Wanton Wonderland

by Eva Chase

  To my joy, Lyssa’s hand welcomed mine, her fingers curling to grasp my palm.

  “You’re doing well,” I told her. “Every bit a queen—all the queen they could ask for.”

  She smiled, but this time it looked tight. “I hope so. This afternoon… I wanted the Spades, at least, to see how committed I am. And now the Queen of Hearts knows for sure what I’m after. And I—I killed at least some of those guards…”

  Her voice dropped with the last words. I stopped and turned her to face me. She hesitated, but only for a second before leaning into my embrace.

  “You were brilliant out there,” I said, my heart wrenching at the thought of her feeling guilty over that moment of glory. “They meant to kill as many of us as they could.”

  “I know.” She nestled her head against my chest. I knew it was only for a moment, but I wished I could hold her like this, protect her with my arms around her, through everything that lay ahead. “I did what I had to do. It was the right choice—I’m not doubting that. I just… I hate having to make that choice.”

  “And that’s why you’re the queen we need,” I said. “Just remember, we’re fighting a woman who’s mad as they come. Sometimes you have to get a little mad to fight back against madness. The more you can hold on to sanity in the fray, the more impressive it is.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Lyssa said. When she exhaled, she sounded more settled. She pulled away from me and swiped her hand over the pale waves of her hair, rumpled from all the rushing around she’d been doing today. Her blue eyes still held a glow of their own even though weariness was starting to color her expression.

  “How are you doing?” she asked me. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be getting more rest, after the way they treated you in the palace?”

  “I think all this running around has been good for me, actually,” I said honestly. The spasms of my muscles, the startling flashes of images, and the pains in my head had all retreated behind adrenaline and motion as the day had gone on. “She only had me for a couple of weeks, after decades of going my own way. It shouldn’t take too long for me to shake whatever she did completely.”

  Lyssa squeezed my hand. “All right. I don’t want my White Knight running himself ragged.”

  “I won’t,” I said, with a twinge at the name I wasn’t sure I could really own now. “And you need to rest,” I said. “The guards haven’t shown any sign of discovering our hide-out. We can decide how to tackle them next in the morning.”

  Lyssa’s lips pursed, but she nodded.

  Not entirely trusting her to actually get that rest once we reached the camp, I walked her all the way to the cabin she’d been sharing. She narrowed her eyes at me, but she tugged me in for a quick kiss before she opened the door. The press of her mouth against mine even for that brief moment left me hungry for more. I wasn’t sure I could ever get enough of her.

  When she’d ducked in, I turned away and noticed Dum’s slouched posture where he was spooning up soup from a bowl outside his own cabin. The cabin he’d been sharing with Dee, as well as Chess and Hatter. Dum had always been the more down-to-earth and solemn of the twins, but he’d rarely acted outright glum. The gloom of his current situation hovered over him like a storm cloud. Even his red hair appeared to have dulled.

  I’d failed him. I’d sworn to their mother I’d keep both of them from harm, and I’d lost his brother. Why hadn’t I seen that Dee was shaken enough to take drastic action?

  All of Mother’s damned “treatments” had been addling my thoughts and my senses. Perhaps I was mostly healed now, but I’d been distracted too often since I’d returned. I needed to make sure I kept control of my mind and my body from here on.

  I grabbed an apple from our food supply and hunkered down on the cool rock next to Dum. He looked up from his bowl and made an effort to straighten his stance, as if he thought I’d be offended by his downcast demeanor.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Best to get that out there first, especially if he was acting as though he owed me something. “I really hoped we’d find him. He may return to us yet. He’s never let the Hearts’ Guard catch him before.”

  “That’s true,” Dum said. His lips slanted at a crooked angle. “But I think something has shifted in him. I don’t know how it’ll have shifted his reactions in turn.”

  I tipped my head to the side. “What do you mean?”

  Dum shrugged. “I wouldn’t have said anything to you before. It didn’t matter. Maybe you already noticed anyway. But since we were kids, when we first started helping with the Spades on the sidelines, it always seemed to me like Dee saw the whole rebellion as some kind of game. An adventure where we just had to play well enough and we’d win, like the games in your apartment in the Tower. I could never get him to take things totally seriously. He didn’t have to. No one we were close with ever got caught. We never got really hurt. He could always keep that delusion going to stop himself from getting too scared.”

  I hadn’t gotten quite the same impressions Dum had, but he’d know his brother better than I did. His suggestion explained how Dee had managed to stay in such high spirits throughout the missions, even when we’d faced setbacks. In some ways, the approach had served him well.

  “But you think that’s changed,” I prompted. “Because of your mother being taken?”

  “That,” Dum said. “And you being gone before that. He was having trouble keeping up that carefree face he always wanted to show the world. He wouldn’t talk to me about it, but I could see it. The fears were creeping in, and he couldn’t push them back the same old ways. I’m just worried that finding out about Mom pushed him over some sort of edge. I don’t know what he’d do if he really panicked.”

  “We’ll do our best to find him and bring him back,” I said, which was the best I could really say. “All of us. If we can save him, we will.”

  “I should have talked him down when he was here,” Dum said. “He’s my brother. Even I couldn’t figure out the right thing to say.” He raised his head. “It won’t be your fault if he’s gone too far for us to bring him back, is all I’m saying.”

  His whole family’s lives were at stake, and he was trying to reassure me. My throat constricted. I clapped him on the back. “It won’t be yours either. Don’t you ever doubt that.”

  I left him to his meal, the talk of siblings and fear leading me across the camp to the new cabin the Spades had set up for my own sibling’s use. I wasn’t sure Mirabel could have tolerated sharing such close quarters with anyone else. As it was, she’d barely left the small structure since I’d arrived here.

  As I’d used to when I’d arrive at her apartment in the Tower, I knocked on the door. “Come in,” Mirabel said immediately, as she would have then too. I eased open the door and ducked inside to check in on my older sister.

  She was sitting against the back wall, her legs drawn up under the soft white folds of her woolen skirt, a book propped against her knees. After a second, I realized the volume was upside down. I decided not to mention that fact. For all I knew, she’d managed to read it just fine like that.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you so soon,” she said, with that dreamy air that made me wonder whether she was viewing time backwards or forwards right now. Or maybe a little of both, as seemed to becoming increasingly common these days.

  “I wanted to make sure you’re settling in all right,” I said. “I know this is pretty different from the Tower.”

  Mirabel let out a light laugh. “Anywhere is fine if it’s not where Mother is.” She paused, her gaze searching mine. “She comes close. I don’t like her that close.”

  Before or after now? I swallowed hard. “I’ll do whatever I can to make sure she never touches you again. You know you have my word on that.”

  “Yes. Yes.” The urgency left her expression. She relaxed back against the wall. Then her forehead furrowed, a more melancholy shadow crossing her face. “We survived it, didn’t we? As much as it hurt. As many as we lost.�
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  A chill ran over my skin. I couldn’t help asking, even though I knew my chances of getting a straight answer were slim, “What do you mean, Mirabel? What did we survive? Who did we lose?”

  She rocked slightly from side to side. “Queen against Queen, Spade against Spade, family against family, friend against friend. We all turn on each other in the end. And only one can come out the other side.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lyssa

  My mind felt more alert, if no less cluttered, after the exhausted sleep I’d toppled into. I rolled my shoulders as I considered the city people the Spades had gathered in the cave room. They seemed to be waking up in their own way too.

  A few newcomers, brought in early this morning, lounged in the hazy blue light that reached the back of the cave room like they might have in one of the club’s shallow pits, a faint rosy smell drifting off their clothes. The ones who’d spent the night with us were starting to ask a lot more pointed questions.

  “The Inventor was here last night, wasn’t he?” said one of the women Theo had talked to yesterday, peering around me as if I might be hiding him. Her gaze focused back on me, and she knit her brow. “He said you’re a queen.”

  “I’m the Red Queen,” I said. The words came more easily every time I said them. “A long time ago, my family ruled Wonderland—without anyone losing their heads. The Reds believed in spreading happiness, not fear. The Hearts slaughtered all of them except one princess who escaped to the Otherland. That was hundreds of years ago, and the Queens of Hearts wiped out every trace of us they could. But they couldn’t wipe us out. And now I’m here, to set things right.”

  A woman I’d talked to yesterday stepped closer with eyes much sharper than they’d been before. “Do you really think you can do that? It’s the Spades down here, isn’t it? They’ve only made trouble the whole time I’ve been alive.”

  The man with the hound’s head shuddered where he was hunched by the wall. “The Spades? If the Queen finds out we’ve been taken in by them, she’ll have all our heads.”

  Several others in the cave stirred nervously. My chest tightened. Before anyone else could start fretting, I held up my hand.

  “Don’t you remember all those years you were stuck repeating the same day over and over? The Spades freed you from that magic. We’re helping you now, bringing you down here so you can clear your head from the drug the Queen of Hearts was forcing on you.”

  “As if we had any choice about it,” the skeptical woman said.

  “Now you have a choice,” I pointed out. “You can think properly. Do you want to go back up to the city and be taken over by that drugged daze again? You can if you want to, and the guards will never know you were gone. But you won’t be able to look after yourself either. They’ve been stealing people from the city, you know. Grabbing cartfuls of you and shipping you out to the Oyster Cove to be pearled. Down here, you’re safe from that too.”

  “Pearled?” the first woman repeated. She hugged herself. “Why would the Queen want that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We’re trying to figure that out. But it can’t be good for anyone. I’ve seen the guards with my own eyes—they were taking dancers off the street, people who hadn’t done anything wrong. The guards weren’t even pretending they had a good reason. Everyone up there is so out of it, they didn’t even think to protest. That’s what you’d be going back to.”

  The houndish man glanced toward the ceiling with a pensive expression. “I don’t like that. But I’m not ready to join some kind of fight. That’d get us killed even faster.”

  I inhaled slowly, willing my nerves to settle. The most important thing was convincing the Clubbers to stay down here where they couldn’t betray our location. Where we’d still have a chance of convincing them to join the cause. As long as they were with us, the rest could wait—forever, even, if that was what they wanted.

  This had been my idea. I couldn’t let it become the Spades’ downfall.

  “You don’t have to join in any missions,” I said. “You don’t even need to help out with our camp down here if you don’t want to. We’ll keep you as comfortable as possible and make sure you’re fed. All we want is to know you’re safe. As your queen, I serve you. I’m not going to demand your help when you hardly know me. There’ll be no pressure on you. Just stay here, stay protected, at least until we can make the city up there safe again.”

  The jitters that had passed through the bunch of them faded. The houndish man sucked in a breath.

  “All right,” he said. “I don’t like how I felt up there—I don’t like anything the Queen’s done to us. If you’re not asking anything from us, I’m in no hurry to throw myself back on her mercy.”

  The skeptical woman frowned. “I’m not either. But if you’re some kind of queen, you’re going to do more than this, aren’t you? What about our friends? Our families? My father must be wandering around up there still. Are you going to stuff all of us down in these caves before she has the chance to pearl any more of us?”

  I swallowed hard, my thoughts slipping to Dee, who I hoped was only wandering around up there and not already locked in the palace dungeon or being shipped to the Cove. “We’re doing everything we can to stop the Queen of Hearts completely,” I said. “I don’t want any more people taken. If I can stop her today, I will.”

  I had no idea whether that was even remotely possible, but the answer seemed to satisfy the woman for the moment. She bobbed her head to me and sat back down on her blanket. I hurried back through the tunnels to see what kind of plans I could actually make.

  As I came up on the main camp, the blue glow of the stream caught on the shiny fabric of Hatter’s top hat farther down the passage. He’d been off on sentry duty, if I remembered right. It reassured me a little, seeing the bit of jaunt in his stride as if he wasn’t all that fazed by the fact that we were now fighting our rebellion literally from underground. The smile he gave me warmed me even more.

  “How are our refugees doing?” he asked when he reached me.

  “About as well as I could have hoped, I think,” I said. “I’ve managed to convince them they’re better off staying down here for the time being.”

  “I happen to know you can be very persuasive,” he said, an amused glint in his eyes.

  “I wouldn’t have needed to persuade you so much if you’d been more helpful to begin with,” I reminded him.

  “Fair point.” He leaned in to kiss me as if he couldn’t quite help himself, and I was more than happy to return it. But as much as I might have liked to lose myself in that heady sensation for longer, I had come back here with a purpose.

  “Do you know where Theo is?” I asked. He normally got up early, but I didn’t see him around the camp.

  To my relief, Hatter nodded. “I passed him on my way here. He was heading out to take his turn guarding the entrance near the palace. I think he wanted to check up on the protections he set up last night.”

  After our close call with the guards, the Prince of Hearts had made whatever use he could of the materials and devices the other Spades had scavenged to hopefully buy us some time if the guards traced our path. Since they hadn’t turned up yet, we seemed to have gotten off scot-free, but it couldn’t hurt to have the defenses in place.

  “All right,” I said with a rush of purpose. “Then that’s where I’m going too.”

  Hatter raised an eyebrow at me. “What are you up to, looking-glass girl? You almost look a little mad.”

  I made a face at him. “Maybe I need to be a little mad to go up against a Queen who couldn’t be madder,” I said, remembering Theo’s words last night. “You’re not exactly one to talk, Mad Hatter.”

  He let out a laugh, but concern had softened his gaze. “Which is exactly why I know the risks involved in letting loose that way.”

  “You should also know by now I’m not the type to go right off the rails. I actually have a very good track record with trains.” I gave him a teasing sh
ove. “Go do whatever else you’re supposed to be doing now. Maybe I’ll come back with a crown on my head.”

  His eyebrows rose even higher. “I’ll look forward to that, then,” he said, and stole one last kiss before heading into the camp.

  The Spades had marked the passages around the stream with chalk symbols long before I’d made it back to Wonderland. I was becoming familiar enough with the usual routes now that I barely needed to look at them as I treaded over the rough stone beside the rippling water. Getting to the palace exit required a scramble across a makeshift bridge and a few turns.

  The mineral scent in the air thickened as the stream narrowed until I could have hopped across it without any bridge at all. It veered to the right. At my left, a narrow passage slanted upward into a room about the size of my apartment kitchen back home.

  Theo was standing by the far wall where carved footholds led up to the trap door, fixing slim silver rod just beneath the door with a faint squeak. He gave the base one last twist and turned to face me as I slipped into the small space.

  “Everything’s still as you wanted it?” I asked.

  “I made a few adjustments I thought of overnight,” he said. “I may not be the Inventor anymore, but my mind still leaps into those ways of thinking automatically.”

  “Good for us that it does,” I said with a smile.

  Theo studied me. “You didn’t come out here just to find out about that,” he said. “What is it, Lyssa?”

  He’d always been able to take a quick read of my mood. I guessed there wasn’t any point in beating around the bush.

  “I want us to move on the palace as soon as we can,” I said. “Too many people are being hurt. I want the hold the Queen of Hearts has over Wonderland severed as quickly as possible, not with a drawn out war. When we found you, in the palace, you said something about clearing the way to the throne for me. What exactly did you do? What do we need if we’re going to see that plan through?”