A/N: So, I've been working on this story for a while, but hadn't posted any of it because I couldn't help thinking it was silly or didn't really work. But even so I couldn't stop writing it.

It was born of the idea that Cedric is his own biggest obstacle and worst enemy. And I started to wonder how that would play out in his relationship to a grown up Sofia.

I also took some liberties with cannon when it comes to the magic library and its relationship to the Amulet, linking them more directly instead of going along with the idea that Tilly chose Sofia.

Disclaimer: Sofia is 20, Cedric is 38 and I don't own them or anyone else. I'm just going to bend Cedric till he breaks and then put him in the middle of a cosmic fight between good and evil- he's not going to like me very much.

Prologue

.o~O*O~o.

Sofia

Sofia sat in the secret library awaiting her next adventure.

She always felt excitement before the chosen book would float down to her, but today she felt a kind of bittersweet sadness as well.

She felt that way because this would be her final book.

Tomorrow was her twentieth birthday.

After twelve years Sofia knew it was time to take the Amulet of Avalor off.

It was time to put it back on its stand in the jewel room and let it wait for the next Princess worthy of wearing it. It was time now for her, as it had been for Tilly before her, to become an adult in spirit as well as age.

As the book floated to her, Sofia felt awed. It was the most beautiful book she'd ever seen, brown leather with a silver tiara embossed on it, and in the middle sat a large purple jewel that reminded her very much of her amulet.

The book finally came to rest in her lap and Sofia read the title:

The Sorcerer and the Princess Apprentice.

Opening it she read the prologue.

Dear reader,

This is the story of a perfect soul in which was encapsulated both good and evil. In this being these opposing forces existed in perfect harmony, their purpose to bring balance to the world and through balance peace.

But though goodness and evil existed within this soul perfectly, throughout the world they did not. And those bent to malevolence, those who counted themselves enemies to peace, plotted to destroy this soul so they might do as they pleased and rape the world with their evil.

Setting upon this soul they found they could not destroy it, for to great were its powers. So they chose instead to tear it asunder. They broke it down the middle, separating it into its halves.

Evil and Good

Hatred and Love

Greed and Generosity

Vengeance and Justice

And from the halves was formed a man bent to darkness and a woman bathed in light.

Flinging the two halves to separate ends of the world those enemies hoped they had wounded the soul enough it could no longer interfere in their plans.

For eons the two halves, the man and the woman, attempted to reunite, driven by a desire so deep it was more instinct than will. Many times they came close, and in doing so thwarted their enemies. But unjoined they could only delay the enemies of peace from their plans, not stop them.

And so these enemies attempted another kind of division. They separated the man and the woman not through space, but through time. They kept the woman from being born for as long as they could, until the man was many years older than his other half.

Believing they had finally divided them for good, they placed the man and the woman close to each other, so they might laugh as they watched them forever separated by the gulf of age.

But it is fate that this soul, this man of darkness and this woman of light, should be together. That they should save the world from itself. And so the forces of fate rallied twice to bring the soul back together. Once to cause a powerful king to take a peasant for a wife, bringing the man and the woman face to face, and once more to stir an insatiable love within their hearts. A love that would give them the courage to cast aside the differences that stood between them.

But know ye reader, that not all is set in stone. For if the light and the dark, the good and the evil, the man and the woman cannot cross the chasm which does not truly exist and reunite, than all will be lost and no happy ending will ever exist for them, or for you.

Sofia read until she came to the moment when the pages became blank.

It was no surprise to her when, for the first time, she wasn't pulled into the book, because she knew without doubt she was already inside it.

Chapter One

.o~O*O~o.

Sofia

"I wish to be big again." Sofia said, emerging from the small hole in her wall.

The amulet glowed for a moment and suddenly she was her normal size once more.

Clutching the book to her chest Sofia kicked off her mud spattered shoes and ran from her room, heedless that she was still in the peasant dress she'd taken to wearing for her story saving adventures.

Dark purple in color, it had no flounce to it, and fell only to her knees. On top the neck of the dress scooped slightly lower than her Princess attire, allowing her amulet to rest on skin rather than fabric, and instead of a corset underneath it had only an outer girdle made of green velvet that cinched under her breasts.

She'd left her tiara behind and only a green headband held her hair back.

Dressed like this she managed to make it passed a good deal of people she saw every day without being looked at twice, until she collided headlong with her father.

"Ohmph," was all that came out of her mouth as she was sent flying backwards from the force of their impact. Had he not caught her Sofia would no doubt have landed on her bottom, her skirt above her head.

"Sofia, what has you in such a hurry? And…what are you wearing?" He asked, steadying her.

"Oh Dad, I'm sorry, I…I just have to see Mr. Cedric. It's kind of a magical emergency."

"Well, can it wait five minutes?" He asked her, still looking at her dress and her bare feet disapprovingly.

"Um…I think so." She answered clutching the book ever tighter.

"Good, come with me."

Sofia followed her father to his personal study.

Rolland went behind his desk and produced a letter. He handed it over to her and Sofia shifted the book so she could open it.

The paper was extremely expensive and had an official seal she didn't recognize.

Sofia scanned the contents and looked up at her father incredulously.

"Before you say no hear me out." Her father said, holding up both hands in a bid to quell her protests before they began. "You and I both know I've turned away a good many men who wanted to marry you. And I've been happy to do it. I know you're not like Amber and you don't intend to marry simply so you can be Queen of some place or another. But this offer from Eldrid is… it's a big deal.

They're a very powerful kingdom to the north, and one that doesn't often associate with outsiders. That Prince Aleric would write me personally asking for permission to meet you is incredible. So as a Princess of Enchancia I'm asking you to consider him. An alliance with such a kingdom would bring unimaginable benefits."

Sofia wanted to say no. She wanted to shove the book in her father's face and tell him why, but she wasn't ready to do that. Not until she talked to the other person for whom this book would be a personal matter.

"Just meet him? No other expectations?" Sofia asked, handing her father back the letter as though it burned her hand.

"Just meet him." Her father held up three fingers of his right hand. "King's honor."

"All right." She turned then and went to the door. "Sorry dad, I really have to go now."

With that Sofia began running again.

This time she wasn't stopped, and in a matter of minutes she was up the slippery stone steps and in front of Cedric's door.

The urge to simply rush in was almost overwhelming, but after years of working with magic she knew you never just barged in on someone when you had no idea what the person might be handling.

Banging her hand down on the door, she heard an angry curse from the other end and realized she'd knocked so loudly she'd managed to startle him anyway.

"Merlin's Mushroom!" He yelled. "Come in already, you're going to anyway!"

Most people would probably have fled back down the stairs given the tone of Cedric's voice, but Sofia had long ago been exempted from his dislike of other people. Even though he wasn't happy now, she knew when he saw her she would be welcome.

Pushing the heavy oak, she stood in the doorway to see her loud knock had caused him to spill a beaker all over his worktable. Cedric was mopping up the contents with a cloth, his back to her.

Sofia took in the long, leanness of him and her pulse quickened as it always did.

No matter how many handsome, strapping princes she was introduced to or how many muscle bound knights, she couldn't find one that held a candle to the dark mystery of her sorcerer. She found Cedric captivating inside and out.

His age added to the wisdom she admired so much. His tall, lean form made her body yearn. And his guarded heart, which he only seemed to open to her, made her feel special. It made her feel wanted and needed, as though she were the guardian of something fragile and beautiful.

She knew her parents chalked it up to a school girl crush and her sister and brother chalked it up to her eccentricities. Since in public they tried to remain in the roles they'd occupied since her girlhood, that of an adoring child and the adult who tolerated her because he had to, she understood why they're continued friendship made very little sense to others.

But they didn't know him the way she did, and in private their relationship had become very different.

In private he softened. He talked openly, he even smiled sometimes. He shared his knowledge with her freely and his friendship with her ungrudgingly. Though he'd never declared it outright, Sofia knew Cedric cared for her more than he cared for anyone else.

Besides his mother, she was the only person he took an interest in.

The change had happened when she was ten.

She'd come to him, as she often did, with sorcery homework.

She didn't really need help with her homework anymore, but it was an excuse come up to his tower.

Cedric had looked at her assignment and made one of his usual exasperated exclamations, before flinging the paper on his desk with disgust.

"Sofia, this is child's play. It's beneath you." He declared.

She thought he was mad at her. That he'd seen through her, and knew she'd been feigning ineptness to be near him.

"I have come to find our current arrangement, of cleaning in exchange for homework help, unsuitable."

Sofia had begun to shake her head, racking her brain for some way to keep him from banishing her from his tower for good. Her heart would break if he told her he didn't want her to come around anymore. Even at ten she'd needed him in ways she hadn't quite understood.

He held up his hand to silence any protest she might have been about to make.

"We both know you can do this dribble with your eyes closed, which is more than I can say for your peers at school and many of the students at Hexly Hall as well. You have more talent than a great many people I know, but that talent will go to waste if you don't start to take it seriously.

So I will not help you with this insulting garbage. But I will ask you to become my apprentice in the serious sense."

Sofia's eyes had grown as big as saucers, elation beginning to bloom in her heart.

"What would I do?" She asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"You would not clean my tower like some tiny Cinderella, and I would not help you with homework like some by the hour tutor. You would need to devote a great deal of your time to study. Four hours a day during the school year, and at least six when on vacation. You would study the materials I give you, learn the language of magic, how to make potions, and not just cast but write spells, among many other things.

And if you excelled in your studies and I believed you were capable, you would go before the Masters at the end of your apprenticeship. If judged worthy they would bestow the title of Master Sorcerer on you. You'd be a real sorceress.

Is this something you have interest in?"

And that had been the beginning of nearly a decade of real apprenticeship under her sorcerer.

In that time so much had changed between them.

The feelings that started out as admiration and childish adoration had grown and matured along with her.

Spending hours together every day had cemented their friendship before her first month as an apprentice was over. That friendship had deepened over the years to the point where Sofia knew they were each other's best friends.

When Sofia was fourteen she'd realized her feelings for Cedric had changed again. He was still her best friend, but she also knew most people didn't dream of kissing their best friend. Nor did they coerce them into dancing every chance they got, just to feel that best friend's arms around them.

As her teenage years had marched on and her siblings and friends had started having relationships, Sofia began to feel oddly removed from them and the rather incestuous air that permeated Royal Prep. People who'd been friends and peers only a few years before began dating each other, breaking up, and dating other friends in a round robin of romances which she had no interest in.

Some of the princes she still counted as friends had tried to woo her, but to no avail.

Sofia didn't want any of them, not even for a little while.

But turning down boy after boy had begun to make her feel as though perhaps there was something wrong with her. If everyone was dating everyone, how could she have already chosen just one person?

Which was why she'd let Desmond kiss her at the school's spring formal the year she was sixteen. Desmond was handsome, kind, and Sofia counted him among her closest friends at school.

Not only had she felt nothing during the kiss. But afterwards she'd been racked by guilt. She'd felt guilt for hurting Desmond's feelings, since he obviously cared for her more than she'd realized, and thought the kiss meant she reciprocated his feelings.

And guilt for being unfaithful to Cedric.

Which had plunged her into a chasm of even greater misery, since Cedric had never, even for a second, give her cause to hope he saw her as more than a friend. She remembered crying into her pillow as she told herself she was a silly idiot. How could a brilliant, talented man almost two decades her senior look at her as anything more than a naïve girl?

To her the differences between them would be nothing if he loved her.

But from his side they must have been so great they precluded him ever looking at her as more than his friend. His little dearest, as he sometimes called her.

She had counted it as hopeless for many years.

But after she'd passed her judgment before the Masters, she'd thought perhaps he might finally come to see her as an adult, as a woman. And she'd let herself hope again…briefly.

But other than being proud of her, and joking she'd probably be challenging his authority left and right now she was a full-fledged Sorceress, he hadn't given her any indication he saw her differently.

Knowing he still wanted her to come to his tower and help him with his work had forced her to make a decision.

She could have severed their relationship then using the end of her Apprenticeship as a reason. But the thought of not seeing him every day broke her in a way she couldn't even put into words.

So she determined to simply accept what he would offer her, his friendship, his knowledge, and his chaste love, and to let go of the rest.

Until today.