MAXINE

Part 2

Ever After

"You don't know the first thing about me," Tedros spat, and clubbed his princess in the face with a musty pillow.

Agatha coughed and bashed him with a pillow right back, knocking him against her black bed frame, as feathersburst all over him. Reaper leapt onto Tedros' face, trying to eat them. "I know too much about you is the problem," Agatha snarled and grabbed at the poorly set bandage under her prince's blue collar. Tedros shoved her away—Agatha tackled him back, before Tedros snatched Reaper and threw the cat at her head. Agatha ducked and Reaper sailed into the bathroom, flailing bald, wrinkled paws, before landing headfirst in the toilet. "If you knew me, you'd know I do things myself," Tedros huffed, tightening his shirt laces.

"You threw my cat at me?" Agatha yelled, launching to her feet. "Because I'm trying to save you from gangrene?"

"That cat is Satan," Tedros hissed, watching Reaper try to climb out of the toilet bowl and slide back down. "And if you knew me, you'd know I hate cats."

"No doubt you like dogs—wet-mouthed, simple, and now that I think about it, a lot like you."

Tedros glowered at her. "Getting personal over a bandage, are we?"

"Three weeks and the wound isn't healing, Tedros," Agatha pressed, scooping Reaper up and toweling him off with her sleeve. "It'll fester if I don't treat it—"

"Maybe they do it differently in graveyards, but where I come from, a bandage does the trick."

"A bandage that looks like it was made by a two-year-old?" Agatha mocked.

"You try getting stabbed with your own sword as you're vanishing," said Tedros. "You're lucky I'm even alive—one more second and he'd have run me through—"

"One more second and I'd have remembered what an ape you are and left you behind."

"As if you could find a boy in this rat trap town better than me."

"At this point, I'd trade you for a little space and quiet—"

"I'd trade you for a decent meal and a warm bath!" Tedros boomed.

Agatha glared at him, Reaper shivering in her arms. Finally Tedros exhaled, looking ashamed. He stripped off his shirt, spread out his arms, and sat on the bed. "Have at it, princess."

For the next ten minutes, neither spoke as Agatha rinsed the four-inch gash across her prince's chest with rose oil, witch hazel, and a dash of white peony from her mother's cart of herbal potions. Thinking about how Tedros earned the wound, a hairbreadth from his heart, made Agatha's stomach chill, and she forced her focus back to her task. She didn't need to think about it—not when the screaming nightmares did the job of reminding her well enough. The School Master turning young . . . grinning at Tedros, bound to a tree . . . eyes flashing red as he stabbed . . . How Tedros didn't have nightmares about their last moments at school, Agatha couldn't grasp, but maybe that was the difference between a prince and a Reader. To a boy from the Woods, every day that didn't end in death was a good one.

Agatha sprinkled boiled turmeric on his wound and Tedros clenched with low moans. "Told you it wasn't healing," she murmured.

Tedros gave her a lion's growl and turned away. "Your mother hates me. That's why she's never home."

"She's busy looking for patients," said Agatha, rubbing the yellow powder in. "Have to eat, don't we?"

"Then why does she leave her medicine cart here?"

Agatha's hand paused on Tedros' chest. She'd been asking herself the same question about her mother's long disappearances. Agatha rubbed harder and her prince winced. "Look, for the last time, she doesn't hate you."