Free ArchEnemy by Frank Beddor Page B

soft belly.
    “Behind you!” Sacrenoir pointed.
    At her back, the caterpillar was calmly smoking his hookah. Redd tried to catch him unaware and whipped her scepter-wielding arm around without turning her head, but—
    “Above you!”
    Alistaire pointed toward the arbor’s uppermost branches, where the caterpillar hovered out of reach.
    “Your Imperial Viciousness,” Vollrath interposed. “Might not the present state of our affairs—to say nothing of your alleged condition—suggest to you the justice of listening to this rather plain-speaking oracle?”
    “You forget whom you address, tutor. I have an underdeveloped notion of justice.”
    “Do you?” Vollrath’s brow leapt up, then contracted. His ears fidgeted. “But Your Imperial Viciousness, you’ve frequently complained of being unjustly removed from succession to Wonderland’s throne, and you cannot be so embittered by what is unjust if you haven’t a strong conception of what is just .”
    Redd stepped close to the albino and, in a voice of quiet menace, asked, “Are you trying to teach me something, tutor?”
    “No, Your Imperial Viciousness. By no means.”
    Vollrath bowed his way out of arm’s reach, and Redd turned a challenging eye on what was left of her army, silently daring them to engage in anythin g they wouldn’t have dared to do when she had imagination. The Cat, Sacrenoir, Mr. Van de Skülle, Siren Hecht, Alistaire Poole—in the steady steam of Redd’s fury, it didn’t occur to her that the caterpillar’s presence had assured these assassins’ continued support and allegiance; because although not anywhere near as strong as she used to be, a caterpillar would not have been courting her if she was to remain forever weak, defeated.
    “You are about to ask why I provided guidance to King Arch,” the slinking wise one said, alighting on the tiniest of branches above her head.
    Redd nodded.
    “I have already answered this. Everything I do is to ensure the safety of the Heart Crystal. For Everqueen.”
    But how was that possible? Redd questioned. Hadn’t the oracle previously told her the Crystal would be safe only after she had regained her throne?
    “You showed Arch how to take away my imagination so as to help me reclaim Wonderland’s crown?”
    The caterpillar sucked on his hookah pipe, exhaled three puffs of smoke: y-e-s.
    “And your coming to tell me this—that you instructed Arch in how to rid me of imagination—this too is to help me reclaim Wonderland’s crown?”
    The caterpillar again let three clouds of hookah smoke do the talking: y-e-s.
    “Inscrutable, infuriating worm!” Redd shouted, not understanding.
    “It is supposed that power corrupts,” the caterpillar said in a voice as untroubled as time itself. “Yet the powerful are often corrupt before they are powerful. In fact, I find that they too often become powerful by being corrupt. Whether real or perceived, a lack of power can also corrupt.”
    “What’s that got to do with me?”
    “Your imagination will return in all its strength, Redd Heart. What you do then will determine everything.”
    “Since you know so much,” Her Imperial Viciousness scorned, “why don’t you tell me what I’m going to do?”
    “Mistress,” said the caterpillar, exhaling a fog that left Redd and her assassins unconscious almost before he finished speaking, “your understanding of the future is naïve.”

CHAPTER 15
    I T WAS her fault and nothing Hatter could say would convince her otherwise.
    During the new palace’s inaugural gala, Molly had attended a meeting between Queen Alyss and King Arch; the king had snickered upon hearing she was the queen’s bodyguard and she let pride and resentment get the better of her. Untamed emotion, lack of self-discipline—the internal enemies of every Milliner—had left her susceptible to cheap manipulation, the Lady of Diamonds gulling her with an exquisitely carved chest supposedly meant for the queen. If she had had any