Page 66 of Trapped By Clocks and Hearts

I blinked. I wasn’t even able to guess what she’d meant before I was struck with an invisible blow. My knees buckling, I collapsed to the tiled floor with a groan.

“You did willfully deceive me, Rabb,” the Queen said again. “You need to be punished.”

Supporting my weight with my hand braced on the floor, I steeled myself in preparation. This wasn’t the first time I had received such punishment from the Queen. There was no talking my way out of it and it was best if I let her have her way.

“I need to ensure that everyone in Wünder understands. This is not acceptable behavior.” The Queen rose from her seat to peer down at me. “Do you understand what you’ve done wrong, Rabb?”

Gritting my teeth, I nodded again.

“Look at me, Rabb, darling,” the Queen commanded.

I slowly slid my begrudging gaze up to meet hers.

The Queen’s smile quirked once again, her lips parting. “Ah, that stubborn, handsome face,” she chided in a merry tone, almost offhand. “You look just like your father.”

My heart dropped to my stomach with a thud.

I froze. What?

All at once, my mind spun. My father? I wasn’t even aware I had family, let alone a father. My earliest memories were only of being a rabbit, alone, hunted, wounded in the forest. Try as I might, I couldn’t capture one fragment of anything to do with my having had a family. How could the Queen possibly know anything about it?

The Queen’s eyes lit up at the questions behind my eyes. Her grin turned to a slight grimace and she waved to dismiss it. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.” With another wave of her hand, a crackling force of lightning streaked in the air, its malevolent force crashing down on my form.

Grunting, I tried to muffle my pained cry, resisting the urge to collapse facedown at the Queen’s feet right then. I called upon my own magic to shield me in part as it didn’t amuse the Queen if I was too weak to receive her punishment either. I knew it would only end up being worse for me.

One of the guards leaned in slightly to ask, “Would you like us to close the doors, Your Majesty?”

“Not today, I think. I think today I would like the kingdom to hear Rabb’s pain,” she declared as she raised both her hands toward me again.

I squeezed my eyes shut as the lightning lashings slammed down on me once again. My vision turned white. I crumpled lower over my knees.

As the Queen continued, I swallowed the groans in my throat until I could no longer hold them in, until my magic defense weakened altogether. And with her next strike, I exploded in a crying, agonized roar.

She was the Queen of Hearts.

My magic was nothing against hers.

I was nothing.

Chapter 19 - I Chose This

Ispent the rest of the day meditating in my chambers to recover. Attempting to resist the Queen’s torture sapped my magic once again and the overnight tides were still hours yet away.

The orange sun threw long shadows against the walls as I strode down the castle hallways. It was a struggle to restrain the urge to check on Allie.

At the very least, I was assured she wasn’t in any danger. That much I could tell.

I felt no pain, no distress, nothing beyond the understandable measure of her apprehension to be within the daunting walls of the Queen who might at any moment try to eat her heart and kill her.

Hesitating by the turn in the hallway which as I’d managed to coerce out of Two led to her room, I shook my head briskly to clear it before whirling back around.

Allie didn’t want to see me anyway.

Turning down one of the corridors which looked out to the castle gardens, I stopped to glance out the arched window. A croquet game was underway on the rolling green lawns.

As the Duchess had mentioned, the Queen often put the games on for her amusement. She enjoyed watching her subjects falter and stumble with faulty mallets and moving targets. It seemed the day’s choice of mallet was some flamingos held upside-down whilst balled-up hedgehogs rolled across the grass.

Pausing to lean against the windowsill, I observed a little boy from the royal court attempt a shot. Shadowed by an older man in a formal uniform, his hand on the boy’s shoulder, the man still smiled when the boy missed widely. Then bending down, the man must have been whispering words of encouragement to the frustrated little boy.