The Collectors' Society 01 (37 page)

“Ah, yes. You and I will find some kind of secret lab in the basement of the Institute, and we’ll devolve into madness together.” He rubs his hands together before holding them up in the air. “Bwhahaha! Think of the damage we can do! We can play croquet with some corpse limbs down there, drinking tea like we’re with the Queen. I’ll make us a mad, dead tea party of our own.”

Genuine laugher spills out of me at the ludicrous image.

“Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”

“What is it?”

“Is there something going on between you and my brother?”

“My lady?”

I turn away from Victor’s unsettling question to find Sir Halwyn at the entrance to the pavilion. “I thought you would like to know that His Majesty has arrived at camp and is headed this way.”

All of the frivolity of the moment whispers away. “Does he know I am waiting for him here?”

“I do not think so, my lady. The Nightrider planned on meeting His Majesty on the outskirts of our perimeter to brief him, but a situation arose that has his full attention. Shall I ride out and let His Majesty know?”

“Please, do not bother yourself with such matters. It will all be resolved shortly anyway.”

The old knight bows and exits the pavilion. Victor says, “You don’t think one of Wonderland’s monarchs might like to know ahead of time if an exiled queen and unknown doctor are waiting for him?”

Irrationally, part of me wants to lay the truth at Victor’s feet. But nearly a year of holding my tongue has me hesitating. This man is Finn’s best friend, his brother—and if Finn is to hear my past, it should come from me and not from hearsay.

So I tell Victor, “You will not lose your head. That is more the Queen of Heart’s
modus operandi
than anyone else’s. Although, the Red King has taken to favoring it a bit more over the last few years, too.”

He doesn’t appear reassured. “And what is this White King’s
modus operandi
?”

Trumpets blare from beyond the canvas walls, cutting off any explanation I may offer. My heart thumps painfully, my palms begin to sweat. I run through a list of perfectly justifiable and worthy reasons why I did what I’ve done. He understands—of course he understands.

He was there with me from start to finish.

Murmurs sound nearby, alongside the clanking of armor. At the entrance, the card soldier assigned to us becomes even more statue-like. Clarity, so foreign in these places, batters at me from every side. I made the right choice. I made the only choice I could, the one we both agreed upon. I made the best choice available to me, for us. I do not second guess my choice. I cannot.

I will not. And yet, the muscle in my chest beats in overtime.

“Should I bow?” Victor is asking me. “Is that a thing here? I haven’t had to bow to you. Bloody hell, should I be bowing to you?”

The flaps to the entrance fold back. A card soldier I do not recognize stalks into the room, his pike bloody and scratched. For a moment, when his scan of the room ends upon me, his eyes widen, but he snaps to attention quickly. “The White King has arrived.”

I think I’ve forgotten how to breathe properly. Because there the White King is, exactly as I remember him, although perhaps a bit dirtier. Tall, dark hair slightly mussed, his skin pale, his eyes so light, so bright they nearly border on the color of his court. His head is down when he strides into the receiving room, maps in his hands as he confers quietly with a pair of military advisors I know well. But then Ferz Epona, a squat, sharp, but fair woman I’ve admired for years, looks up and spies me. She halts in her tracks, mouth open.

“My lady,” she whispers. She drops to a stubby knee.

The White King’s head snaps up. Tracks first back to his advisor and then forward, to where I stand. Disbelief, then shock fills those crystalline eyes of his. The other Ferz, Epona’s identical twin brother, drops to a knee, a hand crossing his heart.

Victor murmurs through closed lips, “Should we bow now?”

The room is silent as a vacuum, with not even a single footstep, not a slip of paper rustling registering. So very many words have clamored around my head for months, but now that I’m here, and he’s here, none of them want to come out.

“Your Majesty.” Ferz Epona’s voice is louder now, even though her head is still bowed. “We had no idea you were here.”

The map in the White King’s hands is shoved toward Ferz Eponi. I open my mouth to attempt any of those practiced words, but the King is already making his way across the room.

“Your Majesty, I want to thank you for receiving us this afternoon,” Victor is saying. “Alice has had only kind things to say about this court and—”

And his words die the moment the King’s takes my face in his hands.

For a split second, I’m flooded with so many emotions I’m left paralyzed. But then familiarity wins out, and my hands come up to rest against his. Just these smallest slivers of contact send a thousand memories clambering toward the forefront of my mind.

“You’re here,” he whispers to me. “You’re
here.”

My voice feels sticky. “I am.”

His forehead rests against mine for a long minute, and the familiarity of such a small but meaningful interaction is so very, very bittersweet. But eventually he lets go both too soon and after too long. We have an audience, after all, and a curse to consider. “How long have you been back?”

I have to clear my throat. Force myself to think logically—hell, even remind myself that logical thought is now my ally. “I arrived in your camp just a few hours prior.”

“Why wasn’t I notified immediately?”

“I knew you were busy attending your soldiers. But please, if I may . . . I am here to ask you for two favors.”

Those eerily pale eyes of his pin me to where I stand. “You know that anything I can do, anything I have, is always yours to take without question.”

I refuse to acknowledge that Victor’s mouth has dropped open and that his eyes have narrowed significantly. Or that the oval-shaped Ferzes behind us are shuffling their feet and papers uncomfortably. “I realize that I’ve come at a most inopportune time—”

“When it concerns you, there is no such thing.”

“But I do not know where else to go.”

“Then you have come to exactly the right place,” the White King says quietly, firmly, “as, no matter what, you always have me to come to.”

God, that’s so bitterly beautiful to hear. “May we speak in private?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Clear the room.”

“Me, too?” Victor asks. There’s a suspicion to his voice, one that I know he’s entitled to as it comes from a genuine place.

The King’s attention shifts to my friend, his eyes narrowing. I quickly say, “This is a colleague of mine—Dr. Victor Frankenstein Van Brunt. Victor, this is His Majesty, the White King of Wonderland.” I touch the King’s arm. “I would like him to stay, as he has much at stake, too.”

“You are not a Wonderlander.” It’s not a question, but it requires an answer all the same.

“No,” Victor says, and I can’t tell if he’s impressed by the monarch so far or annoyed.

The White King waits until the room empties before asking Victor, “Are you also from England? Your accent is much like the Queen’s.”

Victor scratches the inside of his elbow. “Well, yes, technically . . .”

I hold out a hand. “I will explain it all if you’re willing to listen.”

“Shite, Alice,” Victor murmurs as the King leads us over to a series of couches, “he doesn’t look anything like the illustrations in your book, either.”

“The Queen has a book?” the White King inquires. And then, a bit slyly, “And it has illustrations of me in it?”

Victor doesn’t quite know how to answer that, and I’m not too keen to address it at the moment. “There is much for us to discuss, Your Majesty.”

“Much,” he agrees softly. “But will you first help me out of my armor? It’s been a long night and I’d really rather start a fresh day outside of this metal, if even for a few hours.”

It’s my turn to blush, even though this is a task pages do without second thoughts. A task I’ve done countless times in the past. “Of course.” I unbuckle the straps holding the arm pieces to the chest plate. “I’m sure you are wondering what I’m doing here.”

He holds his arm out for me. “I am wondering many things, actually. For example, I am wondering how, after months of searching for you, you suddenly appear in my tent.”

I bite my lip as I gently tug off the first arm piece and pass it over to Victor. He searched for me? But, he knew I went back to England. He was there when the agreements were made. “My reasons are two-fold. But to address one, I must tell the other. Will you hear me out?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Victor wander around with the armor, wondering what to do with it. Finally he sets it down on the floor near the throne occupying the head of the room.

“Why do you even ask when you know I will?”

I slide off the second arm piece and pass it over to the bemused doctor. “After I returned to England, I checked myself into an asylum.”

There is weighted silence for the length of time it takes to unbuckle the two halves of chest plates. “Is that a madhouse?”

I nod, and he glowers. While he has always been one of the more logical creatures in Wonderland, he still exhibits hints of madness himself. “Were you mistreated?”

“I promise you I was not.” He nods, and then I continue. “After months there, I was contacted by somebody who had a most peculiar job offer.” And then, slowly, as I remove his armor down to the padding beneath, I relate the truth of it all. I tell the White King about Timelines, and of catalysts, and of the threat facing Wonderland if I do not find my crown. He listens quietly, taking it all in without interrupting me once. “I arrived with three colleagues,” I conclude after many minutes, “but during the raid on the Land that Time Forgot, Victor and I were quickly separated from the others—a woman named Mary Lennox and a man named Finn Van Brunt.” I’m embarrassed when Finn’s name wavers. “And now, with all the fighting going on . . .”

“You wish to find them before calamity can occur,” he concludes for me, a shadow of hurt flashing in his eyes. “Or, before any of the other Courts find them.”

“Yes.”

“And you wish for me to return your crown to you.”

“I do.”

Victor’s eyebrows shoot up.

The White King says to him, “You are also from a storybook?”

“I’m from a separate Timeline, but I am not a character in a storybook.” Victor sits down on the steps leading up to the King’s simple throne. “My father was, though. Um, both my fathers, if one wants to be precise.”

“And you, my lady?” Faint amusement glimmers in those white-blue eyes. “You are from a storybook?”

I’m positive my cheeks are scarlet. “So I’m told.”

“And I’m in it?”

“I haven’t read the books,” I mutter, “so I cannot verify that.”

To Victor, the King says, “But you have.”

“I skimmed them,” Victor admits. “Before we tracked . . . uh, before Alice came to join the Society.”

“You said I was different? As was she?”

Victor’s clearly impatient, but he answers the question. “Yes, but the stories took place when she was younger. And you were, well, much older. And more like a chess piece. There might have been a picture where she picked you up. You know, like she would one of your little statues over there?” He motions to the battlefield nearby. “You were about yay high.” His thumb and forefinger spread apart. “Or maybe a wee bit bigger.” And then, more awkwardly, “But she totally had you in one hand. I’m sorry to say you were a bit of a bumbling fool throughout the entire thing.”

For a moment, but the White King and I sit in stunned silence. But then we both burst into peals of laughter.

“A bumbling, old fool,” the White King muses. “And a chess piece to boot. I’m afraid I must disappoint, Doctor.” He leans back in his chair, his long legs sprawling before him. “And the Queen of Diamonds was nothing more than a child?”

Victor tugs at the collar of his shirt. “Yes. Your story is considered to be one of the most enduring pieces of children’s literature.”

Those white-blue eyes find me once more. “How curious.” And then, more gently, “But as much as I find this talk fascinating, I’m sure you are eager to find your colleagues.”

“I am.” I want to touch his arm, but I lace my hands together in my lap. “Thank you, by the way.”

“I haven’t found them yet.”

“You believed me,” I say. “Without question. You listened and believed.”

The White King slowly leans forward. “I have never had reason to not believe you. I doubt I ever will.”

For years, this man has been my secret keeper, and I his. We have never lied to one another, and although it aches to be here with him once more, I am grateful to find his faith in me strong as ever, even after hearing what sounds to be fanciful fiction.

Victor is saying, “There are many people in Timelines who resist the truth, unfortunately.”

“Some minds are more closed than others,” the King says. “They see what they want to see.” The corners of his mouth inch upward. “They do not see what I see. Now, come. Let us find your associates. I do not like to think what might happen to them if we are not the first to find them.”