Chapter 7 Threats, Promises, and Good Intentions
CHAPTER SEVEN
THREATS, PROMISES, AND GOOD INTENTIONS
Tagging along with Finlo and Lewis, my feet hurt from trying to keep up. They’re moving at breakneck speed. We’ve walked through two whimsical towns, neither of which they let me dawdle in.
The palace looms overhead, looking slightly different from in my memories because now I have the context of understanding the ruthless woman inside it.
The staircase winds up the edge of the black mountain perched atop, and my body aches as I think about trudging up it.
“You can always stay down here?” Lewis offers. “I have some coin; you could take it into town and walk the market?”
I swallow, watching Finlo’s eyes look down. There’s shame in them, and I find myself wondering if it’s a shame because he wants me to come with him or the opposite.
“No. I’m going. If anything, I can be a distraction to her behavior.”
“Oh, Eleanor.” Fin turns, fear painting his face. “You must behave yourself. Please don’t lose your head in her presence. She’s an awful woman. Downright horrible. Don’t look at her. Don’t give her a reason to keep you, either.”
“Like she has you?”
His brows tug together, considering my words. He likely doesn’t seem to realize, even if the queen is holding his sister hostage, it’s him she wants.
He’s the prize. Anyone can see it.
“Just be on your best behavior. Please?”
I nod. “I’ll do my best.”
Lewis slips a paw in my hand, smiling at me as Finlo takes the lead, ascending the steps before us. “That was very kind. Most don’t realize he’s the true gem in this place.”
“Well, I’m not most.”
“You never have been, Elli-roo.”
I hold on to Lewis’s paw the entire way up the stairs, telling myself it’s only for his comfort, not my own.
The ornate doors at the top of the stairs are weather-beaten and wrought-iron. The curling vines on their surface look like poison ivy from my world and give warning to the vile woman beyond their hold.
“Is this one sanctioned by the queen?” a guard asks, his humanoid face in direct conflict with the paper-thin cardstock of his body.
“She’s my… assistant,” Finlo offers. “Took her on last week. I am getting older, you know?”
“Mm,” the guard says, sneering. “Four hundred looks good on you still, Hatter.”
Four hundred?!
For the first time since I dropped through the hole in the earth, I wonder what magical creatures live in Wonderland.
The guard nods to another standing just inside the gates, and then they open.
Creaking and groaning, the gates finally stand wide, and I follow Finlo and Lewis inside, choosing to hang behind them for shelter.
We’re led through the palace to its interior before being deposited before two more doors, which are made of carved wood, and there is a scene of a queen holding a head upon it.
I notice the queen’s head is oblong, and I’m cocking my gaze to get a better look at it when the doors open.
Finlo looks over his shoulder at me. “Do exactly as I instruct.”
I nod, suddenly overcome with nerves.
The queen sits atop a throne, and her head teeters on her small neck as if it’ll topple off at any moment.
The carving didn’t do it justice.
“There you are! It’s about time!” she screams, her loud, grating voice echoing off the walls.
I jolt, and Lewis gives me a look over his shoulder through his monocle.
I smile to relay to him I’m alright, but I’m not alright.
The Knave of Hearts stands beside her, stoic.
Finlo and Lewis bow, so I follow suit. “Your Majesty,” Finlo says. “You summoned?”
“I did. You know, this would be much easier if you came to live at court like I’ve asked a thousand times.”
“I know, Your Majesty. It’s only that I hat for so many folks; how would I continue my business with a beautiful head like yours distracting me at all times of the day?” Finlo lays it on thick, and it honestly nauseates me.
I also can’t help the ring of jealousy in my stomach, even when I know he’s just placating her.
“Who’s that behind you? Why’s her head so small?”
Lewis and Finlo part, and I step forward. Bowing, I greet her. “Your Majesty, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Eleanor.”
Finlo grows rigid beside me as the queen stands.
“Not that Eleanor, Your Majesty,” Lewis adds. “Another one.”
They hadn’t said I couldn’t use my name. All my memories aren’t back, but I didn’t realize she would remember me.
The queen stops in front of me, tipping my head back.
Her thinly painted red brows knit together. Her head is enormous, and it’s wild to think that she only uses her abnormally large brain for evil.
“Yes. You’re not the same, Eleanor. Pity, the other one owes me her life.”
I swallow. How could I owe her my life?
“This is my new assistant. I’m getting older. I need the help.”
“Mm,” the queen says, still holding my face hostage, her thin hands cold against my skin. “Good thing you brought her. I need a hat for this evening. The Knave and I are going on a date. I’ll need the perfect hat.” She releases her grip, turning back for her throne, and Lewis grabs my hand again.
I grip onto him like he’s my lifeboat in a sea of uncertainty as Finlo and the queen go back and forth about hats.
I’m granted leave to use the restroom—thank God they have those here—and on my way back to the throne room, I take the liberty of my freedom and poke about some.
I assume the queen is holding Finlo’s sister somewhere lower than the palace’s ground floor, but still, I open doors quickly, peering inside the rooms behind them before shutting them.
When I find a library, there’s a woman inside.
She’s sitting on a reading bench, and she seems so familiar that I can’t help but walk inside, glaring at her like a loon.
“Excuse me?” I squeak.
She looks up, and her green eyes lock onto me. Standing, she tosses her book aside. “Eleanor? Oh, it simply cannot be. Fin said you were gone. He said that you were…”
“I’m sorry. I don’t recall your name. Are you Finlo’s sister?”
She smiles. “Those pesky security charms. Your memories will return. Yes, I am. Ariadne.” She places her hand out for me to shake, a very human-like thing to do. “Don’t you remember? You taught me this gesture.”
I swallow. “No. Not yet.”
I shake her hand, and she smiles warmly before her eyes dart toward the door in alarm. “Why are you here? Is Finlo alright? Are you alright? You never came before unless you were… is something the matter?”
“Everything is fine. I’m… I’m fine.”
She purses her lips. “Well, that was very convincing.”
It strikes me that this is the most intelligible conversation I’ve had here yet, and I wonder if that’s why I gravitated toward Ariadne before or if I did.
“I’ll be alright.”
“I hope so. But Fin is doing well?”
“He’s okay. Struggling with my return because I’m…” I wave my hands down my body.
“Older.” She smirks. “That’ll take him some getting used to.”
“It will. The queen summoned him for a hat last minute, and I’d just had some memories return to me about her, and I begged to tag-a-long so that I could find you.”
“I hope you weren’t planning to break me out again. The last time you did that, I slept with the mice in the dungeons for weeks.”
I swallow. That was what I was planning to do, actually. “You’re comfortable here?”
She looks around with a sigh. “It’s all I know.”
“But wouldn’t you want to be with Fin? Come to a tea party? Sleep in your own bed?”
“I’ve been here since I was a child, Eleanor. This is my home. Besides, I see Fin when he comes to hat for the queen. She allows him to remain afterward, and we talk or play games. He’s very good at chess, if you’ll recall.”
I plop down on the reading bench. “I guess I can calm my nerves now. I was determined to save you, and you don’t want to be saved.”
“There is someone you can save if you’re up to the task.” She sits beside me, her eyes wary, flicking to the door every few seconds. “It would be a dangerous task.”
Ariadne fills me in on her and Finlo’s friend, Prospero, a pipe-smoking caterpillar the queen captured last week. He speaks in riddles, so the queen took a liking to him and tossed him into her dungeons.
Ariadne and Finlo worry that their old friend will shrivel and die without the things the Cheshire Wood offers him as his home and the smoke to fill his pipe, so they’ve been hatching a plan to get him back.
It has to be hard to get into the dungeons of this place. It was hard enough to slip the guards on my way back from the bathroom.
I’m honestly shocked no one’s erupted into the room yet.
“I’ll do anything I can to get him back,” I tell her.
She grabs my hands, and I note the tremble in hers. “Just don’t get caught. Finlo would be beside himself to lose you again.”
“Will you tell me what happened? Tell me why I never returned?”
“I won’t. Finlo would skin me alive if I told you the end of your story before it was time for you to know it.”
I grunt in frustration. “He’s a very frustrating man.”
“Oh,” she says, turning my face with her hand on my chin as she searches my eyes. “Oh.”
“What?”
“You like him.”
“He’s hard not to like. Have you met him?”
“No. I mean… You like him.”
“I—” I think about denying it, but I sigh, and a blush fills my cheeks heatedly. “I truly can’t help it. Even in my memories, I think I always did. But I was young and thought it was a girlhood crush that would fade.”
“Love for Finlo Pennington never fades. It only grows. He’s the best Fae I know.”
Fae.
Unwittingly, Ariadne answered the question left unanswered by my memory loss: What the hell are these folks?
“Be gentle with him, Eleanor. His love for you is deeper than you’ll ever know. Deeper than he’ll ever be able to express.”
I swallow as the door bursts open, and the queen storms inside, red-faced and full of rage.
A new hat on her head is small and wrapped in tulle. It looks comical, and I fight a smirk as I take it in.
“You’ve been gone too long, and now I find you with my ward. What vile things have you filled her head with, New Eleanor?!”
“Mother,” Ariadne starts, and I flinch at the term. “She was only lost in the halls. I pulled her in for some company. You know this palace is too grand for a mere mortal to wander alone.”
This appeases something in the queen, and her face changes, looking less red by the second. “Your time is up. The Hatter is finished, and you must leave with him. At once.”
At this, Ariadne stands. “Do I not get time with my brother today?”
The queen narrows her eyes on Ariadne, and my stomach cinches at the idea that I’m the one who caused this upset in my haste to help rescue her.
“No. You do not. He’ll be back next week for his regular services. You can see him then.”
“Yes, Mum.” Ariadne curtseys, grabbing her book, re-shelving it, and leaving the room.
I follow the Knave of Hearts into the hall and to the front doors, where Lewis and Finlo anxiously await my return.
“One Eleanor is as bad as the next. Mind your head better when you’re here next,” the Knave tells me, snarling his lip up at me. There’s a deep scar cutting across them, and I can’t help but stare at it.
Finlo grabs my arm and tugs me out the doors, leading me halfway down the stairs before pulling me into him in a tight hug I never seen coming. “I thought you were lost.”
My arms lift and wrap around him, and Lewis turns away, whistling uncomfortably as the hug continues. “I’m right here, Fin.”