They yanked me to the center of the grassy arena. When they finally hauled me up to my feet and turned me around, I saw the makeshift wooden platform with a thick stake jutting out of the center and surrounded by a bed of straw.
“Let go of me, you bastards!” I shouted. Still struggling to get free of them, I kicked their legs and stomped hard on their feet. None of it appeared to affect them at all. That well of magical energy at my core was boiling and ready to go, but there was still no way for me to access it. The air was too dead to draw from, even with all the excitement around me. I tugged my body one way and then twisted it hard in another direction, hoping to loosen the grip on my arms, but the guards didn’t even seem a little bit troubled by my wild flailing and kicking. They dragged me up the steps to the platform, turned me around, and began to bind me to the stake with a thick rope. One guard held me by the neck, pressing me back into the stake while I gasped for air. The other guard wrapped rope around my legs, arms, and middle, pulling so tightly it hurt. They backed away from me, grinning widely, showing mouthfuls of jagged yellow teeth.
I shot a fiery glance around the arena, my chest heaving as I blinked back tears of fury. From this vantage point, I could see part of the castle—an ivory tower stretching hundreds of feet into the solid blue, cloudless sky. My eyes fell instantly on the Queen, standing on a balcony jutting out from the high tower. The strange cat was in her arms, grinning its sharp toothed smile. Its golden stripes glittered in the sun. The Queen was smiling too. Her pointy teeth showed through her pouty, crimson mouth. They looked even whiter in the direct sunlight. Her red hair shimmered over the poufy shoulders of her black and white striped dress.
Directly across from me in the clearing, a court of sneering, heckling monsters stood, eager to watch me burn alive. The dog faced guards, the skin walkers, the shaggy, faceless sentinels with glowing amber eyes, and a bunch of royal guardians in uniforms with hoods pulled up to hide their faces that were flanking either side of the largest entrance into this grassy arena. Even if I managed to slip out of these tight ropes, it was unlikely I’d get out of this clearing alive.
There were plenty of other creatures standing around that weren’t in the Queen’s service—ghouls with twisted green faces, their toothless mouths hanging open and dead eyes trained on mine. A clump of centaurs stood together next to a smaller entrance into this open area, but they hardly seemed interested in what was going on in front of them. Each one was eating that strange fruit while they stamped their large hooves in the grass. Tiny misshapen beings less than three feet tall and looking slightly human were peppered throughout the crowd. They were dressed in worn clothing, and their large round heads were covered in scarves and hats They watched me closely with beady eyes.
“Are you ready to die, witch?” the Queen asked her voice drifting down to my ears. Somehow her voice was even louder out here than it had been in her echoing throne room. She lifted her dark eyebrows, her smile sharpening as the beast in her arms purred to show its amusement s. The sound moved through my bones. God, I hated that cat.
Suddenly, I was having trouble catching my breath. This was it. I was going to die in this realm.
I was never going to find out what happened to my parents or where they’d gone on their last adventure—the one that took them away from me. I thought of my grandparents, their faces always so kind when they told me how much my parents loved me. Assuring me that they’d never have stayed away for so many years unless something terrible had happened. Then my grandfather on his deathbed, telling me to look in the attic, that my parents had left things behind for me, things I was finally old enough to have. The Terra Magicarum had been up there, tucked away in a box. Reading it had kick-started my traveling. But the old leather-bound guide had been wrong about this realm. The colors and the beauty in the picture conveyed nothing of the dark, twisted truth of this realm ruled by a despot who demanded that all magic move only through herself.
“Guard, check those ropes!” the Queen called down from her balcony, pointing at one of the hooded, motionless sentinels awaiting her orders. “Witches are tricky, murderous beasts. We need to make sure she won’t escape her fiery fate.” The creatures in attendance cheered, growled, and stamped their feet. The Queen’s grin expanded, her dark eyes shining so brightly that I could feel the fire in them from where I was on the ground. I expected the hay around my feet to ignite in the heat of that satisfied glare.
A hooded guard broke formation to step forward, his head bent so I couldn’t see his face. He stepped up to the platform and bent to check the ropes at my feet first. They were the loosest, though not nearly loose enough to pull them free and kick him right in the face. He tightened them, the rope cutting into my legs.
“Please,” I whispered to him, keeping my eyes on the Queen’s sneering mouth and burning eyes. I kept my face clenched in a hard expression, refusing to let her see how terrified I was. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I was brought here against my will. I just want to go home.”
The guard checked the ropes around my midsection and tightened those as well, making it even more difficult to breathe. I supposed that would be the least of my problems in a few minutes.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered fiercely. “I don’t deserve to die!”
He bent to check the ropes that bound my wrists to the stake. When he stood to his full height again, he lifted his head to look me in the face.
I drew in a sharp breath. “Grayson!”
His blue eyes were shadowed with emotion and all the healthy color had left him, leaving him extremely pale, his skin shining with a sickly sheen, like he was about to be violently ill. He couldn’t meet my gaze for much longer than a handful of seconds, preferring instead to stare at my grimacing mouth.
“What the hell are you doing?” I muttered, the heat in my words making him flinch. “Let me out of these ropes! This bitch is going to kill me!”
His pretty eyes skittered up to mine briefly, before diving down to whatever he found so interesting on the ground. “If I let you go, they’ll kill me too.”
“You fucking coward!” I hissed, straining against the ropes. “You’re just going to stand here and watch me burn to death?”
He considered me again. His light eyes were glassy and his lips were turned down into a tight, shaky grimace. The expression on his face was more open now—his golden-brown eyebrows pulled together slightly, as though he was in pain.
“I’m sorry, Alicia,” he whispered, voice wavering as he reached to check the ropes around my midsection again, his fingers lingering. “I’m so very sorry.”
“We don’t have all day, guard!” the Queen bellowed. “Are those ropes secure or not?”
His back straightened, but he didn’t leave the platform. He whispered a few more sentences, his words low and urgent. “I’ll try to make this quick. The Queen ordered a slow, painful burn, but I’ll do my best to light a blazing fire. Just breathe in as much of the smoke as you can.”
“Fuck you,” I said, slowly and firmly, my eyes not leaving his.
He withdrew as though burned, which did my racing heart good to see. It was a hollow victory, but I’d take what I could get at this point. I had a lot more to say, but I didn’t get the chance to rake more insults over him before he turned and left the platform, nodding once to the Queen on her ivory balcony. He returned to his position at the head of the rest of the palace guards, the hood back over his face, so I couldn’t see his eyes.
I was having trouble breathing again, and not just from the ropes cutting into me just below my ribs. My heart thundered in my heaving chest, and I couldn’t force my racing, frenzied thoughts to calm down long enough to come up with a plan to get me out of this.
Worst case scenario: I was going to die in a pillar of flames. Best case scenario: I’d inhale enough smoke to pass out before I could feel the fire burn me alive. Either way, I was toast. I gritted my teeth, trying to hold back helpless tears, but they escaped my eyes as I lo
oked up at the Queen. They ran down my cheeks and dripped onto my dirty t-shirt.
She’d ditched her cat and was leaning over the balcony railing with her hands holding her up. Her dark eyes looked enormous in her pale, gaunt face. The necklace she wore had come free of the bodice of her dress and swung into plain view—the black heart charm catching the sunlight and gleaming with its own dark power.
I was furious at not even being able to free a single hand to wipe the tears from my cheeks. I strained hard, both inside and out, my body tugging at the rope that bound it while my insides struggled against a different kind of obstacle. That wealth of power within me swelled, completely useless, of course. I felt something else too, a tingling that wasn’t quite right, but it was more powerful than the well of magic that I’d drawn from throughout my entire life. It was darker—more invasive—and it called to me. The cuts on my right hand ached, the throb sickly sweet. It was the mirror glass, that murky power simmering inside of it that had promised me a way to escape, if only I succumbed to it. Had some of it gotten inside of me when I cut myself after stabbing that guard? And why was I only feeling it now at the sight of that broken heart amulet?
In my mind’s eye, I saw the picture crudely drawn on the page of the Terra Magicarum—the black, broken heart sketched over the brief description of Wonderland. My fingers moved over one another behind the stake. I could feel my mother’s opal ring. I drew in a deep, trembling breath, everything becoming clear to me in a single instant.
The ring was receptacle for magic—my mother had used it as a kind of backup plan in case she was ever compromised. The broken heart amulet was the same. The Queen had drained all the magic in the realm, drawing it to the beating heart of this strange land, and used the amulet to lock it away, which explained the way it gleamed and trembled, as though powered from the inside. The Queen wore Wonderland’s greatest curse around her neck, drawing from that wealth of stolen energy to keep herself in command. I had to destroy that charm to release all that trapped magic, letting it flow freely as rivers of exquisite power returning to their sources and restoring equilibrium to this energy-starved realm. But how was I supposed to get my hands on it? I was tied to a stake. And it didn’t look like I was going to get much more time to puzzle it out. The guards were moving into position to light fire to the straw at my feet.
“For the crime of daring to threaten the peace and prosperity of this great realm, I sentence this witch to burn at the stake!” the Queen announced, and the creatures around me sent up another cheer.
The guards raised their torches, flames dancing at the ends of them as they approached where I stood bound and trembling on the platform. Grayson glanced up at me, his cerulean eyes pleading. I looked away from him, sickened both by his cowardice and by what was coming. I knew how to fix this realm, but I would die before I ever got the chance.
“Burn her!” the Queen shrieked.
The spectators began to chant, their growling voices turning my already weak stomach and battering my ears.
“Burn her. Burn her. Burn her.”
Now in position right in front of the platform, the guards dropped their torches in unison, touching the flames to the straw around my feet.
The fire started immediately.
I was out of time.
CHAPTER 13
~
I FELT THE HEAT OF the flames on the lower part of my legs. It wasn’t uncomfortable yet, but the fire would soon blaze to life around me, roaring up to end me in the most painful, pitiless way I could imagine. Having my head chopped clean from my body was starting to sound damned good right about now. Too bad the Queen wasn’t taking requests.
The guards brought over more bundles of hay to throw on the platform, piling it high around my legs and hips. I tugged my body against the ropes, desperate to find some give, but Grayson had done his job to the letter, not leaving me even a little wiggle room. I cursed him, every single member of his family, and all the dragon shifters in this and every other world.
I looked up at the Queen. She had that damned cat in her arms again, and was stroking it with long fingers as she watched me. Her pallid face was pressed into an amused expression, and her eyes were as hot as the flames around my feet.
I pulled hard at the ropes binding my wrists, drawing in a sharp breath at the persistent ache in my right hand. The tingling throb in that hand traveled up my arm and reached its clinging tentacles into my center, where the deep, pure well of my true power resided. That tingling, grasping new power felt wrong—corrupted, like something filthy had gotten inside of me. But as infected as it felt running under my skin, it also felt alarmingly potent. I just needed to get my hands free, and then I could use that corrupted, pulsating power to attack the Queen where she stood on her high balcony. I could end all of this, if I just gave in to that throbbing strength and let it direct the blocked magic within me.
The flames were growing. I could feel them licking at my legs, my skin soaking up the heat. My body was drenched in sweat and I could hardly breathe from the thick smoke billowing up from the blazing fire. I tugged at the ropes, but they didn’t give a single centimeter. Growling behind clenched teeth, I tried to dig into that deep well at my center, ordering my magic to spring from my bound hands.
Nothing happened. The air around me was heavy with smoke, but completely and unnaturally still. I tried harder, the ache in my right hand unbearable. The deeper I tried to draw into that well, the more that other, darker power burned inside me—enticing me to use it, to free myself and end all of this, to take that fount of luscious, stolen magic into myself the way the Queen had done. I could rule this realm. Once I steered the heart of Wonderland through me, all of these cruel, pathetic creatures would bow to me.
I shook my head, hard, to clear those insistent, malevolent thoughts that didn’t belong to me. If I didn’t get it together, I was going to die. I needed a plan. I needed to get free of these ropes.
The guards were going back to their places around the large entrance to the clearing, their hoods in place, so I couldn’t see their faces. I knew the last one was Grayson. I’d know those broad shoulders and striding walk anywhere. He hesitated, looking back at me. The hood of his uniform was slightly askew, so I could see the troubled look on his tightly pinched face. He stopped short of his place at the front of the other guards. His hands closed into fists then he opened them again, his eyes were so dark as they watched me.
“What are you waiting for?” I shouted at him. “Help me!” The heat of the fire moved up my body. The flames hadn’t burned my skin yet, but the hay was blazing. I couldn’t stop coughing now. Couldn’t order Grayson to stop standing around and cut me loose. There was just too much smoke. I could breathe it in the way Grayson had instructed. It would be so easy to just give up, to let it overtake me, and pass out into sweet, senseless oblivion. But I couldn’t. I had to fight, even if it was futile. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—give up.
Grayson’s paralysis broke, and he fled from his fellow guards, running on his long legs over to the platform. He ran around behind me, not deterred by the flames. Everyone knew dragon shifters couldn’t burn. Fire lived inside of them, even in human form. I felt his hands on my wrists, pulling the ropes free.
“I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t just watch you die.”
Suddenly, my hands were free. Shortly after that, my midsection. I took in a deep breath, coughing out smoke, as I rubbed my sore wrists. My feet were the last to be freed. I stumbled on the platform, nearly tumbling over onto the flaming piles of hay at my feet. I couldn’t see a thing and could barely breathe. But I was free…for now, at least.
“What is he doing?” the Queen shrieked, sounding very close. But I knew she was up on her balcony, watching what she’d hoped would be a good show. “Seize them both!”
Grayson took hold of me and hauled me off the platform, lifting me from the podium one handed and delivering me onto the ground below. That was another thing about shifters—they were stro
ng as hell no matter their form. I fell onto the grass, hacking up a lung and rubbing my burning, watery eyes.
“We’re in trouble,” he said from above me. “How quickly can you run?”
I wanted to tell him I couldn’t breathe let alone run, but I couldn’t catch my breath long enough to spit out the smartass reply. I opened my streaming eyes to the sight of a solid wall of guards coming for us, the hooded ones—who I assumed were shifters, same as Grayson—and the other, less human looking ones. Grayson took me by the arm and pulled me up onto my feet. Surprisingly, my legs held.
“Run,” Grayson growled, pushing me toward the back of the arena. “I’ll be right behind you.” He stepped in front of me, roaring at the guards that were coming for us, the muscles in his neck bulging. They answered his deep, guttural roar with several of their own, the terrifying sound splitting the air.
There was another exit at the rear of the grassy clearing. But the cuts on my right hand drew my attention sharply away from the danger around me. They were burning hotter than the fire still raging on the platform. I opened my hand, frowning down at the black skin covering my palm, but it gleamed too, just like the black, broken heart charm around the Queen’s neck. Grayson was fighting hard, but he wouldn’t be able to hold off that many opponents. We were done for…unless I used this power. And I wanted to use it. I wanted to lay waste to this entire kingdom.
“Kill them both!” the Queen shrieked, her high voice making her sound completely unhinged, her dark eyes bulging from her pasty, white face. “Don’t let them escape!”
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