by Eva Chase
The wind whispered through the leaves. I treaded carefully through the brush until I could just make out the gate through the trees. A grunt and a thump of a landed blow reached my ears. The fight had started.
I dug my hand into the bag and pulled out a handful of mushroom slices. My gut clenched, but I forced myself to pop two into my mouth in one go. I had to be ready. I had to be as big as I could make myself if I was going to pull this off alone.
As the tart earthy flavor saturated my mouth, the stretching sensation I’d felt twice before now shuddered through me. My head shot upward, my neck extending, and then my shoulders and chest zoomed after it, the vest expanding around my torso as my body grew.
Wonderlanders only felt like their perspective was growing or shrinking when they ate Caterpillar’s special mushrooms. It turned out they affected Otherlanders much more literally.
I had to sway to the side as my body loomed up through the trees, my head nearly slamming into a branch. The growth spurt stopped with my head amid the leaves. No, I needed a little more than that.
I gulped down another slice, and my body jerked even taller. A rippling sensation spread through my legs, and I grasped a tree trunk for balance. I topped out with the highest foliage level with my eyes.
Perfect. I could see into the gardens now, but not enough of me was showing for anyone to be likely to notice, especially when they were focused on the fight.
Unicorn and Lion were circling around each other. They’d ended up leaving the meadow of the trial area behind, swiping and dodging on trampled grass closer to the gate. Unicorn must have maneuvered them in that direction.
Lion lashed out with a paw, smacking Unicorn’s muzzle with a scrape of his claws. Unicorn shook his head as he yanked himself out of the way. Then he charged, his horn pointed straight at Lion’s chest.
Lion started to swerve out of the way, but Unicorn veered with him, driving him toward the gate instead. He dropped to all fours with a sudden burst of speed. Lion wheeled backward, crashing into a guard in his haste to escape that stabbing horn pointed straight at his chest. The other guards by the gate shuffled backward to give them room.
Unicorn hurled himself at Lion, bashing him into the gate with his shoulder. The metal bars clanged, and the door burst open.
Now. I stuffed two more pieces of mushroom into my mouth, ignoring the twisting of my stomach, and pushed forward through the trees.
My body soared up over the treetops as I charged forward. My lungs strained with the heave of air I drew in, trying to fill them. By the time I reached the gate, the once-immense wall only reached my knees. I could have stepped right over it if I’d wanted to.
Several of the Diamonds shrieked and fled at the sight of me. “Monster!” someone cried out. The Queen, looking so small now down there on her throne—barely as tall as my hand—stared up at me, her face flushing nearly as ruddy as her hair. Her eyes flashed.
“Guards!” she screamed. “Destroy this fiend!”
The guards stumbled into one another, gaping, but some of them had the wherewithal to draw their swords or daggers. I strode past them, careful not to step on anyone while they scurried like mice around my feet.
Vicious mice. Pain pierced through my calf as a guard stabbed his sword into the flesh. Another took a slice at my ankle. I winced and bent down to brush them aside with my hands. More blades nicked my fingers, blood streaking across my skin, but I managed to push them aside to clear my way. How many of them even wanted to be here, and how many had been forced like Dee and Dum might have been if Theo hadn’t intervened? They didn’t deserve to die for trying to save themselves the only way she’d given them.
I wouldn’t be a monster. I had to be better than that, better than her, right from the start.
“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” I said, letting my voice ring out of my massive lungs. “Not like her.” I pointed at the Queen. “I’m here to set right a horrible crime that’s been committed by the ones who rule this place. You think you have power? I have power. And I can use it well.”
More guards were barreling toward me. I grasped the top of the stands with a light shake to displace the members of the “jury” still seated on it, and smacked down the empty structure in the guards’ way to slow them down. Then I curled my fingers around the bars at the top of the prisoners’ cage.
I hefted it, gently and then with a little more force. I especially didn’t want to hurt anyone in there. The cage wouldn’t budge from the ground—it’d been fixed there too fast. Okay, carrying it out of the gardens had only been Plan A. I’d known it might not work.
The guards who’d stood around the cage were slashing at my legs. A steady pulsing of pain was spreading through my calves now. Another heaved a spear at my chest, but it clinked off of my hidden armor.
I brushed the guards away as well as I could and reached down to the chain that held the cage door closed. With one quick yank of my giant fingers, it snapped.
“Go!” I said, jerking the cage door open and motioning toward the gate. “You did nothing wrong. The Spades won’t allow the Queen to hold you. I stand with them, and I stand against this pathetic excuse for a queen.”
The Queen of Hearts let out an ear-splitting screech. When I turned to cover the prisoners in their dash out of the garden, she’d stood up in front of her throne, waving a scepter with a heart-shaped golden tip in every direction. “Where are my guards? Stop her, stop them, or I’ll have all your heads!”
Even with an actual giant in their midst, a lot of the guards were still more scared of their queen than of me. Blades flashing, they sprang at me and at the stream of figures hurrying across the grass beneath me. Ignoring the throbbing in my calves and the stinging cuts across my hands, I pushed them aside whenever they got too close to the escaping prisoners. Fat droplets of blood dribbled from my fingers and splashed on the ground.
This pain was just for now. Just for a few minutes, to save all these people’s lives, and then I could get out of here too.
The Queen of Hearts let out another screech of fury. I swept aside another wave of guards and swung toward her. The sudden thought struck me that I could crush her with one squeeze of my hand. My stomach listed queasily with the image of mangled flesh and the crunch of bones, but that would end all the terror, wouldn’t it? She’d done so much worse to Wonderland’s people.
Even as I tried to convince myself, my gaze slid to her scattered children. This woman wasn’t the first Queen of Hearts, or even necessarily the worst. There were plenty of daughters waiting to take her place if she fell. Even if I’d been sure I was ready to commit to taking the throne, I didn’t have enough allies for me to hold it. I’d just be starting another reign founded on bloodshed—and they’d spill a lot more blood than just mine.
As if she’d read my initial idea in my expression, the Queen hollered at the guards to surround her. A ring of them ten bodies deep closed in around her protectively.
Fine. That meant fewer harassing the prisoners and me.
A little of the tension gripping my chest fell away at the sight of Doria slipping through the gate. I shoved aside the guards who tried to race after the prisoners, watching as the last in that bunch disappeared amid the trees on the other side. Then I straightened up, just for a moment, to scan the grounds and make sure everyone had gotten out.
From my great height, my gaze swept over the entire royal property and across the forests and fields beyond, all the way to the garish buildings of the city at my left and the Checkerboard Plains ahead of me, a great shimmering sea farther to my right. A weird sense of rightness flooded me from head to toe.
This was Wonderland. This was my Wonderland, suppressed by a tyrant’s rule but vibrant even so. I’d spilled blood on this ground as nearly my entire family had all those generations ago, and now I was back. I was here, where I was meant to be.
A tremor ran through the ground beneath my feet, as if it were responding to my thoughts. Reaching out to me to tell me i
t was with me, whatever I’d call on it to do. So much of my life I’d struggled just to hold off the chaos around me, and here the world wanted to listen to me.
This place belonged to me, or maybe I belonged to it. Possibly those were the same thing. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave Wonderland.
My heart was already in it—in the crazy vegetation and the wild architecture and the bizarre people just trying to be happy. My heart was with Chess and his brilliant grins that could hide so much pain, with Hatter and the fierceness that came from the depths of his caring. Maybe some of it remained with even Theo, with the passionate assurance he’d built on top of his darkest secret.
The certainty radiated through me for one glorious moment, and then my gut lurched.
I doubled over, my vision hazing, my stomach churning as if it meant to toss itself right out of my mouth. My hand clamped over my belly.
Apparently five mushrooms was a little too much for even an Otherlander to handle.
As swords stabbed at my ankles, my gut heaved. A sear of acid raced up my throat. I vomited onto a rose bush, and then wretched again. My legs wobbled, not just with the throb of the wounds but with a pinch of contraction that was an even more unwelcome sensation.
I was shrinking.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chess
Lyssa was something to look at in her regular size. The sight of her striding toward the palace gardens at least ten times taller took my breath away. Across the road from me, Hatter’s jaw had dropped.
Her dress rippled around her like an immense tapestry, over the mounds of her breasts like small hills, the curve of her waist I could have tucked myself into. She could have fit me in her hand. She could have crushed my bones with a press of her thumb.
Not that I could imagine her ever so much as considering doing anything that horrifying, which was maybe why the thought could awaken that odd flicker of excitement from the same part of me that had enjoyed playing with matches and knives long ago.
But my mind had other places to be. Even within the numbed space of the in-between, my ears picked up the Queen of Hearts screaming out commands. The guards were shouting to each other, and other shrieks carried from farther beyond the wall. This would shake the Diamonds up more than they’d ever been shaken before. They’d wanted thrills, hadn’t they?
Lyssa let out a little gasp, and my jaw clenched. Those guards would be hacking away at her, no matter how quickly she displaced them. We should be in there, helping her.
But she’d asked us to be here instead.
Lyssa’s voice rang out, clearer and sweeter than anything the Queen of Hearts could have produced. Blood streaked across the backs of her hands as she bent down. There was a snapping sound, and a renewed volley of shouts. Then the first of the prisoners, hair bedraggled and clothes spotted with grime, dashed through the gate.
“This way!” one of the Spades near me called, waving the woman off the road into the woods. More figures raced toward us, sped on by panic. Doria dashed straight to Hatter, wrapping her arms around him with a sob. He hugged her tight, relief and regret twisting together in his expression.
“Go on,” he said when he let her go, motioning her after the other escapees. “Hide out, and I’ll come when everyone here is safe.”
One of the twins waved from deeper in the woods. Doria gave her father one more quick hug and then bolted toward Dee.
A few of the guards gave chase through the gate. Lyssa was whirling this way and that behind the wall, but she couldn’t catch all of them. I threw myself forward down the slight slope of the road.
An invisible knee to the gut here. An invisible punch to the chin there. Trip this guard, topple that one. They flailed out with their fists and their swords, trying to fend me off, but the blades barely nicked me as I wove and bobbed through the in-between. It almost felt like cheating.
Hatter leapt into the fray alongside me. He jabbed the dagger he’d brought, only slightly thicker than his hatpins, into the gut of a guard who’d snatched one of the prisoners’ shirt hems.
The older man wrenched away, and the guard slumped against the wall. Hatter nodded in my general direction as if to say, We’ve got this.
I wasn’t so sure we did in our present position. Beyond the gate, a group of stragglers, limping or shuffling as quickly as their aching legs could carry them, were staring around them with faces white with fear as more guards closed in around them. The Queen of Hearts was squawking about something or other again, and blood splattered the grass near her throne. At least some of it was Lyssa’s.
I didn’t let myself think any more than that. I hurtled through the gate to knock the legs out from under one of the guards lunging at the escapees. Another guard raced toward Lyssa’s ankle with a spear. I clocked him across the side of the head and sent him sprawling, scrambling out of the way just in time as Lyssa’s large hands scooped another cluster of guards out of the way. They toppled in a heap like toy soldiers. They must have looked like toys to her.
A few dashed off, unwilling to keep up the fight. The Diamonds were fleeing toward the palace too. More guards were heading our way, though, a bunch of them hauling a cannon.
My stomach dropped. I ran over, my feet thumping over the ground, and slammed the lead guard’s head against the iron surface. With a shove that strained the muscles in my shoulders, I heaved the cannon’s muzzle to the side to collide with the others’ guts.
No one was firing heavy artillery at the woman I intended to see become my queen. The woman who for all intents and purposes already was.
I spun around and found myself staring into the last face I’d have wanted to see. The Duchess gazed back at the spot where I was standing, not quite able to meet my eyes in my invisible state, but she’d worked out an approximation of where I was standing. She must have seen my ghost-like combat and put the pieces together.
Her face was as pinched and her lips, painted crimson, as pert as ever. Even hustling away from the chaos, her diamond-laced hair hadn’t shifted a strand out of place. Despite the shouts and the cries behind us, her mouth curved into a thin but amused smile. “Hello, Cheshire.”
The way she said my name made my skin want to crawl off my body. She said it as if she owned it—as if she owned me, as if she believed she merely needed to snap her fingers and I’d be at her feet.
She’d almost been right. Because of her accusation, if I’d been a little slower on my feet, I might have ended up in the prison where she could have strolled by and offered her condolences, or maybe a deal to get me out under her conditions.
Every inch of me prickled with the urge to run now. But what I’d told Lyssa last night was true. I wasn’t free of my past, not completely, not as long as I had to run or jump because of the hoops this woman set out in front of me.
She’d flayed me nearly inside out, but I’d seen plenty of what lay behind her mask too, hadn’t I?
Bracing myself, I strode up to her, letting only my grin flash into view. The Duchess’s expression turned as satisfied as the cat who’d gotten the cream. She’d forgotten who the real cat around here was.
I tugged my smile back out of view and stopped beside her, leaning close, crinkling my nose at the bittersweet tang of her favorite perfume. The smell brought back the echo of pain radiating through my ribs, a line of agony across my neck nearly slitting my throat, a searing at the backs of my knees. I squared my shoulders, holding myself steady against the wave of memories.
I was more than those memories. I was more than that creature she’d strung up in her bedroom. And it was time I showed her that.
“Hello, Duchess,” I said in a measured, lilting tone. “You’ve caused me a lot of trouble in the last few days.”
She fucking giggled. “Poor Chess. And yet you’re here. It appears I only told the truth.”
“Here’s the thing, Duchess,” I said, my voice dropping to a murmur. “You don’t know why I’m here. You don’t know me at all. But I know all about you. So
consider this your first and only warning. You don’t speak my name, you don’t say or so much as think about me, from this day forward. There is nothing between us. You do not exist to me, so I cannot exist to you.”
“A warning?” she said with an arch of her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “And what will you do if I ignore it?”
I let my grin flash again, wide enough to show my fangs, only just holding myself back from gritting my teeth. “I saw and heard all sorts of things your queen and your fellow Diamonds might be very interested to learn. I know more than you could even guess. Haven’t you ever noticed your memory turns a bit spotty when you think of certain times with me? I stole some of those moments from you, but I still remember everything.”
The Duchess went rigid. I didn’t actually know if I’d observed any secrets that could truly damage her standing—or perhaps even end her life—but she’d bragged enough about skirting expectations for me to believe she had some that serious. Most of all, though, she thrived on her sense of control. One jab of uncertainty about what I might know from those blanks where I’d wiped the image of my transformations from her mind, and all her confidence unraveled.
“They wouldn’t listen to you,” she said tartly, but her haughty mask had cracked.
I slipped around to her other side, as if I were all around her. “I think they would. Especially with the details I could provide. You haven’t always been quite careful enough in how you cover your tracks. But please, go ahead and test me. I look forward to seeing the Queen raise your head on one of those pikes.”
She blanched whiter beneath the sheen of pale peach powder covering her face. I’d said all I needed to. Clamping down my queasiness, I let myself dart away the way my legs had been dying to from the moment I’d seen her.
The ground trembled beneath my feet, and as if in echo, a sense of release shivered through me. I’d faced the Duchess, I’d shown her what I really thought of her, and she’d faltered. I—