“Tedros,” Agatha breathed.
Across the stage, Sophie watched them together, feeling her own heart fill up. For Tedros to risk his life and be this courageous when his people needed it most . . . He wasn’t just a prince. He was every inch a king. Any residue of Sophie’s envy drained away, replaced by gratitude and admiration. She’d give him and his queen the best wedding two friends could ask for.
The Lion freed Agatha and gazed into her big brown eyes.
“Go,” he said. “Before the rogue comes back.”
“No,” Agatha said firmly. “We’re a team now. We’re fighting him togeth—”
The Lion pointed his gold glow and sent her flying way up the flagpole. Camelot’s flag magically came loose and tied around her waist, lashing her to the pole and out of the Snake’s reach.
“Get me down!” Agatha yelled.
The Lion winked at her and stormed back into battle—
The Snake rushed him headfirst, smashing the Lion against the pole, before the Lion delivered a vicious kick to his thigh, scattering a few scims and revealing more of the Snake’s milk-white flesh. The two masked men launched at each other, firing spells and scims, shattering two more frozen walls, the remainder of the stage collapsing under their every step, until they were on the final piece of the gallows, a small square of scorched wood. With their bodies jammed together, they could no longer rely on magic and the two set on each other with their fists, trying to knock the other off the platform and into the fiery pit below.
As the Lion clocked the Snake, a scim crawled out of a hole and snagged the Lion by the ankle, yanking him towards the edge of the stage. The Lion swiveled and stomped on the scim, crushing it. But now the Snake came from behind, hands out, about to push the Lion off the stage and face-first into the blaze below— Sophie screamed.
The Lion whirled just in time, belting the Snake with all of his might, who staggered backwards and plummeted off the stage, landing in the fire and dispersing to a thousand shrieking scims. Wounded, the scims glowed green and rose shakily into the air, forming a massive phantom cobra in the sky. It hissed at the Lion with the promise of vengeance before spraying into the night, terrible shrieks echoing.
Covered in blood and bruises, the Lion stood on what was left of the stage, gold mask glistening in the moonlight, his chest heaving.
Slowly he raised his head to the boy pirates clutching prisoners in the field.
The Lion roared.
Pirates dropped their weapons and ran.
Students and citizens let out a raucous cry, the Four Point reclaimed and the Snake beaten back.
“LONG LIVE KING TEDROS!” someone shouted.
“LONG LIVE THE KING!” said another.
As Nicola climbed the flagpole to bring Agatha down, Hort and Dot kneeled to comfort Reena and Beatrix, who were sobbing over their lost best friend. Hester and the witches hurried to the sides of the other Evers and Nevers, many of who’d been wounded in their battle against the pirates.
Indeed, the questers were so quick to help each other that none of them noticed that inside the billows of smoke coming off the stage Sophie was still trapped on the lone wall standing.
But the Lion had.
He strode over the misty crumbles of stage until at last he reached her, his jacket ripped open and sweat soaking his light blue shirt. He burnt her scims away and squashed them under his boot, leaving a puddle of black goo. Then he looked at Sophie through his mask.
“Thank you,” he said. “If you hadn’t screamed to warn me, I’d be dead.”
“Can’t have you dying yet, Teddy,” Sophie sighed, rubbing at her sore wrists. “I’m your wedding planner.”
“Are you?” he said.
His eyes reflected mischief, like a hall of mirrors.
Something flooded inside Sophie. Something hot and stormy in the deepest swells of her heart.
It was something she’d never felt with a prince.
Slowly she reached up and pulled the mask off the Lion’s face.
Sophie staggered back.
It wasn’t Tedros.
The boy had tanned skin the color of amber and copper-brown hair cropped close to his head like a soldier’s helmet. He had a strong brow bone, a long, straight nose, sensual lips, and thick dark brows that ran flat over his eyes like two streaks of paint. Beads of sweat dotted his coat of brown stubble and his eyes seemed to change colors with the intensity of his stare, from blue to hazel and all the shades in between.
He looked her age. Perhaps a bit older.
One thing was for sure, though. She’d never seen such a beautiful boy in her life, masculine, sultry, and smelling of salt and sand, as if he’d been dewed from the mouth of a desert flower.
“Who are you?” she choked.
“A humble servant of Camelot,” he said, calm and commanding. “Come to protect the king and his princess.”
Sophie shook her head. “But . . . but . . .”
“I suppose that isn’t the whole truth,” said the boy. “My loyalty is to Camelot and I will fight until my dying breath to make sure the rightful king weds his rightful queen. But I’ve also come to find someone else along the way. Someone I saw in a storybook and haven’t been able to stop thinking about since. Someone who in my quest to protect Camelot . . . perhaps I can protect too.”
“Who?” Sophie asked, confused.
From inside his shirt, the boy pulled a red rose.
“The girl who’s already protected me,” he whispered.
He leaned in and kissed her, slowly and deeply, his hands taking her by the waist. Sophie heard herself gasp, his breath filling her mouth, her body lighting up in his grip. She closed her eyes, lost in the softness of his lips, his hot-spice scent, and the impossibility of this moment in the wake of all that had come before. . . .
His lips slipped off hers.
She opened her eyes and the Lion was gone.
Sophie stood there in the fading smoke, her heart throttling.
A delusion.
A dream.
Something.
But then she felt a drizzle on her neck.
She raised her fingers and pulled down the perfect red rose, dripping with his sweat, that he’d slid into her hair as he kissed her.
But that wasn’t all that the Lion had left behind.
Because across the stage, as the last smoke cleared, she saw a girl wrapped in Camelot’s flag watching her . . . her pale, big-eyed face as shell-shocked as Sophie’s had been once upon a time, when another red rose had dropped into their story just like this. . . .
A rose from a boy who was never supposed to be in their story at all.
PART II
21
TEDROS
Allies and Enemies
He dreamed of his father again.
Staring at Tedros through harsh, peacock-blue eyes.
But this time, King Arthur was taller than he’d been in real life. As tall as the statue of him that Tedros had desecrated.
They met on the rooftop of the Blue Tower under gold night clouds. Tedros was in pajama shorts, no shirt, and his feet were bare and wet. He looked down and saw the roof was flooded with water an inch thick, mirroring formless clouds. Only the clouds had a different shape in the water’s reflection. They looked like lions.