by Eva Chase
I was heading back to more of that. They’d cut deeper, bombard me harder with images and words of the rule I was supposed to believe in. The guards we passed in the hall didn’t show the slightest sign of sympathy or concern. I couldn’t rely on anyone but myself here.
I had to hold on. I had to fend off the worst the doctors inflicted on me and keep as much of my head as I could. My mother still maintained enough hope that I could be the son she wanted to keep me alive, and so I had to hope that I could make some difference here.
All of Wonderland was counting on me, and I’d see my neck severed before I let them down again.
Chapter Seven
Lyssa
Wonderland’s glowing underground river didn’t extend beyond the city’s limits in the direction of Caterpillar’s club. I slunk along the darkened streets behind my sense of Chess’s invisible form, my breath warm and humid inside the cloth mask he’d given me to cover the lower part of my face. A hint of the rose scent trickled in, but not enough to affect our minds—or Hatter’s, beside me. Which was a good thing, because the guards had laid out heaps of their drugged flowers all along the borders of the city to ensure no one snuck out to the clearer air beyond.
There wasn’t much dancing on these outer streets, but we did pass a couple slumped together next to the road with their clothes in disarray, as if they’d fallen asleep halfway to having sex. Someone was singing a tuneless, wordless song that filtered through an upper window into the cool night air.
The Queen of Hearts might not have chopped off these people’s heads, but her latest tactic of control had left them pretty much out of their minds.
Chess turned visible just long enough to motion us down an alley. The tap of a guard’s footsteps marched past us on the road we’d just left. We skirted the direct route to the club and slipped into the forest of starkly green trees that sprawled around it. After the few days I’d had to continue recuperating while the Spades made their observations to construct our plan, barely any lingering pain from the accident remained in my body. I felt almost like my normal self again.
After we’d walked several minutes, even the wisp of rose that had reached my nose faded away. Hatter tugged his mask down and dragged in a deep breath, and I did the same, welcoming the rush of the crisp forest smells.
“Chess?” I murmured.
Our fanged companion shimmered into view with a brush of his hand over my shoulder. “Almost there.”
“You’re sure he won’t have guards with him?” Hatter said under his breath.
“He hasn’t the times I’ve watched so far,” Chess said. “You’ll just have to keep those hat pins of yours ready in case he’s switched up his routine.” His grin glinted in the dim moonlight that penetrated the leaves overhead.
Hatter made a slightly disgruntled sound, but he adjusted the sleeves of his suit jacket—an unusually subdued navy blue—where I knew he had at least a couple of those pins at the ready. We stalked on through the forest, Chess leading the way. My heart thumped louder with each rustle of the branches above us.
“Do you think the Queen took Unicorn’s head for helping us?” I asked finally. The question had been rattling around my brain since Chess had said he hadn’t been able to set eyes on our recent ally since the horned fighter had helped us break into the palace grounds.
“Could be,” Chess said softly. “Could be she took both him and Lion, not knowing who to blame. Or they could be laying low with all appendages intact. Not many of the Diamonds are venturing far beyond the palace lately. We shook them up well, and they needed a good shaking.”
Unicorn hadn’t done anything all that obvious, his bashing into the gate set up to look like an accident, but the Queen had executed people for a lot less. She often executed people for nothing at all, from what I’d seen. Him simply being in the area when I’d burst into the palace grounds might have raised her suspicions.
Whether he was alive or dead, he hadn’t shown any sign of being able to help more. Which was why we were on our way to chat with an even more uncertain ally.
Chess held up his hand for us to stop. I made out a narrow path of flattened grass that wove through the trees to a gnarled old oak. Its branches crisscrossed each other and wove together like a latticework, and between its arched roots lay a round mahogany door so polished you could hardly believe it had spent any time outside. I eyed it for a moment.
“Rabbit lives in an actual rabbit hole?” I said.
“I had tea with him once,” Chess said with an enigmatic air. “It’s rather nicer on the inside than the outside, as holes go. Which is not very far, in his case. He wants to stay put, not find himself elsewhere.”
Hatter shot his friend a bemused look. Giving straight-forward answers wasn’t exactly Chess’s forte. But after everything I’d seen of Wonderland, I knew that hole could as easily open up into the fanciest ballroom I’d ever seen as the earthen room I’d expect.
You couldn’t really expect anything to be as you’d think in Wonderland—not even when you’d seen the thing in question before.
I tugged off the blouse I’d wore to hide my armored vest and slid the ruby necklace out to rest on the interlaced metal. For this conversation, I wanted to look every bit the queen.
We stood in the shelter of the trees a few paces from the path, all of us staying silent after that. The breeze whispered through the leaves, and small creatures scampered through the brush. The buzz of a fly zipping past my ear made me flinch. Out on the Checkerboard Plains, we’d encountered some giant insects more massive than I hoped to ever have anywhere near me again. Especially since those insects had seemed to be as interested in removing our heads as the Queen was.
A chill was starting to seep through my clothes when a faint pattering reached my ears. I tensed, holding my body even more still than before.
Rabbit’s white-furred form came into view down the path. Just as his home appeared to be an actual rabbit hole, he looked like an actual rabbit—one about as tall as I was, half-walking half-hopping in a trim pinstriped waistcoat. He was muttering quietly to himself. It reminded me of the one time I’d seen him before, when I’d had to dodge him in the passages beneath the club on my way to the now-broken mirror there. He’d been fussing about how Caterpillar’s demands always made him late, no matter how hard he tried to keep up with them.
He hadn’t sounded all that happy with his boss. There had to be something we could offer him—something I could offer him—that would sway his loyalties. Chess believed there was, anyway.
Rabbit tugged a watch out of his waistcoat pocket, glanced at it, and flattened his long furry ears closer to his head. He hop-walked a little faster. As he tucked the watch back into his pocket, Hatter and Chess stepped out onto the path to intercept him, Chess in front and Hatter behind.
Rabbit startled, his ears springing straight up. He hopped back a step and spun to see that way was blocked too. “Well, I—” he started. His voice started to rise. “It really is quite rude to hold up a person on their way. I must protest that—”
Chess held up his hand. “Before you do too much protesting, Rabbit, consider who you’d be calling for help too. The ones who’ve left the entire city in a daze? The ones who’d take your head the second you seem like a problem? Do you really think we’re more dangerous than them?”
Rabbit sputtered a bit, but he didn’t appear to have a coherent answer. He thumped one long foot on the ground. “Well, what do you want, then?” he asked, his dark eyes twitching from Chess to Hatter and back again.
I eased forward then, right in front of him. “We want information from the palace,” I said. “And possibly a way to get in and out for that building. I’ll repay you, of course.”
Rabbit stared at me for a moment, his posture going rigid. He had to recognize me from the day weeks ago when I’d stomped into the palace gardens at ten times my usual height. He knew I was the “Alice” the Queen of Hearts was after.
“What makes you think I c
ould offer you any of that?” he said tightly.
“You’re the only one making his way to and fro from the palace,” Chess said. “Besides the guards. All the Diamonds are staying in and all the Clubbers are staying out. You have to go right to the Queen’s private chambers to get to her mirror, from what I hear. You must hear plenty along the way.”
“I keep to my own business.” Rabbit’s nose twitched. “It won’t do me any good to be mixed up in yours.”
“It might, though,” I said. “She isn’t going to be queen forever. I’m the Red Queen, and I will take back the throne the Hearts stole from my family. If you help me, I’ll be able to offer you an awful lot.”
“And if I don’t?”
I gazed back at him evenly. “I won’t take your head. I won’t hurt one whisker on your face. Did I hurt anyone when I came to free her prisoners, even when they were jabbing at me?”
His expression relaxed slightly. I hadn’t. I’d made a point of showing how different my methods were from the Queen of Hearts’. I wasn’t sure I could keep up that peacefulness through the battles ahead of us, but I’d spill as little blood as I could manage.
“The Queen of Hearts would take your head,” Hatter said. “For looking at her wrong. For saying the wrong word.”
“For being a tiny bit late,” I added.
“Or possibly even early,” Chess threw in. “It’s only a matter of time now that you’re brushing up so close to her, you know, Rabbit. We’re trying to save you from the trap you’re stuck in.”
“It’s not a trap,” Rabbit said with a sniff. “It’s a job. I’ve done my part for Wonderland. I’ve helped keep people happy and entertained.”
Hatter raised his eyebrows. “Do you really think they’re all that happy now?”
“The Queen is distressed. We can return to our regular club activities when she’s calmed down.”
“And are you treated all that well in the club either?” I said. “Caterpillar is constantly bossing you around and running you ragged. Aren’t you tired of living under his thumb? Isn’t there somewhere else you’d rather be?”
Rabbit bristled so quickly I could tell I’d hit a nerve—but not the way I’d wanted to. “I’m exactly where I want to be,” he said. “I’ve worked within the club from the day it opened, and I’ve made it as good a place as any in Wonderland. Leave it to Caterpillar?” He scoffed.
The glint in his eyes and the passion in his voice lit an answering spark in me. It reminded me of how I’d felt when I’d declared that I was taking back the throne.
He’d just handed me what I’d needed—the key to his desires.
“What if we left Caterpillar out of it completely?” I said, raising my chin as if I had no doubt at all that I could fulfill the offer I was making. “What if, once I’m on that throne, the club passes into your hands as the new owner? You can run it any way you like—within reason, of course. You can make it better than he ever let you.”
Rabbit’s mouth opened and closed and opened again without a sound. An eager quiver ran through him. But he was hesitating.
I drew on every ounce of longing I’d felt since I’d found my way into Wonderland. “It’s what you’ve dreamed of, isn’t it? It could be yours. Don’t pass up that chance. I want to hand you your dream on a platter. What has the Queen of Hearts ever given you except terror?”
Rabbit only wavered another half a second. “What do you want to know about the palace?” he asked in a hushed voice.
I restrained the grin that tried to spring across my face. “What have you heard about Jack, the Queen’s son—the one everyone thought was dead, who was living as the Inventor? Is he in the palace?”
Is he alive? That part of the question was enough to make my urge to grin fade completely.
Rabbit rubbed his small white chin. “That matter has been kept very quiet, but I have caught a thing or two. I believe she’s attempting to cure him of the Spades’ influence. Has him shut away somewhere with doctors attending to him in the inner quarters of the palace.”
A wave of relief rushed through me. Chess smiled wide. Hatter didn’t look quite as pleased, but he didn’t look upset either, which I guessed was about as good a reaction as I could have hoped for given his fraught history with Theo.
“All right,” I said. “Then we’re going to need you to get us into the palace and as close to where they’re keeping the prince as you can without drawing too much suspicion. You’re supposed to go back tomorrow, aren’t you?”
The night felt even thicker as we made our way back to the entrance to the caves, but my spirits were light despite the darkness. We had a plan; we had an ally even if he was a bought one. With Theo by our side, with everything he knew about his mother, we’d be ready to topple the Queen of Hearts once and for all.
We were just slinking around the side of a building when Chess’s invisible arm held me back. I froze.
A squad of the Queen’s guards burst into the street out of one of the buildings, what looked like a tavern. They were herding several men and women, all of them young to middle-aged and reasonably fit, their eyes glazed with that drugged haze.
“Where are they taking them?” I murmured. An uneasy prickling filled my stomach. I couldn’t see how it could be for anything good.
“Looks like to the palace,” Chess said as the guards hustled the small crowd on past our shadowed hiding spot.
One of the guards turned his head our way, and I stiffened even more. But beneath his dented red helm, his face had almost the same vague expression as the drugged city people. His eyes slid over the street and the buildings lining on it without pausing for a second. He snapped his head back to the route ahead with the same blank expression.
Hatter must have noticed my confusion. “That’s a pearl-headed one,” he said softly as the guards marched out of view.
“Pearl-headed?” I repeated.
He nodded. “When the Queen beheads people, if they were reasonably physically capable, she sends them out to the sea. That’s the work my ‘friend’ Carpenter is doing now. They have a process where they can grow a new head in the old one’s place, like a pearl in a shell. They’re never like they once were, though. The new person is nearly mindless.”
“But he’s out there with the rest of the guards,” I said.
“The Queen imprints them in some way to make them see her as their one leader, and any orders she gives them, they’ll follow as well as they can,” Hatter said. “They have no thoughts of their own, as far as anyone’s been able to tell. Mostly she uses them for servants doing menial tasks around the palace, but she’s supplemented the Hearts’ Guard with them too.”
I hugged myself, holding back a shudder. The prickling that had filled my stomach earlier seeped through the rest of my body with a chill.
We needed to get Theo soon. Every moment the Queen of Hearts stayed on that throne, who knew what new horror she might commit? I just hoped we’d be in time to save those people from whatever fate she had planned for them.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We have preparations to make for tomorrow.”
Chapter Eight
Lyssa
Rabbit’s ears flattened to his head when he saw the four of us waiting in the spot just off the road to the palace where he’d told us to wait. “The more I’m bringing, the more likely they are to get suspicious,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“It’ll only look like three,” Chess said brightly. He faded away to his grin, and then that blinked out of sight too. “I find our way, Hatter opens it up, and Dee can shove away any who try to block us.”
“And the Otherlander?” Rabbit muttered.
Chess reappeared in a flash, his grin gone sharp with the glint of his fangs. “The Otherlander is more a Wonderlander than even we can claim, and it’s her palace we’re storming.”
I touched his brawny arm to reassure him that I didn’t need further defending. “I’m not sure Theo—Jack—will leave unless
I can talk to him,” I said. Theo had come to the palace with plans of his own that obviously hadn’t worked out, but I wasn’t sure whether he’d be willing to let go of them without a lot of convincing. And from what he’d said, he’d made those plans for me, so the convincing might need to come from me too.
Rabbit let out a huff of breath and gestured for us to follow him. “Get on your disguises now. You never know when the guards will wander.”
Chess vanished. Hatter, Dee, and I pulled on the white hoodies one of the Spades had quickly sewn together for us. We tied the filtration masks over our faces and tugged the hoods tight over our hair so no one could see much but our eyes. If anyone at the palace recognized us, especially me, it was game over.
But Rabbit had clearly earned a lot of the Queen’s trust. The mark of her seal still stood out starkly crimson against the thin white fur of his palm. He’d told us that she’d imbued it with enough power that it only faded once a week, to save her the hassle of approving his entrance every night.
I couldn’t enjoy the warm afternoon air or the bright sun overhead. The thump of our feet against the cobblestones echoed the thudding of my pulse. We were walking right into the lion’s den, and we weren’t ready to fight the lion yet. But we had to get Theo out.
His mother had been trying to “cure” him, Rabbit had said, but he hadn’t known more than that. What had the Queen been doing to her favorite son who’d then betrayed her?
He might be alive, but after all this time, was he okay?
We slowed as we approached the gate to the palace gardens. The gate I’d barged through like a giant a few weeks ago, as it happened. I resisted the urge to hunch my shoulders under the guards’ stares. One of them frowned.
“Who’s all this?” he asked Rabbit.
“With the increased demand, I’m running through my usual supply too quickly,” Rabbit said. His cheek twitched, making his whiskers jitter nervously, but his voice held steady. “I need assistants to ensure I can gather the necessary ingredients in time.”
