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.”