After all, I couldn’t deny the value in just wanting to be yourself—particularly if you had a stellar reputation like Henri did.
As for me, I wasn’t ready to expose my white-blonde hair just yet. People in Wonderland had been told to be suspicious of the unusual hue foryears. And I didn’t have the same good rep as Hatter. Why would I make gaining their support and trust harder? Just to prove a point?
No thanks, I’d play it safe in the hair department and take my risks where they mattered. In the Trials.
“Alice, you can’t control what the others want to do,” Henri said, in regards to the rebels attending the Trial challenges. “And they want the Red Queen off the throne. If that means voicing their opinion during the challenges, they’ll do it.”
“I know that, but maybe we can negotiate with the queen?” I offered. “Make it a condition that no one who supports me gets injured or killed?”
Henri’s lips leveled into a flat, sad smile. “The Red Queen might agree to that, for now. But if you lose, I have little faith that she’ll keep her word.”
I heaved a sigh and glanced at my uniform. “Then I guess that means there’s only one thing to do . . . I need to win.”
After almost two hours of countless aether drills and some creature research, my nerves had reached an apex. It was almost a relief when two soldiers collected us for the first trial, and led us into the royal gardens.
Rose bushes as large as Smart cars and bursting with red roses seemed to be the plant of choice, filling in the gaps between other, more varied blooms. Pure gold benches dotted the packed-dirt paths, each with little cushions on their frames for comfort. Fountains featuring the Red Queen, kraken, or jabberwocky, cropped up every two hundred yards, reinforcing the message displayed by every tapestry and painting in the castle—that the queen was all-powerful.
“What is this normally used for?” I muttered as we turned onto a garden path, and our destination, an expansive lawn twice the size of a football field and crawling with fae, came into sight. “It seems so out of place in the gardens.”
“It used to be an orchard. But now, this is the queen’s private croquet lawn,” Sansu remarked.
The bitterness in his tone was self-explanatory. I hadn’t walked the streets of Heartstown often, but when I did, half-starved fae were a common sight. To rip out fruit-giving trees for a croquet field when your subjects suffered was despicable.
Fae parted as we approached, allowing me passage to where the queen stood in the middle of the green space, her red cloak fluttering in the faint wind, and her Hearts Battalion at her back.
My spine straightened, and I pushed my shoulders back ever so slightly as I went to join the queen in the middle of the lawn. With Henri on my right and Arlan and Sansu on my left, I was sure I already looked like I’d come to play, but a little posturing never hurt.
It wasn’t until we got closer that I noticed Herald was there too, flanked by soldiers. After what he’d pulled the night before, I hadn’t expected to ever see him again.
“Good day, Alice,” the Red Queen said so that only those in the center of the field could hear. “I must say, it’s a surprise that you’re here.”
“You heard me accept the challenge yesterday, right?” I asked, skipping the niceties.
“Yes, but poison is such a coward’s tool. I would have thought after reconsidering, you’d scurry off like a rat in the night.”
Her eyes flashed to Henri, seeing him unaltered for the first time. There was recognition and spite in her gaze. “Then again, the company you keep has an idiotic familial history of sticking around at detriment to their own lives. Apparently, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
I could practically feel the tension and anger rolling off Hatter.
“Some people call it bravery and loyalty,” I said. “But you wouldn’t know about that, I expect.”
“Darling, you have no idea the many number of things I know about.” My aunt chuckled and unclasped her cloak. It fell to the floor, exposing her all white uniform with red hearts painted over her breast and on her back.
Her gaudy ass hearts versus the White’s roses it is, then.
“What do you say we just get on with this?” I said, ready for action.
“Certainly.” The queen gave me a smug look. “Crier?”
The pooka stepped toward the crowd. “The competitors are present and accounted for. This is the first event of the Trial by Aether. All parts of the trials will be dictated by the godsflame—a physical embodiment of the old gods’ aetherandwill, given to the fae.” Herald lifted a small jar he’d been holding.
“The one who opens the jar becomes a conduit for the godly essence. They will inform others of the will of the godsflame. Once the trials are over, the godsflame will claim their life. As the court crier, I volunteer myself to act as the conduit for the flame. Does anyone take issue with this?”
A lump lodged in my throat as understanding dawned on me. The queen hadn’t spared Herald at all. She’d given him a terrifying job that ensured his death.
No one spoke up or volunteered otherwise.
“Very well,” Herald’s voice cracked slightly, but he wore a determined expression on his face. “I will bear the mantle of the godsflame.”
