Queen of Hearts: The Crown (Queen of Hearts Saga #1)(29)

“You can’t call me that anymore,” replied Dinah as she crouched on her hands and knees, and began crawling through the tunnel. “Once we get inside, you can call me any name other than that one. Be as cruel as possible.” She paused to catch her breath. “Pray that this goes to the Black Towers.”

Wardley grunted behind her. “I’m praying that it doesn’t.”

The tunnel sloped upward steeply, the air growing oddly stifling, almost humid. The warm dirt felt good underneath her freezing palms as they began their ascent.





Chapter Nine



Dinah’s knees ached when she rose again; crawling up a steep slope had been much harder than she anticipated. Up ahead, light appeared from a narrow hole at the end of the tunnel. Dinah poked her head out and gave a sigh of relief. The smallest flicker of sunlight leaked in from a single rusted window that seemed to be miles above her. They had come to some sort of stone cylinder, and the tunnel went no farther. She looked down. The almost-vertical shaft ended abruptly with a steep drop into a large pool of ice. Wardley pushed up from behind.

“Stop, stop, we could fall!” whispered Dinah frantically. She glanced at her surroundings and found what she was looking for. Jagged stairs led up and away from the drop: mangled teeth that spiraled up the wall of the concave ring.

Wardley wiped his face. “It’s warmer in here.”

Dinah looked at the ice. “Not warm enough.”

“We must be in a hollowed-out grain silo. There are a number of them around the Towers.”

Wardley went first, climbing over Dinah and pulling himself up against the wall. “Stay close to the wall. Inch by inch. I see a door up there.” He gestured his chin upward. Dinah swallowed. A fall would not kill them, but it would surely break them.

“Don’t look down,” he instructed Dinah. She did, her eyes following a crooked crack in the ice. Buried up to its waist, frozen forever, was a skeleton. Its bony fingers dug into the ice, the claw marks inches deep. The scream on its face was etched there for eternity, the jawbone hanging grotesquely from its hinge.

Dinah gave a shudder. “Was that . . . ?”

Wardley pressed his body against the wall. “Done on purpose? Yes. I told you the Black Towers were a brutal place. Club Cards find many ways of extracting information, mostly by torture.”

“So, that man. . . .”

“So that man was probably put down here in the water before the snow arrived and forced to watch as it froze around him. I would guess he’s chained to the bottom, at the ankles.”

Dinah stared, letting the revulsion wash over her. She shivered. “How is it both humid and cold in here?”

“It’s the Black Towers.”

Dinah stared at the skeleton. Wardley, ever so carefully, reached his fingers under Dinah’s chin and turned her head. “Look away.”

The thrill of finding their way through the tunnels diminished with each pensive step toward the door, ever mindful of the frozen ground. Dinah heard the cry of enormous Wonderland bats, sometimes known to attack horses. Don’t look up, she told herself, pressing tighter to the wall. Don’t look up and don’t look down, just stay steady. They climbed silently, until they reached a dilapidated, blackened door, eaten away by mold and bat droppings.

Wardley turned to Dinah, the flame casting a pink hue on her dark features. “This is it. We can turn back from here, but after we go through this door, we will have to finish what we have started.”

Dinah looked at the door with a steely resolve, her stomach churning in fear. Regret was beginning to worm its way into her brain. But then she saw the note, unrolled from its tiny vial, and remembered the feeling that overcame her when she read it—that whatever conspiracy swirled through Wonderland Palace was coming for her eventually, whether she accepted it or not. She looked at Wardley, a brown lock of hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. “Faina Baker, the Black Towers. That’s where we are going.”

His face fell as he understood that they would not be turning back. “As Your Highness commands. Stay behind me, and whatever you do, for the love of Wonderland gods, DO NOT SPEAK. You can disguise your face and dress, but you speak like a royal and that cannot be undone.”

Wardley reached into his bag and clamped iron shackles over her wrists. They were heavier than Dinah had anticipated. “You look a mess,” he informed her. Dinah had been purposely careless as she walked and crawled through the tunnels. Her dress was caked with mud. She had soot from the flame smeared across her face and she had let her clean hair run against the tunnel wall. She looked like a commoner, more than a commoner, a criminal. They hadn’t been alone down in the tunnels—Wardley had identified rat and mongoose droppings, as well as a few more with which he wasn’t familiar.

Dinah gave a shudder in the cold, wet air. “I’m ready.”

Wardley drew his eyes to her face and Dinah saw a fear that matched her own. “We stay together, no matter what happens. You brought your crown?”

Dinah nodded and patted her bag. “Just in case things go wrong.” She wrapped her freezing hand around his. The chains gave a slight jangle.

“Here we go,” said Wardley. He gave a hard grunt, and the chain mail on his fist broke the aged lock on the door. It fell to the ground with a loud clang. Together they took a deep breath and stepped inside.