SGE-4

How Not to Throw a Coronation W21
the room . . . the one case that happened to be empty. Its placard
read:
EXC ALIBU R
He was still thinking about that large, empty case when he
arrived at King’s Cove, a sunken bathing pool in the bowels of
the castle. When he was a young prince, this manmade grotto
had flowering vines around tall piles of rock and a steaming-hot
waterfall. The balmy water once shimmered with a
thousand purple and pink lights from fairies who tended the
pool in exchange for safe shelter at Camelot. Tedros remembered
his mornings here as a child, racing the fairies around
his father’s statue at the center of the pool, his tiny opponents
lighting up the water like fireworks.
King’s Cove was different now. The pool was dark and
cold, the water algae-green. The plants were dead, the waterfall
a drip, drip, drip. The fairies were gone too, banished from
the castle by Arthur after Guinevere and Merlin had both
abandoned him, destroying Arthur’s faith in magic.
Tedros looked down at the kettlebells he’d stolen from the
gym and stashed by the pool, along with a sad, lowly rope he’d
tied to the ceiling to practice climbing.
He couldn’t exercise in that other room. Not if he had to
be near that empty case and think about where the sword was
now.
Slowly, his eyes rose to his father’s statue in the murky pool,