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She still had her Wedding History lesson, but Pollux let her eat before it without alerting her chambermaids—a clear breach in protocol, since they had to know where the princess was at all hours.
Instead, Agatha had barreled into the kitchen herself, sending ten cooks into coronary shock.
“Princess Agatha,” Chef Silkima gasped, her rich brown skin flecked with flour. “What’s happened? … Is everything all r—”
“Can I get spaghetti with cheese for dinner?” said Agatha. “Lots of cheese. Tons. Like enough to ruin the dish.”
Chef Silkima and the cooks gaped down at their finished platters of cumin-spiced coconut soup, curried chicken in a green chili sauce, potato tikkis with peas and scallions, black-lentil salad with salmon crumbs, and a five-layer kulfi pistachio cake.
“Spaghetti with … cheese?” Chef Silkima croaked.
“To go, please,” said Agatha.
One of the cooks dropped his spoon.
Now, as she sat dangling bare feet into a bathtub of hot water, surrounded by mirrors and peeling gold wallpaper, Agatha twirled creamy-white spaghetti from a porcelain bowl into her mouth, savoring the melted mozzarella.
Everyone had their comfort in times of stress: Sophie had sea-salt facials, juice fasts, yoga poses, and deep-tissue massages; Tedros had dumbbells and climbing ropes and anything to work up a sweat. …
Agatha had food.
More precisely: so much food that it induced a warm, velvety coma that dulled her senses and made her unable to think beyond the gurgles of her stomach.
Reaper moseyed into the bathroom and sniffed at a scrap of cheese. He gave Agatha a curdled look, as if he thought she’d outgrown all this, and shuffled away.
Agatha and Tedros had certainly had fights before. Fights that made Agatha doubt whether he loved her or she loved him or whether they even belonged together. But this wasn’t a fight. She was sure Tedros loved her now—or at least as sure as she could be. …
Except relationships aren’t just about love, Agatha realized. Relationships are about taking off the mask you wear to make someone like you and letting them see the real you. The one you hid all along. The one you never thought was good enough to find love in the first place.
Tedros had helped her peel off her mask in her years at school. He’d seen her at her most vulnerable and her absolute worst and loved her even more for it.
But now it was Tedros’ turn to do the same and he was acting like most boys do when asked to face their feelings. …
They run.
There was another thing that also made this rift different than the others, Agatha thought, spotting the pile of letters on her desk. She could see the latest one, which she’d read so many times, yet left unanswered.
Darling,
I know you’re not reading this. I know you’re not reading any of my letters. You’re in love and have a wedding to plan and have no time for silly old me, but if you do read this, just know that you are in my heart always. And living without you has been far harder than I could ever admit out loud. So let me say it here. I miss you.
Love,
Sophie
P.S. Did you know Hort has been getting love letters from a girl?
Agatha wiped her eyes. Back at school, she’d always had Sophie by her side, the third point in the triangle between her and Tedros.
A hollow loneliness overwhelmed her and for the first time she saw it wasn’t just her old, chivalrous prince she was yearning for, but her bold, beautiful best friend too. A best friend she’d been avoiding, just like Tedros had been avoiding her.
Now she was all alone.
Outside, she heard wind and rain batter the ships in the harbor. Glancing through a small window, she saw none of these ships could sail; they were broken, neglected, and falling apart, like the rest of Camelot. Well, not all the ships: there was one that looked sturdy, with brilliant blue-and-gold finishes and milky white sails. Along the bow, she read the ship’s name … IGRAINE.
“Agatha?” Pollux’s voice echoed outside. “Shall we resume our—”
A loud hissing noise interrupted, followed by dog barks and crashing furniture.
Pollux had met Reaper.
Twenty minutes later, Agatha was in the Library, a two-story collection in the Gold Tower that must have once been impressive, but was now a heap of cobwebs, moth-eaten books, and so much dust she could hardly breathe. There were colorful sheets slung over the bookcases and desks, as if someone had started renovating a decade ago and never got around to finishing. Agatha slouched at a desk shrouded in a purple sheet, trying to take notes as Pollux scrawled on a squeaky chalkboard, his face slashed with claw-marks, suggesting he’d lost the battle with her cat.
“You certainly don’t want to be like Princess Kerber, who was so overwrought on her wedding day she ate an entire jar of peanut butter and vomited on her poor groom’s shoes. Conversely, learn from the example of Princess Muguruza, who married a commoner, nearly prompting a revolt, until she revealed her bridal gown, made entirely out of pink pearls she’d dredged from the Savage Sea. No one dared attack a girl who’d braved such treacherous waters and in time, every last dissenter forgave her. …”
Agatha glazed over, her head drooping into the purple sheet. She tried to force herself awake, prying her eyes open—
That’s when she saw the pattern stitched on the fabric.
Tiny, silver five-pointed stars in a purple night sky, like they’d been drawn by a child.
It wasn’t a sheet at all.
It was a cape.
Agatha held in a smile, her eyes on Pollux’s back. She put her nose to the purple velvet and inhaled the scent of fresh cocoa, as if someone was brewing it right now. …
“Then there was Princess Mahalaxmi, whose father kidnapped her during the ceremony and sold her to a Never warlord in Ravenbow,” Pollux rattled. “Which goes to show all family entanglements should be sorted before the wedding. …”
Agatha rose from her chair, careful not to make a sound, and slipped her palms into the cape, vanishing her hands like a magic trick … then her arms … then her shoulders. …
“I don’t hear your pen, Agatha. This is for your own good,” Pollux tutted—
But by the time he turned, all that remained of his student was a single clump, somehow left behind.
The moment Agatha put her face through the cape, she felt herself swaddled in velvet, then plummeting through darkness, pulses of blinding white light streaking by. She closed her eyes and let herself free-fall, her arms raised, her one-shoed feet splayed, her mind untethering from her thoughts, her fears … until at last she crashed face-first into something fluffy and soft and tasted sweet cloud in her mouth.
Agatha opened her eyes and craned up to a purple night sky lit by thousands of silvery five-pointed stars, as if the childish pattern on the cape in the Library had come to life in heavenly dimension.
“The Celestium,” Tedros once called it. The place where wizards go to think.
Agatha rose to her knees and saw there was indeed a wizard peering thinkingly at her, sitting cross-legged on the cloud with purple silk robes, a droopy cone hat, horn-rimmed spectacles, and soft-furred violet slippers.
“Merlin,” she smiled.
“Sorry to interrupt your lessons, dear girl, but I’m afraid we have more important ones at the moment,” the old wizard said, sipping at a mug of cream-topped cocoa. “First, tell me: Do you want whipped cream in your chocolate? Provided my hat complies. A third mug of cocoa might be too much to ask. He’s been rather insubordinate of late, insisting on a minimum wage and a month of paid vacation—”
“A ‘third’?” asked Agatha, confused. “But there’s only you and me here.”
“Goodness, you two really do have a hard time seeing eye to eye, don’t you?” Merlin murmured.
He leaned back, revealing a boy sitting next to him, who’d been obscured by the wizard’s profile.
Tedros didn’t look at Agatha. He held his own undrunk mug of chocolate, heaped with cream and rainbow sprinkles, his bare legs dangling off the cloud. He wore a sleeveless white undershirt and pajama shorts, his gold king’s crown sunken into his wet hair.
“Agatha and I have work to do, Merlin. Not that you would know since you’ve been gone for half a year, but we’re in charge of a kingdom now,” Tedros said, dumping his steaming mug over the cloud. “Our coffers are empty. We have no knights. Mother and Lance are missing. There’s unrest all over the Woods. We don’t have time for a wizard’s games.”
“You used to share your chocolate with Agatha. Now you’re wasting it,” Merlin upbraided him.
“I didn’t ask for chocolate,” said Tedros, yanking his crown tighter. “I’m too old to be bribed with sweets.”
“But not too old to let your dear princess go hungry?” Merlin asked.
“I’m stuffed from dinner,” said Agatha, trying to play both sides.
“Where’s the girl’s cocoa!” the wizard bellowed into his hat.
“You can’t keep me here all night,” Tedros scorned. “Air’s too thin in the Celestium.”
“I can keep you here until you’re as white-haired as me. I’ll just turn you into a goldfish and put you in a bowl. Agatha can feed you,” said Merlin, giving his hat a good shake. “That is if she doesn’t dump your food off a cloud.”
The hat spat chocolate at Merlin, who promptly sat on the hat in return. “Now let’s begin,” the wizard harrumphed.
“Begin what?” asked Agatha.
“We don’t need this, Merlin,” Tedros hounded.
“Need what?” asked Agatha.
“You need this more than your obsessive workouts and overdeveloped stomach muscles,” said Merlin, sitting harder on his squirming hat.
“You don’t know anything about me anymore,” Tedros snapped. “You disappeared when I needed you like you always do, haven’t sent so much as a postcard in six months, and then drop in acting like you can help me when you don’t have the faintest clue. Just go back to whatever hole you were hiding in.”
“Because you were doing such a fine job as king without me,” said the wizard.
Tedros snarled. “My father was right to banish you from the castle.”
“Well, you’re certainly seeming more and more like him each day,” said Merlin.
“Stop it! You’re like squabbling hens, the both of you!” Agatha yelled, echoing into the night. “What is this? What are we doing? Why are we here!”
The two men gaped at her sheepishly.
But it was the hat that spoke from beneath Merlin’s rump, scowling at them all—
“Couples therapy!”
6
(#ulink_2b2d5d3e-b837-54ea-a95c-b4f62d40efb1)
TEDROS (#ulink_2b2d5d3e-b837-54ea-a95c-b4f62d40efb1)
Two Theories (#ulink_2b2d5d3e-b837-54ea-a95c-b4f62d40efb1)
Somewhere inside, Tedros knew this would happen. He couldn’t continue the way he’d been going, treating Agatha like a distant cousin while wrestling his own demons down down down into the basement of his soul.
These past six months, he’d told himself it was the only way forward—that Agatha was best left to the hopeful, happy duties of wedding planning while he reassured his castle staff that Camelot would return to glory. But he could only lie to himself for so long. There was nothing reassuring about his guards looking at him with pity and doubt, their eyes darting to his sword jammed in a balcony. And there was nothing hopeful or happy about a princess planning a wedding to a boy who was doing everything he could to avoid her.
Someone had to intervene. Someone had to save him from himself. But now it was happening and he wasn’t ready.
The worst part was that he’d been through this before—only he’d been the one ignored and abandoned. He’d been the one in Agatha’s place.
He was nine years old. His mother had fled the castle with Lancelot, deserting both him and his father. But right when he needed his dad most, his father turned to drink instead, slowly poisoning himself rather than admit how much pain he was in. He’d begged his father to stop, but Arthur insisted it was Tedros’ mother who needed help, not him. Yet in the end, it was his mother who’d been honest with herself, giving her a second chance at life, while his father numbed his feelings all the way to the grave.
Now, sitting with Agatha and Merlin, Tedros felt his own buried pain return. He didn’t want Agatha to suffer the way he once did, shut out by someone she loved. And he didn’t want to be like his father, refusing help until it was too late.
“I thought everything was going to be okay when we left school,” he said finally, unable to look at his princess. “I didn’t want her to worry for the rest of her life. She’s been through enough. But then I saw her watching me this morning when I was on the balcony and I could see she was hurting—”
“‘She’ meaning … me?” Agatha asked.
Tedros saw Merlin squeeze Agatha’s wrist, telling her this wasn’t her turn to talk.
“Merlin, where were you all this time?” Tedros said, clearing his throat. “No one’s seen you since the coronation. Not that I really ‘saw’ you then either.”
“I’d hope not. It took a meticulous spell to turn me into a mosquito that could last a decent amount of time without sucking someone’s blood,” said Merlin.
“Too bad it couldn’t be Lady Gremlaine’s,” Agatha offered.
The wizard frowned at her.
“You watched the coronation as a mosquito?” Tedros asked.
“I was hoping to avoid detection and have all attention be on you, my boy. If anyone saw me, they would have foolishly tried to execute me and it would have led to quite the spectacle indeed. But then you created your own spectacle by presenting your mother and Lancelot to the people against all reasonable advice. It was a stunning act of stubbornness, something a swaggering boy at school would do rather than a new king trying to build faith with his kingdom.”
“And I’m sorry for it,” said Tedros softly. “I thought it was the right thing at the time.”
“I could have helped—” Agatha started.
Merlin’s hat bit her bottom.
“Maybe I did do everything wrong and messed it all up. Maybe I am the worst king in the world. But isn’t that punishment enough?” Tedros fought. “You didn’t have to punish me too by disappearing for six months!”
“Punish you?” Merlin said, aghast. “Tedros, dear, I’ve been gone keeping two people you love safe.”
Tedros gaped, suddenly understanding. “You were with Mom and Lance! I’ve been going crazy trying to track them. … I got these mysterious cards from different parts of the Woods—”
“And she would have sent far more had I let her,” said Merlin.
