A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,68

teacher scorched.

Laithan cleared his throat. “Um, the dungeons are . . . here?”

“Right where you’re standing,” Agatha confirmed.

Bunched under the snakeskin, the three boys barraged the ground with their lit fingerglows, burning holes in the grass. Hort’s magic burrowed far faster than the first years’, searing through dirt like the sun melting ice, until he hit a solid gray wall. He gave it a kick, hearing a hollow sound and saw specks crumble, as if the wall was exceptionally old or not very sturdy. Then he silently cued the boys and they renewed their glows’ assault.

Suddenly a gust of wind swept in, blowing the snakeskin off them. The boys’ outlines brightened in Agatha’s frame. They weren’t invisible anymore. Agatha saw a guard on the tower turn—

Hort snatched the cape back down, shielding them once more. “Holy frogballs. Did they see us?”

“I don’t know,” said Agatha. “Just hurry.”

The boys shot their lit fingers harder at the dungeon wall, but this time, Bodhi and Laithan’s glow just spurted weak sparks.

“New boys never last long,” Princess Uma lamented.

“Easily drained,” Professor Sheeks concurred.

Hort glowered at Bodhi and Laithan as he redoubled his glow strength. “And you wanted to do this alone?”

There was another problem now too.

“Hort?” Agatha rasped.

“What.”

“My connection’s weakening.”

Hort looked up into the frame and saw what she was seeing: the image in the bubble turning translucent.

“Oh, for Hook’s sake,” Hort growled.

He redirected his glow onto himself and, with a choked scream, exploded out of his clothes, morphing into a giant man-wolf, nearly evicting the two boys out from under the cape with his girth, before hugging them back under his furred torso like a lion protecting his cubs. Then with the snakeskin hung tight around them, Hort raised two hairy fists and slammed the wall, once, twice, three times, the last with a roar—

The wall caved in.

Two boys and a man-wolf tumbled down in an implosion of brick, dirt, and grass as Agatha watched, bug-eyed, hearing the confused shouts of distant guards through the crystal and then the clatter of alarm bells. Black dust swirled inside the crystal ball like a storm, obscuring everything behind it; Agatha pressed her nose to the glass, while teachers and students crowded in behind her, desperate to see if the boys survived.

Little by little, the dust cleared, revealing three walls of a dark prison cell, a ray of sunlight piercing through like a saber. Hort, Bodhi, and Laithan lay facedown in the rubble, groaning as they stirred.

But that’s not who Agatha was looking at.

Agatha was watching a sallow, glassy-eyed boy, covered in blood and bruises, slowly rise from a crouch into the sunlight, like he was lost in a dream.

“Agatha?”

Tears came to his princess’s eyes. “Tedros, listen to me. Everything I said that night before the battle . . . everything I said to Sophie . . . I was lost in a moment. I was scared and frustrated. It’s not how I feel about you—”

“You came for me. That’s all that matters,” Tedros said, choked up with emotion. “I didn’t think there was a way. But you found one. Of course you found one. You’re you. And now you’re here . . .” He cocked his head. “Along with a lot of other people. Um, I see Yuba . . . and Castor and . . . are you at school?”

“For now,” said Agatha quickly. “And soon you will be too. You’re hurt and the teachers can heal you.”

“Do I look as bad as I feel?” Tedros asked.

“Still handsomer than Rhian,” said Agatha.

“Good answer. And Sophie?”

“A group of first years is distracting Rhian long enough to free her. There’ll be plenty of time for us to talk once you’re here at school. You need to get out now, Tedros. You and Dovey and all the others.”

But Tedros just gazed at her like they had all the time in the world. Agatha, too, felt herself falling into Tedros’ eyes, as if there was no barrier between them at all.

“Um . . . guys?”

Tedros turned to the man-wolf, head raised on the floor.

Hort pointed with his paw. “They’re coming.”

All of a sudden, Agatha saw shadows rushing in from every side of the crystal, converging on the dungeons.

“Free the rest!” Tedros cried at Hort, who bounded with the prince down the hall towards the other cells. Bodhi and Laithan lumbered up from the floor, limping after them, but Hort flung them backwards—“Call the stymphs, you fool!”

Bodhi spun around, firing navy flares through the sinkhole into the sky, past