Sophie woke to the smell of roses. Again.
The same scent of the rose that her 'Lion' had given to her. He'd thrown his True Love a rose, a rose for their own unique Ever After. Or so she'd thought.
But it was all a Lie. More a Lie than what Sophie had thought she'd had with Rafal or Tedros.
Sophie inhaled sharply, wincing at the thought of how things had been only a day ago. Agatha and Tedros, king and queen, her best friends, at her side, her prince who loved her for who she really was holding her, as she, Dean Sophie, completed her quest and proved herself worthy of Lady Lesso's successor. Just a day ago.
Sophie sat up, desperately determined to find a distraction, any at all from the whirlwind of horror inside. She had been dragged, by those awful pirates, to the queen's quarters. Agatha's quarters. Sophie had refused, but she was kicked in the bottom and thrown onto the bed, as Thiago and Wesley laughed jeeringly.
"Don't know why the king even likes this prissy, stupid Dean," Thiagoo muttered, as he tossed a key lazily to the other side of the room.
"Has a weakness for pretty girls, like all the best," Wesley sniggered. "Even Rafal."
"Can't understand them, myself. Lovesick for this."
With a few last howls, the pirates left her to her terror, anger and guilt.
Sophie winced again as she surveyed her surroundings for the umpteenth time. Agatha should be staying here, she thought, thinking of her best friend, Agatha, kind, Good, sarcastic Agatha. Who was a thousand times a queen than Sophie would be even if she tried her hardest.
But now she was meant to marry a 'king' she doubted, no longer trusted and who she'd discovered was a mass murderer of Good and Evil.
Sophie closed her eyes and fell back onto Agatha's bed. And she let herself cry.
She let the sobs rack through her body, let the tears fall onto the slightly dusty duvet. She hadn't cried for years. Not really cried. Not like this. Not since she thought she'd been abandoned by Agatha, when Evelyn Sader's tricks stripped her of all the good emotions in her, emptied her of her will to live. That was the last time she'd felt so vulnerable and shocked and confused. The last time she'd felt as if every single thing in the world was wrong.
And now it was.
Sophie had said yes. To the Snake's proposal. She'd thought she was saying yes to her True Love, to a Lion. But now, like before, she'd been tricked into a "happy ending" that she never wanted in the first place, one that didn't feel happy at all.
She wiped a hand across her soaked cheeks and blinked at Agatha's chambers. The cracked walls, half broken chandelier that looked like it was going to collapse at any moment now, the neglection, the idea that this was Camelot. Agatha had been right.
"Royal from afar, rotten when you look closer."
"I'll fix it better than Tedros did," Sophie had heard Rhian say to the Wood's jubilant leaders. "I'll do a king's jobs. I am King Arthur's son. I will make Camelot, and, in doing so, the Woods, great again."
Would he, though? Rhian had wanted to be king of Camelot, but she had a feeling that it wasn't to turn it towards Good again – he'd proven that he wasn't Good in any way at all. It would be more likely that he'd do something else…
Yet he didn't have any more respect for Evil than he did for Good. That was why, she realised, he'd frowned when she'd talked about being Dean and restoring Evil's balance in the Woods, so that it was again Good's equal.
So what would Rhian do to Camelot?
Ignoring the key on the floor, other than a quick look of disdain, Sophie left the rooms, unable to think in them anymore, hurrying down the first flight of stairs she found.
She'd wrestled open the closet, to find it still filled with Agatha's colourful Camelot gowns. Her throat caught. Then, with a deep breath, Sophie took one of the few black, Agatha-like gowns she could find and closed the wardrobe, telling herself that Agatha wouldn't mind anyway, which she probably wouldn't. But while it was painful, Sophie wanted to have a part of her friend with her as she faced Rhian.
The dress, surprisingly, was tight and had a formfitting waist, and a billowing skirt with a slight train. Not surprisingly, it had a non-revealing halter-top neck, small, off-shoulder sleeves and a black cumberband. But it still had a touch of Agatha, and Sophie held back more tears as she inhaled Agatha's unique and slightly heavy scent.
She hurried down continuously, having no idea where she was going, but knowing what her objective was.
Luckily, she happened to wander to the person she was hoping, and scared to, to find.
Rhian was talking to the priest Agatha, the Royal Rot and the Camelot Courier had pointed out to be the presider at Tedros's coronation.
"Rhian," she said simply, stopping half a metre away from him and the priest, who gave her a fleeting, furtive, empathetic look.
Rhian looked up. A half-smile lifted his lips, Snake lips, lips that Sophie somehow, despite everything that had happened, wanted to kiss. Mentally cursing herself, she thought about the people who had died… who Rhian had carelessly and with no conscience, killed…
It worked.
Sophie mustered up her best dazzling "Ever" smile, then after a split second, her best, most cutting, sharpest and Never glare. But she couldn't hold it. After one second, her face collapsed again into her blank, tired, storm-filled eye expression with a wince.
"What is it, Sophie?" Rhian said, eyeing Agatha's dress. "Have you run out of gowns? I'll send for more to be made – you already look like a beautiful, true queen, but wearing a beautiful dress does help." He grinned, and Sophie knew that he knew that it was Agatha's dress.
Sophie looked in dead in the eye and said, "I am wearing a queen's dress, from a queen's wardrobe."
Rhian gaped at her, with the same expression he'd let flash across his face when she'd told him how she didn't trust him anymore. Then his face hardened, and he turned away.
"So you still refuse to preside over my coronation, the coronation of Camelot's real king?" he shot at the priest, who quickly dropped his expression of admiration and approval of Sophie's defiance.
"Real king? I do not thinks so," the priest replied, glaring back. "Camelot's 'real' king, butcher the Woods for his own means? Camelot's 'real' king, preparing to execute his only half-brother? Camelot's 'real' king act so horrifying that even the most cold-blooded Evil feared him? Camelot's 'real' king, do all the thing you did? No, that doesn't sound like any King of Camelot to me."
Rhian hissed, so softly and so dangerously and so 'Snake', both Sophie and the priest recoiled.
"I am the true heir and eldest son of King Arthur. Excalibur left the stone for me! I am King Rhian!"
He unsheathed Excalibur swiftly and ferociously, waving it in front of the priest's face. "I am the next One True King!"
"Really? In other people's opinion, or in your wildest daydream?" The priest, whom Sophie decided was the first old person she respected, said coldly.
"In other people's opinion," Rhian said. "Ask the whole Woods, who is a better king, me or Tedros? What will they say, I wonder? The Lion's Army and the Sons of the Lion? Me."
"I will not crown a false king, in Camelot or anywhere else," the priest replied, examining his clipped, unusually short nails.
"I am not a false king," Rhian forced out, trying very hard to seem calm, but Sophie and the priest could clearly see his vein throbbing, as if a red light was flashing. "I am King Rhian of Camelot."
"It is against all my beliefs, values and traditions of Camelot and the world to do any such thing. I will not crown a Snake."
Rhian snapped. His eyes blazed, face overturned with rage, anger churning out as if the tightly sealed container had broke and the burning liquid was flowing out, his gaze so searing Sophie half-expected the priest's old fashioned, seemingly tailored burgundy robes to set aflame.
"I AM THE LION! I AM THE KING! I AM NOT A SNAKE!" he roared, and everyone in the vicinity turned and gaped. Most were citizens of Camelot, who were on Tedros's side and looked at him with the look they would give a squashed, wriggling, hateful cockroach.
The leaders of the Woods, however, who insisted on staying at Camelot at least until the coronation and probably until the wedding (which still made Sophie feel the worst kind of nauseous), stared over with wide eyes and wide mouths, before gaining composure and rushing to Rhian's defence.
"He is the Lion!" the King of Bloodbrook roared.
"He saved all of our lives!" shrieked the Queen of Jaunt Jolie.
"He's a hero!" cried the Duchess of Glass Mountain.
"Long live King Rhian of Camelot!" yelled the Queen of Ravensbow.
"Who are you to call our saviour a Snake, barmy old codger?" the King of Mahadeva shouted at the top of his lungs.
Rhian's eyes locked with hers, and an odd, contorted, distorted version of hurt flashed across his face as he watched her stand there and press her lips together, saying nothing. He had expected her to do the same, to be his queen even though he planned to kill her best friend and her best friend's fiancé, even though he had killed her classmate.
Sophie stood there, eyes still locked to his, with an expressionless, or, at least, stony, face and closed mouth.
"I doubt his Majesty King Arthur would approve of a son like you," added the priest, for good measure.
He turned back to the priest, whose posture wavered with fear, but whose eyes stayed determined and loyal. The castle fell silent, with kinetic patience, waiting to see what would happen.
"You either show your hidden loyalty for me and our Camelot now or be exiled from this kingdom forever," Rhian said slowly in a low, clear, crisp, deadly voice.
The priest's eyes widened, but he stayed firm and cool, even as Rhian waved Thiago and Wesley over.
"Say goodbye to Camelot," sneered Thiago, as Rhian gave a nod. They dragged the priest away, and he was now as much imprisoned as Sophie was.
Rhian swiftly kissed her cheek, supposedly consolingly, and walked away with cold, high-headed 'kingly' grace.
Everyone turned back to what they were doing.
Rhian walked back to her after one moment. "What was it you wanted to talk to be about, Sophie? Anything, my queen."
Sophie stood frozen, gazing into his eyes, blood nowhere in her body, limbs ice-cold. He watched her expectantly with his piercing eyes.
"Nothing," she managed to choke out in a whisper. And she turned and ran.