by Eva Chase
I hadn’t seen Mirabel since I’d found out the truth of her identity. She was the Queen’s daughter, a Princess of Hearts. It was the Queen who’d struck her and left her with that scar—and with her thoughts even more addled than they’d been already, with her ability to look both forward and backward through time.
Theo had said Mirabel wanted to see the Queen displaced as much as everyone, that she’d fled the palace and helped the rebels ever since then. I wasn’t totally sure I could trust Theo’s assessment of his own sister, though, especially since I still wasn’t totally sure how much I could trust Theo.
He’d been trying to protect me when he’d nudged me through the mirror back to my world. He’d sworn to face his mother and fight for Wonderland head on. But he’d also spent who knew how many years hiding who he was and orchestrating the Spades’ battles mostly in the background, where it was safer. He’d lied to them, and to me, more times than I could count.
Mirabel was heading straight toward me, though. Her glimpses of the future could very well have told her I was here. And she’d never given me any reason to distrust her. I couldn’t judge her based on who her mother or her brother was.
I eased away from the tree. Mirabel’s pale eyes brightened when she saw me.
“There you are!” she said, speaking in a whisper. “We only came a short way, but it seemed like a long time.”
As usual, it wasn’t super easy figuring out what Mirabel was talking about in her disjointed way. At least she looked happy to see me. I found myself smiling back at her.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked, matching her volume. “Why did you leave the Tower?”
Her body swayed for a second, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “They all left. And they came. The roses, everywhere—I had to find my way here. I had to find my way to you. We’ve already gone and come.”
My throat tightened with sympathy. She sounded even more loopy than usual. How long had she been wandering around in the forest alone? I couldn’t ask her and expect anything close to a straight answer.
She might be able to get us to someplace better, though. I touched the side of her arm lightly. “Do you remember where we came from? Is there somewhere we should be?”
“I—” Mirabel blinked hard. She rubbed her temple, and her mouth twisted with effort. “There is light, but I don’t know how far away. The music and the stink—I didn’t like it. But that’s where you were needed. They always needed you. We can go, I think. We met her. She knew the way.”
Okaaaay. I let the White Queen take the lead, walking half a step behind her as we wove through the woods. Mirabel’s hands moved in furtive gestures by her waist. After a few minutes, I realized she was going through the motions of knitting without her needles or yarn.
Any doubts I’d had about her seemed ridiculous, watching her now. This woman wasn’t capable of scheming or duplicity. She could barely keep track of herself in the present, let alone juggle all kinds of lies. I sure as hell couldn’t blame her for not wanting to broadcast her heritage.
Maybe I couldn’t blame Theo for that either. He still shouldn’t have hidden so much else from me, though. He’d realized who I was, how I’d fit into Wonderland’s history, long before I had, but he’d kept all that to himself for his own reasons.
“Have you seen—” I started to ask, and Mirabel raised her hand in a wave. For a second I thought she was hallucinating a friend up ahead. Then a slight figure rose from behind a bush where it’d been crouched in hiding.
The skinny woman in front of us was one of the Spades, but not one I’d really have wanted to run into. The second I looked into her pointed face with its beady, ferret-like eyes, I remembered her skeptical look at the meeting where she’d suggested I had no place in Wonderland at all. That my being there had made it worse for all of them.
None of us had known then that I had Wonderlander blood running through my veins. Unless the handful of people who’d made that discovery with me had spilled the beans since I’d been gone, she still didn’t know. It was still hard to forget how unwelcome she’d made me feel with a few quick words. The same sensation prickled over me now as her eyes widened with what looked like horror.
“The Otherlander,” she said quietly, blinking hard. “Where did you—How—Where have you been?”
My stomach clenched into a ball. I’d obviously been gone long enough for the Spades to assume I’d abandoned them—just like Hatter had predicted I would, back when we’d first been getting to know each other. I’d led them to that huge battle at the palace and then I’d just disappeared.
Well, I was going to have to face the rest of the Spades sometime. When I explained, when they realized I’d come as soon as I could, they’d understand, right? It was just the initial questions and hurt that I was queasily anticipating.
“I’m here now,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“You take us to the others,” Mirabel informed the ferrety woman in a brisk tone as if she should already have known that.
The woman left off staring with a jerky bob of her head. “Yes. All right. Yes. We have a little time before the next patrol comes around. Quickly.”
She motioned to us with a twitch of her hand. I peered through the woods around us as we followed her on toward the city. From that comment about the guards, clearly the Queen was still in command and out to crush the Spades. How much more had the people of Wonderland been through while I’d been lying in a daze in that hospital bed?
The vivid walls and roofs of the buildings at the edge of the city came into view through the trees. A faint smell, sickly sweet like fresh roses dipped in corn syrup, reached my nose. The ferrety woman knelt by a boulder at the foot of a tree and heaved it up to reveal a trap door and a passage underneath. She pointed for us to head down.
Metal rungs formed a sort of ladder down into a damp tunnel. My feet hit the ground on rocky earth at the edge of an underground stream. It flowed on through a passage that was only about a foot taller than I was, the flickering blue glow of the water lighting up the rough stone walls. Where we stood, the stream stretched only a few feet across, but farther down, it doubled and then tripled in size to brush the passage walls.
The ferrety woman came down after us, closing the trap door over her head. She ushered us in the other direction, which I thought was leading us under the city. We had to leap the stream a few times when it branched with the caves, and at one wider spot we hopped across a makeshift bridge of stones. The ceiling slanted a little higher. The rose smell had faded the second we’d come underground, replaced by a crisp mineral scent.
Voices reached my ears over the hiss of the passing water. My pulse stuttered. The ferrety woman led us around a bend to an alcove at the edge of the stream, where a few of the collapsible cabins Theo had brought for our trip across the Checkerboard Plains had been set up around a heap of supplies.
One of the redheaded twins was leaning against that stack peering at a creased piece of paper. Doria and a couple other Spades I vaguely recognized were slicing bread and fruit on a makeshift table. And farther over by the cave wall, the other twin was standing with Chess in huddled conversation, Hatter listening in from where he was poised by a cabin doorway with a furrowed brow.
With the blank gap in my memory, to my mind it could have been only a day ago I’d last seen my two lovers, but my chest wrenched as if it’d been a year. The last time I’d seen them, they’d been pinned to the ground by the Queen’s guards. But they were here, alive and looking reasonably well, although Hatter was going sans hat. I guessed he hadn’t been able to make it back to his shop.
I wanted to fling myself at them, but my uncertainty about their reaction locked my legs. In that instant, Chess glanced up.
“Look what I found,” the ferrety woman said, jabbing her thumb toward both of us. Before the words had even left her mouth, Chess bounded forward, the widest grin I’d ever seen splitting his handsome angular face. He threw his brawny arms around me and sp
un me around in a powerful embrace.
“Lyssa,” he murmured. “My lovely.” He sounded so choked up that a lump filled my throat in turn. I had to clutch the front of his shirt to keep my balance when he set me down. Then he was kissing me, and if my legs wobbled with the rush of heat from his arms and his mouth, oh well.
He eased back, still beaming, and managed to tear his gaze from me long enough to dip his head toward Mirabel. “White Queen. It’s good to see you too.”
Hatter had stepped toward us. He was staring, his green eyes searching my face as if for confirmation that I really was me. How long had I been gone?
“Hatter,” I said, my voice rough, and that snapped him into action. He tugged me into his arms, his embrace as tight as Chess’s had been, his head tipping next to mine. The lime-and-wood-smoke smell of him filled my nose, and tears sprang into my eyes.
They weren’t angry at all. Nothing but happy to see me, just as overjoyed as I was to see them.
Still, an apology tumbled from my mouth the second Hatter released me. “I’m sorry. I came as soon as I could. There was an accident, in the Otherland—”
“You were in the Otherland?” Chess let out a breathless chuckle.
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for, Lyssa,” Hatter said, his hand sliding down my arm to clasp my fingers. “Hearts take me, we thought you were dead.”
Oh, God. That was why the ferrety woman had looked so unnerved by the sight of me. “I—I don’t know how long it’s been here—I don’t know what’s going on—didn’t Theo manage to pass on some kind of word?”
Chess’s expression turned puzzled and sad. “None of us has heard a thing from Theo—Prince Jack, I suppose we should call him now—or seen him since he walked into the palace with you two weeks ago.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Lyssa
“T wo weeks?” I said, repeating Chess’s words. “And there’s been no sign of Theo at all? Has the Queen even mentioned him?”
“Not where we’ve been able to hear,” Dum muttered.
“Then…” The words stuck in my throat like a jagged rock. It hurt forcing them out. “Are you sure he’s still alive?”
“It put the Queen over the moon to find out her precious prince wasn’t murdered after all,” Hatter said. “I can’t imagine she’d decide to reverse that revelation.”
“He made her believe he was on her side,” I said. “I don’t know how happy she’d have been when she found out he wasn’t. He helped me escape—he took me to the mirror to the Otherland that she keeps in her chambers. He said he was going to challenge her and set things right.”
But he hadn’t succeeded. I’d been frustrated with him for deciding it wasn’t safe for me to stay and fight alongside the Spades, but he’d probably saved my life. If the Queen hadn’t shown even him any mercy…
Theo had been afraid of her rage. Afraid of what she’d do if she found out he’d left her purposely and worked with the Spades against her for years. But in the end he’d stood up to her anyway, to save me. To try to clear the way for me to the throne. And maybe he’d died taking that stand.
A wave of nausea rolled over me. My legs wobbled, both from that and the trek here. Chess caught my other arm.
“You look like you could stand to get off your feet for a minute or two, lovely,” he said gently.
“That might be a good idea,” I admitted. “I just got out of a hospital, actually. And I wasn’t really supposed to leave.”
“What?” Hatter said. He grabbed a box and helped me ease down onto it. “Were you and the prince attacked on the way to the looking-glass?”
“No,” I said. “I just—I wasn’t focused enough when I went through. I landed in kind of a dangerous spot, and a car hit me. I was really out of it for almost a month, Otherland time. Technically I wasn’t even supposed to be up and walking around yet, but I found out my mom and my best friend had arranged to take all the furniture out of Aunt Alicia’s house, and I was afraid I’d lose the mirror that could get me back here.”
Chess’s bright blue eyes widened a little. “As much as that devotion speaks in your favor, I’d like to speak up for self-preservation. Yours, of yourself.” He motioned to the other Spades. “Bring some food over—and some of the drinking water.”
With my queasiness, I wasn’t sure how much food I’d be able to get down, but as soon as the plate of fresh bread and sliced fruit was in front of me, hunger gnawed right through my nausea. I hadn’t had a proper meal since the last time I’d been in Wonderland. I had to restrain myself from shoving it all in my mouth, taking small slow bites instead, watching my responses to make sure I wasn’t overwhelming my recently out-of-commission body.
Between the nourishment and the seat, a deeper sense of steadiness spread through me. I swallowed a mouthful of pear and glanced around at the Spades. “What else has been happening in the last two weeks? Why are you down here? This isn’t all that’s left of the Spades, is it?”
Hatter shook his head where he’d propped himself against the cave wall beside me. “There are a few other pockets scattered along the River Down. We thought it’d be wiser to spread ourselves out so we can’t all be caught at once.”
“One thing’s for sure: the Queen was pretty shaken up by the way you barged in there and freed all those prisoners,” the twin I thought I could now identify as Dee said, with a rough laugh. “She has guards patrolling everywhere up there, and they’re bringing out fresh roses laced with the kinds of drugs the Clubbers liked to smoke at Caterpillar’s—everyone’s partying up there. They can’t think straight enough to do anything else.”
“Down here is the only place we can avoid getting caught in that high too,” Dum put in. “It’s made it hard to get anything done, even to follow what she’s up to. Chess just picked up some equipment that’ll help a little, but… we haven’t been much of a rebellion since then.”
“But you’re here now,” Dee said, smiling wide. The eager glint in his eyes looked a little desperate. “You can figure out how to topple her.”
I knew why he was saying that, but a few of the people around me didn’t. I glanced over at Mirabel, who’d sat herself down on the stone floor beside one of the cabins. Did she even know who I really was and what I represented to her family?
When I’d first found out, when we’d made it back to the city with the Red Knight and his revelations, I’d asked the small group who’d been with me not to say anything to anyone else. I’d needed time to figure out whether I was ready for the responsibilities that came with being the Red Queen’s heir—whether I wanted to accept them.
Those responsibilities didn’t feel like a burden now, though, not even with the news I’d just heard. There was no reason to keep the truth of my heritage quiet. After the stunt I’d pulled, growing to ten times my size to barge into the Queen of Hearts’ gardens and crash her mock trial, I couldn’t possibly be in any more danger from her than I already was.
“That’s why I came back as quickly as I could,” I said. “It might have been risky, but—I realized something that day when we freed all those people. This is my home. I belong in Wonderland. I don’t want to leave my old life behind completely, but what I have here, what I need to do here, that comes first. I’m the however-many-greats granddaughter of the rightful rulers of Wonderland, and I’m going to take the throne back as the Red Queen.”
After I had my bearings back, anyway. The second I finished speaking, a tremor tickled through me. I had to grip the side of the box for balance.
“Hold on, what’s this about?” one of the other Spades said. Dee bounded over to exalt in a hushed voice about our adventures and discoveries on the Checkerboard Plains, and I was more than happy to let him convey that information.
Chess squeezed my shoulder. “And we need to look after our true queen. We have many fine abodes if you’d like to rest your head as well.” He swept his arm toward the cabins.
“No,” I said automatically. I’d spent most of the last
four weeks in some sort of sleep. I wasn’t in any hurry to return to that state. “I think I just…” I tugged my hair back behind my ears and grimaced at the feel of it. The brief dunk in the Pond of Tears hadn’t made up for nearly four weeks with no showers. “Is there anywhere I can wash here? I think I’ll feel better if I can clean myself up.”
The corner of Hatter’s mouth quirked up. “One thing we have plenty of down here is water.”
Chess glanced from him to me and gave us a smile that looked a little sly. “Why doesn’t Hatter get you where you’d like to go? I’ll slip upside with our new equipment and see if I can’t get a clearer answer of what happened to our White Knight turned Prince of Hearts.”
My heart squeezed. It wasn’t as if Chess hadn’t spied on the Hearts’ people plenty in the past, and I did want answers about Theo, but I’d only just gotten back here. Only just found him again. I grasped his hand for a second. “Be careful, okay?”
“I have every intention of making it back to you now that you’ve made it back to us,” he said with a grin.
Hatter held my elbow as I got up, not insistently but just firmly enough that I knew I could lean on him if I needed to. His gaze slid to Doria, who’d come over to join the cluster around me.
“You know I’ll be fine without you watching over my every move,” she said, wrinkling her nose at him but smiling at the same time.
“Of course,” Hatter said. He’d loosened up on his daughter as he’d become more active in the rebellion again himself, but I could imagine their current precarious situation had woken those protective parental urges right back up.
We left the camp behind, following the stream around a couple of bends in the caves and past another split.
“Here we are,” Hatter said.
I stared for a moment, taking in the scene up ahead. The current of glowing blue water veered to the side, hitting the wall and then… flowing right up it. The stream coursed on in a diagonal line that reached right up to the ceiling and spiraled around back to the ground farther down the passage. Where the water crossed the cave ceiling, some of it rained down toward the floor into a pool that had formed there. But some of it defied gravity completely.
