Kingdom of Villains and Vengeance

by Laura Greenwood et al.

  Was it madness then, coursing through my cousin’s veins, the virus having infested her from when she was a child? Or worse than madness—what if it was malice? And did it even matter what it was?

  “You don’t have to do this,” Malachi said as I took my space in center position, but we all knew that was a lie. In their own kingdom, Malachi and Caspian might be able to overrule my cousin’s demand, and once he was Red King, Caspian might be able to overrule a command made by the Red Queen, but for now, they were just foreign princes visiting a foreign land, nothing more. And I was just a lady-in-waiting. No matter how much I tried to glamorize my role, or make myself belief Celia genuinely cared about me, her love for me turned to ice in the blink of an eye.

  I squared my shoulders and looked straight at my cousin, refusing to show her how much this hurt me, rattled me to my core.

  Just sing, I told myself. Don’t listen to the words, to their meaning. Focus on the melody. Channel some of that iron resolve that has helped your mother through all of this.

  If Mother knew what Celia was making me do, she would rip my cousin apart shred by shred, risking my uncle’s wrath. But if my uncle himself knew of this, I was pretty confident he would be mad at his heir too. Mad, but not enough to really punish her—and maybe that was what really haunted Celia, made her turn from a regular person into a tyrant. Maybe no one had ever dared to stand up against her, and punish her, punish her like she deserved to be punished.

  I took a deep breath, balling my hands into fists. Squaring my shoulders, I started by singing a few notes, until I found the right one, and then I began.

  “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

  All mimsy were the borogoves,

  And the mome raths outgrabe.”

  My voice broke a little, but I closed my eyes, refusing to break down in front of all of them. Digging my nails into my skin, I forced myself to focus on the pain, on the words of the song.

  “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

  Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

  The frumious Bandersnatch!”

  The first parts of the song were a bit nonsense-gibberish about the Jabberwocky itself, and its famous equally-dangerous counterpart, the Bandersnatch, but it was the last part of the song that made reference to my father.

  “He took his vorpal sword in hand:

  Long time the manxome foe he sought—

  So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

  And stood awhile in thought.”

  I would never forgive this for this, I swore to myself. I was no marionet she could command whenever it pleased her. And if… God help me, if Celia became Queen one day, I would leave the Red Palace and move to the outskirts of Wonderland, to a place where she would never find me, where I could live my life in peace and quiet, away from the madness that had infested this castle and its inhabitants.

  “And as in uffish thought he stood,

  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

  Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

  And burbled as it came!”

  Now came the hard part. I felt my breath stuck in my throat, and the notes, which had sounded pretty decent until now, came out like nothing but squeaks.

  “The great hero of Wonderland, Lord Obelin,

  he stabbed the beast with his sword,

  the Jabberwock died of its sin,

  and Obelin hath protected the north!”

  My voice cracked, and I barely made it to the last sentence. When I opened my eyes, I felt tears pricking in them.

  Celia looked slightly embarrassed, and she opened her mouth to say something, but I rushed past her, past Caspian and Malachi, and out of the library before any of them could even open their mouths.

  I rushed to my bedroom, faster than I had ran away from the creatures stalking me in the maze, hurrying as if the devil was on my heels. But it was not the devil, it was the shadows of the past haunting me, that wicked image of my father’s face, blue and swollen, as I watched him drown in the Pool of Tears.

  Chapter 10

  “Who is it?” I asked Bella as she walked back into my bedroom. I had asked her not to let anyone in my chambers without my permission, and she had stood guard even firmer than the actual guards.

  “It’s Prince Caspian,” Bella said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  I lifted my head from my pillow. My head felt as if it weighed a million pounds, and my shoulders heaved under the weight. “Why?”

  “Celia isn’t with him. He said she went to the banquet, and the ball.”

  “The ball…” I groaned. “Did you tell my mother I was ill? She’ll be flaming mad at me otherwise.”

  “I told her in gruesome detail just how sick you are.” Bella’s lips curled into a smile and I was glad that I at least had one friend between these castle walls – besides my mother, of course. “She was slightly annoyed, but she did agree it would be better you puke out the contents of your stomach while in the safety of your own room, rather than all over the guests.”

  So, at least mother wouldn’t storm in out of nowhere and launch a tirade at me. I wasn’t in the mood to see Caspian either—I felt more than a little embarrassed at the scene in the library. But Mother would force me to see him anyway sooner or later, and rather get through it now than worry about it all night.

  “All right, fine.” I pushed myself up until I sat on the edge of my bed. “Let him in.”

  Bella nodded, and retreated from my bedroom. I quickly glanced in the mirror, straightened up my hair, and then walked toward the antechamber, where Prince Caspian was already waiting for me.

  “Please, sit down.” I gestured at one of the lounge chairs, and Caspian sat down immediately.

  He seemed as embarrassed as I was, eager to look anywhere but at me.

  I swallowed hard while I sat down on an empty chair opposite of him. Bella stayed lingering in the corner of the room, a faithful chaperone.

  “I…” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry you had to witness that.”

  “No.” Caspian spat out the word as if it was a curse. “Don’t apologize, Lady Regina.”

  We were back to using ‘Lady’ now. I felt my hopes shattering—whatever chance I had with him, it was long gone now.

  “What Celia made you do… It was downright cruel. I should’ve stopped her.”

  I felt the strange urge to defend Celia. Not to defend her actions as such, but to defend myself for having to follow her command, even if it was the last thing on earth I wanted. “I…” I coughed, clearing my throat. “I’ve learned it works best when you don’t question her when she gets like that.”

  Caspian shook his head. “I’m the Crown Prince of the White Kingdom, and I would never allow any of my subjects to be treated this way. It shames me that I have allowed her to do this to you.”

  Any of his subjects. So, he saw me as one of his subjects.

  He would treat me like a toy as much as Celia did. A fancy little toy he could use and discard when he wanted to.

  “Your song was beautiful,” he said, taking me by surprise. “It came straight from your heart, I could tell. It was the most beautiful song I have ever heard.”

  I snorted. “You must be joking. Please, you don’t have to lie for my sake.”

  “But it’s not a lie. You have a beautiful voice, Regina. If Celia told you otherwise…” He shook his head. “I can only imagine it’s because she’s as jealous of your voice as she is of everything else.”

  What did he mean by that?

  “I—Can I speak freely?” he asked, with a quick glance at Bella.

  Normally, I would just say ‘yes’, because if there was one person I trusted in this castle, it was my chambermaid. But if Mother was here, she would urge me to get as much time with Caspian alone as possible—even if it wasn’t proper. And I… I wanted to be all alone with him. I wanted to confide in him.

  “Bel
la, can you please leave us?” I asked my maid. “I will call for you when I need you.”

  Bella’s eyes went wide, but she was too kind to speak against me. She softly bowed her head, and left the room, leaving just Caspian and I.

  This was wrong on so many levels.

  Protocol alone demanded a chaperone should always be present: the four of us hanging around together worked fine, but if word came out that Caspian was spending time alone in my room, and I had sent my mid away, that could create a minor scandal.

  Caspian leaned on the front of his seat, putting his elbows on his knees. “Since I met you, I feel as if I can trust you. I don’t know why, after all we’ve only just met the other day. But in the maze, I knew right away you were speaking the truth, even before those other intruders showed up. And I’m sorry to have to bring this up again, but you’re the daughter of Wonderland’s most legendary hero. If you have even half the courage your father had… Then we’ll need your help.”

  Bringing up my father again was like plunging a knife in my chest and twisting it, but considering he said he needed my help, I tried to focus on that part of his speech instead. “Why do you need my help?”

  “Because we know what this is.” Caspian took something from his coat and put it on the table. My drawing.

  I gulped. “What is it?”

  “It’s an army of cards.”

  I frowned. “I’m sorry, did you say… cards? Like, playing cards?”

  “Yes,” Caspian nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, and maybe it is, but everything in Wonderland gets a little crazy sometimes.”

  I stared at him as if he’d suddenly morphed into a march hare. “So you’re saying that… what we ran into in the labyrinth… were playing cards?”

  “Someone has recruited them, or has created them, I’m not quite sure, and they’ve been invading Wonderland. This is the plague that infested the town at the Edge of the World. Remember, that town I told you about earlier today?”

  “Of course I remember.” I moved to the edge of my seat too, intrigued. The prince’s knees nearly touched mine as we sat opposite of each other. “You mean that these cards could destroy an entire town?”

  “Oh, they did much worse than that.” Caspian shook his head, a hint of sadness flashing across his features. “At first, we thought half the population of Edge of the World had just up and ran into the woods, or in any other direction they could find, hoping to get to safety. But turns out that’s not true, not at all.”

  He put my drawing down on his knees and pointed at it. “This… This is what they became.”

  “Cards.” I stared at Caspian with my mouth half-open, his words barely sinking in. “Someone is invading Wonderland using an army of cards, and is… is turning the citizens of Wonderland into cards?”

  The crown prince nodded. “This is why Red and White must unite against our common enemy. Last we heard, the army of cards had barely passed the Tumbley Wood, but we saw them today, which means they must be here already. Right in our midst.”

  “Why are they here?” I narrowed my eyes, leaning my chin on my hands. “It doesn’t make sense to come straight here, rather than just continue with their invasion scheme. Why go for the most difficult place to attack first – the palace?”

  “If they bring down the palace, they strike right at the heart of Wonderland,” Caspian said. “At the moment, this is the only reason I could think of why they’re following this strategy. Plus, perhaps this upcoming union scares them, maybe they think that if Red and White combine forces, we could stop them once and for all.”

  “Does the King know this? Did you tell him?” I jumped up, pacing around, my mind working as fast as it could to process all the information Caspian had just given me.

  It all made sense now. The strange figure, the square shoulders—the edges of the playing card. The strange head, the thinness of the figure. A playing card.

  “I tried to, but it’s hard with Celia around. She kept on telling him that this was all exaggerated, and that he shouldn’t worry about it too much. But she’s wrong. This is the worst threat Wonderland has faced in decades. If the cards succeed in turning every single inhabitant of Wonderland into one of their own, then what?”

  I stopped mid-step, lifting my head toward the prince. “Then there will be nothing left making Wonderland wondrous. Everyone will be the same—a card in a game of cards.”

  I remembered the words of the Cheshire Cat, which had an almost prophetic quality to them now. You’ve been playing chess while you should’ve been playing cards, Regina.

  I had only ever played cards a handful of times. With Derrick. He had taught me one night, and I was horrible at it, but we had still laughed and joked. Derrick was a magician with a card deck: he could even do little tricks where I had to pick one of the cards, and then he would show me which one I had picked.

  Don’t think about Derrick, I scolded myself. Wonderland was in danger, and I shouldn’t waste any time dwelling on the past.

  “What’s your plan?” I asked Caspian. “How do we stop this threat?”

  “We don’t have a plan yet,” the prince admitted. “Malachi and I both thought we’d have enough time to go here, seal the union, raise an army, and go find the army of cards on the battlefield of Wonderland. Turns out now that rather they have brought the war to us. But we have no army here; the White army is battling the Red army on the chessboard.”

  My eyes grew wide. “We’ve been idiots, both of us. Fighting wars for the sake of fighting, treating war as if it was just a game of chess played on a faraway chessboard none of us ever really cared about. While we were too busy playing soldiers, our enemy has found their way to our doorsteps, and now we’ve spent so much time pretending to fight we no longer know how to actually fight.”

  Caspian nodded. “Yes. You’re absolutely right.”

  “You need to take your pawns off the game. Your pawns, your knights, your towers, we need them all here.” I knelt down next to him, putting my hands on his knees. “We can’t waste more time, not if the fate of Wonderland depends on it.”

  “My mother will never stop the game. It has been going on for generations. Whenever I ask her, she goes on and on about how she’s nearly one this round.” Caspian threw his head back, annoyance written all over his features. “An endless game with an infinite number of rounds. I only managed to convince her that we will stop if Red and White are combined—if I’m King of both sides, there is no use fighting anymore.”

  I took a deep breath. “If you marry Celia.”

  The prince turned toward me, looking me straight in the eyes. “If I marry Celia.”

  I felt his frustration, an almost exact replica of my own. We were frustrated by the stupid rules of Wonderland, of court, of how a stupid game of chess that was never even meant to be won by either party, couldn’t just be stopped for the sake of the greater good, for the sake of Wonderland.

  “You know,” I said to him, in a voice so hoarse it barely sounded like my own, “when it comes to deciding who should be King or Queen of Wonderland, the decision should not be made by blood, or based on what has always been. They should decide based on who is willing to put the needs of Wonderland above their own. Who is willing to settle a game of chess to protect the people of Wonderland. Too long, Kings and Queens have stood on their chessboards and hidden in their ivory towers, away from the real Wonderland.”

  I grasped his hand in mine. For once, without any other intention. It wasn’t my Mother’s ambitions driving me forward now, nor was it my pity need for revenge toward my cousin because she had stolen my first love from me.

  For once, I was driven by the desire for one thing, and one thing only.

  To save my home. To save Wonderland.

  “You can’t marry her,” I told him.

  Caspian squeezed my hand, his thumb softly caressing my palm. “I don’t have a choice. If Red and White don’t unite, we won’t be able to save Wonderland.”

  I stared into
his eyes, those blue pools of eternity, and I wondered what it would feel like to kiss him. What it would feel like to drown in his eyes, as vast as the Pool of Tears.

  His gaze didn’t leave mine, those piercing blue gems staring into the very depths of my soul.

  I looked down for one moment, at his lips, and when I looked back up, I realized he had seen my movement. Slowly, I licked my lips, all the while without breaking eye contact.

  Caspian leaned closer toward me, and for a moment, the world stopped spinning. All that existed was the here-and-now. Everything else was an illusion, insignificant. All that mattered was him and me, and the energy lingering between us.

  Then, Caspian abruptly turned away from me and stood up. “I… I have to go.” He dusted some imaginary dust from his shirt, avoiding to make eye contact with me. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lady Regina.” He bowed, keeping his eyes glued on a particularly interesting spot on the ground.

  He vanished from my room in a matter of seconds, so sudden I wondered if he had really been here in the first place. Like a phantom, he waltzed in and out of my life, enchanting my heart with his beautiful eyes and his heart-stopping smile.

  Caspian, Prince of the White Kingdom. The man my mother had wanted me to seduce. The man promised to my cousin.

  He had left two minutes ago, and I was still staring at the door closed behind him.

  I was falling for him. The plan my mother had concocted had backfired against me, and rather than making him fall in love with me, I was head over heels for him.

  Stupid, stupid me. Hadn’t I learned anything from Derrick then?

  Derrick.

  I frowned and stood up, leaning on the arm of the chair for support. Something was dangling at the edge of my mind, a faint memory, something waiting to click into place as soon as my ‘aha’ moment would hit me.

  While I tried to figure out what was bothering me, Bella reappeared in my room, a knowing smile plastered all over her face.

  “Don’t act so smug,” I told her. “I’m not telling you anything we talked about. Nothing. Nope. Nada.”