by Eva Chase
He turned me so my back was to him, keeping his hand on my waist as we wove through the crowd of dancers. Was it wrong to be this attracted to three men at once? Maybe not in Wonderland. The club held plenty of trios and quartets along with the couples. Over there, three women were grinding on the same guy, this one with her hand up his shirt, that one caressing his face. Near the door, another woman braced herself against the wall with an ecstatic expression as one of her lovers kissed her neck and the other worked his hand between her legs.
No wonder I could hardly keep my hormones in check with all the sex in the air around here.
Chess ushered me through the doorway and out into the cooler night air. His stance became instantly more alert. “We go quietly until I find us a good vantage point, all right?” he said.
“Lead the way,” I said. He hadn’t guided me wrong so far.
We set off around the edges of town, buildings on one side of us and alternating trees or fields on the other. I ducked beneath the fronds of one of those enormous ferns leaning over the road, and Aunt Alicia’s key, still on its chain around my neck, shifted with my movement.
She couldn’t have left me anything intended to help with Wonderland’s current predicament. The Queen of Hearts hadn’t even captured Time yet when my grand-aunt had been here. But it might be useful in some other way. First thing when I got back, after Theo’s plan had broken everyone from this repetitive cage, I was opening that box.
Chess stopped once, touching my arm. I stood stock still beside him, unable to hear anything that might have disturbed him. We stayed like that for a couple of minutes before he relaxed and ambled forward again.
When the street split, we took the branch to the right, away from the city. The cobblestones there glittered with mica like the rocks around the salty pond, even though only thin moonlight penetrated the scattered trees. The effect was like looking down into a slice of starry sky laid out on the ground. My stomach wobbled the way it had surrounded by all those upside down trees in Hatter’s Topsy Turvy forest.
Okay, I was kind of looking forward to getting home, at least for a breather. There was such a thing as too intense.
Chess’s fingers slipped down my arm to twine with mine. They squeezed my hand as a glimmer of light came into view through the trees up ahead. He halted, cocking his head and drinking air through his mouth. We walked a few paces farther and then veered off the road onto the tree-dappled hills.
Chess paused by a dense stand of saplings hung with vines with fluffy leaves like giant dandelion heads. He motioned me into their midst. “Stay here,” he murmured. “I’m going to scout out our route.”
Without waiting for an answer, he vanished before my eyes. He didn’t make a sound as he slunk away, literally invisible in the night.
I rubbed my arms, more from nerves than from any real chill, resisting the urge to fidget on my feet. Minutes stretched by. A footstep crunched somewhere in the distance, and I froze even stiffer than I’d already been standing.
The steps rasped over the ground. They didn’t sound as if they were coming toward me, but I also didn’t think Chess would have let himself make that much noise. I held my breath, the muscles in my legs tensing to run.
The steps faded away. It took another few minutes before I could breathe normally again. Then Chess’s light voice spoke by my ear.
“Time to go, lovely.”
I startled and spun around in time to see his grin glint, floating in the air, just before the rest of him materialized. I smacked his chest, not hard enough to really hurt him. “You practically gave me a heart attack,” I said, as forcefully as I could while whispering.
“I’m keeping you on your toes,” he said. “It’s a service I’m pleased to provide.”
I made a face at him and swatted him again, and this time he caught my wrist and tugged me around so his arms wrapped across my chest. His whole solid body pressed against mine from behind. Heat flared from my core.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, Lyssa,” Chess murmured, so sweetly it melted me. For a second I thought he would kiss my cheek or the crook of my jaw. Then he let me go, taking my hand like he had before. “This way,” he said, as casually as if he’d never touched me more than that.
We walked through the trees a while longer—long enough that my dizziness from his abrupt embrace had faded when an odd sound rose up around us. A thin, erratic chittering filled my ears, like someone trying not very successfully to stifle a cruel giggle. My skin crawled at it.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered to Chess.
He tipped his head to the trees around us, hunched shapes that rose several feet above us before drooping back down to kiss the grass with their thin quivering leaves. “The laughing trees,” he said. “No one likes to come into this part of the forest—they say it’s unnerving.”
“It is unnerving,” I hissed, but I had to agree that feature made it a good hiding spot.
Chess guided me to one of the trees and helped me climb from branch to branch until we reached a small platform at the peak of its hunch. “How did you make this?” I asked, tapping the bottom of the boards.
“I didn’t,” Chess said. “I found it. Someone used it before the freeze—maybe a Spade, maybe some curious kids. Funny how the two can act so much alike.” He winked at me and held my elbow as I scrambled the rest of the way up.
At my first glimpse of the view over the trees ahead of us, my body went still, my breath catching all over again.
The vast property began maybe a quarter mile from where we were perched. It looked like a cross between a Christmas festival and an amusement park. Red and white lights twinkled across hedges and glided around posts as if they were droplets endlessly trickling down. A massive gazebo floated in the middle of the gardens as if on a glowing cushion, turning in a slow circle. Flamingos and peacocks strolled between the lights. An enormous rose bush dappled with scarlet blooms twisted and turned like a maze across nearly half of the gardens and beside the high wall. Its tart floral scent wafted over us on the breeze.
In the midst of all that stood a grand palace, its scarlet walls shimmering faintly in the night. Turrets wide and narrow sprouted up all around the domes that covered its center-point and each of the attached wings. Glazed pink tiles glinted in the garden lights where they framed the windows, some of which were shaped like six-petaled flowers and others like hearts. The Queen clearly didn’t want anyone to forget her full name.
I spotted a couple of guards ambling past the palace. Closer, around the gazebo and throughout the rest of the gardens, strolled men and women, some more human and some more animal, clustered in groups of three or more as if in intent conversation. They all wore hats much fancier than anything I’d ever seen on Hatter, decorated with jewels and pearls as well as ribbons and feathers. The men had on tuxedos and the women ball gowns in various colors. Matching brooches sparkled on all their chests.
“Who are all those people?” I asked. “I haven’t seen them in the city.”
“You wouldn’t,” Chess said. He hunkered down and sprawled out on the platform on his belly, his chin propped on the back of his hands. My awareness of how exposed we were up here prickled over me. I copied his pose. I wasn’t sure how much chance there was of our being seen through the darkness, but the lower profile we kept, the less chance there was anyway.
“Those are the Queen’s courtiers,” he went on. “The Diamonds, we like to call them, because of the diamonds she makes them wear to proclaim their loyalty to the Hearts family. They reside in the palace or on the grounds and pretty much never leave, living it up all day and all night. A lot like the Clubbers in the city, just in a much more posh venue. And they’re no less terrified, in my experience.”
His mouth had curled into the closest thing to a frown I’d ever seen on his face. I hesitated and then ventured, “In your experience?”
He let out a breath and recovered his grin. “I used to come out here sometimes to hobnob wi
th the gentry. Diamonds have great appreciation for cleverness—or what they take for cleverness. If you can turn a phrase and a few tricks, play the wise fool, they’ll beg you for more. Not a bad day’s work for a little banqueting and lolling in the gardens.”
Something about his tone gave me the impression he was trying harder than usual to keep up that playful demeanor. “But you don’t go out there anymore,” I said. “You said you only used to.”
“The freeze hasn’t ground down any of us into our finest shapes,” Chess said. “I believe the spoiled go savage first.” He rolled onto his back, switching his view to the stars. “I won’t pretend we aren’t all mad here, in our various ways, but I decided I prefer the Clubbers.”
“And the Spades,” I said.
He made a wordless noise I took for agreement. The subject seemed closed. Maybe there wasn’t much more he could say about it anyway. It wasn’t my business how he’d passed his time before. The knowledge that he’d had access to that luxury and now passed it up in favor of risking his neck sent a wave of tenderness through me that I didn’t know how to voice.
“I’m glad,” I said, trying anyway. “That you picked the city over the palace, I mean. I’m glad you’ve been here to explain things even if I don’t always understand and dance me through guarded doorways and all that.”
He tilted his head toward me. His grin looked gentler now. His tone was too. “So am I.”
My heartbeat stuttered. He turned his gaze back to the sky. I made myself focus my attention on the grounds.
Where would Theo want his team staked out before they made their dash for the palace, toward whatever room that pocket watch was hidden in? Did he have a way for us to get over the walls unseen, or were his people going to have to get across the entire garden in that half hour of grace?
My attention stopped on a spot on one of the towers where the garden lights reflected back especially bright. A symbol had been carved into the ruddy stone there—a heart surrounded by a sunburst. The Queen’s mark? It reminded me of the gem-and-teardrop marking I’d seen on that old buried wall and on Aunt Alicia’s box back home.
“Chess,” I said, “I went out to the Topsy Turvy Woods with Hatter to get a key my grand-aunt left there. On the way, we came across a stone wall that looked like some kind of ruin. It had a symbol on it I’ve seen in my grand-aunt’s things—like a multifaceted gem with a teardrop in the center. Do you know anything about that, or why there’d be ruined buildings all grown over out there?”
Chess knit his brow and hummed in his throat. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen the symbol you mentioned,” he said. “Or come across any ruin like that. But there was one time, when I was indulging in palace life, when one of the Diamonds went for a ramble outside the walls of the grounds and came back talking about seeing some sort of unusual old building.”
Interesting. “Did they describe it?” I asked.
“The Queen sounded rather disturbed about it, so naturally I snuck out there to give it a gander myself the first chance I had,” Chess said. “Whatever it’d been, the guards had already smashed it to the ground and carted off most of the rubble besides. An ever better disappearing act than my own.”
“She was worried about people seeing it,” I said.
“It would appear that way.”
My hand dropped instinctively to the chain around my neck, testing the weight of the key. What people worried about showed where they had a weakness. “There must be something about those buildings she wants to keep hidden,” I said. “Something that could hurt her.”
Would the contents of the box back home give me any idea what that was?
Chapter Eighteen
Theo
I felt a twinge of guilt knocking on Mirabel’s door at this hour of the night, even though she kept the oddest hours of anyone I knew. Maybe it was simply the knowledge that I was the last person she’d ever turn away that nagged at me.
“Theo!” she said when she answered, with one of her dreamy smiles. “I’m always sad to see you go.”
She was in one of her backwards moods again. Even with Time caged in the Queen of Hearts’ pocket watch, the personal timeline in our White Queen’s head twitched back and forth with no care for linearity.
I couldn’t say I minded. If there ever was a time I wanted to hear about her memories of the future, it was now.
“I can’t stay very long,” I said as we drifted to her assorted seating options. I could never be sure how much or how clearly she recalled events I hadn’t experienced yet. “I’m expecting a couple of people downstairs in half an hour.”
“It’s good to see you for however long,” Mirabel said. She sat down at one end of one of her softly cushioned sofas, and I sank down at the other. “What can I do for you, White Knight?” Her lips quirked up a little at that title, as they often did.
“We’re on the verge of a major move,” I said. “One that will put lives on the line. I wanted to ask—when I came here earlier, with Lyssa, when you looked at her you said something about the hands moving again. You saw the hands on the Queen’s watch, didn’t you? You saw Time freed?”
Her gaze drifted. “Time can never be trapped for very long.”
I supposed “very long” meant different things when you were barely bound by time at all. My entire life felt like a rather long time to me.
“Of course,” I said. “From what you saw, will it be freed soon? Close to now, I mean?” Before or after this moment, whichever direction it looked like to her.
If I set this plan in motion, could she tell me it would succeed?
It might have been folly to hope for that sort of certainty at all. Mirabel’s hand fluttered over the high heap of her golden-brown hair. Her thin eyebrows drew together. “The days will pass in a daze, and then—oh, she is angry. The shouts, the screams. I am glad I missed that. I see—I see—”
Her voice was turning ragged. I touched her arm to stop her. “It’s all right. Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked something that specific.”
But the need to come up with something to even out the wavering of my thoughts still gnawed at me. There were too many factors beyond my control. For Hearts’ sake, Hatter had passed on word about that jabberwock prowling around much closer than the borderlands. Our land was shifting in ways I couldn’t predict. So many problems I couldn’t tackle while Time remained trapped.
“What about Lyssa?” I found myself asking. “Have you seen any more of her since she came?” That was a more reasonable question, more pliant.
Mirabel’s gaze traveled back to me, momentarily fully alert. Her mouth curled into a smile that looked almost sly. “It makes me glad knowing you didn’t always keep your heart so closed off, Theo.”
My chest tightened, as if my ribs were closing around that organ right now. Dear Hearts and hopes, what exactly had she seen?
She swayed on the cushion, her eyes clouding again. There was no way to hook onto specifics when she faded like that.
“I’m asking about Lyssa,” I reminded her gently. “Lyssa… and the Spades, and our rebellion.”
She made an amused sound. “Mmm. She’s right to have feared them.”
A chill tickled over my skin. “Who? Who should she fear?”
“They’ll all come from the same line,” she said, and her voice faded into a wisp. I couldn’t even be certain she was still talking about Lyssa at all.
“Hey,” I said. “Let’s leave it there.”
Mirabel tipped against the back of the sofa and sighed as if reflecting the disappointment I’d meant to hide. Her hair spilled across the padding. The angry pink botch of her scar glared where it marred the pale skin of her temple.
I reached out and grazed the back of my forefinger over the skin just under it. “She really injured you with that blow, didn’t she?” I said quietly. “Inside and out. I would have liked to have gotten to know you before.”
“So would I,” Mirabel said. A giggle spilled out of her. She spread her a
rms wide. “But who would want a child around who contains not just a beginning but every ending there is?”
My mouth twisted. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“No,” Mirabel murmured, her momentary amusement fading. “No, it wasn’t.”
I let my weight ease back against the sofa’s padding too, just for a moment. “You’re the only one who really knows me now,” I said. That fact had been true since the moment the White Knight before me had met his end. Why was I feeling it now like a fresh wound?
Talking with Lyssa had stirred up more feelings than I’d bargained for. Feelings I couldn’t afford to wallow in, not with so many things that mattered so much more than me at stake. I couldn’t give her anywhere near the same openness she’d offered me so straightforwardly. I couldn’t even really talk to Mirabel when her understanding of our lives was so skewed.
But I’d always been on my own, really, and I’d known I would be. At least I was doing some good now.
I shouldn’t have come here at all, looking for certainties I knew no one could give me. If I needed certainty, I’d have to find it the only place I’d ever been able to generate it before: inside myself.
“Are you all right, Mira?” I asked. One last question, both absurd and necessary.
“I am,” she said. “As much as I am not ill. It will get better and worse. Who can say different?”
“Very wise, as always,” I said.
She leaned toward me, extending her hand, and I bowed my head automatically. Her lips brushed my forehead like a benediction. “It’s always lovely to have you stop by, baby brother,” she said, as if I’d just arrived.
I straightened my shirt collar in the elevator on the way down, though it hadn’t been particularly crooked before. Then I tugged at the cuffs I’d unrolled.