Chapter 48 #2
I count more monsters in the firelight-flickering dark.
Seven. Maybe nine. Shapes cluster along the walls, near the entrance, beyond the firelight.
Some blur into the stone. Some have faces that keep shuffling like cards between griffins, turtles, walruses, and men.
Two of them play with literal cards—war, if I could guess—on a toppled headstone. All of them carry weapons.
What’s worse is every one of them looks the epitome of mean and bored, an awful combination among men in power. All they’ve got is time to invent ways to hurt people.
“What’re we waiting for?” I hate to ask the question, but honestly, sticking around is a dumb move, right? Monster criminals are supposed to be smarter than this.
She huffs and juts her chin to the walrus.
“The one pissing on the wall suggested they bet their getaway would be on a speedboat. Bond-style. Never mind the fact that we all won’t fit.
” The Duchess rolls her pea-sized eyes. “They’ve got a Wilde on shore who’s trying to get them one.
” Then she snorts. “If DJ Watchman were around, they’d at least have some sense of urgency, am I right?
Who knew Castle was down with human trafficking.
The only innocent ones were Chef, Watchman, Hatter, and…
” she chokes back into Duchy, her pretty face soft, her voice gentle and sad while tears track down her cheeks again. “And Xavier.”
I follow her line of sight, deeper in the ruin around fifteen feet bound to a stone pillar inside a small, open-air alcove lies the Executioner.
He’s massive even crumpled over, his arms tied behind his back making his shoulders even more broad, and nearly touching the side of the alcove he’s not laying on.
His chin is down, resting against his heaving chest, and despite the shadows brought on by his black hood, I can see the damage.
One eye is swollen shut, his lip is split, and dark bruises spread down his neck.
Outside the alcove, an axe leans along the wall
“X?” I whisper, hoping I’m not wrong. A foggy memory bubbles up from the houseboat. Duchess saying that they had her and Xavier. They used him to get to me.
“X? Are you okay?” I try again.
He stirs, and opens one good eye. Then his jaw drops. “Alice? Duchy?”
Duchy trembles beside me, apologizing. “Xavier. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t—” She hiccups, flashing to the Duchess and back as she gains control again. “I didn’t know what else to do. They were—”
“I know, Duch. I know.” His face crumples before it hardens again. “Don’t worry. I’ll get us out of this, I swear.”
No you won’t. No one saves me, I almost argue. But I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I remember hope getting me through the hard times too.
He seems to stretch and grow as he looks beyond the alcove, no longer paying strict attention to Duchy and me. When I look at her again, she’s looking up, muttering.
“Who all do you think is watching out there? How many people enjoy gambling on other peoples’ pain?”
Above us, mounted in the trees and on the eaves of the ruined church, are large unblinking eyes, their pupils glowing red in the dark. Uninterested but watching all the same.
Cameras. Castle’s cameras? Someone’s… which means either they planned this or…
“This has happened before,” I murmur.
“Probably,” Duchy agrees. “Jesus, what a damn mess. I should’ve left ages ago. But I didn’t want to leave Xav—”
The rat whoops a reedy laugh and holds up his phone. “Yo, that one just hit twelve percent,” he calls to no one in particular. “Some guy in Zurich put five K on it. We got four more minutes, and we’ll get forty each for staying past six.”
There are cheers and gnashing of teeth. I use the ruckus to shift and fight my rope, digging my heels into the sand, hunting for weakness in the knots. The headstone is even smaller than I thought. If I can rock it an inch or two, maybe I can slip the rope over the top.
Duchy watches me, her pea-sized Duchess-eyes fierce through her bruises. They widen when I lean forward.
“Wait, do that again. The stone’s coming up when you do that. Maybe you can—”
“Unloop? Yeah, I’m trying.”
She nods quickly, then mouths. “On my signal.”
She glances around, waiting for the dragon’s back to turn, then nods quickly.
We time it together, and I stop looking at her to lean and shift, teeth clenched, as I try to both use the gravestone to stand while also making sure it doesn’t completely fall over on top of me.
I hear Duchy shimmy too, lightly scraping her own headstone against its base, just a whisper of movement in all that dark.
The fire pops against metal, making the men shout and laugh. Then they’re arguing about God knows what, and hope flares in my chest as I’m slightly stand, and I al… most…
The Jabberwocky is on me before I register it moved, grabbing my arm and shoving me back down so hard my shoulder screams and white starbursts of pain blind me. His breath is hot and foul and smelling of liquor, smoke, and sulfur.
“Try it and I’ll break your fucking fingers,” he growls, the dragon’s jaws opening wide enough to bite my head whole. He leans close, fire-eyes searing through me, and around his head the Bandersnatch appears chuckling.
“Boat’ll be here soon. Be a good girl, princess, and I promise we won’t have fun before then.” Then he seems to weigh his threat. “Unless someone bets it, of course. Maybe Dorman will throw something up on DarkBoard and I’ll have to oblige.”
“Leave her alone!” The Executioner yells from within his alcove, and the Bandersnatch holds up a gun, making the Executioner go quiet.
“When the fuck did you wake up?” he groans. “Money rides on you that we can keep you tied up and not interfering. Don’t make me lose a grand.” He smirks and gestures to Duchy. “Then again, it might be worth it to hear this one scream again.”
The Duchess spits at his feet. “Go to hell.”
Both monsters tip their heads back so far to laugh, it almost looks like they’ll fall off. The Bandersnatch recovers first. “Y’all are cute, seriously. But I’ve had about enough of this waiting.” He grins at me as he speaks over his shoulder. “Dorman? I got a bet I want you to submit.”
He and the Jabberwocky back up, watching me and the Duchess before turning around to organize whatever bet he’s aiming to do, and my blood runs cold.
The ruins are quiet for a moment. Just the crackle of the barrel fire, the rat muttering odds with them and into his phone, and the low, furious breathing from the alcove where X hasn’t stopped pulling.
“Alice. L-Lucy? I’m so, so fucking sorry.”
I turn my head to face Duchy, and the Duchess’s enormous face crumples. Her features flicker—grotesque, then small, then grotesque again—but her eyes morph back to her, that pretty almost violet, terrified and full of tearful guilt.
“I tried to tell you,” she whispers. “On the boat. Before you went under. I don’t know how much you heard.”
“Pieces,” I say hoarsely. “Your family. Wildes. X. Castle.” The names come back like objects floating up after a shipwreck, I know they’re connected, but I can’t remember how. “It’s all jumbled.”
She nods, turning to awkwardly wipe her wet cheek against her shoulder since her hands can’t reach. “Then let me fill in what you missed.”
She takes a breath that shakes on the way in.
“I was already feeding Castle information before any of this to help him get an in with my family. He would threaten Xavier with me and vice versa. It’s why Xavier is so huge on the ‘no boyfriends’ rule. Relationships fuck everyone over in that place.”
She swallows. “I did what I could to appease Castle. Small things. Schedules, shipments, who was talking to who. Nothing that was supposed to hurt anyone.” Her jaw tightens.
“But then they found me. They’d been watching the whole time, apparently.
And when they made contact with Castle, everything escalated.
Suddenly it wasn’t just him holding leverage over me, it was my family too, working together, and I was trapped between them with no way out that didn’t end with Xavier dead. ”
She looks toward the alcove where X is bound and focused on getting free. Her voice goes small.
“The tart was Castle’s idea. The Pining, the dosage, everything. He told me exactly what to do. I just—” She swallows. “I was the delivery system.”
“You were trying to save X,” I say low.
She nods.
“Everything before this was harmless mostly, but when my family took Xavier—” Her breath hitches and my chest aches. “I’m sorry. What they would have done to him—”
“Duchy.” My voice is thin, but the word feels stronger than the others have so far. “It’s okay.” I hold her gaze through the Wonderland, through the shifting faces, through the drug that wants to turn her into a storybook villain and say something that I’m not entirely sure is a lie.
“I would have done it too.”
She freezes. “You would have?” she asks hopefully.
“If someone had Hatton.” I nod, and even if I don’t think I believe it, I give her what I can anyway. “If someone was holding him and told me the only way to save him was to betray you—I would have done it. I would have hated myself. And I would have done it.”
A sob cracks through her chest, pouring out grief.
“We’re all pawns,” I whisper. “Every single one of us. My father drunkenly bet my life before I was even born. Your family used you. Castle used us both.” My throat tightens. “We’re just pawns on their chessboard.”
From the alcove, the Executioner lifts his head.
Through the hood, through the swelling, X’s one good eye finds Duchy across the dark, and the look on his face would level a building.
His jaw works. His fingers curl into fists behind the rope.
Every line of his body is aimed at her, and the fury in it is indistinguishable from devotion.
“We’re getting out of this Duchy. I swear to Christ, we’re getting out of this.”