One True Queen (School for Good and Evil Book 2)

Chapter 8

Agatha awoke to the smell of roses.

She opened her eyes. She was still bound and gagged by scims, but her body was moving, magically coasting past bushes and flower beds as if pushed by a strong wind. White leaves and florets fluttered from trees overhead like an enchanted snow.

Her eyes darted around, looking for the Snake.

For Y/n.

So this was where she'd been for six months. Hiding, making her classmates stray from their quests.

Plotting the fall of Camelot.

Agatha thought back to the map room. Y/n must have had some sort of voice changer, something that made her voice deep and intimidating.

And she must have had a partner. She has to have had someone she coaxed into working with her. Into kissing the Lady of the Lake. After all, the Lady had kissed a man.

And while Y/n may have had the power to change her voice, she was no man.

Agatha was still floored. Here was her friend, her sister, behind the attacks on her classmates.

Behind Chaddick's death.

The scims were moving her faster now, through blue-and-white gates and up a steep grassy slope. The scims pushed her down the hill, through a gathering mist, the fading sun infusing it with a bruised-purple glow. Over the scims' loud burbles, Agatha heard dark rumbling ahead. But she couldn't see anything but thick, gray fog. . .

Agatha coughed.

Not fog. Smoke.

Only now it was clearing and Agatha's eyes flared wide—

The scims drove her smack into a screaming mob, brandishing fiery torches and weapons under a darkening sky. The crowd spread as far as Agatha could see in every direction, converging from four different kingdoms around a walled-off plot of land.

The Four Point, Agatha thought. It's where her quest mates were headed on the Y/n's Quest Map. Now she was heading there too.

Agatha spotted Camelot's flag flying high above the Four Point.

Chills ran down her spine.

Y/n was bringing them all there for a reason.

Even so, the Four Point was still a hundred yards off with at least a thousand bodies in the way—

The scims paid no mind, barreling straight for the jagged-ice walls and thrusting the Agatha into the crowd with reckless force. She ducked her head, jammed between men and trolls, children and centaurs, scims gripping her tighter and tighter. She could hear the crowd as she squeezed through—

"King Tedros is on his way with his knights," a horned ogre said to his family.

"But I thought Camelot had no knights anymore," said his lumpy ogre daughter.

"Then he'll fight single-handedly," his humpbacked mother assured. "He's King Arthur's son."

"A useless king, that's what he is," groused her surly son. "Don't even have Excalibur."

"Watch your mouth, boy. Heard folk say they saw him riding down Glass Mountain," a pastel-dressed man cut in. "He'll be here soon—"

"And he'll make whoever's responsible for this pay," growled a troll.

Agatha's head jerked up. If they were all waiting for Tedros to save them . . .

That means they're on our side!