by Eva Chase
I rocked to meet Theo, urging him deeper, faster. Pleasure trembled and spiked through my core. I could feel my release building and building, so high and so quickly I lost my breath.
Theo kissed me, his lips firm and certain. His hand was hot as a brand on my hip as he filled me over and over. “Let it out, Lyssa,” he said, his voice ragged. “Let me hear you.”
The command opened my throat. “Oh, God,” I mumbled. “Oh, fuck. Oh, please. Please.” Then my voice blurred into a wordless sound of ecstasy as he plunged into me even more completely and my orgasm shattered through me.
My core and my thighs clenched around him, and he groaned. With a shudder and another searing kiss, he spilled his own release into me. In that moment, with bliss still ringing through my nerves and my body tucked against Theo’s as if it’d never been meant to exist anywhere else, every doubt and every fear washed out of me.
This was my Wonderland right here, and I was sure as hell willing to fight for it.
I woke up nestled against Theo on the anti-gravity room’s cushioned floor. At some point he’d flipped the gravity back on, but my body kept a faint sense of that weightlessness. I snuggled closer to him, and he rolled toward me, brushing one soft kiss to my lips.
“Well,” he murmured with a smile, “now we know for sure that you can keep a person with you through the night, despite the reset.”
“Let’s just hope I don’t have to be naked to accomplish that,” I said.
He laughed. “No regrets?” he said, searching my eyes as if he really thought I might have some.
“Exactly zero,” I said, and he smiled again, a little more easily.
We’d found our way back into our clothes when a little automated voice carried through the room. “Chess is arriving alone,” it intoned. Theo motioned for me to follow him.
We reached the main office just as the elevator dropped Chess off. He took in the two of us with his bright gaze—Theo’s collar askew and his normally slicked-back curls disheveled, my hair probably even more of a mess—and the grin he gave us looked knowing.
“I thought breakfast might be in order,” he said, producing a paper bag.
“Bring it over here,” Theo said, heading to the table with his retriever device. Nothing about it had changed since I’d seen it last night, I realized with a lift of my spirits. I’d really done it. Just by touching it, I’d kept it whole—and ready to use tonight.
“Perfect,” Theo murmured. He turned to his shelves and picked up a box of parts. “I’ll put together a few more basics for the mission—it shouldn’t take more than a couple hours. Then you’ll have—”
“The Knave of Hearts,” the automated voice announced, with the hiss of the elevator door opening.
Chess leapt forward with more speed than I’d have guessed that brawny body was capable of. He caught me around the waist and dove behind the solid base of the worktable, pulling me with him.
I flinched as my ass hit the floor and then stiffened. Chess braced himself beside me. We held there, still and silent, as heavy footsteps thumped across the room.
“Inventor,” the Knave said in a harsh voice that made my nerves wobble. “I’d like to have a word.”
He must have done something to the elevator to stop it from announcing him earlier. Fuck. My pulse thudded past my ears, so loud I was afraid he’d hear it. I inhaled shallowly, my palms sweating on the tiled floor, pressing myself as flat as I could against the worktable’s base.
“Feel free,” Theo said, smooth and confident as ever. “What’s this about?”
The Knave’s feet kept up a steady rhythm as he must have been pacing the room. “A number of anomalies have come to our attention in the past few days,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’ve been trying out some strange new device? Something to produce a little time, despite the Queen’s decry?”
Time. A chill crawled down my spine. He knew that much—someone had noticed. I must have screwed up somewhere.
“I wouldn’t defy the Queen’s sanctions,” Theo said. “And as far as I know, such a device would be impossible.”
The Knave stopped with a snap of his heel. “Then perhaps you could tell me what you think might be leaching food from our shops and painting flowers on the floor of Caterpillar’s Club.”
I winced, clamping down on a groan. The paint at the club yesterday—I’d been so out of it I hadn’t even thought about the consequences. I tucked myself even smaller against the table. Chess’s hand slipped across the space between us and touched my ankle with a reassuring pressure.
“I can’t say I know anything about that,” Theo replied. “My apologies.” He stepped to the side where his body would block view of us if the Knave walked closer on that end of the table.
“I don’t know about that,” the leader of the Hearts’ Guard said. “You keep track of everything that happens in the city. I can’t believe something so unsettling could slip your attention. Or someone so unsettling. The Queen begins to suspect an Otherlander is involved, and I have to say the evidence adds up.”
And what would he do if he found the Otherlander who was very much right here? I swallowed thickly, struggling to keep my breaths even.
“A Dreamer?” Theo said. “I spoke to one briefly the other day, but as far as I know they’ve never had any effect on Wonderland.”
“Not a Dreamer. The other kind.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you there. If I do hear anything—”
There was a rasping sound, and the box of mechanical parts that Theo had set on the neighboring worktable flew over the edge and crashed to the floor. Metal bits clattered across the tiles. I bit my tongue, holding in my flinch.
“Oh, dear,” the Knave said in a cutting tone. “I hope you hadn’t put anything together in there that you need all that much today. Of course, if you give me what I need…”
“I can’t give you what I don’t have,” Theo said, quiet but firm. “Knave, I give you my word, I—”
He cut himself off with a sharp little breath. Panic jolted through me before the impact even came.
The retriever skidded off the edge of the table above Chess and me and hit the floor just inches from my feet. The joints shuddered and snapped apart; porcelain fixtures shattered. The crystal sphere in the center burst into shards. The spray battered my legs and my arms where they were hugged around my knees. A cry snagged in my throat.
They’d touched me. The broken pieces of Theo’s device—the crystal he’d said it’d taken him so long to find—and the Knave’s boots were thumping across the floor again.
Any second, he was going to stride around this table and see us. Then it’d be my head rolling across the floor.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chess
Lyssa’s fear spiked the air, sharp as the chunks of metal and crystal scattered around us. Her face had gone sallow, her shoulders rigid as she clutched her knees. My jaw clenched, seeing her that shaken. Even an iron will could tremble when it was pushed to the brink of disaster.
Why hadn’t the White Knight been better prepared? The Knave was stalking closer, and I didn’t see how he could be talked down. There was nowhere else for our Otherlander to hide, nowhere she could run to.
Unless…
Resolve wound through my chest. The White Knight had brought Lyssa into the path of danger. Perhaps it came down to me of all people to get her out. I couldn’t let her fall into the Queen’s hands because of a plan that had been all for our benefit and not for hers.
The Knave’s steps thudded closer. I shifted my weight onto my feet, grasping Lyssa’s wrist. When she looked at me, I jabbed my thumb toward the door and then held up a finger. Just one minute. Probably less. That was all I needed.
She stared at me, wide-eyed, but I couldn’t talk to explain any better than that. The girl had a good head on her shoulders, which was where I intended to see it stay. She’d figure it out once I set the ball rolling.
With a slow inhalation, I willed my
self into the space between the particles of air. The voices around us dulled. The edges of shapes came into sharper focus. I stood up and strode toward the hall door the White Knight had left open, not the slightest current grazing my skin as I moved beyond sight and sound.
Normally I took a certain comfort in that numbed space. Now, my heart pounded adrenaline through my veins. It had been a long time since I’d been able to contribute anything to the cause that would make a significant difference. That came anywhere near to a matter of life and death.
I slipped past the door and in its shadow flicked my hand out of the invisible space. My fingernails twinged as I scratched them against the wall.
“What was that?” the Knave barked, thundering over. I yanked my hand back out of view and darted farther down the hall. Here, around the corner, I let one foot fall on the floor, gave another scratch. The Knave bellowed and hurtled onward.
Onward out of the room where Lyssa was crouched.
I’d caught his attention enough. I whirled around, moving completely into the space in-between, and then bolted down the hall. The Knave charged past me unseeing, his teeth bared and a purple flush spreading under the blue-gray sheen of his blunt cheeks. I barreled back into the office just in time to see the flash of Lyssa’s white-blond hair swallowed up by the elevator shaft.
I dashed after her. It wouldn’t do the White Knight any good for me to stick around now. If the Knave was on a rampage, if the Queen already suspected the truth about Lyssa’s presence, Lyssa might need me still, far more than he did.
The elevator caught me and shot me down toward the base of the Tower just behind her. When I made it to the ground, Lyssa was already loping down the street, looking around her as if she wasn’t sure which way to go. Which maybe she wasn’t. She really hadn’t sounded keen about seeing Hatter again, and she didn’t have anyone else here to go to.
I hustled after her. “Stick with me, lovely,” I said, pitching my voice to travel out from the in-between space. Lyssa turned toward me, and a pair of palace guards marched out of a cross-street just ahead of us.
They stiffened when they saw her. “Hey!” one shouted. “You there—stop!”
I grabbed Lyssa’s elbow with my invisible hand. She whirled toward the nearest alley before I even had to guide her. I ran with her, urging her faster, keeping my grip loose but steady so she’d know I was with her.
A louder shout rang out, with several more echoing it in answer. By the lands, how many of those helmet-heads had swarmed the city today?
I tugged Lyssa to the right, down a flight of stairs, under a bridge, and up into another alley. Her head jerked at the sound of more hollering, somewhere on the other side of the buildings around us. Her face was still pale, her hair wisping even wilder around her face than it’d been when I’d walked in on what had looked very much like post-coital disarray.
Happy post-coital disarray, at least. I didn’t know what the White Knight thought he was doing exactly, but I hadn’t seen a shine like that in Lyssa’s eyes since her first night in Wonderland, so I supposed I couldn’t criticize him for eliciting it.
“Chess?” she said now, with a quaver in her voice.
I moved around her, letting my arm slide up to hug her shoulders. She leaned into me for a second, and a pang of regret ran through me.
If I’d had a place to take her, if I’d been more than a rambling, aimless creature, I might have been the one she’d turned to last night for that other more intimate dance. I might have put that shine in her eyes. I’d felt attraction crackle between us, but I’d shied away from it.
What if I couldn’t? What if I wasn’t capable of giving what she needed at all?
I embraced the visible world again, so she could at least have the comfort of seeing me beside her, as much of a comfort as that might be.
“You’re all right,” I told her in a low voice. “You got away from the Knave. We won’t let his lackeys find out.”
“Where do I go?” she asked. “I can’t even— The Knave is suspicious of Hatter already. I can’t bring even more trouble down on him.” She gnawed at her lower lip. “The guards seemed to know I was the one they were looking for the second they saw me.”
“The Knave said something about a painting in the club,” I said. “You did something there last night—something that left a mark?”
She nodded with a grimace. “The Wonderlanders I was sitting with thought I was a Dreamer.”
“The Guard must have questioned people who were there, gotten a description.” My stomach balled into a knot. That meant every guard in the land might know Lyssa on sight. We couldn’t pass her off as a Dreamer any longer.
Another shout rang out, even closer than before. My pulse hiccupped. “Come on,” I said, without entirely knowing where I was leading her. “Let’s go.”
As we veered down another alley where the buildings leaned together so closely they almost touched overhead, a sinking certainty filled my chest. The answer that had come to me wasn’t what the White Knight would want—but he wouldn’t get to see his plan through if we lost Lyssa anyway. He wasn’t here to adjust course. Someone had to think outside the lines he’d drawn.
We dashed across a street and ducked into an alcove between two houses. Lyssa leaned against the wall, panting. The yells of the searching soldiers careened by us.
I touched her cheek, drawing her gaze to mine. The only shine in those bright blue eyes now was one of panic. I had plenty of reasons to wish the Knave dead, but seeing that, I’d happily have gutted him myself.
“Lyssa,” I said. “You can’t stay here. I have to find a way to get you to Caterpillar’s looking-glass.”
Lyssa stared at me. “But Theo’s plan—tonight—I’m supposed to—”
I shook my head to cut her off. “After the Knave is done with the White Knight’s workshop, I’m not sure we’ll have the tools to carry out that plan tonight anyway. We’ll certainly lose any chance if you lose your head to the guards. There’s nowhere here you’ll be safe. Maybe in a day or two, if nothing else happens, they’ll decide the anomalies were a fluke and ease off, and then we could talk about our next moves. I can’t leave you in this much danger waiting for that.”
“A day or two,” Lyssa repeated. “I’d go home and then come back?”
I didn’t let my gaze waver. “If that’s what you wanted. If it isn’t, if you simply stay there… No one should fault you for being where you’re meant to be. I certainly wouldn’t.”
Her jaw tightened, but she nodded. “How do I get to the looking-glass? If they know I was in the club, they have to have that place guarded.”
“Leave that to me.”
We slunk and darted through the streets, with me occasionally slipping ahead through the in-between to scout out our route. Twice we had to stop, crouched behind a bit of shelter, waiting for a squad of guards to pass. When we finally reached the edge of the city near the club, my heart sank.
A dozen guards were stationed outside. My powers of trickery and distraction might be extensive, but the palace folk knew me. I wasn’t going to be able to divert all of them with my ploys, not when they knew their heads would be on the chopping block if they failed the Knave.
They’d only leave their post if they saw something they couldn’t explain, which might therefore be part of the anomalies they were pursuing. Something they had no reason to expect.
My throat constricted. I shook myself, trying to shed the sensation of hairs rising all down my back.
“There are too many of them, aren’t there?” Lyssa murmured. “Chess, it’s okay. It’s my fault for making that stupid painting. I’ll just hide as well as I can, and they’ll never know you or Theo or Hatter helped me. If they find me, I swear I won’t say anything about the Spades or the rest of it.”
Oh, this Otherlander was something, wasn’t she? Lovely indeed. Her life on the line, and her first worry was how she was risking me and the others who’d dragged her into this mess.
&nb
sp; I’d sworn to myself I’d do right where I could. If this wasn’t a moment for that, then when was?
Besides, what did it matter anyway if this one more person found out? If she knew what was good for her, she’d stay on the other side of that looking-glass and never set foot here again.
I traced my thumb across Lyssa’s cheek, stopping at the corner of her mouth. Her lips parted. The beautiful lips that the White Knight had recently been kissing.
He had brought her pleasure. I would bring her home. In some ways, this actually came easier.
“I’ll get them away from the club long enough for you to slip inside,” I said. “As soon as you have the chance, run for it. What you’re about to see—I never want you to talk about it, not with me or with anyone else. Can you do that for me?”
She knit her brow. “Of course. But Chess—”
I tapped my thumb to the middle of her lips to quiet her. “You’re getting my secret because you’re special, lovely. Be ready.”
I turned away from her with a roll of my shoulders. My breath came out shaky. It had been a long time. Even the thought of the shift came with a stale twinge of shame.
This time I was using it for something worthwhile. For something deserving.
I hunched over and sank my fangs into the inside of my cheeks.
The pain crackled through my flesh from my head down to my toes. My skin contracted with it, bones shrinking and realigning, fur sprouting up. A puffy tail sprang from the base of my spine and snapped from side to side.
When a cat wags his tail, you know he’s mad.
On broad furred paws, I leapt into the street and dashed toward the guards. As I streaked past them, swaying my rounded body and waving my tail like a signal flag, I slipped into the in-between, and out, and in, and out. Now just my tail showing. Now just my head. A bizarre beast made of jumbled parts. An anomaly.