Blood of Wonderland (Queen of Hearts Saga #2)(36)
“The king told his council that he was going off on a hunt, but instead we rode hard for the outer villages on the lower Western Slope—isolated sea towns where we would go unnoticed. On our way there, we chanced upon a small hut, far outside of any town or village. A woman and a girl were making necklaces out of seashells. The girl was breathtakingly beautiful, ethereal almost, and most important, she had yellow hair the exact same color as the king’s. That night the king burned a small heart on to her back to remind her who he was, and rode homeward with her strapped to Morte’s back. A few Cards followed behind with her mother, Faina Baker, and threw her in the Black Towers upon their arrival to Wonderland proper. The girl was christened Vittiore—a noble name—and put in front of the court as his long-lost daughter.
“That day I realized your life was even more in danger than I had previously thought, and that the closer you got to your coronation, the more the king would try to get rid of you—either that or try to persuade you to give up your rightful throne. That would never work. Even as a child, you longed to be queen.”
He grinned as he began stirring the tea. Steam curled out of the cup, a dark red.
“Your thirst for power matches my own. I showed you the tunnels that afternoon, for it was all I could do at that moment to help you. Someday, I thought to myself, you would have need of them. I started trying to clue you in to the king’s motivations, to the fact that a vast conspiracy to crown Vittiore was growing around you, one that I was a part of—but I undermined it whenever I could. The king made his stance known during the Royal Croquet Game, and I knew it wasn’t long before he would try to have you murdered or exiled. I passed you a note at the dinner that evening, in a small bottle. It might seem coy, but I wanted you to figure it out on your own. After all, I knew my daughter to be intelligent and curious, just like me.”
Dinah’s throat was dry and stinging, her eyes filled with tears. This couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be.
“I shouldn’t have worried. Using the tunnels, you made your way to the Black Towers and discovered the truth about Vittiore, even if you didn’t put it together right away, for by then Faina Baker had gone mad. The king was hungry for a shift in power, and once he learned of your excursion to the Black Towers, he decided to behead Faina. It was a message for you, but its true purpose was to remind Vittiore of what would happen if she ever rebelled against him. It was unthinkably cruel, but it was a well-instructed lesson to both of you to stay out of his way.
“By then a sort of madness had overtaken the king, and he began muttering dark, violent things. I worried for your safety. I pressed the king to reveal his plans to me, but he refused. Even his most trusted advisers remained in the dark.”
Dinah’s hands were gripping the tablecloth, her nails tearing through the thin fabric. Her world was collapsing, inside and outside. Her watery eyes made the stars look like they were falling. She stopped breathing. She stared at Cheshire as he continued, but all she saw was Charles.
Cheshire blew on the steaming mug.
“On the night of your brother’s murder, I was out meeting with some colleagues who lived in the court just outside the palace—Lords Delmont and Sander, I’m sure you know them.”
Dinah nodded impatiently.
“I returned late, much past the midnight hour. The king burst into my chamber, unannounced and covered with blood. He was hysterical. I calmed him down but could not hide my horror when he told me that he had just thrown Charles from a window and murdered Lucy and Quintrell. He said that he was going to frame you, so that you might never ascend to the throne. Instead, it would be off with your head, or you would be thrown into the Black Towers for the remainder of your life. As he rocked himself by the window, muttering of justice and how your mother’s bastard would be tried for her crimes, I knew that every moment of my life had boiled down to this one. How could I help save my daughter without revealing the truth to the king?
“I told the king to change, bathe, and gather his Cards to help apprehend you. I ran—how I ran—first to the kitchens and then to the weapons room. I knew you would never survive without food in the wild. You were raised in a palace that gave you everything you ever needed. After I packed your bag, I ran to your room, where I knocked Harris and Emily unconscious. For a few seconds, I watched you sleeping—my daughter, the pride of my heart, with a face like her mother’s and a fierce intelligence not unlike my own. I had never seen you so close, so perfect, the blood of my veins sleeping before me. I vowed I would do whatever it took to help you survive. Then you awoke . . . and tried to kill me.”
He gave a chuckle, and Dinah remembered the horror of waking up to the dark shrouded figure in her room. Cheshire took a sip of the tea. “Ah, perfect. A lovely Scarlet Cloud.
“Though you did not follow my exact directions, you did escape, and in what grand fashion! You left behind a bloody mess, you stole your father’s Hornhoov and then outran him and his army in a chase that the peasants will be talking about a hundred years from now!” He clapped his hands with glee. “I couldn’t have planned it better myself. After you left, the king quickly declared you a traitor to the realm and placed the crown on Vittiore’s head. The coronation was the biggest that Wonderland had ever seen, and I believe she was glad to receive the crown. The king left immediately after to resume the hunt for you, and it was the opportunity I had been waiting for. A chance to find you, to make sure that you were surviving in the Twisted Wood.