It was only when Guinevere hugged Agatha that the old queen lingered. Agatha could see her lips trembling and the wet sheen of her eyes.

“Take care of my Tedros,” Guinevere whispered.

“I will,” said Agatha, trying not to cry.

Something cold touched her head and Agatha looked up at her prince as he fit her crown back on her.

“You left it in your room,” he said, with a droll smile. “An oversight, I’m sure.”

Then he met his mother’s gaze.

Agatha could see each of them overwhelmed with emotion . . . a mother and son who’d battled so much pain to come back together, only to be pulled apart once more.

“Let me come with you, Tedros. Please,” Guinevere pleaded. “I can fight—we’ll be together—”

“No,” said the prince. “It’s the one thing Lancelot and I agree on.”

Guinevere shook her head, tears falling.

Tedros hugged her to his chest. “Listen to me. You’ll be at Camelot for my coronation. Once Agatha and I close her storybook and the School Master is dead. That’s where your story will end, all right? Not here, but Camelot, where you’ll be a mother . . . then a grandmother . . . and you’ll have so much love for the rest of your life. . . . You can even bring the ogre.”

Guinevere sniffled a laugh. “Promise me, Tedros. Promise me you’ll come back.”

“I promise,” Tedros rasped.

But Agatha knew he was lying.

Guinevere spotted something over her son’s shoulder and pulled away.

Agatha and Tedros turned to see Merlin leading his League of heroes, young and old, towards a floating portal of white glow atop a distant hill.

Lancelot climbed through first, evaporating like a shadow into the sun, before the old and new heroes followed him into the light, one by one . . . until only Merlin was left, raising consoling eyes to Agatha and Tedros across the moors, as if he wished he could let them stay.

“Has to be morning by now, surely,” said Tedros to Agatha, peering through the darkness of the Woods, as they tried to keep up with the pair in front of them.

“Then where’s the sun?” Agatha asked, searching a horizon of fast-moving black clouds with a pinprick of light pulsing through it. “All I see is the North Star and storm clouds—”

Only they weren’t clouds, as Agatha looked closer.

It was smoke, emanating from somewhere far ahead, directly in the path of where Merlin was leading their army. Huddled into a black cloak, Agatha stood on tiptoes, squinting over the pairs in front of her, but she couldn’t see where the smoke was coming from.

“Lift me up,” she nudged Tedros.

“What?”

“On your shoulders.”

Tedros frowned. “Just because you’re wearing a crown doesn’t mean—”

“Now.”

The prince sighed. “And I thought Sophie was high maintenance.”

He swung her up onto his shoulders, grunting softly as she clasped her arms around his cloak collar, her clumps digging into his chest. She could see Hort and Peter Pan paired in front of them and hear Cinderella and Pinocchio a ways behind, trading jokes at the sight of them.