AllFreeNovel
Share Us
To try and pretend that none of us had seen Alice would be a surefire way to enrage the queen. And since I had no intention of losing my head, let alone watching it happen to my dearest friends, I said nothing.
I hated myself for it, but I was in no position to fight.
The soldiers bound our wrists and forced us to our feet. Callister swayed, his unique shade of violet blood running from his temple. Hatter leaned heavily on his uninjured leg, his face white with pain. That brilliant blue eye of his was dull and colorless.
If my friends were in this bad of shape, I could only imagine how I appeared to them.
Without another word, the soldiers prodded us forward. We set off through the trees, the path lit by the soldiers’ flickering torches. The hounds flanked us, snapping their jaws if any of us slowed down too much.
The terrain grew rockier as we traveled. Jagged cliffs reared up around us, closing in like the walls of a prison. Lightning forked across the bruise-colored sky, thunder rumbling. The first fat drops of rain spattered down.
Before long the rain was falling in sheets, drenching us in seconds. Our shoes slipped on the muddy trail. A soldier clubbed Hatter with the pommel of his sword when he stumbled.
“Keep walking, scum," the soldier growled.
Hatter spit blood but kept moving. His eyes found mine, full of rage and despair.
We crested a rise, and there it was. The Red Queen’s castle, anchored in the most advantageous location in the Kingdom of Hearts and Roses.
It loomed before us, a hulking shadow against the stormy sky. Twisted spires clawed at the clouds, while parapets and battlements brooded like hunched-over gargoyles. Banners bearing the Queen’s crimson crest snapped in the rising wind.
Lightning flashed, throwing the castle into stark relief. In that instant, I saw the true menace of the place—the iron spikes adorning the gates, the razor-wire coiling atop the walls, the spear-tips of the guards patrolling the ramparts.
The decapitated heads on spikes to remind us of what it meant to displease Her Majesty.
As if there was anything majestic about the diseased cunt who ruled over us all.
The guards pushed us through the gates, across a courtyard slick with slime and rain. Our steps echoed off the imposing stone walls. Torches sputtered in the wind, casting wavering shadows all around us.
We were prodded down a spiral stone staircase, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the castle. The air grew dank, heavy with mold.
Once we arrived at the base of the stairs, the dungeons sprawled out like eight rows of spider legs. Stone cells lined both sides of eight long corridors, with heavy bars caging the wretched inhabitants within. Some peered out at us with sunken, hopeless eyes as we passed by them. Most simply hunched on the floor, despondent.
These were broken souls, crushed by the Queen’s iron fist. How long before we shared their fate?
The guards opened a cell and threw us inside. We hit the floor hard, the breath knocked from our lungs. Before we could react, the door clanged shut, locking us in.
"Hope you like it down here, because you’re never seeing the light of day again," one guard sneered. His companion laughed.
Their footsteps receded, leaving us in musty gloom. I met Hatter’s and Callister’s eyes, seeing my own dread reflected in them.
We were the Red Queen’s prisoners now.
We were at her mercy.
Unfortunately, she had none to give.
* * *
ChapterFour
ALICE
My cage rattled faintly over the polished black marble floors, drawing curious glances and outright stares. The sex bunnies in charge of me wore sheer black lingerie and black bunny masks, their coltish legs stretching for miles in seven-inch stiletto heels.
The blue-haired girl on the right stumbled, nearly pulling down my cage. A laugh bubbled up in my throat, muffled by the gag, and she shot me a venomous glare over her shoulder. A glare that clearly said if I didn’t choke on my own drool first, she might just arrange an ‘accident’ for me.
My bare ass scraped against the metal bars of the cage as Trippy and her caramel-haired friend rolled me through the different floors and halls of the Rabbit Hole. Ransom was right about this place—it was a fucking maze. At least the hedge labyrinth had some variation.
