One True King

by Soman Chainani

  Agatha glances at me.

  For the slightest second.

  The magic is already forming between my bound hands, my fingers prying apart just enough to release it into the air . . . floating out of my palms . . . a pink orb of light . . . in the shape of . . .

  . . . an apple.

  Agatha stares at it through tears, then at me, confounded.

  I glare at her hard, willing her to think like me.

  She looks at the apple again.

  The apple Tedros wouldn’t let her eat on our journey, even when she’d asked.

  Her gaze sharpens like a knife.

  The apple.

  The Lady.

  The magic.

  She understands.

  Tears dry up.

  Her jaw sets.

  Sophie sees the shift in her, follows her eyes to me—

  But Agatha is already jumping on top of the banister, diving with her cuffed arms out, swooping like a phoenix towards the Snake.

  Only one problem: all of us are chained to her—

  Sophie goes jerking up after Agatha, tumbling with a scream towards the first level, before the witches and I and the others yank the chain back, suspending the two girls in air, upside down, their heads swinging for the floor. Japeth whirls around in surprise, but Agatha is right there in his face. She bludgeons him with shackled hands, knocking him off-kilter, then snatches at his collar, grabbing something from beneath it. Dot manages to fire a spell from her lit finger, turning the chain over Agatha to chocolate. Agatha and Sophie snap free, crashing down onto King Dutra and Empress Vaisilla, who shriek and swat at them, pinned beneath the girls and yelling for their guards. Meanwhile, Sophie angles her bound fists to burn her glow through Agatha’s cuffs, Agatha doing the same to Sophie’s. Chains break at the same time, before Sophie swipes a brooch from Vaisilla and spears through her and Agatha’s gags. But now soldiers are running for both girls, Japeth leading them, swords out to slash them through—

  The soldiers pull back, startled.

  Because Japeth’s crown is . . . moving.

  Rising off his head without a sound.

  It drifts across the room, five spires of gold, shining in sunlight through the roof, passing over stunned leaders, before Camelot’s crown fits down onto another’s head.

  Agatha’s head.

  Japeth surges for her, but Sophie blocks him, her fingertip glowing hot pink.

  “Bow down, worm,” Sophie hisses.

  Then she peeks back at King Agatha, mouthing: “What’s happening?”

  Agatha’s eyes stay locked on Japeth.

  Baffled guards pivot their weapons between them.

  When Agatha speaks, it is with pure fire.

  “Here is your liar. Here is your Snake. He stole the blood of the heir and faked being king this whole time.” She holds up a piece of fabric, stained with blood. “Excalibur never chose him. Not the first time. Not now. It chose this. Without it, he’s not king. He’s no one. He’s nothing.”

  “More rebel tricks—” Japeth mocks, appealing to the leaders.

  “Oh?” says Agatha.

  She thrusts the scrap of fabric at Sophie, who’s caught on to the game. Sophie takes Chaddick’s blood into her hand, smiling imperiously as the crown flies from Agatha’s head to her own. Her white dress magically morphs into a coronation gown.

  “I could get used to this,” King Sophie says.

  King Dutra of Foxwood stumbles to his feet. “Explain this, Rhian!”

  “I don’t understand!” Empress Vaisilla cries. “Why would the crown go to them, Rhian—”

  “Rhian?” Sophie puffs. “Oh, no, no, no. Rhian is dead.” Her emerald eyes cut through the Snake. “This is Japeth. He killed his twin and has been pretending to be Rhian ever since, like a grand old stooge. All of you are his fools.”

  At first, they think she’s joking. Then they see the steel in Sophie’s glare, coupled with the crown on her head . . . The room erupts into commotion, demanding King Rhian respond to the charges and punish the girls’ lies.

  I can see Japeth’s cool shell cracking. He wants to turn into the Snake right here, to crucify these girls with a thousand scims. But he can’t give himself away. He’s playing his brother now. His Good, kingly brother.

  Japeth turns to his soldiers. “Kill them!”

  But they don’t move, even his Camelot pirates stupefied by the crown on Sophie’s head.

  Japeth’s facade breaks. He roars with murder, his face monstrous and gnarled. Excalibur out, he rushes at Sophie, for the blood clasped in her hand. Sophie rears in surprise, the scrap of blood fumbled from her palm, into the air, about to catch on Japeth’s sword—

  Agatha’s glow scorches the blood, setting it aflame, incinerating it to nothing.

  Ashes dangle in the sunlight like dust . . .

  Then they’re gone.

  So, too, is Camelot’s crown.

  Excalibur rips from Japeth’s hands and plunges back into the pile of stone.

  No one moves, the house silent as a grave.

  Japeth faces Agatha, her gold fingertip still smoking.

  “There is only one true heir now. Only one true king,” Agatha says, her voice big as thunder. “A king who warned you. The truth cannot be spoken. It can only be seen.”

  A truth Japeth doesn’t see at first.

  Then he hears the gasps.

  Slowly the Snake turns.

  Tedros rises, the Lion, the King, the crown of Camelot glittering in his hair.

  Leaders drop to their knees, awed and overcome, a wave of humility and allegiance.

  “Long live the King!” Agatha proclaims.

  “Long live the King!” the leaders resound.

  Tedros steps into the sunlight and pulls Excalibur free, the stone shattering from his force.

  His gaze never leaves Japeth.

  Arthur’s sword soars out of Tedros’ hands.

  It lifts over the Snake, glowing hot red.

  Japeth’s eyes widen, reptilian blue—

  “Like father, like son,” says the King.

  The sword falls.

  This time, no mistakes.

  32

  THE STORIAN

  Samsara

  When it comes to wedding preparations, a witch can only take so much.

  Which is why Sophie was in a dank sewer, her black-spike heels clacking along the path that bordered a river of sludge. When she was Dean, Sophie had tried to make the School for Evil more enticing, fumigating these sewers with sandalwood incense, changing the color of the sludge to a resplendent blue, even turning the dungeons into a nightclub party on Saturday nights for the highest-ranking Nevers. But in her absence at Camelot, Professor Manley had seized control of the school and restored everything to its old, decrepit gloom.

  Evelyn Sader’s dress hugged her tightly, refitted into a black leather sheath. Once, she’d have done anything to get the dress off; now, it was her loyal companion, shape-shifting to her moods and desires, like her own version of Hester’s tattoo. If it was up to her, she’d mold the dress into a black vampire gown for the wedding, complete with thigh-high boots, a shimmering red cape, and heavy necklaces laden with blood rubies and signs of the cross.

  But that wouldn’t go over well with the groom.

  Boys, Sophie sighed, running her fingers over walls, struggling to see down the tunnel. Soon the solid stone turned to rusty grating and Sophie found the keyhole, using her old Dean’s key to pry the door open. She’d wanted to escape the wedding planning for just a moment, to catch her breath and be with her thoughts, but something had compelled her towards the Doom Room, even though she hadn’t the faintest clue why. She only had terrible memories of this torture chamber for wayward Nevers and the big, hairy man-wolf that probed for weaknesses and made nightmares out of them. She still remembered the way he sniffed her hair, his paws stroking her. He’d paid the price in the end. Pushed into the sludge and left to drown. For daring to touch her. For awakening her Evil. Th
e Doom Room had stayed beastless ever since, the punishment of students left to the teachers.

  But now she’d felt called back, all these years later. Sophie stood alone in the dark, taking in the bare walls, as if there was still something here for her, something she couldn’t yet see. She closed her eyes, listening to the silence, the creak of the grate, the flit of a moth. Her heartbeat picked up, a tight pitter-patter, as if struggling to keep control. She tried to focus on the river sounds, a thick, soothing rush. But now the sludge had a life of its own, churning faster, harder, its roar thundering in her chest, swallowing her up. Something brushed her ear, the kiss of fur. Heat clawed her body, the threat of an animal’s touch. She tasted tears. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. This is why she’d come: to find her beasts, to make peace with them. The one she’d killed. And the one she couldn’t save. Both had to forgive her if she was to be free. She could feel them now, the two beasts inside her, entwined around her heart, pulling her towards an ending, life or death, she couldn’t know—

  A chill hit her.

  She startled awake.

  Something was there.

  In the darkness.

  Two coal-black eyes.

  “Sophie? Is that you?” a voice echoed.

  She turned, a thin shadow coming down the tunnel for her—

  Sophie spun back to the dark, her fingerglow lit.

  But there was nothing, except the memory of ghosts.

  A SHORT TIME before, the bride had been in her last fitting, poised on a pedestal in Good Hall as tall, floating nymphs poked her with pins and clips and measuring sticks. The groom lay on his back on the blue marble, sweaty and shirtless from a workout, eating chips out of Merlin’s hat and reading the Royal Rot.

  “You shouldn’t be here, you know,” Agatha warned him, as the neon-haired nymphs hovered over her. “Bad luck for you to see the dress before the wedding.”

  “Bad luck for me to get my head cut off too, but here I am,” said Tedros, his nose in the paper. “Besides, I can’t see anything with all those overgrown pixies around you. Listen to this hogwash: Tonight, King Tedros and Princess Agatha will be married at the School for Good and Evil by their own choosing, even though every king of Camelot has married at Camelot Castle since the founding of the realm thousands of years ago. In an exclusive interview, King Tedros insisted this is because he wants to ‘show unity between the School and Camelot,’ after Rhian and his brother sought to overthrow the school and the Storian kept within. But privately, sources tell us King Tedros moved the wedding because the castle is under repair, due to a ‘de-Snake-ification,’ which the king ordered to rid Camelot of every last vestige of Rhian and Japeth’s reign.”

  “Um, that’s all true,” said Agatha, but Tedros barreled on—

  “We at the Royal Rot will keep a keen eye on the king’s expenditures, now that the Camelot Beautiful funds have been unfrozen. Word is he’s also spending a pretty penny to revive the Camelot Courier with a new staff, so the Rot isn’t left ‘unchallenged,’” Tedros scoffed.

  “That’s true too,” said Agatha.

  “Don’t encourage them,” Tedros growled. He grabbed more chips from the hat and kept reading.

  His bride sighed. “There will always be people looking over our shoulder. But that’s why I wanted the wedding here,” she said, the nymphs finishing their work. “This world is powered by its stories. Stories that are real to those who live them, but stories that also inspire and teach and belong to every last soul in these Woods. And this wedding is about our story: a prince from this world and a girl from beyond it, brought together by an unlikely education.” Agatha looked out the window into the golden afternoon, my steel edges glinting high in the School Master’s tower, writing the words she was speaking at this very moment. “Camelot might be our Ever After,” said Agatha. “But this is where our fairy tale began.”

  “See? Why didn’t they write that?” Tedros asked, mouth full, finally looking at her—

  He dropped Merlin’s hat, his eyes wide.

  Agatha smiled down, the nymphs parted. “Because they only talked to you.”

  The dress was as white as a summer cloud, a three-quarter-sleeve gown with a plunging neck and a cascade of shimmering tulle from the waist sweeping out across the floor, catching the light of the hall’s torches and casting sparkles on Agatha’s face. Her hair had been pulled into a delicate twist and wrapped in a wide white-silk band, her makeup fresh and light with a peach sheen on her lips. Diamond studs shined in her ears, a matching bracelet on her wrist. As for the shoes . . .

  “The nymphs had their ideas,” said Agatha, lifting her dress to reveal two silver clumps, covered in crystals. “And I had mine.”

  Tedros had no words, his skin so pink in his neck and chest that Agatha thought he might burst into flames.

  Luckily the nymphs needed the dress for final adjustments and stripped Agatha of it, along with the hairband and jewels and shoes, leaving her in the unfussy blue frock she had on underneath. She wiped away her lipstick, hopping off the pedestal—

  “Can you please wear your wedding dress every day?” Tedros asked.

  “Can you please wear clothes in public?” Agatha replied, sprawling onto his chest.

  They were alone in the vast hall, the half-dressed king and his barefoot princess, like two first years who’d snuck out after curfew. Neither spoke for a long while, Tedros running his fingers through her hair, their breaths falling in synch.

  “Only a few hours now,” said Agatha. “They’ll start letting guests in soon.”

  Tedros didn’t say anything.

  Agatha rolled over, her chin on his chest. “Something’s bothering you.”

  “No, no. I mean . . . it’s just strange, isn’t it? Not having anyone to give us away?” said Tedros. “No mom. No dad. For either of us. Dad’s at peace now, his ghost finally at rest. But still . . . No Dovey or Lesso. No Robin or Sheriff or even Lance. Not even Tink. None of them lived to see the end. But we did. We made it somehow. Through the tests. Through the darkness. I just wish the others had made it with us.”

  Agatha saw the emotion in his eyes, the elation and sadness of everything that had happened, and she, too, felt it in her throat. “I wish the same thing, Tedros,” she said, lying back and holding him. “We do have Merlin, though.”

  Tedros smiled. “Nineteen-year-old Merlin who we’ll get to watch grow old, day by day.”

  “Where is he? Haven’t seen him since we got to school.”

  “In the Gallery of Good,” said Tedros, fidgeting with his ring. “They have an exhibit there with some of his old spellbooks and things. Probably wants to break the glass and get them all back.”

  Agatha laughed. “Doesn’t seem happy to be young again, does he?”

  “Merlin’s happy as long as he has a pupil to badger and nitpick,” said Tedros. “Thankfully, he’ll be badgering me for a very long time.”

  He fell quiet, turning the ring round on his finger, studying its carvings. “On our carriage ride here, he asked me what I was going to do with it. The last of the Storian’s rings. He said all the leaders look to me as the Lion now. If I burn Camelot’s ring, I’ll be the One True King, with the power to write others’ fates. The power to claim the Storian’s magic and remake our world as Good as I want.”

  Agatha sat up. “And what did you tell him?”

  “That I will never be the One True King,” Tedros answered calmly. “Because a true king knows there is more than one king. I will be followed by another and another, each protecting this ring, each leading the Woods for as long as we are alive. And with my time on the throne, I’ll be the best leader I can, while knowing that the Storian is the true master of our fate. I can’t stop new tests from arising, but I can will myself to conquer them. Man and Pen in balance. Me and the Pen. The Storian has a larger plan for all of us. I am only one part of it.”

  Agatha held her breath, looking at him, the boy she once knew, become a man.

  High in a tow
er, I paint this in their storybook: Agatha and the King. The last swan in my steel goes calm, my days of writing out of turn at an end, a Pen returned to its familiar rhythms . . .

  Tedros shrugged. “But then Merlin’s hat bit him, insisting it was time for Merlin’s nap, and M said he’s not a child anymore and they had a holy row. That’s how I ended up with his hat. M said he wanted to be left alone for once—”

  He saw Agatha still staring at him. “What?”

  She traced the faint pink scar on his neck, Excalibur’s mark. “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine . . .”

  “Now she’s stealing my lines,” said the boy, wrestling her playfully. “Did you really think I was dead for good?”

  “I still haven’t forgiven you for it,” Agatha said, trying in vain to pin him. “What if I had died from the sheer shock and then you came back to life?”

  “Dunno. Marry Sophie instead?”

  Agatha smacked him. Tedros pinned her. They kissed passionately on the cold marble floor.

  “Oh, kill me now,” a voice grouched—

  Agatha and Tedros turned to see Beatrix tramp in with Reena and Kiko.

  “Romping like rabbits while we manage the wedding,” said Beatrix.

  “You?” Agatha asked. “I thought Sophie was in charge!”

  “Sophie went running off right when we were doing decorations,” said Reena. “Professor Anemone helped us instead.”

  “And the witches,” Kiko chimed.

  “Witches,” said Tedros, his face clouding. “Helping with wedding decorations . . .”

  “But why would Sophie run off?” Agatha pressed. “Did anyone see where she went?”

  “Towards the Doom Room, last I saw,” said Reena.

  Agatha sat up. “The Doom Room?”

  “YOU OKAY?” AGATHA panted, pulling Sophie out of the dungeon cell. “Why are you in here?”

  Sophie stammered, her skin damp: “S-s-sorry, I didn’t mean for you to . . .”

  But Agatha wasn’t looking at her anymore, her gaze over Sophie’s shoulder into the Doom Room. Agatha’s eyes narrowed before she closed the grating, hugging her chest to it, making sure it was shut.