Queen of Hearts: The Crown (Queen of Hearts Saga #1)(28)

“Like a Club,” Dinah replied. “Me?”

“Like a servant, only cleaner.”

Dinah quickly braided her hair, and then started pushing back the cloaks in the corner of the room. They moved cloak after cloak aside until they saw it: a small wooden door, expertly camouflaged with the wood around it.

“I still can’t believe this is in here,” Dinah whispered, running her hand over the minute cracks.

Wardley nodded. “This was how your Great-Grandfather snuck out of the Great Hall to meet his Yurkei mistress, a serving girl of the King. The tunnels through the castle are well known among the Heart Cards.”

“Except mine,” Dinah said softly.

“Except yours.” Wardley took a deep breath and pushed open the door. “Let out a cry.”

“What?”

“Let out a cry, a loud one.”

Dinah did as she was told.

“That should keep them satisfied for a while,” laughed Wardley. “Let’s go.” They ducked under the door.

The passage—a sort of hallway between wooden wall brackets—led them directly into a niche in the stone that pushed out into the Great Hall. Checking that the massive room was empty, they quickly ran up the steps and past the throne. Dinah led Wardley into the narrow foyer bordering her father’s privy.

“This is the way into the tunnels? Through the privy?”

Dinah didn’t reply. She was too busy turning over tapestries. The last one, an elaborate work of art depicting her father’s victory over Mundoo—the Chief of the Yurkei—showered them with dirt and dead spiders as she yanked it back. There, there was the door—the one she remembered from that terrible day when Vittiore had arrived and her father had led her proudly out like his prized steed. The day Cheshire had shown her the tunnel and she accidentally wove her way beyond the palace gates.

The door inched open with a loud creak. They slipped through it, making sure to leave the door unlocked behind them. Dinah led Wardley down into the damp stone tunnels that ran parallel to the Great Hall and then, with a sudden plunge, down underneath it. The tunnels were dank and cold, much more unpleasant than the last time Dinah had been down here. The buildup of winter snow around Wonderland had turned them into long, wet slabs of frozen mud and cracked rock. Dinah watched her breath freeze and fall to the ground in front of them with a loud tinkle.

Wardley grabbed a torch from the wall and lit it with his flint. Pink flame danced over his face. “We ought to hurry. You could fall asleep down here and never wake up. The cold is just cold enough . . . ,” he trailed off, his lips turning a deep shade of blue.

They ran. The tunnel became deeper and colder the farther they spiraled into the frosty earth. Several times Dinah had to backtrack, trying to remember all the twists and turns she had taken as a hysterical fifteen-year-old. It was nearly impossible; she had been so deeply wounded that day, running blindly through the weaving catacombs. Did she turn here, at that strange cat etching on the wall? Or was it up there, when the tunnel split into four hallways and then returned to itself? She gave a shiver through her cloak.

“We should have grabbed more layers,” Wardley whispered. They had been down in the tunnels for almost an hour by Dinah’s pocket watch, lifted easily off of Harris the day before. “Are we almost there? Maybe we should head back.”

It seemed darker than before, and a sudden rush of panic enveloped Dinah. “I’m not sure. It’s so dark down here.”

“And cold,” added Wardley. “Don’t forget cold.”

Dinah bit her lip as she took in her surroundings. “It’s so much darker because we are deeper underground—the same reason it’s getting colder. Hold the torch up to the ceiling.”

She looked up and trailed her fingers across the dirt. Wardley held the torch above her. The light flickered and jumped against shiny black roots running the length of the tunnel. Every once in a while they gave a tiny pulse, as if alive, and they seemed to move ever closer.

Dinah grinned in the darkness. “Roots! That happened the first time; I remember thinking they looked like black bones. We’re almost there!”

“I pray you are right,” muttered Wardley, his teeth chattering. “Otherwise, we are turning back and I will spend the rest of my day warming my toes by a fire while you feed me tarts.”

The stone walls started to narrow; Dinah and Wardley turned sideways as they squeezed through, their faces damp with sweat. They turned one corner and then another, a maze of barely visible walls and dirt. There was a downward slope and then suddenly they were there. The dirt circle. The collision of the three passageways.

Wardley let out a long breath and waved the torch at the drawings. “Incredible. This is old Dinah, very old. Ancient.”

Dinah ran her fingers over the wavy triangle. “When I was down here before, I thought this was a symbol for the Yurkei Mountains. But it is so clearly the Black Towers.”

Wardley wrapped his hand around her fingers with a friendly squeeze. “You wanted to escape what your father had just done. It makes sense that you wanted it to be the Yurkei Mountains—it was anywhere but where he was.”

Dinah’s black eyes glittered in the darkness. “Do you have the chains?”

Wardley gave his bag a shake. Dinah heard metal clang against metal. “Let’s go, Princess.”