Heartless(126)

“Don’t say that!” She dug her hands into the mud, squeezing it through her fingers. “We have to save him! We have to—Jest!”

A hand brushed the hair back from her forehead, and Mary Ann’s voice came to her, painfully gentle. “Cath…”

“Don’t touch me!” she raged, tearing away from her. “I came back for you! If you hadn’t come here, if you hadn’t gotten yourself caught, then we wouldn’t be here. This wouldn’t be happening, but for you!”

Mary Ann drew back.

Cath ignored the look and tried to crawl forward, dragging her skirt through the mud. “There must be a way. Something we can do. Something in the hat that can save him, or … or … the Sisters. Fate. Time. There must be someone who can…”

Her hand fell into something that wasn’t cold mud, but warm and wet. Something that felt real. Too real.

“It’s impossible,” she said. “He didn’t do anything—he was innocent. He…” A sob lodged in her throat.

“You’re right. He was innocent,” Hatta said, so quiet she barely heard him. “Martyrs usually are.”

Mary Ann pulled Cath away from the body and the growing pool of blood, wrapping her in an embrace. Cath barely felt her. Her breaths grew shorter. Her lips curled against her teeth. She peered over Mary Ann’s shoulder, into the dark trees. At the place where Peter had run.

Her cries died in her throat and were buried there, suffocated by the fury that was even now pounding, shrieking, demanding to be released.

She would kill Peter.

She would find him and she would kill him.

She would have his head.





CHAPTER 48

CATH REMEMBERED LITTLE ABOUT how she got back to the manor at Rock Turtle Cove. Hatta carried her part of the way, though she screamed and clawed at him to let her be, to leave her with Jest. He had restrained her until she had exhausted herself and her throat was worn raw. Her head pounded with the need to find Peter, to destroy him.

A muscle was twitching in Cath’s eye. Her fingers kept tightening, imagining themselves around Peter’s throat. Squeezing. Squeezing.

When they arrived at the mansion, her parents took one look at the blood and the dirt and the shredded gown and her dead eyes and ushered them all inside.

Her anger simmered beneath her skin. She looked at no one. Said nothing. Sent them all away. When finally she was alone in her bedroom, she knelt at the window and pleaded with Time until her lips were chapped and her tongue was too dry to go on. Surely he could turn back the clock. Surely he had dominion over her fate.

She would spare the Jabberwock this time, if only Jest would live.

She would let the beast have Mary Ann, if only Jest would live.

She would listen to Hatta’s warnings. She would turn away from Mary Ann’s cries and escape into the Looking Glass. This time, she would not look back, if only Jest would live.

She would do anything. Marry any king. Wear any crown. Give her heart to anyone who asked for it. She would serve Time himself if he would bring Jest back to her.

Her agony turned to fury when Time refused to answer her. There was no this time, no next time, no time at all.

No amount of bargaining made any difference.

Jest was gone.

At some point that night, Raven tapped at her windowsill. Cath sprang forward to open it—but he had only come to tell her that Peter had gotten away.

Cath fell onto the carpet, the pain knocking into her all over again.

Her rage split her open.

The night passed and she became a wild animal, raging and inexhaustible. When Abigail brought her tea, she threw the tray at the wall. When Mary Ann tried to draw a bath, she screamed and flailed. When her mother cried outside her bedroom door—too afraid to come inside—Cath snarled at her reflection and pretended not to hear her. She plotted Peter’s demise. She swore on every grain of sand in the cove that she would avenge Jest’s death.

It took almost two full days before she could cry and then, as if a levee had been broken, she couldn’t stop.

Murderer, martyr, monarch, mad.

So far as she could tell, only one of the prophecies had come to pass.

Jest was martyred. Jest was dead. Jest.





CHAPTER 49

SHRILL LAUGHTER AND THE RUSTLE of branches jolted Catherine awake. Her eyes snapped open. Her nostrils flared at the onslaught of crisp citrus.

Her blankets had been kicked off in the night, likely due to another nightmare of monsters and murderers and merry-go-rounds, and she lay sprawled on her bed with cool sweat clinging to her skin. She stared up at the canopy and the waxy leaves that had grown up in the night. Green key-shaped fruits swayed overhead.

Her limbs felt heavy as she reached for one of the lower hanging fruits and snapped it from its branch. The tree rustled.

The key lime was almost as big as her hand. It must have been made for a very large lock.

More tittering drew her attention upward and she was met with a pair of black eyes through the foliage.

Cath bolted upward and snarled. “What do you want?”

Tillie pushed aside a branch so Catherine could see her narrow face and waxen hair, tangled with leaves from the tree. “We told you this would happen,” she said, in her eerie child’s voice. “Murderer, martyr, monarch, mad.”

Loathing kindled in her vision, red and burning. With a guttural scream, Cath threw the key at the girl as hard as she could.