CHAPTER THREE
CARDEN
When we rolled up to the local tavern, Old man Harper pulled the reins, cooed to his horses, and told me to get out of his wagon. The trip was over. “Welcome to Brookhaven. Don’t get lost,” he laughed. “And steer clear of the woods to the north. The fae queen I told ya about rules those parts.”
I’d thanked him for taking me along with him, and for the warning I didn’t think was real. When I pictured the fae in my mind, they were either little blue men with pointed ears, grotesque human-spider mixtures, thanks to Harper, or tall, thin, beautiful women who loved and took pity on homeless, human former princes.
After leaving the beautiful, sad girl outside the tavern, I followed the man in the vibrant purple coat and saw him climb into a carriage that trotted along a northern forest road, slowly enough that I could follow him for a while. When I lost sight, I could still follow the deep tracks cut into the loamy, dark earth of the northern woods.
That was when a set of guards, wearing blood orange suits and armed with matching spears, surrounded me. “Trespasser!” one yelled. The second man screamed the same thing and they took turns shouting that I was on their land without permission. I looked around, suddenly believing in the fae, and terrified they would alert an enormous fae monster who liked his dinner warm…
I held my arms out. “I mean no harm! I didn’t know I was on your land,” I hollered, trying to get them to stop screaming.
… but what came out of the woods was a woman so beautiful, I couldn’t stop staring. Her flawless skin glowed with a translucent brilliance in the twilight as the last rays of sun disappeared over the hills to the west.
The opulent gown she wore undulated between scarlet and tangerine, as deep as an angry sunrise on the ocean, a harbinger of ship-sinking weather. The gold crown on her head was crafted to look like fire, and the metal somehow writhed and flickered, licking up toward the sky. She gestured upward with her hand and I rose into the air, hovering a few feet above it.
“What are you doing?” I stammered, realizing I’d just come face-to-face with the fabled fae Queen of the Northern Forest.
She narrowed her hawkish eyes. “You’re on my land. Trespassing is punishable by death.”
“I didn’t know it was yours,” I eked out as a force squeezed my middle. It was like she had an enormous invisible hand and I was stuck in the middle of it.
“Everyone knows to whom the Northern Forest belongs.” She turned to her soldiers. “Teach him not to walk where his feet shouldn’t tread. Then leave his body near Brookhaven as a warning to others who might have forgotten their place.”
The soldiers used their spears to jab at my middle, quickly and efficiently breaking ribs on either side until I couldn’t even suck in a breath. I sank to my knees, trying to hold myself together from the outside in, pain tearing through me like bolts of lightning. Then they began to use their fists. The bones under my cheeks split, and my flesh cracked and bled with each blow that rained down. It was a gale of malice and hatred the likes of which I’d never seen.
My mind flashed back to when my father asked his men—my men—to kill me. They beat me, but I was young and strong. I’d taken off for the stables, stolen a horse, and never looked back. I thought I might die then, but I was sure I would now.
I lay on the forest floor, my blood leaking onto the leaves. The pain they caused began to fade away and my vision blurred. I wondered how she would leave me. Harper’s stories came to life in my imagination.
“Don’t touch him again,” commanded a smooth male voice.
The man and the Queen bickered back and forth. I couldn’t make out what they were saying half the time. Blood choked me, pooling in the back of my throat. I tried to cough, but the pain was too much. I could feel my heart slow.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
“They were right about you,” I slurred.
The Queen’s burnished gown came into view. The bottom hem was all I could see, and that was only when my vision wasn’t blurring. “Who was right about me? What did they say?” she asked, crouching down to look me in the eye.
“You really are a….” I sucked in a shallow breath, “… beast.”
Her lip curled up with hatred. She brushed the hair off my brow, almost lovingly, and leaned down like she wanted to whisper in my ear, when she was interrupted.
“It really has been too long since you’ve hosted a game, my queen,” came a strangely familiar masculine voice.
She eased back, a smile spreading across her lips. “You’re right.”
I woke up when the guards doused me with a bucket of cold water and then dragged me from the cell I was in, up staircases and down winding hallways, until we reached an enormous room. The throne room. The Queen sat on a gilded monstrosity, wearing the gaudiest red dress I’d ever seen. I held my ribs and pushed up until I was sitting on my knees and could see her better.
Positioned every few feet around the room were her guardsmen. Tall and broad, the fae soldiers stood at attention, expectantly waiting for their queen’s next order. The guards were painted red, colored by a sticky crimson goop that clung to their hair and skin and dressed in pressed, blood-colored suits... their coat tails perfectly pressed. Each carried a red spear tipped with iron hearts, their sharp points jutting toward the ceiling.
No one dared look her in the eye, keeping their gazes fastened on the shiny floor below their feet. Most of them stood completely still, as if they were unable to move or shift to get comfortable. Then, as if the spell holding them in place had been broken, the guards began to close in, stepping forward one slow stomp at a time until they formed a rectangle around me. I blinked up at them through swollen eyelids, my sweat-soaked, reeking hair falling into my eyes. In front of me, the men parted and the Queen slithered into the enclosure.
“Hello, Prince. Allow me to formally introduce myself. My name is Coeur. Some call me the Queen of Hearts.” She smiled proudly. “I do enjoy eating them from time to time.”
“How’d you know who I was?”
“It’s easy to crawl into a human’s mind. They’re so weak and pathetic, though you may be the most ridiculous excuse for a human male I’ve ever seen.”
“Then why don’t you let me go?”
She tsked. “I can’t do that. You’ve committed the crime of trespassing, and as if that weren’t damning enough, you insulted me. From the stubbornness painted on your face to the strength of your body in light of the beating you took, I’d say you’re more than fit to be my player.”
I remembered someone mentioning a game, but no details about it. “What sort of game?”
“The sort I choose.”
“What are the rules?” I asked as if I wasn’t kneeling before her in agony, but standing tall, toe-to-toe with her. My knees, bloodied and raw, marred the white and black checkerboard tiles that stretched across the vast expanse of her gilded throne room.
The bountiful, silken fabric that encased her swished noisily as she approached. “You act as though you have a choice whether or not to play. You don’t. But I will humor you,” she conceded imperiously. “My rules are simple. You will be given a series of tests. Pass them, and I will set you free. Fail, and I’ll keep you as my pet for as long as it pleases me. And when your presence ceases to please me, I shall put you down.”
“How long is this game?” I queried, feigning boredom. “How many human days will it last?”
She smiled, her crimson lips widening. “Clever. Only five human days. And I want you to know that during this game, I will make sure you know intimately what it feels like to be a beast.”
There was a ruthless, calculating cruelty in her eyes. They say that a person with no soul has a hollowness about them; that even in the depths of their eyes, there’s nothing but emptiness. Queen Coeur was not empty. She was filled with a terrifying evil I had no comprehension of, and I’d unwittingly turned all her wicked ire upon myself with one sentence.
She slowly stepped forward, her heels clacking against the floor until she stood directly in front of me, her skirts swiping heedlessly across smears of my blood. “You will play and die with dignity, fighting me and everything I throw at you, or I will start killing you now… and I’ll take my time making sure you rue the day you ever set eyes on me.”
“I already do,” I gritted as an invisible vice tightened around my ribcage. I panted through the pain, refusing to let her see she was hurting me. I lifted my chin so she wouldn’t see me grinding my teeth together.
She began to chuckle. “You are going to be so fun to break. I don’t mean just physically, either. Broken bones and bruises can heal in time, but there are things that cause unspeakable misery, invisible wounds that never heal, and I’ll make sure you’re well acquainted with them before I’m through with you.”
The Queen was powerful. She used those dark powers to comb through my mind, tearing into me like a butcher cleaved into meat and bone. It felt like someone had taken a saw and cut through the layers of flesh and bone, prying them away before clawing into my brain. She never actually touched me. Never raised a hand or twitched a finger. But she took control of me like I was nothing but a wooden puppet on strings, manipulated by a hand no one could see above the stage.
When she found what she was looking for, she grinned. “I’ve found your partner.”
The pain ebbed as quickly as it began. I clutched my chest, thankful that the terrible pressure was gone, but readying myself in case she sent it again. “Partner?” I panted.
“Oh, yes. Every great game is played with a partner.”
She called out for someone named Glenlyn, and I’ll be damned if the man in the purple coat, who was now wearing an identical one in red to match his queen, didn’t appear at her side out of thin air. “You…!” I yelled. “You lured me here!”
The man pulled at his lapels and raised his chin indignantly. The Queen turned to him, a question in her eyes. “I certainly did no such thing,” he stammered. “The human would say anything to get away now.”
She took a long moment to ponder his answer and then turned around. The Queen waved her hand through the air and in front of me, the air rippled like it did on hot summer days, distorting the colors beyond. It bled together into red, gold, black, and white, and then combinations of the four. A scene emerged from the amorphous blob, a scene I couldn’t tear my eyes from. It was the girl in the alley. She was in a forest with scraggly pines and lofty oaks all around her. Saplings and briars tore at her skirts as she stumbled through the woodland, calling out for someone. Probably her brother. She spun in circles, trying to get her bearings. Sweat clung to her fair skin and wet the dark tendrils of hair at her temples.
Coeur’s voice cut through the silence. “She seems quite lost. An easy situation to find oneself in while in the deepest part of the wood, but an unfortunate one. She could walk for days and not find her way out. Or something larger, fiercer, and hungrier than she could descend upon her.”
I tried to stand, but an invisible force pushed me to my knees again. “She is a huntress, this girl,” the Queen continued. “Do you see the snare she set just beyond the briars? She will make a formidable partner. You’re quite lucky,” Coeur offered with an evil grin. She turned to Glenlyn. “Bring her to me.”
In an instant, he vanished. I wasn’t sure if he used his own power, or if Coeur spirited him out of the palace, but I knew the moment he reappeared in front of the girl. My heart leapt into my throat at the sight of him behind her. He wiggled his nose and transformed into a small, white rabbit.
As the briar bushes she’d been tangled in withdrew from her, her mouth gaped open at the sudden turn of luck. She took advantage of the reprieve and ran out of the thicket and into the open, where the same snare Coeur pointed out a moment ago had tightened on the hind leg of a fluffy white rabbit.
The animal struggled to free itself, just as she’d been doing only seconds ago. When it saw her approaching, it panicked. She took slow steps toward the creature, its red eyes widening as she drew near.
A loud clap of thunder made them both jump. The sky, which was sunny moments ago, filled with clouds and thunderheads quickly tore their way across the heavens. She turned to the rabbit again and muttered something before removing a knife from her boot.
She set her jaw and squared her shoulders. Coeur thought she was a hunter? She wasn’t. It was clear she’d never felt the slippery thickness of blood on her fingers before. Her hand quivered and her nervousness drove the hare into madness. She tried to calm it, but before she could slit its throat or even cut the rope that held it, the rabbit managed to escape the snare and bolted into the thicket to hide.
Her lips formed a curse and she chased after the rabbit. I couldn’t look away. Her desperation to catch the animal was palpable. She was still hungry. Where the hell was her brother, and why wasn’t he providing for her? Something inside me rumbled with fury, but that was stupid. She was only a girl; a girl I’d met for all of a few moments. What did I care if she was starving?
But I found that I did care, which was why I watched intently as the rabbit found new places to conceal itself. I watched as she found it again and again, only for the animal to slip out of her grasp, just out of reach. It never strayed too far. No, the creature Coeur sent – the fae she dispatched to lure the girl to her castle – was skilled. It promised exactly what she needed and stayed close enough to taunt her and give her the slightest inkling of hope that she might be able to catch it. He toyed with her.
It was the cruelest thing I’d ever seen, and I knew what she was in for when she got here. In that moment, I’d have given anything to keep her safe.
My stomach clenched tight. “Just let her go. This doesn’t involve the girl.”
When Queen Coeur erased the image in front of me, my chest felt like it might cave in on itself.
She’s gone.
“I make the rules,” she whispered.