Queen of Hearts Complete Collection: Queen of Hearts; Blood of Wonderland; War of the Cards. Colleen Oakes
was pressed against the wall, held tight by leather bonds that looped over her abdomen and chest. She writhed against them, her feet slipping in the black fluid that dripped down from above. Thin tendrils of black roots snaked out of the wall and into Faina Baker’s open mouth, nose, and ears. All down her body, the black roots circled and twisted, moving slowly, leaving a thin black film as they slithered inch by inch. Dinah gripped Wardley’s arm as a tendril crawled its way up Faina’s face.
Faina’s eyes were open, frozen in panic; a low moan came out of her mouth filled with black roots. Cray sauntered up to her and unhooked the leather straps from her torso, narrowly avoiding the roots that reached ever so slightly for his hand.
Wardley’s mouth twisted with anger. “What are you doing to her? How can you allow this? What is …?” He stepped forward, forgetting himself. Dinah could see he was unhinged, his hand on his sword hilt. Forgetting chivalry and honor was not an easy thing. Dinah yanked backward on her chain, and he remembered where he was. Cray untethered Faina, and she slouched forward. The roots slithered back from her body, retreating from her nose, mouth, and ears with a revolting sucking sound. Finally, the roots released, and Faina Baker crumpled like a rag doll onto the dirty floor.
“You strap her to the tower? That’s the torture for high treason?”
Cray gave a filthy, toothless grin. “Aye. What could be worse than being strapped to the very source of the poison that corrupts the Towers? The roots take to the skin, and as you can tell, they love an opening. Eventually the poison seeps directly into the brain. It gives hallucinations and fevers, and some say the ability to see beyond the towers. The future and the past, and everything in between. The roots make you forget who you are, make you forget that you are human. What else could we do to these criminals that is worse than losing who they are?”
He laughed, and Dinah imagined silencing him with the flat of her palm. There was a faint outline left on the wall where Faina had been strapped, a root twisting itself back into place. An oily mist condensed in the head area.
“Make it quick,” snapped Cray.
Dinah stepped forward. Faina Baker was a shred of a woman. Her arms were as thin as sticks, and thick gray veins ran the length of them. The roots left black dirt behind where they had been clinging to her face and torso, as if she had been burned. What once had been lovely blue eyes were now sunken into two dark holes that stared out of a gaunt face.
“My gods,” muttered Wardley to Cray. “How can you live with yourself?”
Faina Baker was a walking skeleton. Her once-honeyed yellow hair was streaked with white, her lips dark with blood and bite marks. Faina Baker looked up at Dinah from the ground, a string of drool sneaking out of her mouth and pooling on the ground. She began singing in an eerily beautiful voice—high and lovely, her tears mingling with her warbling vibrato.
“You have a few minutes, that’s all.” Cray walked to the cell door.
Wardley gave Dinah a nudge forward as Cray slammed the cell door shut behind them. I could be stuck in here forever, thought Dinah, with a rush of panic. I should never have come. She knelt before Faina in the muck. The woman lay still on the ground, her fingernails tracing broken hearts in the mud.
“Hello, Faina, my name is Dinah. I don’t believe we’ve met before, but somehow I think you have information for me.”
Faina reached out and grazed her blackened fingers down Dinah’s face, leaving foul trails. Her vacant eyes looked through Dinah. “I know you,” she whispered. “The queen, the queen. You aren’t the queen, not yet. Keep your head.”
“I am. I received a note, to come here, to find you, to talk to you. Who are you?”
Faina blinked a few times and looked directly at Dinah. A moment of clarity lit up her eyes as the black marks left by the roots faded into her skin. Her arm reached out and clutched Dinah’s fingers roughly. “She’s not who you think she is, she is a good girl, be merciful, please. The one you call the duchess …”
Vittiore? Dinah’s heart skipped a beat. This was about Vittiore?
“Are you talking about Vittiore?”
“He came in the night. With the devil steed and many men. He was looking for something, looking for the yellow and the blue, looking for something he would never have again, something he had only once.” Her voice lifted in a song. “Blond, blond like the sun on the shore she was …” Her eyes widened. “The wrong crown waits for her. The strings will tighten around her arms, and she will dance, oh she will dance for her head, strings around her wrists like roots. Curls in blood, curls in blood …”
The woman was making no sense. It reminded Dinah of every conversation she had ever had with Charles. She took Faina’s hand in her own. “Please try not to speak in riddles. I need you to remember what you know.”
Faina blinked. “Have you seen my baby? She was here, once, inside of me. Now there is nothing but the black, the roots. They show me things. I know things. She will find her death under the heart, trampled under the devil steed, just like me.”
“She’s mad!” hissed Wardley.
Faina raised her head to look at Wardley and licked her lips. “You must have been mad,” she said, “or you would not have come here.”
Dinah pulled Faina to her feet and rested her on the stone platform that served as her bed. “What do you know? I need you to tell me. Think. How did you get here?”
Faina’s lower lip trembled and black tears that looked like ink began rolling down her face. “We did nothing but serve Wonderland, all our lives. Catching clams and oysters for the king’s pleasure and table. I have seen the beauty of a fiery sunset over the Western Sea, of shells in my baby’s hand. And then it was all gone, in the flash of a silver blade. All because of you. The queen’s cold bed was for naught, but she will, oh yes, she will rise like the sun, my own little sun … she will possess all that you desire.”
She leaned against Dinah, who held her breath against the wave of nausea that passed through her. Faina smelled like nothing she could ever describe—the smell of the tower itself, an ancient evil, filth, and death.
“Please, Your Highness! Please don’t let them tie me to the tree. The root shows me things, horrible things, beautiful things …” She started babbling incoherently.
“That’s Yurkei,” hissed Wardley. “She’s speaking Yurkei!”
Dinah listened closely, but all her language lessons were useless. The Yurkei that Faina was speaking was a strange blend of sounds and random words. Faina’s body gave a jerk, and then another. Dinah held Faina’s head gently with her hands as she thrashed in the darkness.
“I know,” she murmured. “I know it hurts. I know it feels horrible to not have control.”
She flashed to Charles, how his mind was a wild, unknowable thing, always seeing but never sharing, straining but always failing to make a human connection. With a loud scream, Faina’s seizure ended and she laid her head on Dinah’s lap. Her bright blue eyes shone with a new clarity, her voice unwavering. The madness had retreated. “You have to go,” she whispered. “Straddle the devil. And when the time comes, do not open the marked door. Please!” She grabbed Dinah’s arm, long nails ripping into the princess’s pale skin. “Do not heed the blood of secrets.”
“What do you mean?” Dinah heard the faint sound of marching from down below. The Clubs were changing their watch.
“It’s time to leave, right now. We have to go!” insisted Wardley. “We will not be so lucky with the night Clubs coming in.”
Dinah leaped up. “We can’t leave her here like this—they’ll bind her to the tower again!”
“What did you think went on in the Towers? Tea and tarts? That isn’t our choice to make! She is a prisoner here, and you are the princess.