“At midnight, you will seduce him,” I order my queen.
“The knight?”
“It’s treason to touch the queen,” Alice reminds me. “My maid might do so, but a knight…”
“I did not say to fuck him.” I shake my head. She’s not so daft as this. “Seduce him and have him sent to your lovely dungeon. I will collect the weapons he leaves behind.”
“To keep me safe,” she adds.
We do not discuss what we both know I’ll do once I have his weapon. That is too direct. That is, in its truest terms, treason.
* * *
When I leave the cell and the dungeon, both Mark and the hatted man take off. Whatever plot they agreed to did not include staying in the company of the woman who murdered the king.
“Regicide makes a girl a bit of an outcast,” I announce, knowing Tom’s there. I’m sure of it before his teeth appear in the dark. Tom, for all that he claims not to be the puppet master of this world, is nearby.
In the Original World, in the Crescent City that was my last home, I would have thought that Tom was a tour guide dressed up as Baron Samedi. If ever there was sexier man, I’m not sure where or when he was. Tom, unfortunately, is also the single most terrifying man in the whole of Wonderland. Like the finest bluesman in all of New Orleans or the pirate at the helm of a cutthroat crew, Tom is a force unto himself.
“The queen must have a king,” he announces. “There is a necessary order.”
“And? Will I be calling you the Red King soon?”
Tom laughs, and I am reminded of my father when he was luring victims to his traps. He was the spider, entrapping fly after ladybug after lesser spider. They all died because he willed it so. Those who lived, who avoided his lair, did so at his whim. Tom is more like that man who raised me than anyone I’ve ever met.
“I am not interested in surrendering my power, Rose.” He extends his arm, and we begin to walk.
A woman is dragged toward the dungeon as we continue down the flower-lined path. “My name is not Beatrice!”
“Shame about the queen’s maid.” Tom glances at her. “Treason is such an ugly thing.”
I miss a step. My feet tangle. “What?”
“She’ll be beheaded at dawn.” He shrugs. “We must protect the throne, Rose.”
“She’ll die?” I glance in her direction. “That woman will die?”
“Indeed.” Tom gestures for me to go ahead of him. “Someone must.”
And I know that this is one of those moments, a test of my character. Do I let another woman die so that I might live? I can’t say that I want to die. I can’t even say that I haven’t taken lives. None of them were truly innocent, though. No one is innocent.
“Would it help if you knew she wasn’t, either?” He smiles, seeming genuine for a change, even trustworthy. “Innocent, I mean.”
I stare. “How did you know I…”
“You are as readable as a book in a language I almost know, Rose.” Tom’s voice is light. “You ought to be grateful I’m not scandalized by your salacious thoughts in my direction.” He leans in, kisses the tip of my nose, and adds, “And that I don’t tell Alice.”
“I love her,” I say. “You wouldn’t be the first man I was willing to kill to make her smile.”
And there, in the dark garden, Tom laughs. “You’ll make a fabulous consort.”
“A what?”
“A king, dear Rose. The role is unfilled, and the queen is useless since she has lost you.” Tom shook his head. “We have options. You could become queen, but then I’d still need a king to fill the vacancy you created. I could let Alice descend in madness and bring in a new queen to oust her, as Alice herself did with the last regent. Or…”
He looks down at me, and I realize I’ve slid to the ground.
“You become the king. Adore Alice and keep her in check, or if you prefer, I could make you a knight. Move a knight into the king’s position.”
There are words. Millions of words I know. Most of them aren’t available in this instant.
“I’d kill him,” I whisper.
“Kill the knight, too?” Tom sounds aghast. He puts his hand to his chest in faux shock. “You truly are bloodthirsty enough to be queen, Rose. That was my plan, you know. Alice seemed so promising, but she became mad. They all do—such is the nature of queens.”
“And Wonderland,” I add with more bite than I ought.
He laughs again. “I simply want a world as beautiful as can be, and it gets so dreadfully boring if it’s only Wonderlandians here.”
Suddenly, I realize with strange certainty that this world is his. We are all Tom’s puppets. Me, Alice, Lord Hare, Mark, the nameless knight, all of us. Maybe it should bother me, but we are puppets with lives and opinions.
“If Alice is to be queen, she needs a king,” Tom says.
“Yes.” My answer is neither enough nor too much. It is all that is left to say when the question is Alice. I will serve her. Not Tom. Not his world. I exist for Alice.
* * *
The coronation is a lavish affair. In true Wonderland fashion, there are as many impossibilities as can be. The band plays late into the night, and Lord Hare decides to replace the water for the teapots with white liquor. Tall, leggy women in pink dresses walk with the exaggerated elegance of drunken flamingoes, and an assortment of men who look like bloated, sullen toads sit at most every table.
“They wish they were you,” Tom whispers as he escorts me to the rose-covered archway where the king’s crown rests on a pink velvet cushion.
“I’d kill them,” I whisper back. I glance to my side and clarify: “Each and every one until there were no men left to bother her.”
Tom gives me another toothy smile.
At the front of the crowded gathering, we stop. Beside Alice is the knight who was almost chosen to be king. He gazes at Alice in awe, and she smiles briefly in his direction.
I kneel before her and make a mental note to kill the knight after all.
She extends her left hand and takes his sword.
When my beloved lifts the blade into the air, I see bloodlust in her eyes. My Alice is mad. She debates my death. It is neither the first nor the last time.
Then, steadily, she lowers the blade and pronounces, “I knight thee, Lord Rose. Stand and be recognized.”
I stand, face the assembled crowd of both Wonderlandians and imports from the Original World. None of them matter. They are background at my union with the perfect woman.
I take Alice’s hand. “My love. My queen. There is nothing I won’t do for you. No life I won’t end. No obstacle I won’t conquer.”
“Such is the nature of the Red King,” Alice murmurs.
She’s not wrong.
“I’ll be better, though,” I swear. I stare into her perfect face. “For you, my love. I’ll be better.”
Tom steps up to my other side.
“Bow and be named,” he says.
I can’t look away from Alice, but I bow my head as directed. The crown feels heavy, a part of me now as if silver thorns are slipping from the beautiful circlet and driving into my skull.