The Looking-Glass Curse: The Complete Series

by Eva Chase

  “My apologies,” he said, his voice only slightly rough. “Yes. I—The Queen of Hearts has more than one throne. There’s one most people never get to see her sitting on, farther into her inner chambers than the looking-glass I sent you through. Seeing it while I was there these past weeks, I realized it’s another artifact of the Red royal rule. I believe my family has harnessed the magic in it somehow to their own ends—it’s the source of her magic. If you can reclaim it, I don’t think defeating her will be difficult after that.”

  My heart leapt, but only for an instant before I thought of all the obstacles still in the way. “How do I reclaim it?”

  “Once you get to it, I managed to fix a small device to one of the panels, that when triggered should crack through the cage of sorts she’s built around it to control it. Then all you should need to do is sit on it and let it welcome you.” Theo gave me a crooked smile. “Of course, the greater trouble is getting you that far into the palace to begin with. And not just you, but enough of us to protect you while we subdue my mother. Even without any magical power, some of the guards will still listen to her. You couldn’t take her and them on alone.”

  “Okay,” I said, mulling her words over. “So we really just have one problem—how to get me and at least a few Spades into the Queen’s inner quarters. That’s a tricky problem, but at least it only needs one solution, and then we’re ready to go.”

  Theo chuckled. “You do know how to look on the bright side. We’ll get you there. I’ll get you there. Those city folk you’ve been collecting may sway the balance too.”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the cause this morning.” But that could change. I opened my mouth to ask another question, and a raised voice filtered through the trap door above us, far too close for comfort.

  “This is it. I’m telling you.”

  My mouth snapped shut. Even muffled by the layer of wood, it sounded like… Dee. Another, deeper voice was already answering him.

  “You’d better not be yanking us around. If this is a trick, your head will be on a pike within the hour.”

  That growl was the Knave—I was almost sure of it. My eyes caught Theo’s and found his expression was as distraught as I felt. Then Dee spoke up again.

  “Why would I come to you and make this offer if I was lying? I just want the deal we made—I want my mother freed—you promised that, didn’t you?”

  A dismissive guffaw from one of the other men above didn’t dislodge the horror that swelled inside me in an instant.

  The Hearts’ Guard hadn’t forced Dee into giving us up. He’d gone to them intending to betray us.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lyssa

  T heo grabbed my arm. “Let’s get out of here,” he said under his breath. “Fast. We have to warn the others.”

  As I scrambled after him into the longer passage with the glowing stream, the trap door’s latch was already grating to the side. Shit. My heart thumped with a lurching beat. How could Dee have given us all up like that—even his own brother?

  We broke into a run along the side of the stream. “What are we going to do?” I said to Theo.

  His mouth had gone tight. “The measures I put in place will slow them down exactly as I intended. I just didn’t expect one of our own to be helping set them off. Damn it.”

  Nausea coiled around my stomach. “What else do you think he might have told them? What if there are guards at all the exits?”

  Theo shook his head. “I have to believe he still had some concern for us and the cause. The way he was talking up there—he’d have known that by pitching his voice that loud, anyone standing guard down below would hear it. And he knew there’d be a sentry at that entrance. He sold us out, but he purposely gave us a little warning. I don’t think he wants us dead. He just wanted a big enough bargaining chip to save his mother.”

  It was hard to picture the happy-go-lucky guy I’d been getting to know scheming like that, but I hoped Theo was right. “Do you think the Queen will keep up her end of the deal she made with him?”

  Theo’s lips curled into a grimace. “I wouldn’t count on it. Even if he’d served us all up on a platter, she’d probably enjoy laughing in his face and sending him off to be pearled with the rest of them. He’ll have admitted he was a Spade. That’s a death sentence right there. She’ll never trust him to stay in ‘her’ kingdom.”

  Then we’d better make it my kingdom before it came to that. My breath ragged in my throat, I pushed my legs even harder.

  A crashing sound echoed through the passage behind me. I startled, nearly tripping over my feet. Theo steadied me.

  “That’s the main trap,” he said with grim satisfaction. “It’ll take them at least a few minutes to work their way through that.”

  A sentry from one of the smaller secondary camps came into view up ahead. “Get everyone to move out!” I hollered to her. “Right away, take only what you have to. The guards have found the way into the River Down.” I paused for a second, searching my whirling thoughts for the right strategy. “Leave through the forest exit. We’ll regroup on the other side of the mushroom fields.” Please, let that be far enough.

  Between our fight and flight yesterday and the stress my body had been through in the weeks before that, I couldn’t keep up the same pace as Theo for much longer. A burn nibbled at my legs and chest. He slowed as I did, but I nudged him onward. “I’ll catch up. You get to the main camp and sound the alarm there. As soon as I’ve got my sword, I can push back anyone who comes at us down here.”

  We still had to leave, though. Now that the guards knew that the Spades were using these underground passages, we’d never be safe down here again.

  Theo squeezed my hand and forced himself to let go. I kept up a steady lope as he pulled ahead. The prickling burn spread on through the muscles in my calves.

  When I made it to the main camp, everyone was already grabbing their things and heading farther along the stream. Theo had retrieved my sword and my scepter from my cabin where I’d left them. I didn’t have anything else here that mattered all that much to me. Theo handed the artifacts to me and gripped Mirabel’s arm where she was standing wide-eyed next to him to urge her along. Chess fell in with us at my other side. Hatter glanced back from up ahead where he was hurrying Doria along, and the mass of us hustled on through the caves.

  The stream’s blue glow wavered over our bodies. The Spades stayed quiet, but the noise of so many hurrying footsteps echoed through the cave. I kept glancing back over my shoulder, waiting to see a flash of red-and-pink tunic. How long would it take the Knave and the other guards to break through Theo’s defenses?

  He was fiddling now with a round device about the size of a coaster, with a shell of dark gray metal and a clump of tiny wires protruding from its upper edge.

  “What’s that?” I asked him in a hushed voice.

  “Something to cover our escape,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to be using it down here, but if I adjust the intensity of the shock…”

  That sounded a little ominous. We passed the third camp and stirred everyone there into action. My pulse stuttered at the thought of the city people we’d brought down here, the ones I’d been talking to no more than an hour ago. I’d promised them they’d be safe, and now the guards were coming right down here.

  “The Clubbers,” I said. “We can’t leave them.”

  “Of course not,” Theo said. “Chess and I will get them. That’ll be the perfect place to cut off the charge anyway.”

  The fork in the passage opened up ahead of us, one side leading to the Clubbers’ room, the other to the forest exit. Theo motioned to my sword. “Hold off anyone who comes this way. We’ll be back as soon as we can, and then I’ll blockade the guards completely.”

  There wasn’t time to ask him how he was going to do that. He motioned to Chess, and the two of them dashed down the left passage toward the cave where the Clubbers had been recovering. In front of me, the ot
her Spades kept running. I stopped at the fork and spun around, sword at the ready.

  The hasty footsteps on either side of me faded away. I stood braced, my fingers clutching the sword’s hilt, my ears pricked for the slightest sound of our pursuers.

  It didn’t take long. Theo’s traps might have slowed the guards down, but they hadn’t needed to stop to warn anyone or grab anything. The distant rasp of dozens of boots scraping the rocky ground carried to me, getting louder by the second. My gut knotted. I raised my sword a little higher.

  They emerged into the hazy light like a mass of crimson, the mix of red and pink reminding me of butcher’s meat. At first it was hard to pick apart individual forms. They barrelled toward me along both sides of the street, their blades flashing with the blue light, and I made out the Knave’s tiger head at the front of the pack. He wasn’t hanging back shouting orders today. No doubt after yesterday’s embarrassment, he wanted to sever my head from my body himself.

  Too bad, buddy. I intended to keep it right where it belonged.

  My muscles ached with tension, but I held myself still, poised. The thunder of their feet and the warble of harsh breaths and muttered curses filled the passage. There was no point in playing my hand too soon. I didn’t want to wear myself out. Only when I had to, I’d press them back.

  Chess and Theo had better get those city people over here fast.

  There was no sign of Dee in the midst of the guards. They must have left him behind, either suspecting he might try to sabotage their efforts at the last second or not wanting him to get in the way. It wasn’t as if the guy was a fighter.

  Something else struck me about the faces scattered around the Knave as the horde came more clearly into view. Not just a few but at least a dozen of those I could see had the glazed look of the pearl-heads I’d noticed before. Their expressions were slack, their eyes fogged, as dazed as the Clubbers were when under the influence of the rosy drug. Their bodies moved in a relentless forward charge as if nothing existed inside them except the impulse to carry out the orders they’d been given.

  No doubt those orders included slicing through any Spades they encountered.

  I shivered with a sudden, chilly certainty. This was why the Queen of Hearts had commanded her guards to round up people from the city—people healthy and strong. She was expanding her army by the day with unwilling soldiers. With innocents she’d murdered.

  If I’d lacked conviction before to strike back with all the power I had in me, that realization would have summoned it. I adjusted my grip on the sword and tensed my muscles. They were only thirty feet away now. Twenty. Fifteen—

  I lashed out, snapping the blade in a swift arc, the need to defend all the people fleeing behind me rolling off me and surging out through the air.

  The sword’s power smacked into the advancing force as if a sheet of metal had slammed into their middles. The guards buckled over and heaved backward at the same time, knocking into each other in a domino effect down several rows. Some stumbled and fell into the stream. Blood spilled across the floor where the sharpest edge of the magical blow had hit them.

  I sucked the still air into my lungs and readied myself for another strike. The sound of pounding feet reached my ears again—from the passage beside me this time. Theo and Chess were urging our twenty or so recovered Clubbers toward me.

  “Go!” I called to them. “Hurry! I can hold them off for now.”

  The woman who’d expressed so many doubts when I’d talked to her earlier glanced past me down the caves toward the horde of guards. Panic washed across her face, followed by a startled expression as she realized the men were struggling just to get up. Her gaze fell to my sword and then rose to my face. In that instant, for the first time, she looked at me like I really was a queen. Similar surprised relief lit up the expressions of her companions.

  I waved them on down the tunnel, and they dashed the same way the Spades had gone. Chess loped with them, calling directions. Theo came to a halt beside me. He reached into his pocket and yanked out the coaster-shaped device he’d been tweaking earlier.

  “It’s time for you to go too,” he said. “Let’s see how well this works underground. Get ready to run.”

  He flipped a switch on the device and jammed it into a nook in the rocky wall. Hooking his hand around my elbow, he tugged me down the passage. I raced with him, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking back over my shoulder at the eerie crackling that reverberated through the cave.

  Sparks were shooting from the device. A bolt of searing white electricity leapt from its top and arced across the cave ceiling. Everywhere it touched, the stone cracked and split open.

  The Knave roared on the other side of the device’s path. He rushed toward us, one arm pressed against his abdomen where my sword’s magic must have cut him, the other gesturing for his men to follow. He wasn’t fast enough.

  The ceiling shattered. Rocks rained down with a boom that rattled my ear drums. In an instant, that entire section of cave had collapsed in on itself, cutting us off from the rest of the underground.

  Pebbles plummeted down even where we stood. At Theo’s noise of warning, I started running again.

  We darted through increasingly narrow passages until a familiar top hat came into sight in a streak of sunlight spilling down from an opening above. Hatter let out a relieved sound at the sight of us. “Everyone else is up,” he said. “Come on, slow-pokes.” He paused as he gripped the rungs of the ladder. “What in the lands was that noise back there?”

  “I carried out a minor renovation to the caves’ layout,” Theo said, breathlessly wry. “There’s now a wall where there once was a passage heading this way. If the guards want to catch us, they’ll have to find their way back aboveground first.”

  Hatter’s lips curled into a smirk. He scrambled nimbly up the ladder. Unwilling to let go of the sword that had saved us twice now, I heaved myself after him one-handed, the blade clinking against the rungs.

  In the thick forest above, the fresh green smells of the vivid leaves filled my nose. Most of the Spades were already hustling off between the trees, aiming for the land beyond the mushroom field like I’d told them.

  When I turned in the other direction, all I could see of the city amid the foliage was a sliver here and there of bright paint. My legs locked for a second. That city was part of my Wonderland. We were fleeing it, leaving it behind—abandoning all the people there who still needed my protection.

  “We should get moving,” Theo said, firmly but with sympathy in his eyes. “The Knave knows which direction we fled in; he’ll suspect we came to ground somewhere. He’ll send troops this way as soon as he can.”

  “I know.” I did, but turning my back on the city still wrenched at me. I set my jaw and strode toward the mushrooms. We’d regroup and sort ourselves out, and then we’d come up with a plan for how to reclaim the ground we’d lost—and more.

  No workers chattered and giggled in the mushroom field today. The giant orange-and-pink spotted forms loomed beside the path completely untended. I guessed Caterpillar didn’t have any need to harvest his crop when the Queen was getting the entire city high with her doctored roses and the ingredients Rabbit was bringing from the Otherland.

  More forest sprawled beyond the mushrooms. A cloud drifted over the sun as we tramped along, and a cool breeze tickled over my skin. How far did we need to go to make sure the Hearts’ Guard didn’t find us? Could we go far enough? They might track us all the way to the Topsy Turvy Woods with its massive upside down trees. The Queen wanted us all dead, one way or another.

  I needed to make sure I could protect the people already with me before I could even think about the rest of the city.

  Our companions had gathered in a clearing just out of view of the mushrooms. It might have been the same one where I’d trained with my sword and scepter the other day. The city people paced or swayed in the middle of the meadow while the Spades stalked along the perimeter as if on patrol, but they were here
. A few of them had even picked up spare weapons the Spades had brought with them, watching the forest just as warily. A little awe touched me, looking at them.

  The Clubbers might not be all the way ready to fight yet, but they were coming around to the cause. They’d chosen to stay with us rather than take their chances heading back to the city. We had more than twice the number of allies we could have counted on a few days ago. It was the start of a real army.

  The thought sent a quiver of nausea down to my gut, but it steadied me at the same time. We needed an army. That much was clear. Even what we had now wasn’t going to be enough.

  “Where to now?” Dum asked, his gaze on me expectantly. “What should we do?”

  Oh, fuck. It was up to me to figure that out too, of course. I had the urge to glance at Theo for guidance, but that might destroy the confidence I’d spent the last two days building in all these people watching. They’d want to know their queen could make her own call.

  The guards might be coming behind us. Ahead of us lay that stretch of bizarrely shaped hills and then the Topsy Turvy Woods. Would it be easier to hide out there? Of course, I also had to consider that the last time I’d ventured that far, Hatter and I had nearly been lunch for a jabberwock…

  Oh.

  A smile leapt to my face with the spark of inspiration that had just lit in my head. I wanted to laugh, but I hadn’t pulled my new plan off yet.

  I reached behind me and tugged my scepter from its carry bag. Theo watched me with obvious curiosity.

  “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

  “We don’t want the guards catching up with us here,” I said. “I’m going to put something between us and them that they won’t want to tangle with. I’m going to call a jabberwock.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Hatter

  “T his is fucking amazing,” Doria said, her face glowing with excitement as we moved through the forest. She bent to grab another stick to add to the pile of firewood in her arms. “Isn’t it? Can you imagine the looks on their faces when they realized they’d have to go through a jabberwock to get to us?”