Archive of Our Own ^beta

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The prince wasn’t exactly feeling well at the moment. Professor Dovey had snapped his ears off, lecturing him about why downplaying Sophie’s actions was an abomination. Now, he was looking forward to some rest and food. God, he was tired—

“Tedros.”

The prince blinked, seeing his sorta frenemy looking impossibly guilty. Which was worrying. Agatha looking guilty usually meant something either morally significant or physically dangerous was about to happen, and he had already had one near-death experience this week.

“Oh... hello, Agath—”

“Here.” She thrust a page at him. A very specific, very damning page. His brain short-circuited the moment he recognized the love potion recipe. Chaddick’s eyes widened comically. Beatrix spat out her drink with enough force to hit a first-year at the next table.

Tedros went pale. “T-That—”

“Look,” Agatha grimaced, clearly not enjoying this. “I had no idea Sophie would actually fall this low, and I’m really sorry about that.”

Tedros felt his soul leave his body.

“I talked to Professor Dovey,” she continued, waving a hand as if this was just a minor inconvenience instead of a major human rights violation, “and she said that somehow she’s going to burn all the books with these spells, so don’t worry.”

Don’t worry?!

He absolutely would be worrying!

Agatha sighed, rubbing her forehead. “While I’ve tried to convince Sophie to apologize, she won’t. She’s too busy lamenting how she ‘ruined her chance.’ Which is—well, it’s absolute garbage, actually.”

Tedros opened his mouth to say something—probably something profound, intelligent, and full of righteous fury—but Agatha wasn’t done.

“So, Tedros,” she said, meeting his eyes with a look so intense his brain flatlined. “I’m going to make sure that Sophie, or anyone who tries that kind of thing on you, regrets it. Understand?”

Tedros could only make a strangled noise.

“Because I was dead wrong,” she continued mercilessly. “You deserve better than the way I treated you. You can be infuriating, an absolute idiot at times, and stubborn as hell—but you are not an object. You are a human being with your own problems, and I’ll make it up to you by not treating you like one.”

With that, she nodded to herself, apparently satisfied, and walked off. Completely unaware of Tedros' now tomato-red face.

Not that Chaddick didn’t stare at him with unholy amusement. Or that Beatrix didn’t immediately reconsider her life choices and start re-evaluating her decision not to befriend Agatha.

Most concerningly, people barely avoided arrows or random gusts of wind if they so much as thought anything bad about Tedros in the following days.

Chaddick, meanwhile, was having way too much fun teasing him about his “knight in shining armor” moment. Which only made Tedros’ face even redder.

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