by Eva Chase
Up ahead of me, near the gate, Lyssa’s enlarged form knifed over so sharply my heart stopped. Her body heaved. With a strangled sound, she vomited in a shower over a cluster of rose bushes. Another wave followed. After each wretch, her figure contracted, a little more, and a little more.
Fuck. I’d worried that so many mushroom pieces would be too much—none of the Clubbers I’d been around had ever taken more than two in an hour without taking the opposite type to balance out the sensations, and even two was extreme. We had to get Lyssa out of here before the guards removed her in a much more permanent fashion.
I hurtled down the garden paths, vaulted over a low hedge, and crashed through the ring of guards that had started to close around Lyssa. She hunched over, sputtering and shaking, only as tall as I was now. Blood trickled from her fingers as she pawed at her belly.
Hatter must have noticed her distress too. He raced into the midst of the guards, jabbing this one and that with his dagger, darting around Lyssa to push them back as quickly as his swift feet could take him. I leapt in behind him to shove and trip whoever I could. Whirling around, I caught up a short sword a guard dropped after I kicked his wrist. The gleam of the blade nauseated me all over again, but that sensation was nothing compared to my terror for the woman behind me.
“Grab her and break a path to the gate,” I said to Hatter. If we could just get past the wall, we’d have the forest to fade into.
He started to push at the growing crowd of guards in that direction, but they just swarmed in closer on the other sides. There were certain limitations to trying to fend off this many packed so tightly together when they couldn’t see me. I had surprise, but I couldn’t rely on feints or intimidation. My lungs tightened.
I’d stood up to the Duchess. I could stand up to these Queen’s-asshole-licking lackeys too. For Lyssa. For our real queen, the one we deserved—all of us, even me.
With a crackle in my ears, I emerged from the in-between, plowing over four guards with one thunderous sweep of my arm. My dagger glinted and my fist flew. For a few heartbeats, the guards fell back, startled and wary. I nudged Lyssa after Hatter, and she managed to stumble onward on legs back to their usual size now. Blood dribbled over the grass in her wake.
Right then, I thought we could do it. The gate was less than ten feet away. It was crazy, sure, but we were all mad here, and Hatter and I were madder than anyone.
My knuckles connected with a guard’s jaw. My dagger sank into another guard’s sword arm. We made it another few steps—and then a mass of them pushed in around us too quickly for me to fend them all off.
One guard caught me with an elbow to the back of my head. As I reeled, another kneed me in the back. I spun around, and two clotheslined me in unison, throwing me right off my feet.
A heavy heel jammed me against the ground. A blade slammed straight through my shoulder, attaching me to the earth with a spear of agony. My nerves jumped with the urge to vanish, to contract into my own smaller form, but my body resisted.
I had to focus to find my way there, and the haze of pain clouded my mind too much. Just like it had back then.
I caught a glimpse of Hatter tackled to the ground, of two of the guards wrenching Lyssa’s arms behind her back, too forcefully for her to struggle free. The Queen’s voice split the air from far closer to us than I’d ever have preferred. Especially considering what she had to say.
“Their heads. All of them. Now!”
The new Knave stepped through the crowd toward Lyssa, drawing his sword with a hiss. I thrashed against the ground despite the fresh flare through my shoulder, and more feet stomped down on me to pin my limbs.
Forceful footsteps thumped across the ground. Another figure strode through the mob, and for a second, despite my predicament, I found nothing but shock.
Our White Knight was walking up to the Knave, his square jaw lifted, every muscle in his body tensed. Why did his hair look brighter, almost gold? When had he gotten here?
What in the lands was he doing?
His rich baritone reverberated across the gardens as commanding as the Queen’s had been, as if he expected even her guards to obey his order.
“Stop.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lyssa
So much authority rang through Theo’s voice that the guards holding me actually hesitated, their grip on me loosening enough to ease the pain of their digging fingers, though not to give me enough room to run.
Where the hell could I have run to anyway? There were more guards everywhere I looked—they’d battered Chess and Hatter to the ground. My stomach was still churning, my throat burning with acid, splinters of pain digging through my legs and my hands from all the cuts that had shrunk with my body but not disappeared.
The Knave raised his sword by my head, and Theo grasped his wrist. The sun gleamed golden on his curly hair, no longer slicked back but allowed to fall loose across his forehead. It wasn’t quite as bright as Mirabel’s, but close. He must have washed the dye out as well as he could.
An ache squeezed around my heart with a sudden understanding—why he’d have done that, why he’d have held back during the fighting. He’d had his plans. One last gambit, in case mine failed.
“I don’t answer to you, Inventor,” the Knave sneered, yanking his arm back. “Move aside. Or are you officially throwing your lot in with the Spades?”
“No,” Theo said, perfectly calmly, perfectly assured. Like the man I’d thought I was falling in love with. “I’m here to announce that the rebellion is over.” He raised his voice. “Anyone calling themselves a Spade should go back to their homes and set aside these futile conflicts. It’s finished.”
The Queen of Hearts was bustling her way through the crowd of guards, her square jaw jutting out and the eerie sheen in her eyes glowing fiercely. Her vast scarlet skirts flowed around her. “It is not. They must pay for what they’ve done. You must—”
Theo shook his head as he cut her off. “I’ve already settled everything that needs settling, Mother.”
No. Even though I’d criticized him yesterday, even though I’d told him he’d been wrong to keep so much from me, from everyone, every part of my body protested at the admission in that one word.
I’d wanted him to be honest with us, not with her.
Even the Knave faltered at his remark. The Queen stopped dead in her tracks at the edge of the ring of guards. She stared at Theo, her rigidly severe expression shifting just for a second. Then it snapped back into place.
“Mother?” she demanded. “What is the meaning of this?”
Theo gave her a pained smile. “It’s me, Mother. It’s Jack. I know I don’t look exactly the same, but you can see it, can’t you?”
Her hand tightened around her scepter, her knuckles blanching. “My son Jack is dead. Don’t you dare—”
“That’s what I needed everyone to think,” Theo went on before she could threaten him. It was unsettling how easily I could see the similarities now with them standing face to face: the set of their jaws, the confident stance that looked bold on Theo and arrogant on the Queen. The way he could pitch his voice to cut through any others around him.
“What do I need to tell you?” he asked. “How we went through four tutors in a year before you found one who’d teach things right? That my first real lesson was supervising the beheading of the one you liked least? That I once spilled parsnip soup all over your sitting room rug? That the first creature I killed in a hunt was a pheasant I went out and shot with an arrow on my own before presenting it to you?”
The Queen’s face had gone as white as her knuckles. Her lips parted and closed and parted again. “It can’t be,” she said.
Theo was wearing his usual white dress shirt and gray slacks. Without breaking eye contact with his mother, he reached toward his muscled back and drew his forefinger sharply across the linen fabric, first by his waist, then a few inches higher, and then by his shoulders.
“You did it because you w
anted me to remember,” he said. “Three times. I did remember. This was for bringing scraps from the dinner table to the stable cats. This was for failing to punish the serving girl who brought me the wrong color of wine. And this was for skipping out on a ball to roam in the city instead.”
She whipped me to bleeding, he’d told me. She could have without anyone being the wiser. Score him to the bone one night, and the next morning he’d wake up with only the memory of the pain, no evidence of it.
I restrained a shiver. The guards’ hands were still clamped around my arms.
“Jack,” the Queen said, with so much emotion tangled in that one syllable that I knew he’d convinced her. She gathered herself, needing to maintain her appearance of superiority in front of her guards, I guessed. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“And I will,” Theo said. “The most important part is that you taught me well. I saw that I had to be the prince and the heir that you needed. And that meant ending the one threat that’s loomed over our family for so long.” He cast his hand toward me. “This is the latest Alice. I deliver her to you.”
A sharper chill ran over my skin. He sounded so steady, as if the role he’d taken on really had been one long plan to bring down the Spades and the Red royal line.
“We’ll see that she faces the appropriate punishment, but first we must be sure the threat ends with her. I’ll bring her to the dungeon while you prepare yourself for the questioning, if it pleases you, Mother.”
The Queen’s gaze hadn’t left her newly recovered son for an instant. When he called her mother, she nodded automatically.
Theo gestured toward Chess and Hatter. “Let them go. Escort them back to their homes. They’ve all been under her thrall. We must give them the chance to shake off her influence.” He grasped my wrist. “Come along now. Don’t make your loss any more painful for yourself than it needs to be.”
I tried to turn to make sure the guards were really freeing Hatter and Chess, and Theo’s fingers clenched tight enough to bruise my skin. A rough pained noise broke from my lips. The Queen smiled as he marched me toward her.
He held up his hand, palm toward her. “I’ll need the mark of your seal. Until the guards know me properly again.”
Her seal—like she’d given Rabbit, he’d said. The Queen produced a small metal object about the size and shape of a car’s cigarette lighter from the folds of her dress. Holding Theo’s gaze, she pressed it to his palm. Lines of blood sprang up where the edges cut into his skin, sealing over almost instantly into a stark pink pattern.
“They’ll know you properly soon,” she said, the shimmer in her eyes almost… joyful. Somehow that was even more unsettling than her rage.
We strode down the path through the garden toward the ruddy walls of the palace, Theo half a step in the lead. His fingers loosened around my wrist as soon as we’d left the Queen and her guards behind, but he didn’t let me go.
I didn’t know what to say, what I should do. Should I be trying to escape? Or was this a ruse I’d only survive if I played along? I felt like vomiting all over again, and I didn’t think the mushrooms were at all to blame this time.
I’d been angry with him, but I had trouble believing even he could have faked the anguish he’d shown me yesterday over his mother’s treatment of Wonderland. If his role as the White Knight had been the real ruse, he’d had plenty of opportunities to hand me over to the palace before now. So I stayed quiet, waiting for his cues. He’d earned that much trust.
Whatever his plan was, I was finding it increasingly difficult to follow. He showed the seal mark to the guards at one of the palace’s smaller doors and marched past them. Inside, he led me up a flight of stairs, down a hall, and around a corner to another one. A plush red rug cushioned my feet. The smell of dried roses tinged the air.
Yeah, I was going to go out on a limb here and say this wasn’t the way to the dungeons. But where the hell was he taking me?
My calves were throbbing again. We finally stopped outside a door with an ornately carved wooden frame, where a squad of guards waited. At the flash of the Queen’s seal, they stepped aside. As the door thumped shut behind us, Theo’s hand slid farther down, brushing the cuts on my hand. I winced, and his gaze jerked to me. He adjusted his hold in an instant.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice raw.
Those two words dissolved the last of my doubts. He was still on my side, on the Spades’ side, as much as he’d ever been.
He ushered me into a sitting room full of fancy old-fashioned furniture, glinting with gold twined into the fabric and glazed over the wood. Fresh roses sat in a vase on the side table and on the buffet at the other end of the room. The smell of them hung so thickly it smacked me in the face.
Theo pressed on into a vast room with a grand piano and more sofas than I could count. Somehow the rose scent was even thicker there. He coughed and swiped at his mouth. His dark brown eyes were starting to haze.
My heart skipped a beat as I remembered what he’d told me about the roses—that the smell of them clouded his mind. I couldn’t lose him, not here, not now. I needed him with me if we were both going to get out of this situation alive.
His steps dragged on the floor. I tossed all my hesitations aside, stepped in front of him, and gripped his shirt to pull him into a kiss.
It was as with me as I knew how to accomplish. Let him feel me and not the presence of the roses. Something even clearer, even more potent, that he could train his mind on.
Theo’s breath hitched, and then he kissed me back hard, his other hand tucking around my waist and pulling me against him. It only lasted a few seconds, long enough for me to notice that it still felt so fucking good being this close to him, and long enough for my fear to creep back in.
He let me go, his hand coming up to the side of my head, his lips almost brushing my hair. “Thank you, Lyssa.”
I swallowed thickly. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Theo—Jack—”
“It’s Theo,” he said. “I’m not hers. I—I’m going to fix this. I’m going to set things right for Wonderland or die trying. There’s been so much pain while I watched and I waited… No more of that. Someone has to stand up to her. It ought to be me.”
“You didn’t have to do it like this,” I said.
He gave me a crooked smile. “She was a hair’s breadth from taking your head. We need you alive if things are ever going to be completely right. I need you alive. You upended my world, but you saved it—and me—too. It’s my turn to save you.”
“But how…?”
He eased toward me, and I backed up a step automatically. “I’ll do whatever it takes to challenge her, to convince her,” he said. “I’ve already used you too much to fix problems that were my responsibility. You’d try to save us all because that’s just who you are, but you’ve done your part more than anyone should have asked. Now I’ll do mine. I swear I’ll come for you when it’s safe, when I’ve cleared the way, and you can take the place that’s meant for you if you want it.”
Another fragment of memory came back to me, from after we’d discovered that the mirror in Caterpillar’s club had been shattered. When Theo was discussing the other one he knew of. The Queen was keeping it in her private chambers…
“No,” I said, with a protest that rippled through me from head to toe. I started to turn, but Theo caught my head with his other hand too, holding my face cupped between them. He walked us back another step, gazing into my eyes.
“I love you, Lyssa. I have to do this. I owe you this. I promised I’d get you home.”
“Theo—”
He nudged me backward another half a step, and my elbow brushed cool glass. “Just think of home,” he said softly.
My body recoiled, trying to throw me forward away from the looking-glass—too late. The mirror’s pull was already sucking me through. The last thing I saw of Wonderland was Theo’s taut expression before I fell away into blackness.
Think of home, he
’d said. As I tumbled headlong through the chilly looking-glass void between my world and his, my skin prickled with the certainty that home was not where I was going but the place I was leaving behind.
I groped into the darkness as if I could catch hold of something that would pull me back there. My body flipped heels over head and spun around. A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I stumbled onto hard wet ground.
I hadn’t been focused on anywhere in the Otherland while the mirror had heaved me here, so it must have spat me out into my former world somewhat at random. Into a drizzly night with a tarry scent in my nose and a pair of headlights bearing down on me.
A horn blared, I scrambled up and stumbled, and a wallop of pain shocked my senses into an even deeper darkness.
* * *
Will Lyssa find her way back to Wonderland in time—and what will she find waiting for her when she does? Find out in Wanton Wonderland, the third and final book in the Looking-Glass Curse trilogy. Get it now!
If you’re a fan of reverse harem paranormal romance, why not check out Eva’s new series, The Witch’s Consorts? You can grab the prequel story FREE here!
Lyssa’s Favorite Vanilla-Cranberry-Pine Scones
(Recipe makes approximately 8 scones)
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup butter, cubed
1 cup dried cranberries
2 teaspoons ground juniper berries
1/4 cup sugar plus extra for sprinkling
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk, plus more for brushing on top
Preheat the oven to 425° F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Combine flour and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Using your fingers, massage in the butter until the mixture looks like fine crumbs.
