“Are you all right?” she asked.
A ghost smile fluttered over his mouth—but just one side, barely revealing his dimples. “Mostly right, my lady.”
She grinned, briefly, at the memory of their first meeting, but with her thoughts no longer writhing with pain, questions were fast pouring into her. “How did we get here? There was … I remember a wall of stone, surrounding us…” Her thoughts were hazy. It felt more like a dream than reality.
“I am a Rook,” Jest said. “I can travel faster than any carriage, so long as the path is straight.”
She opened her mouth, but shut it again. She didn’t understand, but she sensed he had been as clear as he could. So she started again, “The treacle well is real.”
He nodded.
“Do you think … do you think it could help the Turtle?”
Jest looked surprised at the question, but gathered himself quickly. “Hatta already tried, but the poor creature wouldn’t follow him here. He wasn’t desperate enough.”
“Desperate?” She faintly remembered Hatta saying something about desperation too.
“Yes. He was distraught and miserable, no doubt, but that isn’t enough. I’m afraid he will forever be a Mock Turtle now.” He rocked back on his heels and, as if afraid of what other questions Cath might be preparing, said, “If you think you’re able to walk, I’ll escort you home. Miss Mary Ann will be worried. No doubt, everyone will be by now.”
She glanced around. “How much time has passed since we left the theater?”
“An hour or two, I think, but no timepiece will work here.”
“That can’t be right. It’s near daylight.”
Amusement glinted in his eyes. “Or it’s near night. Never one or the other. At least, that’s what Hatta told me. I’ve only been here once before, but it was the same then.”
“Never day or night,” she murmured, looking around at the gold-lit grasses. “How can it be?”
“I suspect Time has never set foot in this glen. Perhaps he isn’t willing to pay whatever price the Sisters would demand.” His voice lowered. “Or maybe he’s never been desperate enough to find it.”
Cath dug her bare toes into the soft grass. “And how did you find it? You and Hatta.”
His shoulders slumped and, as if realizing that she was not about to leave, no matter how much time had or hadn’t passed, he lowered himself to sit beside her. He peeled off his gloves and set them and the tri-pointed hat aside. “Only the desperate will ever find this place. Hatta found it when he was desperate not to meet the same fate as his father. I brought you here because you were in so much pain, and I was desperate to make it stop.”
Her heart expanded, but she tried to squeeze it back into place. “And what about the first time you came here?”
He peered back at the well and stared at it for a long time—a very long time—before returning his attention to her. He looked like he’d lost an internal debate.
Finally, he said, “I was desperate to fulfill the request my queen had made of me, and the treacle well is between times and between lands.” He dragged in a long breath. “We are standing at the doorway to Chess.”
CHAPTER 36
CATH BLINKED. “YOU MUST BE wrong, Jest.”
He looked up at her, surprised, and she swooped her arm over the wildflowers. “We can’t be standing at the doorway to Chess. We’re sitting, after all.”
This time, both cheeks dimpled. “So we are.” He pointed at the wall of shrubs on the other side of the glen. They were, she realized, surrounded by a hedge on all sides, without any openings so far as she could tell. “You can’t see it now, but this is the entrance to a great maze. If the Sisters allow it, the maze will open, and you can pass through to the Looking Glass. Beyond that…”
Cath searched the wall of green leaves and wild branches and pale wildflowers. She imagined it. The narrow corridors that wound back and forth, the living walls that played games on mind-weary travelers. In its very center, the Looking Glass, the door to—
“Chess,” she said. “The Looking Glass leads to the lands of Chess.”
He nodded. “The Red and White Queendoms.”
She turned her focus back to him, inspecting his profile—sharp nose and smeared kohl and unruly dark hair. “Why are you here, Jest? Why did the White Queen send you?”
He grimaced and again faced away from her. “Please don’t ask me that.”
She leaned back, more intrigued than ever. “Why not?”
“Because things are different now. You’ve changed everything.”
She twisted her lips to one side and pondered a while, before asking, “Do you mean I’ve changed your mission, or your thoughts toward it?”
“Both.” He started picking at the grass, considering his words. He snapped the stem of a blue flower and twirled it between his fingers. “You live in a peaceful kingdom. Maybe Hearts has always been this way. But Chess is different. We’re one country torn apart by two ruling families, and we’ve been trapped in this war since … forever, as far as I can tell. And whenever it seems that one side has finally won and the war should be over … it’s as though Time resets and we start from the beginning. We do it all over again. Over and over. We’re trapped in a forever war between the white and the red. I’ve watched so many die on the battlefield. I’ve taken so many lives myself—pawns of the Red Queen, mostly, only for them to be replaced by new soldiers and sent forward again. There’s never any end to it.”
“That sounds awful,” Cath breathed.
Jest looked up at her, but didn’t acknowledge her words. “I serve the White Queen. I always have. But she’s rather like your King—bumbling, a little clumsy, sheepish at times and terrified of conflict. She isn’t strong or brave…” He swallowed, hard, his nervous fingers tearing the soft leaves from the flower’s stem. “I don’t know if she can ever win this war. She doesn’t have the fortitude we need to defeat the Red Queen, once and for all, and our King agrees. This mission, it was his idea.” His focus returned to the flower, twisting the slender stem around his finger. “We were told that Hearts had a queen. We were told that she was a great ruler—fierce and passionate.”
He hesitated again, his lips parted. He dropped the flower between his feet. “Raven and I were sent here to find her and … and to steal her heart.” He became so quiet Cath wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. Then he looked up and held her gaze, his expression full of torment. “I came here to steal your heart.”
Cath’s heart thumped at his words, almost fearfully, but she started to shake her head. “Hearts doesn’t have a queen.”
“I know. Time tricked us, I think, or maybe it was the Sisters that brought us here too soon. But there will be a Queen of Hearts soon, and … Catherine, I do think it’s meant to be you. You’re everything we hoped to find. You’re fierce, and passionate, and brave—”
“Me? I can hardly stand up to my own mother!”
“You stood up to the Jabberwock.”
Cath bit back her protests. She had been delirious and frantic. She had not felt brave or fierce, and she could remember the rush of relief she’d felt when the monster had run from her, rather than fight.
“Then there’s the Vorpal Sword,” Jest continued before she could form her thoughts. “It’s been passed through the Chessian royal family, generation after generation. I don’t know how it came to be in my hat, or how you managed to pull it out. Supposedly…” He trailed off, his shoulders falling again. “Supposedly, only one with royal blood can wield it.”
Cath shook her head. No. No. That wasn’t her future. That wasn’t her fate. She wouldn’t allow it.
“I am not a queen,” she whispered, willing it to be true. “And I never will be. It’s impossible.”
Jest’s eyes softened. “The White Queen once told me that there were days when she believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Catherine’s brow tensed. “But … that’s what I said.”
“I know.” He licked his lips. “I knew it the moment I met you, Catherine. The moment I saw you, even. You are the one we came to find—no matter how you try to fight it.”
She opened her mouth to refute again, to insist that she had no desire to wear the crown, that she would find a way to refuse the King—but she hesitated, as another thought trickled through her denials.
Her chest suddenly squeezed, forcing the air from her lungs.
“You’ve been trying to steal my heart.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw and he looked away.
Mouth suddenly dry, Cath placed a hand to her collarbone, feeling the steady thumping beneath her skin. “Is that … has it all been for that? The tea party, the letters, what you said at the festival … all of it, no more than an attempt to steal my heart so you could take it back to your queen?”
“The easiest way to steal something,” Jest murmured, “is for it to be given willingly.”
She realized it was true. He would already have her heart if he had only asked for it. She would have been too willing to give it to him.
Instead, he was telling her the truth.
She sucked in a trembling breath. “Why haven’t you taken it then? Surely you know … I’m sure you’ve realized…” Her words caught, the confession strangling her. She loved him. Or, she had loved him. She wanted to love him still, though now she wasn’t sure if it had all been riddles and tricks.
Jest sounded miserable, and was still unwilling to look at her, when he said, “You are not yet the queen, and I was sent to take the heart of a queen.”
Tears misted her eyes. “That’s why you’ve been pushing me to marry the King, and all the while…” She sniffed and launched herself to her feet, glad there was no residual pain left from her ankle. She felt off balance, though, the bare toes of her foot pressing into the soft ground. She spun to face Jest, though she could see only the top of his head, his black hair hanging over his brow, his shoulders slumped and defeated. “How dare you? You made me believe you wanted a courtship. You pretended that you would choose to stay in Hearts, for me. My heart is not a game piece, to be played and discarded at will!”
He lifted his head at this, his golden eyes full of distress. “You’re right. It isn’t. But I have lived my life knowing that someday I would die in service to my queen, and everyone I’ve ever cared for would die, and it would mean nothing. Our sacrifices mean nothing, because it never ends and it never will end. I believed—” He dragged a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “I believed this was the only way to end the war. I still believe that.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “I am sorry, then, Sir Joker or Rook or whatever you are. Your mission has failed. I will never be the Queen of Hearts.”
His expression twisted. With agony. With hope. “I cannot tell you how much I want that to be true.”
She frowned. “Why? Because you want to fail?”
“Because I don’t want to hurt you.” He opened his hands, palms held toward her, pleading. “Don’t you understand? My role has been compromised since that first night in the gardens. I don’t want you to marry the King. And even if I could still somehow claim your heart, even after telling you how cruel and unfair I’ve treated you, I wouldn’t be able to give it to the White Queen. Catherine, I don’t want your heart to belong to anyone but me.” He groaned and fell back onto the grass, covering his face with both hands. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Hatta and Raven saw what was happening even before I did. They tried to warn me, told me to protect my own heart, but it’s too late now and I’ve ruined everything, and somehow, if it means saving you, I’m not even sure if I care.”
She clenched her jaw, trying to hold on to her anger, her resentment. She took a step closer so she could stare down at him, scowling. “How do I know you aren’t only saying these things now as part of another attempt to gain my trust?”
He chuckled, but there was no joy in it. His hands fell to his sides. He looked almost vulnerable lying beneath her. Her nerves tingled with the absurd and unwarranted fantasy of curling up beside him, tucking her body along his side, staying there forever.
“You don’t,” he said, propping himself up on his elbows. “Don’t give your heart to me, Catherine. I don’t deserve it. But…” His voice turned strained. “Don’t give it to the King, either. He may deserve it even less.”
“Does he?” she barked. “At least he has been nothing but honest with me.”
“That’s true. But I’m sure he doesn’t feel as strongly as I do.”
She held his gaze and let her breath out slowly, slowly, her crossed arms a shield between them. Finally she sat down again, draping her skirt over her crisscrossed legs. “You have nothing to fear, then. I am not going to marry the King. I am going to open a bakery.”
Jest sat up and folded his long legs, facing her. “A bakery?”
“That’s right. Mary Ann and I have been planning it for years, and we’re close now to making our dream a reality.” It was only a partial lie. Though her attempts had failed so far—no contest prize, no dowry money, no loan from Hatta—she now felt more certain than ever that she had to find a way. She would not allow fate to trick her out of this dream. “So you see, you’ve been wasting all your efforts on me. I suppose you will have to wait and see what other girl the King chooses, and set about charming her instead.” She didn’t bother to bury the sour note in her words. Jest flinched and she was surprised at how much the small motion pleased her.
“A bakery,” he said again. “And your parents approve of this?”
“Of course not. But I’m not going to let that stop me. It’s my life, after all.”
“But … you would no longer be gentry. You would have to give up everything.”
She glowered. “Don’t imagine you can tell me anything I don’t already know. I have given this much more consideration than you have.”
His gaze turned intense, peering into her as if he expected to find a weakness in her plan. She seemed to have rendered him speechless.
When the silence had dragged on for so long Cath found herself in danger of telling him everything—the fight with her parents, the deal she’d struck with the Duke, even how she’d gone to Hatta for help, which, now, knowing his ulterior motives, seemed painfully naïve—Catherine instead straightened her spine and forced herself to say, “I would ask you to take me home then. As you said, everyone will be worried, and I’m sure you must have much to do. Finding another heart to steal, stopping a war, and all of that.”
She still did not move.
He didn’t either.
Instead, Jest said, “Once you have your bakery”—as if long minutes hadn’t dragged on since she’d made this confession to him—“and you’re no longer in danger of … of me. Would there be any way…”
Her pulse began to flutter, but she tried to keep her expression blank. She waited, not daring to hope. Not even sure that she should hope.
Jest licked his lips. “I understand if you’ll hate me forever, but if there were any way you could trust me again. No more lies, no more tricks…” His knuckles whitened, his fingertips pressing into his knees. Cath found herself staring at those hands. The lithe fingers, tight with tension, showing more than his face would allow, telling her more than his words.
She was hoping, still hoping, no matter if she should or not.
She cocked her head to the side, and though she wanted to be flippant, she couldn’t. “Are you suggesting you would still want to court me, Sir Joker? A lowly baker, with no hope of being the queen?”
“More than anything in this world, Lady Pinkerton.”
Her traitorous heart stuttered. “What of your mission?”
“If there is no queen, there is no mission.”
“And if the King should marry someone else?”
“Another girl with a heart like yours? She doesn’t exist, not here in Hearts. I’m sure of it.”
Her brow knit together. “What of
the White Queen? What of the war?”
Jest shrugged helplessly. “We could do nothing before and we can do nothing now.” His shoulders sank. “Cath, there is nothing for me there. A never-ending war. Almost certain death. I’m not sure if I meant it before, but I mean it now. If I had a reason to stay in Hearts, I would. Hatta and Raven will probably hate me forever, or maybe they’ll stay too, I don’t know. But I would stay. For you. If you want me. If—”
“I want you.”
Jest fell silent, his lips half formed around some new declaration.
Her breaths quickened. Her body hummed with nervous energy, renewed uncertainty, but there was no taking the words back, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“You have my heart, Jest. I don’t know if you deserve it or not. I can’t tell if you’re a hero or a villain, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Either way, my heart is yours.”
He stared at her, his eyes wide, burning, stunned. Her heart continued to pound. Her words hung in the space between them.
Finally, Jest whispered, “Now that you’ve said that, you must promise me you will reject the King.”
“I promise,” she said, without hesitation.
Relief washed over him, then he was on his knees, reaching for her hands. She gave them willingly, and his lips were on her fingertips, brushing over each one. “Catherine,” he said, breathing her name into her palms. “Dear Catherine. I have wanted to kiss you from the moment you awoke in that rose garden.”
She licked her lips, a reflex, the result of a hundred daydreams. A hundred daydreams about him.
The glen was quiet but for the drum of her heart. Cath could imagine it. Everything about it. His lips, his arms. His body pressing her back onto the soft grass, the golden light of a timeless day cascading over them.
She curled her fingers over his. “Kiss me, then.”
She offered no resistance when he pulled her to her knees, trapping their interlaced fingers between their bodies. His nose brushed against hers.
“My heart is yours,” he whispered, sending a chill down her spine.
The corners of her lips lifted, in anticipation, in joy. “Do be careful, Sir Joker,” she said, remembering Hatta’s riddle. “A heart, once stolen, can never be taken back.”