by Eva Chase
“That one?” Lyssa murmured beside me, pointing to one of the guards ambling down the street past my hat shop, keeping his distance from the wandering revelers.
Theo peered over her shoulder. All three of us were outfitted with the masks that filtered out the Queen’s drug, but even with the lower half of his face covered, his gaze was penetrating.
I wished I could feel totally secure it’d stay that way. Even though his plan had made a reasonable amount of sense, we were still depending on him to pull the first part of it off.
“Yes,” he said to Lyssa. “That’s one. You can always tell from the slightly unnatural stiffness to the way they move. I’ll take him.”
He slipped away through the shadows along the street, after the pearl-headed guard. His plan required a guard’s uniform, and he’d suggested we find a pearled one if we could, to make the taking easier. I couldn’t deny the wisdom there.
Our White Knight had more combat skills than I’d have suspected given his tendency to hang back behind the scenes. He whipped out a cord he’d brought with him and used it to yank the guard to him. The slam of his hand to the man’s forehead left the figure slumped. He dragged the guard into an alley and returned a few minutes later in the traditional red-and-pink pleated tunic and red pants, the heart-shaped helm perched on his head and the antidote rose tucked into his collar. He’d kept his mask up as we’d discussed.
“Wish me luck,” he said under his breath as he passed us. He strode into the hat shop.
Lyssa grasped my hand as we waited. The thrumming rhythm of the music playing down the street vibrated over my skin.
“Do you think we should have made him wait, or let someone else do this part?” Lyssa whispered to me. So, she’d noticed he wasn’t exactly in tiptop shape too.
“He does know what demeanor the guards will respond to better than anyone else in the Spades,” I said. “And he can pull off that authoritative presence. I think we should keep an eye on him, be ready to step in if he falters, but I wouldn’t have agreed to go along with this plan if I’d been that worried.”
Lyssa nodded, and I took a small particle of satisfaction from having reassured her. We braced ourselves, our eyes fixed on the doorway. Theo was meant to go in and announce to the guards that the roses just dropped on this street had been laced far too heavily with the drug, more than the antidote they all wore could stave off. They were to retreat a few blocks for an hour until it dissipated. The story would also explain the mask he was wearing, which would also stop them from identifying him.
I’d tried to find a loophole, a reason to question his judgment, but I hadn’t seen one. And we hadn’t been able to come up with a better plan for retrieving her sword and scepter on our own. Lyssa had been right when she’d said we needed him here, at and on our side.
At the sound of raised voices, my pulse hiccupped. It was only a stream of guards from inside the building emptying into the street. Seven of them in total, with Theo at their heels. “Three streets to the north and one west, and wait there for further instructions,” he said, as if him giving commands were perfectly natural—which in a way it was. “I’ve got to clear everyone else out of the area.”
The guards made a few puzzled sounding noises, but they headed off down the street in the direction he’d indicated. I let out my breath, but my body stayed tensed. We weren’t in the clear yet.
Theo strode in the opposite direction, past us, peering through the shop windows as if looking for other comrades. Every now and then he took a quick glance over his shoulder. After the fourth of those, he glanced our way and motioned quickly to the shop.
The guards had moved out of sight. This was our chance.
Lyssa and I dashed together for the hat shop doorway. The sight of my merchandise strewn across the floor and counters made my chest twist. Ignoring that pang of discomfort, I snatched up a simple top hat as we hustled on to the stairs and set it on my head in a way that immediately set me more at ease.
I could rearrange my hats. I could make new ones. The guards hadn’t hurt anything permanently.
As long as Lyssa’s artifacts remained in their hiding place undiscovered.
I must have been spending too much time lurking around in the underground passages in the last few weeks and not enough getting my exercise. By the time we reached the fourth floor, I was winded. Lyssa stopped with a gasp of breath that comforted my ego a little, and we hurried down the hall to the upper apartment’s master bedroom.
I sprang into the lead. The wardrobe had been my design; I knew exactly where to press the second I’d whipped the door open, exactly how much pressure to apply for the panel to swing around. Lyssa let out a sigh of relief when the gleaming sword and scepter came into view.
She lifted the scepter first, her pale fingers curling around the dark cherry wood staff. The massive ruby in its frame of gold glittered as she shoved it into the sack she’d brought. She slung the bag over her shoulder and reached for the sword. The ruby embedded in its hilt flashed as if in welcome.
Then a shout carried from the street below.
My back went rigid. Lyssa snapped up the sword and swung around. My hatpins all but leapt into my hand. Someone thumped along the street’s cobblestones, raising his voice in a bellow.
“Hey! You there! What’s this story you’re telling? What unit are you meant to be with? Our orders were to never leave this building unguarded.”
He had to be talking to Theo. Theo could flee underground, but that man stood between us and escape. I wasn’t sure our former White Knight had the wherewithal to do more than save himself right now.
I looked at Lyssa—her wide eyes, her determined expression, so beautiful and so fierce at the same time—and my mouth and my body moved before I’d even really thought about it.
“I’ll go down,” I said, stepping toward the hall. “I’ll lead him off, and you can get back to the trap door.”
Before I’d even finished speaking, more footsteps thundered on the road outside. I was going to have more than one guard to distract. My gut clenched, but a surge of adrenaline overwhelmed it. I was about to race toward the stairs when Lyssa caught my arm.
“No!” she said. “Hatter—you don’t need to throw yourself into the line of fire for me. We’ll get out of this together. There has to be a way. We can—we can go across the rooftops.”
She tugged me toward the window. I started to balk, the layout of this block unfurling in my head. Then a single sharp thought pierced the mad haze that had been rising through me.
We could take the roofs close enough to the underground entrance to be pretty sure of making it. All the city folk were either sleeping or reveling in their drugged state. We could slip through the window of another building farther along and go straight through a house without anyone likely to complain.
Lyssa shoved the window open just as a door banged open downstairs. I boosted her onto the shingles and scrambled out myself. The cold night air filtered through my mask, waking me up even more.
“This way,” I said, grabbing her hand and trying not to think about the hasty way I’d almost run straight into danger on her behalf. “Follow me.”
Chapter Ten
Lyssa
It felt strange just leaving the magical sword and scepter of the Red royal line sitting out in the cabin I was now sharing with Doria and the ferret-faced woman—whose name, Mallo, I’d finally gotten—but it would have felt even stranger carrying them both around in the caves. I still didn’t even know how to use their magic. After the disarray when we’d fled Hatter’s house last night, Theo had suggested he could help me work with them, but I wasn’t sure when that would happen with so much else up in the air.
The images from the city above, the people so loopy, had haunted my dreams. They’d kept my sleep restless and short. My cabin-mates were still sleeping under their blanket, their breaths rasping faintly, as I tugged my clothes into something resembling neatness as quietly as I could.
Most of the camp was still sleeping. I knew a couple of the Spades would be standing guard farther down the caves near the closest entrances, but the only other person up near the alcove was Theo, sitting a little ways off by the edge of the stream. His head bent low as he twisted a bit of metal onto a thin black device he was holding. Still the Inventor, even now. I guessed old habits died hard.
He was so absorbed in his work that he didn’t notice me coming over until I’d almost reached him. His head jerked up, and his fingers clenched around the device as if he was afraid he’d drop it. The second he saw me, the tension fled from his expression. He smiled at me, warmly but maybe not as confidently as he might have a few weeks ago.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he said.
“I seem to have gotten more rest than you did.” I sat down at the edge of the stream next to him, leaning to let my fingers ripple the lukewarm water. Its blue glow sharpened the angles around Theo’s square jaw, the slightly crooked nose he’d purposely let heal wrong after his mentor, the previous White Knight, had broken it for him.
Even with that minor imperfection, he was handsome as a prince. Honestly, the flaw made him even more so—more real and less like a work of fiction.
But so much of our time together had been fictional. Just the story he’d wanted to tell me and not all the darker and more fraught pieces he’d wanted to keep hidden.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Theo said. He set the device down on the smooth rock beside him. “If I’m going to see you on that throne, we’ve got to determine a way to get more than a handful of us into the palace. Or a way to make the guards stand down no matter what my mother says. Neither is going to be easy.”
“You know, you can take a little longer to recover from what she put you through,” I said. “She had you trapped in there for weeks, messing with your head, hurting you…” My gaze fell on the thin pink lines of healing cuts at the corners of his jaw. I suspected there were more beneath his clothes. “No one will blame you for taking it easy for a day or two.”
“I’d blame me,” Theo said firmly. “I promised you I’d clear the way for you—that I’d make it safe for you to come back. But it isn’t at all, and she’s destroying everything that matters about this land.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I know her. I matter to her. I should be able to work out a way to turn things around.”
“She has powerful magic and hundreds of people on her side, too afraid to do anything but follow her orders.” Or incapable of even considering it, in the case of the “pearl-heads” Hatter had told me about. I restrained a shiver at that memory. “But I’m here now, and we’ve got you back, and we’ve managed to get the artifacts. We’re already turning things around.”
Theo looked at me for a long moment. The intentness of his dark brown eyes sent a tingle over my skin. My body remembered all too well what it was like to be wrapped in those strong arms, to meet the heat of his kiss with my mouth.
“I owe you so much more than this,” he said. “Maybe we would have overcome her already if I hadn’t let my ego and my ambitions sway my thinking. I’m not even sure how many of my decisions were practical and how many I simply convinced myself were. The only thing I do know for sure is that I haven’t made up for any of it until the Queen of Hearts has fallen and you’re safe in the palace that should have been yours all along.”
His hand edged forward as if to take mine, but he hesitated just shy of contact. We hadn’t touched since that quick hug when we’d found him in the palace. My emotions jumbled in my chest, but whatever I was feeling, however I decided our relationship played out from here, I didn’t want to push him away completely.
I slid my hand the last half an inch to brush his. He wrapped his fingers around mine immediately with the same solid, comforting grasp he’d always had. A rush of warmth shot through my veins, and a large part of me wanted to scoot a little closer, to melt into his embrace like I had in the past. I held myself back.
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself, like you always have,” I said. “I’m still upset about the way you lied to me, but I understand. You were right that you weren’t ready to take on the Queen of Hearts to get my throne back—no one here was. I certainly wasn’t. I wish you’d trusted me with the whole truth of who I was, at least, sooner, but… You’d only known me a couple weeks. You’d seen yourself as the heir to that throne for decades. It’s—it’s a mess. Maybe I’m still confused and I’m going to need some time to sort out my feelings, but I know for sure that you’ve always truly wanted what’s best for Wonderland. You don’t need to prove that to me.”
Theo’s smile came back with a quirk of his lips. “And that generosity,” he said, his gaze still holding mine, “is one of the many reasons I love you. I meant that when I said it before. I might not have proven my devotion yet, but I will. Whether you ever find you can return those feelings or not. You haven’t been here long, but you’ve already shown me things about what a ruler should be that I’d let myself forget. I’ll fight to the end, and it’ll be for you as much as for Wonderland.”
My breath caught. I squeezed his hand harder. Before I’d found out about his lies, I’d been falling for Theo. The qualities that had drawn me to him were still there. I wasn’t ready to say the words back to him, and I didn’t know when or if I would be, but hearing him talk like that made my heart sing.
“Theo,” I said, not sure what to add.
He shifted a smidge closer, his other hand rising to brush over my hair. “That’s all I ask for,” he said. “For you to know who I am, who I’ll continue being from this day forward. I’m so sorry for how I deceived you before. You have my word that I’m committed to being nothing but open with you now, and we’ll just see where that takes us. You’re my queen.”
He said the last words so fervently I couldn’t help myself. I tipped toward him, seeking out his lips. He returned my kiss in an instant, his hand coming to rest on the side of my neck, his thumb tracing a line of sparks over my cheek. His mouth moved against mine sure and eager but restrained, not the headlong passion with which we’d come together the last time we’d had sex. Still letting me lead the way.
The rose and raspberry smell of him filled my nose. I should have wondered before about that faint flowery scent that clung to him as if it were part of his essence. But it tasted sweeter on his lips than anything I’d encountered in the Queen’s palace.
He wasn’t his mother. He wasn’t his family. That was enough for me to share this moment with him.
I curled my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, pulling myself even closer. In the back of my mind, I was conscious of the cabins in the alcove just a few steps away and of all the walls around my heart that I wasn’t ready to let down.
I could still have this. Just a kiss, or maybe two, with the man who’d first made me feel like I deserved every joy Wonderland could offer.
Footsteps rapped over the stone, echoing against the cave ceiling. I drew back from Theo, and we both turned as one of the Spades from the other camps jogged into view. His expression was tight, his hands fisted. Theo sprang to his feet, and I followed.
“Whi—White Knight,” the man said, coming to a stop, stumbling a bit over the title Theo had admitted wasn’t entirely rightfully his. “I was scouting out around the edges of the city, like we’ve been doing regularly since we came under to the River Down.”
The other members of our camp started to emerge from the cabins at the sound of louder voices. Theo started to speak and then looked to me. A prickling ran over my skin. I needed to lead these people now. If I told him to handle this, he would, but I had to get used to the role I was reaching for, didn’t I?
“What happened?” I said, keeping my voice even but attentive. “What did you see?”
“The guards were bringing more of the Clubbers off to the palace,” the sentry said. His gaze flicked between me and Theo. “A couple dozen of them this time. I don’t like the looks of it at all.”
“Did the
y say anything about what they were doing with them?” Dum asked. He and his twin had come out of the nearest cabin to join us. “Has the Queen announced anything?”
The sentry shook his head. “Not that we’ve heard. And the guards weren’t saying anything other than to keep the Clubbers walking. They were all still drugged out of their heads—they’d just left the city.”
Dee turned to Theo with a hopeful expression. “Did you hear anything about her planning a round-up while you were in the palace, boss?”
Theo’s shoulders had tensed. “No,” he said. “No, I—”
He flinched and clapped a hand over his eyes, hunching over for a second. My heart lurched.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, jerking himself straight. His hand hadn’t left his eyes, and his mouth pressed in a thin line before he went on. “Just an after-effect—the treatments—I’ve got it. I’ll be fine in a moment.”
His voice had gone ragged. I touched his arm tentatively and then more firmly when he didn’t retreat. He let out a stuttered breath and raised his head with a sheepish smile. The twins smiled back at him, but Dee’s lips wavered. He looked more frightened than reassured.
“We have to assume whatever the Queen wants with those people, it isn’t good,” I said, pitching my voice a little higher to bring everyone’s attention back to me. To get us back on track to solving this problem rather than focusing on Theo’s momentary lapse. “Is there any way to fend off the guards, to stop them from taking more people?”
The sentry sputtered a laugh. “If we could do that, we could take the whole palace.”
Fair enough. “And the city people couldn’t fight back even if they were willing to now, thanks to the drugs. Okay.” I squared my shoulders as the idea came to me. I didn’t know how well it would work, but it felt right, and that was the best we could go by. The people in the city had been trapped just as much as Theo had, and like him, they couldn’t help us unless we helped them first.
