his heart ripping open, a Lion awakened, a Lion reborn, before Tedros gnashed his teeth to the sky and unleashed a roar that shook heaven and earth.