Fire Princess

Chapter Forty-Two

"I suppose the entrance was a bit dramatic,” Merlin mulled in his musical baritone as he reclined Tedros onto the sofa, his purple cape accidentally smothering the prince’s face. “But a good wizard can’t very well loaf in like a delivery boy, can he?”

“Don’t talk to me!” Tedros mumbled, his voice cracking as he shoved Merlin and his robes away. “You think you can mosey in and tell jokes and pretend everything’s okay?” He smeared angry tears, turning his ire on Agatha. “And just so you know, I didn’t faint, so don’t even think about it!”

“Put your legs up here,” Agatha said calmly, stripping off the prince’s socks and lifting his clammy feet onto the ottoman.

“Tell all the old farts that I didn’t faint. Tell them.”

“They’re busy eating supper, not even paying the slightest attention to you,” Agatha replied, peeking up to see Yuba and the other League members instantly duck their heads to their plates of mashed carrots and gruel at the dining table, pretending to have a conversation. Burn was playing with his teddy-bear, his dinner hardly touched.

“And even if I did faint, you fainted twice,” Tedros snapped, wiping his runny nose with his sleeve.

“Nice to see the future of Camelot is in mature hands,” said Agatha, jamming another pillow under his head.

“He was even more emotional as a child. Imagine that!” Merlin piped, smacking the dust out of his robes before he plunked down in a rocking chair, doffed his hat, and pulled a cherry lollipop out of it like a carnival magician. “Of his future princess, his father would say, ‘Look for the girl who is truly Good.’” Merlin sucked loudly on the lollipop. “I, on the other hand, said, ‘Look for the girl who will give you a good kick in the rump.’”

Tedros glowered, red-eyed. “You think this is funny?”

Merlin burped and tugged at his moustache. “Tedros, I know I have a lot to explain—”

“No. No explaining. There’s nothing to explain!” Tedros waved him off. “Mother runs off with Father’s best friend when I’m nine. Runs off with Lancelot, of all people—Lancelot, the knight I idolized, who carried me on his back and gave me my first sword and acted like he was my friend too. She didn’t even say goodbye, Merlin! As if Dad and I were strangers, as if we were nothing. But no matter how much I cried or cursed her, no matter how many times I watched Dad lock himself in his chamber, at least we still had you. You kept our family together when it was falling apart.” Tedros welled up again. “And then a week later, you disappear in the middle of the night, just like she did. Not a word to my father after guiding him his whole life. Not a word to me, who you took questing in the Woods like I was your own. Father said you left because your life was in danger—said you’d created a spell that messed with boys and girls and could bring down whole kingdoms; that word of the spell had spread and armies were coming for you. . . . But the Merlin I knew was stronger than any army, bigger than any danger. The Merlin I knew would have put my dad before his own life.”

Tedros heaved a breath. “I was ten years old and had to watch my father die, as weak as he was once strong. I kept telling myself you’d come back. Merlin couldn’t abandon me like this: an orphan in a giant castle, with no mother, no father, no one to care about me. But years went by and I told myself you were dead. You had to be. So I mourned you like I did Father, promising to make you proud for the rest of my life, wherever in heaven you were.” Tedros let out a sob, burying his face in a pillow. “And now you show up…alive?”

“That’s depressing…” Jay, the middle brother with the same brown hair as Phoenix and green eyes, whispered and Cinderella shushed him.

The brightness in Merlin’s face drained away. He flicked his finger and the lollipop evaporated as he leaned into his chair. “I should have left the castle long before that night, Tedros. Your father had stopped viewing me as his friend and more as an old fool, there only to nag and point fingers and hold him back. Indeed, he’d come to my cave only days before demanding a spell to spy on Guinevere, but I’d held firm that matters of the heart were too delicate for magic. The young Arthur would have trusted my advice and confronted her, even if it wounded his pride or led to a truth he wasn’t ready to accept. But the old Arthur, green-eyed and arrogant, stole a spell recipe from my cave like a vengeful child, changing himself from a boy to a girl in order to trap his own wife. I had to leave Camelot. Not just to protect myself, but to protect your father most of all. Had the spell not been there for him to take, perhaps Arthur and I may have found a different ending. Though that in itself may be wishful thinking. As he told me many times before that day in anger, ‘I don’t need you anymore.’”