I still feel the heat from here.
Little by little, the crowd quieted, sensing the magnitude of the moment, realizing that they too were now pledging loyalty to Man over me. Sophie seemed to stir from her daze, as if deep inside, a kernel of the past had shaken loose in her memory.
“The last piece of the Storian’s power,” the king declared, fixed on Bertie’s ring. “The last tether between Man and Pen.”
Bertie stepped forward, his eyes on the king.
“Rhian” nodded.
My spirit cries out in its shell—
The Sheriff’s old friend opens his palm. Nottingham’s ring falls into the fire.
Crackle! Whish! Pop!
The ring is no more.
All that’s left of me is a whisper.
For the first time, the king’s face softens, the regal facade falling away, as if he too had dipped into memory. “With my Pen, I vow to write these Woods as they should be. To give all your stories the endings they deserve.” His gaze fell on Dean Brunhilde in the crowd. “Including mine.”
The Dean locked eyes with “Rhian,” a cold tingle worming up her spine. She peered closer at him—
“He sees you!” Arjun blurted, grabbing her. “Rhian remembers!” By the time the Dean turned back, the king had regained his poise, his focus on his bride.
“No more rings left. No more pledges to make,” he said, touching Sophie’s cheek. “Except one.”
Slowly his eyes lifted.
From Lionsmane’s tip birthed two golden rings.
One floated into the king’s hand.
One into his bride’s.
Lionsmane glowed brighter in the sky, the witness to this moment, both altar and grail.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” the king said to Sophie.
He slipped his ring onto her finger.
What power I have left dwindles, my words fainter on the page, as if they cannot sustain another blow.
Sophie stayed lost in his eyes.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” she repeated.
No hesitation: she slid her ring onto his finger.
“Then by the power of the Pen, Man’s Pen,” the boy proclaimed, looking up into the sky, “I ask Lionsmane to seal the bonds of this marriage. To crown Sophie my queen. To name me, Rhian of Camelot, the One True King of these Woods!”
Lionsmane burned brighter, brighter, drinking in all the force I have lost. Suddenly, it is alive, becoming me, my powers stolen into the hands of this king. Against the night, his pen paints a queen’s crown, five ribbons of jewels topped with a ring of fleur de lis—
Instantly, the crown came to life, a dazzling tower of diamonds, as if the king’s wish had made it true, before the crown set down upon Sophie’s head. Sophie touched its grooves, the blinding glare of jewels casting sparkles on her hands. A strange bubble of light streaked past her, and she swiveled her head to follow it before she remembered what she was supposed to focus on: the crowd chanting her name . . . her wedding to the king nearly sealed. . . .
As for this king, his focus was only on the pen, alive with the power of a hundred flames. His eyes quivered with triumph.
The rings had been destroyed.
The queen had her crown.
The prophecy was complete.
Raising his hands, he reached up for Lionsmane, the Pen he’d pillaged and betrayed and murdered for, the Pen that could now bring his deepest wishes to life. He claimed its warm gold in his palm, seizing its powers, seizing immortality, a roar rising into his throat and unleashed to the sky—
The light of the pen snuffed out, its metal turned cold in his hands.
The crown vanished from Sophie’s head.
So did the crown on the king’s.
Their wedding rings disappeared, too.
Across the gardens, the crowd stood stunned.
Sophie startled from her trance, looking to her groom.
“Rhian” was frozen, his teeth clenched.
Here in my school tower, a bolt of heat lights up my steel.
There is one ring left, you see.
A ring which precludes full transfer of my powers. A ring this king does not know of.
And it is closer than he thinks.
Now the last swan in my steel pumps its wings, harder, harder, as if to make up for all the other swans lost, all the other kingdoms who’ve surrendered their rings.
Over Camelot’s castle, silver lightning lashed through the sky, imploding Rhian’s statue, and the whole of the frozen stage came plummeting down. People in the mob screamed, diving for cover—
The iced pool shattered to the ground, launching bride and groom in opposite directions. Chunks of ice hailed around them, bashing into spectators.
“Watch out!” Kei yelled, tackling Sophie—
The remnants of Rhian’s statue cratered into the dirt behind her, a mountain of rubble.
All went quiet in the gardens, thick with the smell of fire and ice.
Slowly, adults, children, creatures inched out of their hiding places.
Kei lifted his head, Sophie curled up beneath him, her eyes quivering with the blankness of someone who didn’t know where or who she was. She spotted the king, flat on his stomach near the statue’s ruins, Lionsmane clenched in his fist. Seeing “Rhian” centered her—
But suddenly, from the king’s belt, Excalibur rocketed out of its sheath by its own power, flying high over the castle, swordtip gleaming like the point of a pen, before it came axing down into the statue’s rubble. It landed blade-first at the top of the heap, its hilt high and standing, like a cross out of a grave.
The hilt magically opened, a scroll rising from inside. As the king and his princess watched, the crowd shellshocked around them, the scroll unfurled in midair, revealing a parchment card, filled with faded words, stamped with Camelot’s seal.
Moonlight illuminated the decree.
King Arthur’s voice thundered from beyond.
“The first test was passed.
Excalibur pulled from the stone.
A new king named.
But two claim the crown.
The sword returns to the stone,
for only one is the true king.
Who?
The future I have seen has many possibilities . . .
So by my will, none shall be crowned until
the Tournament is complete.
The Tournament of Kings.
Three trials.
Three answers to find.
A race to the finish.
My last coronation test.
Excalibur will crown the winner
and take the loser’s head.
The first test is coming. Prepare . . .”
The card crumbled and blew away, like sand in the wind. The hilt of Arthur’s sword sealed up, leaving Excalibur in moonlight at the peak of piled stone.
A new altar.
A new grail.
For a moment, there was utter silence, strangers and friends gawking at each other in the gardens. The students of Arbed House looked to their Dean, but she had no words. So too were the leaders of the Woods tongue-tied—the Empress of Putsi, the Queens of Mahadeva and Jaunt Jolie, the Kings of Foxwood and Maidenvale and Bloodbrook and more—scattered across the ice-strewn fields and unsure of what they’d just heard. Even Sophie’s vacant sheen had cracked, her eyes narrowing, her soul closer and closer to breaking through. . . .
But now all of them caught sight of a figure rising out of the ruins, climbing the stone heap: the king, crownless and dirt-smeared, Lionsmane cold in his hands, his cheeks a violent red. Slamming a foot onto the highest stone, he seized Excalibur with a single fist, and pulled it hard.