Heartless(58)

“What are you doing out of bed at this hour?” Mary Ann finally asked, the hysteria gone from her voice.

“I was—I thought I heard something. Outside.”

Mary Ann’s eyes widened again. She stood and crossed to the window. “And you act like I’m a frightened child. It really might have been the Jabberwock, you know.” She stuck her head outside and scanned the shadowed trees. “Or maybe a raccoon bandit—sneaky little things.”

“Perhaps,” Catherine muttered, wondering whether Jest was still out there, sneaking.

Mary Ann shut the window, then turned and eyed Catherine’s dress. It was the same she’d worn to the King’s garden party the day before, but the hem was now stained with tea and wet with dew and her knees were muddied where she’d scrambled through the brush to try to save the Turtle. Glancing down, Cath noticed a waxy leaf caught in the lace cuff of her sleeve. She plucked it off. Chewed her lip. Met Mary Ann’s stare again.

“You heard something?” Mary Ann drawled, suddenly skeptical. “Perhaps you were having another dream.”

“Perhaps?”

Mary Ann crossed her arms.

Starting to shiver, Cath hugged herself tight. “It really is quite crisp in here…”

It was another long, awkward moment before Mary Ann drew herself up to full height and walked with agonizing slowness toward the fireplace. Her suspicious gaze lingered on Catherine the whole time.

Cath swallowed. “Thank you, Mary Ann.”

She picked at the climbing roses, listening as Mary Ann removed the fireplace grate and set up the kindling. Within minutes, a fire had sparked and taken hold.

Cath spotted the single long-stemmed rose that Jest had left on her windowsill, now forgotten on the floor. The petals were already fading. She wondered whether Mary Ann had noticed it too, and whether she’d written it off as another figment from one of Cath’s dreams.

Gnawing on the inside of her cheek, she looked back at her dearest friend. The fire’s orange-gold glow flickered over Mary Ann’s face. Her jaw was set in annoyance, and Cath felt a twinge of guilt.

She padded to the hearth and knelt down beside Mary Ann.

“I lied,” she said.

Mary Ann’s lips tightened as she used the poker and wrought-iron tongs to shift the wood around in the flames.

“I didn’t hear anything outside. I wasn’t going to investigate some mystery.” She took in a long, slow breath, filled with the scent of char and smoke, and let her memory travel back to the beginning.

A sharp glee began in the pit of her stomach and crawled its way up through her chest and burst as a smile across her mouth. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to contain the giddiness that threatened to burst out of her.

Mary Ann was watching her now, her irritation replaced with confusion. “Cath?”

“Oh, Mary Ann,” she whispered, afraid that to speak would be to wake and find that it was all another dream. “I’ve had such a night. I hardly know where to begin.”

“At the beginning would be advisable.”

Catherine looked back, past the curtains and the walls and the Crossroads, to a little hat shop filled with revelry and song … and also a glen where nightmares had come to life.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to frighten Mary Ann with the truth of all that. She would tell her only the joyous things, so she wouldn’t have to worry.

“I was invited to a tea party.” She felt like she was holding a soap bubble in her palms, afraid to say too much, too quickly, or she would frighten it away.

“A tea party? With … the King?” Mary Ann ventured.

Catherine groaned. “No. Good gracious, no. I don’t want to think about the King.”

“Then who?”

“The court joker.” She scrunched her shoulders, protecting her heart. “I went to a tea party with the court joker.”

The silence that followed was punctuated by the popping of wood and a tower of kindling collapsing on itself, sending a flurry of sparks up the flue. Catherine stayed hunched over, bracing herself against whatever reaction Mary Ann might have—disbelief or disappointment or a fierce scolding.

“The Joker?”

“His name is Jest.”

“You mean to say … I don’t … Did you go by yourself?”

Cath laughed again and sat back up, beaming at Mary Ann for a long moment, before melting back onto the ground. She spread her arms out across the carpet and kicked her shoes off so her cold toes could enjoy the fire’s heat. She traced the shadows on the ceiling tiles and wondered when was the last time she’d lain on the floor. It wasn’t proper. It wasn’t done by young ladies.

But this viewpoint seemed just right for recounting her story.

She told Mary Ann everything—at least, everything she dared. Fainting in the gardens. Playing croquet. The rose and the rhyming Raven and the marvelous millinery. The Hatter and his guests. Jest and the dreams and his lemon-yellow eyes.

She did not tell her about the Jabberwock and the brave Lion.

She did not tell her that Jest was a Rook for the White Queen, or that he was on a secret mission that could end a war, or that she hoped maybe she would be his reason to come back to Hearts when it was done.

When she was finished, it felt as though her heart had outgrown her body. It was the size of the house now. The size of the entire kingdom.