“She just thinks you’re a complication to an already complicated situation.”

“Agatha, there is an entire town out there that will kill us on sight. There’s nothing complicated about it,” Tedros argued, sitting up on his knees. “Listen, I’ll be sixteen in a month. That means I take over Camelot as king from my father’s council. Sure, the kingdom’s broke, half the people are gone, and the place is in shambles, but we’ll change all that! That’s where we belong, Agatha. Why can’t we go back—”

“You know why, Tedros.”

“Right. Because you don’t want to leave your mother forever. Because I don’t have a family anymore and you do,” he said, looking away.

Agatha’s neck rashed red. “Tedros—”

“You don’t need to explain,” her prince said quietly. “If my father was still alive, I’d never leave him either.”

Agatha moved closer to him. He still didn’t look at her. “Tedros, if your kingdom needs you . . . you should go back,” she forced herself to say.

Her prince sighed. “I’d never leave you, Agatha.” He pulled at a thread in his dirty socks. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to. Only way back into the Woods is to make the wish together.”

Agatha went rigid. He’d thought about leaving her behind? She swallowed hard and grasped his arm. “I can’t go back, Tedros. Terrible things happen to us in the Woods,” she rasped anxiously. “We were lucky to escape—”

“You call this ‘lucky’?” He finally looked at her. “How long can we stay trapped in this house, Agatha? How long can we be prisoners?”

Agatha tensed. She knew he deserved answers, but she still didn’t have them. “It doesn’t matter where your Ever After is, does it? It just matters who you’re with,” she said, trying to sound hopeful. “Surely a teacher said that once.”

Tedros didn’t smile. Agatha lurched up and ripped a strip from a clean towel hanging on the bedpost. Tedros flopped back onto the bed, arms splayed cactus-style, and lapsed into silence, as Agatha bound his wound tight with the cloth.

“Sometimes I miss Filip,” he said softly.

Agatha looked at him, startled. Tedros turned pink and picked at his nails. “It’s stupid, given all he did to us—or she . . . or whatever. I should hate him—her, I mean. But boys get each other in a way girls can’t. Even if he wasn’t really a boy.” Tedros saw Agatha’s face. “Forget it.”

“You really think I don’t know you?” Agatha asked, hurt.

Tedros held his breath a moment, as if contemplating whether to be honest or to lie. “It’s just . . . those first two years, we were chasing the idea of being together, rather than actually being together. I got to know Filip better than I ever got to know you: staying up past curfew together, stealing lamb chops from the Supper Hall, or even just sitting on a rooftop and talking—you know, about our families or what we’re afraid of or what kind of pie we like. Doesn’t matter how it all turned out, really. . . . He was my first real friend.” Tedros couldn’t look at Agatha. “You and I never even got to be friends. Don’t even have nicknames for each other. With you, it was always stolen moments and faith that love would somehow be enough. And now, here we are, three weeks cooped up in a house, no time alone or room to go for a walk or a hunt or a swim, and then sleeping, eating, breathing with the other person hovering around like a keeper, and still we feel like strangers. I’ve never felt so old.” He glimpsed Agatha’s face. “Oh come on, surely you feel it too. We’re like fusty married saps. Every tiny thing that bothers you about me must be magnified a thousand times.”