I let her pull me off the road and down a small trail.
The path curved around short, cracked trees that bled sap the colour of Maple’s hair. The colour of the warm liquid on my hands.
“Stop,” I breathed, my legs staggering under me.
Maple‘s grip left my arm.
I dropped onto a bloody tree stump at the side of the narrow trail.
Looking down at my bloody hands, I whispered, “I almost killed him.” My gaze lifted to Maple, pale and nerves so fraught that she picked at her fingers. “Did he attack you first?”
“Would it make you feel any better if I said yes?” she glanced at the watch-globe as if sensing the truer depths of my fears. Not of what I am, but of what they thought of me.
“Maybe.” I wiped my hands on my tattered ruffle skirt. “I don’t know, really.”
“He attacked me.”
It could have been a lie, but I let myself believe her. The wave of relief was instant, but suffocated.
Still, etched into my mind, I saw his spidery fingers coiled around her frail throat. The rock raised above. The bloodthirsty gleam in his eyes.
Knowing that the rotten toothed man still existed in the game made my skin feel as though it was made of sand granules. What if he attacked someone else, or worse, killed another player?
“I stole this before we ran.” Maple unwrapped a woven bag and emptied it onto her palm. A small drizzle of button landed on her hand.
Blankly, I stared at the pile of buttons and felt the icy chill of dread spread over my face.
Maple looked up at me, a stiff silence crackling between us.
“No,” she said, a frown pulling down her brows. “I didn’t attack him. He tried to steal from me. That’s the truth.”
Grimly, I nodded and watched as she divided up the buttons. I stuffed my share into my bag. “Serves him right, then.”
My face twisted at the horrid bleeding sound of the tree trunk I sat on. Gingerly, I crept away from it, checking my skirt.
A stain bigger than my hand glistened on the back of my skirt, darkening the ruffles into the colour of melted black and crimson marbles.
“Disgusting,” I muttered to myself, fingers peeling apart the layers of my bloodied skirt.
“Why sit on a bleeding tree stump if you didn’t want to stain your skirt?” asked Maple, genuine curiosity flattening her tone.
Lazily, I swatted the nearing watch-globe away and threw Maple a tired look. “Because I was distracted by almost killing a man.”
Maple shrugged, her attention on the bleeding stumps all around us. Admiration shone in her eyes, like the dance of sunlight over the sea on a bright day. All I saw were pulsating, throbbing tree trunks cut too short, and the thick goo oozing down their sides.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, as if hearing my repulsed thoughts. “Like they’re really alive.”
My lips puckered as she ran her fingers over a long trunk that reached taller than her head.
If those trunks were alive, then their lives weren’t too pleasant—bleeding off-trail for an eternity, people sitting on them, others stroking them, but none of us healing them.
Beauty was the last thing I would have called it.
“It’s almost as if the blood of the fallen is fuelling them,” she added dreamily. “Nature … the dead bring life to the living. One falls, another rises.”
I took her by the arms and steered her away from the trigger of her crazy. “All right,” I said gently. “We need to keep moving, in case he followed us.”
Maple nodded and hummed a short tune to herself.
I was absolutely convinced of her madness. Then, she jerked out of my hold and shot me a look charged with anger.
“I can walk myself, Shoshanna.”
Arching my brows, I held up my hands and took a deliberate step to the side. “No one said otherwise.”
How Holly could have been friends with Maple was something I would never understand. Already, her company had exhausted me. It wasn’t unlike making nice with a minefield.
We strolled down the trail in silence for the most part, until Maple finally spoke.
“The performers are keeping the buttons,” she said, watching her slippers glide over the dirt. She didn’t see my questioning glance, but she explained as though she had. “When we pay them for carriage rides and shelter, they pocket the buttons for themselves.”
“Buttons are the real currency here,” I said. “Maybe it’s the performers’ payment. Like tips.”
“They’re thinning us out.” Maple touched me with her crystal eyes, and I thought I saw guilt shimmer in them. “The less buttons—”
“The less players.” I nodded. “I wonder what happens when we run out completely.”
“We don’t go home,” she said darkly. “We stay here in Spades.”
The corner of my lips tucked into my cheeks. “I suppose that’s why we have little choice but to stay in the game.”
“You, maybe.”
Maple’s face gave nothing away. She looked ahead at the looming end of the trail, but there was a faraway glaze to her eyes.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I want to stay here,” she confessed, her voice a breathy whisper.
Stunned, I stopped in my tracks and stared at her.
“Did you see the village?” She turned to me, an urgency gripping her tone, consuming her eyes. “It’s gone, Shoshanna. The whole village was destroyed—burned to the ground. There’s nothing to go back to, and even if there was…” She shook her head, limp flames sticking to her cheek. “There’s true magic here. A future and a fresh start.”
Maple didn’t have a family like mine. Her was mother was swine who belted and whipped her all the time. Her father, a runaway. No brothers or sisters to call friends.
Until that moment, I didn’t see how lucky I was to have so much love in my life. Even if Holly wasn’t around anymore. At least I didn’t have a torturous life that beat me into the fragile woman in front of me.
“So why play the game?” I asked, my brows bunched together. “Why bother if you’re only going to stay in Spades?”
She patted her pocket, and the tinkle of buttons clicking together sounded out. “I need more of these.”
Maple wanted security.
Spades’ currency. Enough to begin her life free from her mother. If I had only an abusive mother and absent father to return home to, I would want to stay in Spades too.
Was it a curse or a blessing that I had more to return to? More to care about? More to consume me?
I could only know when I made it back to Crooked Grove.
For all I knew, Marybelle and Augustus burned with the village Square, and I had nothing to go back to at all.
Chapter 15
The trail speared into a cosy stone town in the middle of the bleeding woods.
Maple didn’t hang around—before my boots touched the cobblestone, she ran off, muttering something about the castle of death.
I should have turned back.
Night was waiting at the court of me, and if I stood him up again, he would strike down the pittance of alliance we had left.
But I was already too deep down the trail, and the sky had darkened with the shadows of late dusk. There was no use in turning back now.
I walked down the narrow cobblestone lanes that slipped between tall shops
Iron shop signs hung from creaky fixtures above the doorways, and I was careful not to step under them. I’d always had this fear of shop signs falling on my head.
When I looked up at the gas-lantern lights that flickered weakly against the glitter of twilight, I let out a sigh. Even if I left the cosy town now, I wouldn’t make it back to the court before night took the sky.
Besides, I didn’t fancy heading back to the brick road alone, where robbers and crooks lurked, some of them with a grudge against me.
I made it to the third shop when a flash of silver hissed by my head and nipped my ear.
Wincing, I leapt back just as a throwing knife struck the lamppost mere inches from me.
I spun around, hand on the hilt of my dagger.
The rotten-toothed man stood at the mouth of the lane, eyes ablaze. His chest heaved wildly, and blood soaked into his tattered boots from where I’d cut him.
His lip curled into something ugly, and he whipped out a short rusty knife from his belt. So short that he would have to get up close to use it.
I almost let a confident smile twist my lips as I took a challenging step toward him. My skills would cut through him and his tiny knife in seconds.
But then, another shadow crept out of the trail and joined him. A shadow that cleared into the bulky robber from the path—a man I’d almost killed.
I swallowed, gaze switching between them. It was too risky to take them both on, and they weren’t after me for mere buttons or clues. They were fuelled by something stronger than greed.
Revenge.
I might’ve been a blacksmith and a damn good swordsperson, but I was no fool. A losing fight faced me. Before they could take a single step my way, I spun around and bolted down the lane as fast as my tired legs could move.
Their footsteps pounded against the cobblestone, but far enough away that I was able to veer down another lane and scramble into a quiet shop with an open door. I ducked behind the door and turned myself into a statue.
Footfalls drew nearer, then slowed. Breath held, I pushed my hand against my chest to muffle the shouts of my beating heart.
The crook behind the door was barely wide enough to wedge my whole self into. Still, I crept further behind it and stretched myself up as long as I could.
My watch-globe didn’t give me away. Humming softly, it lowered to my head, where it rested and silenced itself. I shut my eyes in a wave of relief.
The voices drifted away, farther down the lane. But I didn’t move from the wedge until I was certain they were gone and the light breeze stopped carrying the whispers of their gruff voices over to me.
I slid out from the wedge and peered around the door.
The lane was silent, quiet. I let out a gushed breath and slumped back against the wall.
Without an ally, whether Night or Lock, I wouldn’t make it to the next round of the game. If I didn’t meet up with Lock soon, I would have to round back for Night, and who was to say his offer still held?
The watch-globe lifted from my head and floated around the shop. My lazy gaze followed it to the counter where there was a row of glass cake stands, littered with crumbs. The shopkeeper was nowhere in sight, and there were no more cakes to be had.
At the sight of the crumbs, my belly gave a deep rumble and I hugged it tight.
Since Night took me to the outdoor tavern, I hadn’t had a decent meal—my stomach wasn’t pleased with the reminder, and began sending trickles of bile up my throat.
Food was the first thing on my list, allies would have to come second. I dipped out of the shop in search of ones with whole cakes and pies. But as I cautiously slipped between lanes, keeping an eye out for the robbers, I began to notice that every shop was empty.
There were no keepers, food, daggers, clothes, or drinks. Only traces of what had been sold. Scraps. And I wondered if anything had been in the shops at all, if these lanes were decoys, props. And if so, what were they distracting from?
I pulled down a dreary alley shrouded in grit and shadows. Unlike the lanes, the alley reeked of old potato peelings and too-ripe apples, and at the far end loomed a wrought-iron gate with rusted flaked over it.
Among the cobblestone and doorless shops, the gate was out of place. Slowly, I crept closer, hand reaching for the hilt of my dagger.
Something about the gate sent chills over my pebbled skin and drew me in all the same.
Before the end of the alley, I paused beside a lone trash bin. At first glance, I thought it was empty. Just as I was about to draw away, a shimmer caught my eye.
Frowning, I reached a hand into the bin and felt around the bottom. Cold metal bit at my fingertips.
Clasping my hand around the cold, I pulled it out and turned it over in my hand. It was an old key, attached to a ribboned piece of paper.
Scribbled in handwriting worse than my own, the parchment read, ‘Shoshanna White. Tea Party’.
Looking around the alley, I saw no doors—only the gate. As I made to approach it, the scrape of boots over cobblestone stopped me dead and chilled my bones.
I spun around to face the mouth of the alley, where the lightposts burned bright and encased a dark shadow of a man.
“There you are.” His leer pushed through the shadows. He ran at me, massive shoulders grazing the tight walls.
This time, I didn’t hesitate.
With a single twirl, I whipped out my dagger and kicked the metal bin at the burly robber. It cracked against his knees hard enough for his legs to buckle a beat. And it was all the beat I needed to charge at him.
I plunged my blade into his chest.
He blinked, stunned.
Realisation swept across his slack face, dulling his eyes. I snared his gaze and, with a leer of my own, twisted the blade upwards.
His legs gave out, and I yanked my dagger out of him before he could take it with him. No regret took me as he slumped to the grimy stone ground.
Even as his blood washed over my boots and the watch-globe hummed with renewed life, not a mere bud of guilt lifted to my heart.
The watch-globe didn’t falter. It stuck close as I grabbed the key and jogged to the gate. I turned it in the keyhole.
The clink was so loud that it bounced off the stone walls, calling to the other crooks like a siren to sailors. Quickly, I shoved through the gate and locked it behind me.
But when I rested my back against the cool metal and adjusted my shoulder bag, what I saw before me was nothing like the small town or the dark smelly lane with the bleeding corpse.
I stood at the edge of a forest, looking out onto a bright green glade. Every blade of grass shimmered under the fading sun.
In the centre of the clearing stood a crooked house, one that whisked me back to my village. Though, unlike the slanted buildings at the village, this one was different—it warped in on itself, one level sloped down onto the next.
I studied it, and thought of warm toffee, the kind my dad sometimes made from scratch. Whenever he whisked up a batch, I sat at the kitchen table and sculpted houses from the warm sweet. They never stood stiff enough. The house ahead reminded me of those toffee houses, if I’d pinched their centres and lifted up to twist them.
Closer to the gate stretched a long, messy table. A dozen patterned table cloths dressed it in lumpy spots, beneath cracked teapots and shattered cake-stands and spilled milks
I spun around, grabbing for the gate I’d left behind. But it was gone. Only trees surrounded me. As I looked around, I realised that my watch-globe had vanished too.
Wherever I was, it was off-grid, and I had the sinking feeling that I wasn’t supposed to be here.
The suspicion was confirmed when a deep, lightly accented voice came from the trees—
“This glade is forbidden to contestants.”
Chapter 16
On instinct, I drew my dagger and pointed it at the man who’d snuck up behind me.
The tip of the blade made a dimple on a porcelain cheekbone. Then, crisp twilight eyes struck through me with the chill of the Winter Years.
“What are you doing here, Night?” I asked, suspicion dripping from my tongue. “How’d you get here?”
“One could ask you the same.” Dark eyes shadowed me as I bent to tuck my weapon into my boot. Night leaned against a thin tree and crossed his arms, his hands ungloved now. “Do you know where ‘here’ is?”
I straightened and tossed the key at him. He caught it with a smooth swipe, his unreadable gaze glued to me.
“No,” I said. “But I know that wherever here is, it’s somewhere off-limits to contestants. Yet we’re both here. And
that key brought me here.”
He turned it over in his hands, his eyes lingering over the piece of parchment. He handed it back and studied me, rinsing his gaze from my bloody boots to the dry clots of dirt in my scraggly hair.
“You’re early,” he said, pulling away from the tree as if suddenly losing interest in my forbidden appearance in the glade. “Hatter hates punctual guests more than late ones.”
I made to follow him through the thinning trees, but a chipped trunk caught my eye.
Carefully, I closed in on the tree. Etched into the bark was a cat’s face. A wide grin with very unlike-cat teeth, huge round eyes, and a chubby face. It didn’t look terribly different to Tabby from the circus.
“Hatter?” I blinked back to the now and chased after Night into the fringe of the green clearing, so bright and fresh that it reminded me of juicy apples. “As in the Hatterthon?”
“Careful.” Night snatched me to his side, a sharp look taking his face.
I shrugged his arms off of me and traced his gaze to a patch of mud in the grass—where I’d almost stepped.
“If it catches your foot, you’ll be stuck there for hours. Those bogs don’t let you go until they grow tired of you.”
I side-stepped the bog and kept an eye out for any others hiding beneath overgrown tufts of grass.
We made our way through the glade to the long, messy table ahead.
“Hatter,” said Night, “designs the Hatterthon in a way. Costumes, landscapes, games.”
I frowned up at him. “You know that from your first time in Spades?”
Night hesitated a moment, and we listened to the soft footsteps as we closed the last of the distance between us and the table. He turned his face away from the drooping, pink sun and gestured lazily to the slanted hat-house on the other side of the glade.
“This is where I called home for a time,” he said.
“Hatter was the one who helped you,” I said, a look of understanding smoothing out the suspicious wrinkles from my face.
Night gave me a flippant glance, then dropped into a chair halfway down the table.
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