Chapter 23 #2
A wary scowl seemed permanently fixed on the king’s face. His sharp eyes surveyed our surroundings, ready for any threat.
Goosebumps broke out on my arms as we approached the eerie grassy garden where a long table of mismatched chairs sat empty, save for what looked like an abandoned tea service holding a precarious pile of teapots, dirty cups, and saucers.
“I see something.” The king’s eyes narrowed. “It’s similar to the hazy aura at the river.”
I studied his face, turned back toward the cottage, then looked at him again.
The king was seeing things not visible to me.
Pushing past the metal gate flanking the garden, he led the way toward the cottage’s front door. The windows were dark. “It looks like nobody’s home.” Not bothering to knock, he pushed the front door open and sauntered in.
Taking a deep breath, I forged on, following behind him.
The air was musty, half the furniture covered with sheets, dust caked on surfaces. It didn’t look like anyone had properly lived in the Hatter’s cottage for a while.
My eyes lit up upon spotting a wide table piled with papers, tools, beakers, and spare parts.
Our main goal was to find the rabbit hole to get back to the other side of the river. We weren’t really here to solve the mysterious disappearance of the Hatter.
However, I still needed to see if he at least had an F-capacitor amongst his bizarre collection of otherworldly trinkets before crossing back. It was the last thing I needed to make my own invention work.
“It’s faint.” The king tilted his head, as if straining to hear a silent melody. “It’s not quite here.”
“What is?”
“That strange energy.”
He had always been able to detect the bizarre anomalies first.
Touching his arm, I furrowed my eyebrows in thought. “Last night—”
His eyes lit up suggestively. “Yes? What about last night?”
I sighed. “No. What I meant was—I sensed something in your mind. These anomalies, are you able to detect them because of the traces of magic from my heart?”
He nodded. “Since I started wearing your heart, I have been detecting bizarre energies across the land. I’d first felt it in Cindervale.”
“Cindervale,” I echoed with a frown. “I’d heard you leveled that kingdom.” I couldn’t help the despondence in my tone. “So many innocent people.”
The king huffed. “Those people were not innocent. Cindervale betrayed my family. The only reason the Red Queen was able to usurp my father’s throne was because of them.”
My stomach still felt queasy. “Surely there must have been another option. You could have gotten justice without having to annihilate an entire kingdom.”
I couldn’t even imagine how it would have felt to lose my entire family to such a tragedy, but I couldn’t fathom how a wrong would right another wrong. How death could justify even more death.
“Traitors deserve no mercy.” He smirked.
“During my mission to seek them out, on occasion, I felt that same bizarre energy. That was when I discovered the other odd villages afflicted with the mysterious malady. Brasshaven, Aurelforge. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I knew couldn’t let the sickness spread. They had to be dealt with swiftly.”
My jaw dropped at recognizing the names of other towns he had leveled. All those people, women, and children… “So you just…killed them all?”
“It wasn’t until Lucerne that I realized what they meant, and what they had to do with your origins. Those ghosts, those infected people. They were a threat to Wünder and to you.”
Heaving at the horror, I covered my face with my hand. “Oh my god, that doesn’t mean you can just go and kill whoever you want.”
“Why not? I’m the king.” He crossed the house, approaching the back door.
I sucked in a breath. “That’s not—oh my god—that is so not what that means. It is the king’s responsibility to ensure the well-being of all the citizens of Wünder. Surely, you could have done even a little bit of research to find out the truth before annihilating all those kingdoms.”
“That’s what that prick Gregory said.” He turned back with a sneer. “You do think he’s a better ruler than I am, don’t you?”
A wave of helplessness drained my energy.
It had already occurred to me before. Rabb had never had any formal royal training—not in policy or diplomacy.
He was an assassin. He had been one for hundreds of years.
He knew nothing else. He’d never had to think too hard to solve problems. He’d simply eliminated them.
His former employer, the Red Queen, certainly didn’t set a stellar example as a monarch.
His shoulders lifted, matter-of-factly. “Besides, I knew it would make a better story. That I was out for revenge for my family, instead of some sort of otherworldly conspiracy. It strengthened my reputation further. Also, I was sure it would make you hate me more. If you believed all the bad things everyone was saying about me.”
“What?” I sputtered out. “Are you saying…it was part of your elaborate plot to get me to break up with you?” My head spun. “You are mad.”
“Am I? Didn’t it work? Didn’t you hate me even more?”
Almost crying in frustration, I threw my hands up. “You can’t just keep killing everyone.”
He scoffed. “Casualties of war are negligible compared to the king’s will.”
“The cost of a war cannot be every single life,” I groaned. “Besides, why would you willingly take on such a dangerous mission on your own? You didn’t even care that you were risking your own life left and right—and for what? For me? I never asked you to do that.”
He shot me a pointed look. “My life is mine to risk.”
I blew out an exasperated breath. “Oh, you are still just so absolutely arrogant.”
He dismissed me with a hiss. “You sound just like my royal advisors.”
My eyes bulged. “What? So you do have royal advisors?”
“Had. I fired them all. Those ignorant bastards.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
“Because what?” I put my hands on my hips.
He gave me a suffering look. “Let’s just say they didn’t like the way I dispensed justice either. And…” He averted his gaze, hesitating. “They said… They said that if I were to marry, she needed to be someone from Wünder. They said it was against tradition otherwise.”
My breath caught in my throat.
“There was a vote. They demanded that I compromise, that I negotiate.” His lips curled with hatred for the word.
“Is that what ‘compromise’ means? Never getting what I want?” Eyes blazing, his shoulders heaved at the forcefulness of his words.
“I wasn’t going to have any of it. They’re lucky I only fired them. ”
I must have looked quite conflicted.
The fire in his eyes flickered when he saw my face. Looking away, he took a moment to catch his breath, as if attempting to process everything for the first time.
He had been at this, all alone, for so long.
Groaning, he raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I don’t know anymore. Were they right? Should I have listened to them? My father was the real king. I’m not any good at this.”
I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry.
It was the first real crack in his overly confident facade.
He didn’t even know his family, his true self. In the past, his moral compass had been simpler. He’d never once thought that what he was doing—killings, assassinations, stealing hearts—was wrong. He’d never considered any of his actions as mistakes. He slept soundly every night.
This was the real version of him, the person I’d never had a chance to truly meet. Grappling with ethics, morality, and responsibility. A man with passion, desires, wants, needs. Conflicted. Fallible. Human.
His raw struggle tugged at my heart. Pursing my lips, I shook my head. “When we get back to the castle, I think I need to teach you the difference between being feared and being respected—” I yelped as he grabbed my arm.
He pressed me back against the wall beside the back door. His forehead creased in alert, eyes scanning to make sure we weren’t spotted.
“What?” Narrowing my eyes warily, I peered carefully over his shoulder.
The back door should have led to the forest behind the Hatter’s cottage and the graveyard where the guardian to the underworld entertained ghosts.
However, instead of the usual ghostly headstones set out in a haphazard order across the grass outside, something else materialized out of the fog.
Metal scaffolding, staircases, and ladders framed around a large fantastical machine, with a giant round silver stage made entirely of glass and mirrors, ethereal green lights shining up from underneath it, ominous and hazy amidst mechanical clicks and the occasional puffs of steam.
I couldn’t contain my gasp of horror.
It was a maelstrom machine just like the ones we’d seen at the River of Tears and at Emberstead. Except this one was about five times the size.
Oh, dear god.