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Agatha would have, he thought peevishly. Not only that, but for a woman who’d been determined to spend time with him, Lady Gremlaine didn’t seem to like him much.
When they first met last night, he’d assumed she thought him handsome and charming and would do anything he asked. But now that they were seated together, she kept throwing him skeptical looks any time he spoke as if he had the brain of an oyster. It was undermining his confidence right when he needed it most.
“I don’t understand why Agatha can’t sit here with me,” he said, squinting at the royal gallery below on the lawn where she was just a shadow, cooped up with the dukes, counts, and other titled nobles. “Or my mother for that matter.”
Lady Gremlaine straightened her turban. “Agatha is not your queen yet. After you’re married, she can join you at official events. As for your mother, given her and Lancelot’s ignominious flight from the castle, I thought it best to keep them out of sight and withhold news of their return until a more appropriate time.”
Tedros followed her eyes to a white scrim curtaining off the balcony behind them. Through the scrim, he could see his mother and Lancelot watching the ceremony with a few maids and kitchen boys.
“It’s a wonder news hasn’t leaked,” Lady Gremlaine added. “Lancelot made a spectacle throwing those advisors into the castle jail last night.”
“Who cares if it had leaked?” Tedros countered. “The sooner we tell the people my mother and Lance have returned the better.”
“Once you are crowned king, you can make your own decisions.”
“It’s just stupid having my own mother confined like a leper while I sit here with you,” Tedros badgered, glancing up at a cloud blocking the sun. “As if you’re my queen or something.”
Lady Gremlaine pursed her lips.
“When Merlin gets here, give him your seat, as he’ll be my real advisor once I’m king,” Tedros piled on.
“Merlin won’t breach the gates of Camelot. After he deserted your father, Arthur had him banned from the kingdom,” said Lady Gremlaine.
Tedros gave her a bewildered look. Neither Merlin nor his father had ever told him that.
“Well, Arthur also put a death warrant on my mother’s head and she’s very much alive,” Tedros said brusquely. “I don’t follow an ex-king’s edict and neither does Merlin, even if it was my father’s.”
“Then why isn’t Merlin here?” Lady Gremlaine challenged.
Tedros bristled, wondering the same thing. “He’ll be here. You’ll see.”
He has to be, the prince thought. The idea of ruling Camelot without Merlin was unfathomable.
“I wouldn’t bet on it. Defying banishment is punished by death,” said Lady Gremlaine crisply.
Tedros snorted. “If you think you can execute Merlin while I’m king you’re as clueless as those monkeys.”
A sequined hat hit him in the face and he swiveled to see the chimps in a violent brawl, pummeling each other as the crowd tittered.
“Is this really the best we can do?” Tedros moaned. “Who planned this idiocy?”
“I did,” said Lady Gremlaine.
“Well, let’s hope you’re not planning the wedding.”
“The wedding is planned entirely by the future queen,” Lady Gremlaine said, her face a cold mask. “I hope she is capable.”
“That’s a bet I’m willing to take,” said Tedros defiantly, trying not to frown.
Agatha: the wedding planner? Hadn’t she dressed as a bride for Halloween? If it were up to her, they’d marry at midnight in a boneyard, with that satanic cat presiding. …
She’ll be fine, he thought. Agatha always found a way. She’d no doubt share his opinion of Lady Gremlaine and his determination to prove her wrong. Plus, once Agatha saw how he handled his coronation, with royal decorum and integrity, she’d follow his example for the wedding. Soon Lady Grimface would be eating her words.
A long while later, after the monkeys had been soothed with a vat of banana pudding and dragged from the stage, Tedros took his place before Camelot’s chaplain, perilously old, with a bright red nose and wiry hair growing out of his ears. The chaplain put his hand on Tedros’ back and guided him to the front of the stage, overlooking the teeming hills.
On cue, the sun broke out from behind the cloud, spilling onto the young prince.
An awed hush fell over the crowd.
Tedros could see the legions gazing up at him with wide-eyed hope: the boy who vanquished the School Master … the boy who saved the Ever kingdoms … the boy who would make Camelot great again.
“I’m king of all these people?” Tedros rasped, the weight of responsibility finally hitting him.
“Oh, oh, your father asked the same thing, lad! Fear is a very good sign,” the old chaplain said, hacking a laugh. “And luckily, no one can hear us from way up here.”
The chaplain turned to a skinny, red-haired altar boy, who carefully handed him a jeweled box. The chaplain opened it. Sunlight ricocheted through five spires like a web of gold, eliciting gasps from the mob. Tedros gazed down at King Arthur’s crown, the five-pointed fleur-de-lis, each with a diamond in the center.
Once, when he was six, he’d stolen it from his father’s bed table and worn it to his lessons with Merlin, insisting the wizard bow and call him King. He assumed Merlin would put an end to his mischief—but instead the wizard obeyed his command, bowing eminently and addressing him as Your Majesty, all the way through math and astronomy and vocabulary and history. Perhaps the old wizard would have let him be king forever … but soon the young prince removed his crown and sheepishly returned it to his father’s table. For it was too heavy for his soft little head.
Now, ten years later, the chaplain held out the very same crown. “Repeat after me, young prince. The words might sound a bit funny, given it’s an oath that harkens back two thousand years. But words aren’t what make a king. That fear you feel is all you need. Fear means you know this crown has a history and future far bigger than you. Fear means you are ready, dear Tedros: ready to quest for glory.”
Legs quivering, Tedros repeated the chaplain’s oath.
“By thy Lord, on wrest that Godes doth place on my head, I swear to uphold the honor of Camelot against all foel. I swear to be a beacon in the darknell to thy enlightened realm …”
Like the old man warned, he tripped over the strange syllables and sounds, without knowing what he was saying. And yet, somewhere in his heart he did. His eyes welled up, the moment getting to him. Just a few years ago, he was a first-year boy at the School for Good and Evil, full of bluster and insecurity.
Now the boy would be a king.
A husband.
And someday a father.
Tedros made a silent prayer: that he would do Good as all three, just like the man who had made him. A man who he loved and missed every single day of his life. A man he’d give anything to touch one last time.
The chaplain placed the crown upon Tedros’ head and tears streamed down the young king’s cheeks while the crowd roared a passionate ovation that lasted long after he’d managed to get his emotions under control.
The chaplain patted his shoulder. “And now to seal the coronation and officially make you king, you must complete the ceremonial tes—”
“Do you mind if I say a few words first?” he asked the chaplain. “To my people, I mean.”
The chaplain furrowed. “It is a bit unusual to speak before the proceedings are complete, especially since no one will hear you.”
Something fell from above, right into the folds of Tedros’ oversized robe: a small five-pointed white star, like the ones Merlin used to lay in tribute at his father’s tomb in Avalon.
“Strange,” Tedros said, studying it closely. “Why would one of these be …”
His voice instantly amplified for miles.
The crowd gaped in astonishment, as did the chaplain, but Tedros knew full well where such sorcery had come from.
He looked up into the big blue sky and smiled. “Thanks, M,” he whispered.
Then he put the magic star on his shoulder so it would broadcast him far and wide.
“Felt funny looking down at all of you without saying hello,” he spoke, his voice resounding over the cliffs. “So, um, hello! I’m Tedros. And welcome to the … show.”
Crickets.
“Right. You know who I am. Same boy who used to stand here and fidget when my father gave speeches. Just older now. And hopefully a bit better looking.”
A ripple of laughter.
Tedros smiled, feeling the warmth of the crowd. They wanted to hear from him. They wanted him to do well.
He searched for Agatha below, but the sun washed out the faces. He was so used to having his princess by his side when it mattered. But after all they’d been through, he could feel her inside him even when they were apart. What would she tell him to say?
The same thing she always told him to say: the truth about what he was feeling.
Only he was never very good at that.
Tedros took a deep breath.
“When I was a boy standing up here with my dad, Good and Evil seemed so black and white,” he said, his voice steadying. “But of all the things I learned at school, one lesson proved the most important: no one knows what is good or bad until after the story is written. No one knows if a happy ending will last or if a happy ending is happy at all. The only thing we have is the moment we are in and what we choose to do with it.
“And so here we are at this moment. A moment where riding into Camelot doesn’t feel the same as it used to when I was a boy. We aren’t the shining kingdom by which all others are measured anymore. The streets are dirty, the people are hungry, and I can feel a rot at our core. Even the king’s chamber smells a bit moldy.
“Part of it is neglect, of course,” Tedros went on, “and those responsible have been removed from power and punished. But that won’t fix our problems. Even if we could bring back my father, King Arthur couldn’t make things the way they were. The Woods have been changed forever by an Evil School Master. And though he is dead now, the line between Good and Evil has blurred. Enemies disguise as friends and friends as enemies. Look at our own Camelot, decayed from the inside.”
The masses were rapt as they listened, their bodies like trees in a windless forest.
“I may be young. I may be untested. But I trust my instincts,” Tedros declared, confidence growing. “Instincts that helped me find my way back to you even when I had Evil’s sword at my heart and an axe at my neck. Instincts that helped me choose the greatest of all princesses, soon to be your queen.”
Everyone followed his eyes to the royal gallery, where the nobles stepped back, revealing Agatha in the sun’s spotlight.
Tedros smiled, expecting applause.
He didn’t get it.
The crowd took in her pallid, ghostly face, buggy brown eyes, and witchy black helmet of hair and then seemed to look around her, as if she was a stand-in for the great princess Tedros was speaking of, as if they couldn’t believe that this was the Agatha whose fairy tale had grown so famous throughout the Endless Woods. … But then they saw the diadem on her head—the same tiara Arthur once bestowed upon his own wife—and their postures stiffened, a soft murmur building.
“Together, Agatha and I have faced down terrible villains and found our happy ending,” said Tedros. “But after a fairy tale comes real life. This is no longer my and Agatha’s story, written by the Storian. This is the story of ourkingdom, which we must all write together. A history and future you are now a part of, even those who doubted my father, even those who doubt me. Today we turn the page.”
He took a deep breath. “And to prove that this is indeed the beginning of a new Camelot, my first act as your king is to present two members of my royal court. Two people who know our kingdom better than anyone and will protect it with love and courage.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Lady Gremlaine leap out of her seat—
In a flash, Tedros tomahawked Excalibur across the stage, slashing open the scrim over the castle balcony, before the sword planted blade-first in the balcony’s archway.
“Presenting my mother, Queen Guinevere, and our greatest knight, Sir Lancelot!”
Tedros beamed down at the crowd, believing full-heartedly that since he’d learned to forgive Guinevere and Lancelot, his people would do the same.
But now there was a collective wide-eyed gape as if they’d all stopped breathing, and a cold, deathly silence.
“Come, Mother. Come Lance,” Tedros prodded, hurrying over to his mother and yanking at her hand—
Gobsmacked, Guinevere stumbled over the fallen scrim, losing a shoe and almost face-planting before Lancelot caught her and glared daggers at Tedros. “What the hell are you doing!”
“Sit down!” Tedros hissed, shoving his one-shoed mother into his throne and Lancelot into Lady Gremlaine’s seat, while Lady Gremlaine gawped in horror.
Something in the crowd changed too. Tedros felt it in his gut: the way the once warm, hopeful air had turned wary upon his unveiling of Agatha and now had become menacing and tense. Sweat pooled beneath his crown.
His heart had told him welcoming back his mother and Lancelot was the right thing to do … the Good thing …
Did I make a mistake?
He swallowed his doubt. No going back now.
“Let’s get to the test,” Tedros pressured the chaplain, eager to seal this coronation and get his mother and Agatha inside.
“Yes—uh—of course,” the chaplain stammered, his eyes darting to Guinevere and the knight as he fumbled a faded parchment card from his robes. “Uh, hear ye, hear ye. As all prior kings, King Arthur Pendragon conceived this test to prove his successor be worthy of—”
Tedros ripped the card from his hands and read it out loud, his voice booming through the magic star:
“To seal his coronation, the future King of Camelot must pull Excalibur from an ordinary stone, as I once did.”
“Wow. That’s easy,” he blurted, voice echoing.
He hadn’t meant for the crowd to hear that.
“CAN SOMEONE FIND ME A STONE?” Tedros puffed, glancing uselessly around the stage.
Lancelot shifted in his chair, which made the stage creak so loudly the audience’s eyes went to him.
“Preferably one that isn’t made out of wood,” the knight said.
A ruckus echoed behind him and everyone turned to see the red-haired altar boy careen through the fallen scrim onto the stage, having tripped on Guinevere’s shoe. “Sorry! That’s my cue!” he squawked, dragging an iron anvil behind him. “Behold! The stone from which King Arthur once pulled Excali—”
The heavy anvil splintered the wooden platform. The edge of the stage imploded and the anvil plummeted straight through the hole like a cannonball, down to a cliff, where it bounced off the rock and fell into the ocean.
“This is going well,” said Lancelot.
Tedros scorched pink.
His mother’s eyes were glued to her one shoe. Lady Gremlaine wasn’t on the stage anymore. And he couldn’t even look in Agatha’s direction. He’d wanted the coronation to show her what kind of king he’d be. Instead, she was probably as mortified as he was.
“Merlin … some help?” he peeped desperately, glancing upwards.
