“I shall play for her,” Nash offers to the queen.
Her disdainful roll of the eyes could cut through stone. “You see, this is the nature of these fools. They do not seek your desires or heed your wishes. They simply insert themselves without permission.”
“They have my permission to invade every part of me,” I retort, a bitter edge creeping into my voice, drawing a few dark chuckles from the knights.
“From one queen to another, you must play for your soul,” she demands.
The guard hands me one of the weird pink creatures. I clasp my hand around its body, and it stares at me with judgy eyes. “What’s the aim?”
The Red Queen takes her creature and clasps its ankles before dropping its head to the ground, making me wince. “To win, of course.”
The guards carrying the wriggling sacks undo the drawstrings and tip out two spiky balls. Nope, my bad. Not balls, but little creatures. What’s wrong with normal balls and some sort of bat that doesn’t stare at me like I’m the most evil person they’ve ever met?
“The rules?” I ask as a guard boots one of the creatures toward me. It has a white line of paint on its back, while the one by the queen’s feet has a stripe of red.
A wicked grin spreads across her face. “To start with, you need to hit your hedgehog through the arches.”
To start with? That sounds like a loose set of rules. Also, what in Blazes is a hedgehog?
“And then?” Hart snaps.
“It depends,” the Red Queen answers as she widens her stance. Her tongue peeks out from between her lips, and she levels her gaze on the hedgehog before swinging the pink creature behind her in an arc and smashing it into the spiky creature.
“I didn’t sign up for this!” the ball shrieks as it goes wide. An arched man shuffles to ensure it rolls beneath him, grimacing as the spikes scrape against his butt.
The Red Queen whoops in glee, raising her pink thing over her head. She nods at me. “Your turn.”
I clutch the body of the pink animal, and we stare at each other, grim acceptance on its face.
“Someone help her hold the flamingo correctly,” the Red Queen snaps.
Nash strides forward and spins the creature upside down. “I believe in you,” he mouths. Those four words solidify the tether between us. Nash steps back, and I resist the urge to look at everyone else.
“I hope you are good at this,” my flamingo says. “My last player lost an ear.”
How? I shake my head, pull my flamingo back, and eyeball the arch. Violet eyes appear a little farther up, above another arch. Chess. He winks at me and drops his gaze down. The arch in front of me is going to move to ensure I miss. I’ve already figured that out. But perhaps I should aim for the less obvious. I smash the hedgehog, and my flamingo releases a loud noise from its anus.
“Sorry. I’m gassy when I’m nervous,” the flamingo declares.
I screw my nose up at the unpleasant smell and follow the hedgehog as it flies over the first arch, which, as predicted, scurries to the side. Bunkum poop—it’s going to miss. A breeze ruffles my hair, and the hedgehog tucks itself tighter and rolls through the arch.
“Foul,” the Red Queen shouts, making the courtiers step back with a gasp.
“I’m so confused,” Malachi mutters.
The White Rabbit, who has been hiding only Idols know where, steps forward with another book in his hands, flipping through the pages. “No, my queen, Daphne played the bypass rule you yourself entered in the book recently.”
The Red Queen’s lips thin. “Fine.”
“Trust Calamity to find order in chaos,” Hart says with a laugh.
She strides to her hedgehog, and narrows her gaze on mine farther ahead. Swinging her flamingo over her shoulder, she ignores her own ball and makes her way to mine. My hedgehogsees her approaching and unfurls itself before shouting, “Nope, not this diurnal.”
What kind of rules are these? Maybe the key to winning is to embrace the utter chaos, which is my natural state. My mouth curls. This is my domain. If she thinks she’s about to outwit me with a disarray of rules, she’s about to get schooled. I hurry to her hedgehog just as she stomps her foot on mine, forcing it to freeze. Chess’s eyes reappear in the air to the side of the garden. He’s guiding me.
The queen bashes my hedgehog at the same time I hit hers, and they both go sailing through the air, colliding before spinning across the grass. My flamingo lets out the loudest gas I’ve ever heard, and that’s saying something because Goldilocks at Strongfair had issues after eating all that porridge. The hedgehog with the red paint bounces on the lawn and slips through a scrambling arch. The white one hits a male courtier’s legs, making him grimace.
“This is the third time this week,” he grumbles as the hedgehog settles on the lawn.
