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C ATHERINE AWOKE TO THE SOUND of her parents’ carriage returning home, the clomp of the horses’ hooves on the drive loud and distinct against the muffled backdrop of ocean waves.

She didn’t know how many hours had passed, but it was still dark outside, and she dug herself deeper beneath her covers, yanking the quilt up past her nose.

Her head was drowsy with fog and sleep. She had the sensation of sleepy tendrils clinging to her from some far-off dream.

Arms lowering her onto a bed of rose petals.

Fingers tracing the contours of her face. Kisses trailing down her throat.

She sighed, curling her toes against the sheets.

He appeared slowly from the mental haze. Messy black hair. Amber-gold eyes. A dimpled smile stretched across teasing lips…

Her eyes snapped open, a blush climbing up her neck.

She’d been dreaming about the Joker.

Again!

Downstairs, she heard the front door crash open, her mother’s voice splitting through the still night. She sounded upset, and Cath cringed. Was she angry that Cath had left the ball without telling them? Or that the King’s marriage proposal had been slighted?

Maybe… maybe… he’d asked some other girl.

Energized with hope, she pulled the quilt away and peered up at the shadowed canopy of her bed. She gasped .

Not a lemon tree this time, but roses. They were white as swan feathers, their thorny stems strangling the bedposts.

Cath inched one hand from beneath the covers and reached for the nearest blossom.

A thorn dug into the pad of her thumb and she flinched, pulling back and popping the wound into her mouth before she got blood on her nightgown.

Giving up on the rose, she whipped the blanket over her head again, letting her heartbeat slow.

What did it mean? What were the dreams trying to tell her?

She counted off the things she knew about Jest.

He was the court joker, but no one knew where he had come from.

He was friends with a Raven.

Impossible was his specialty.

The way he had touched her hand had awoken something inside her she had never felt before. Something giddy, but also nervous. Something curious, but also afraid.

And if her dreams were to be believed, he was a very, very good kisser.

The fluttering in her stomach returned and she squirmed farther into the covers, suddenly light-headed.

Perhaps his presence in the castle gardens had been unexpected and disconcerting, but Cath was the master of her own whimsies.

She began to wrap herself up in the dream of slow kisses and white roses, to find her way back to that small, harmless fantasy…

Her bedroom door crashed open. “CATHERINE!”

Startled, Catherine pushed back the bedcovers and sat up. A ring of lamplight shone on the walls. “What?”

Her mother shrieked, but it was an overjoyed sound.

“Oh, thanks to goodness. Whealagig, she’s here!

She’s all right!” With a wail, she threw herself across the room, pausing to set the oil lamp on the bedside table before she collapsed onto Catherine’s bed and pulled her into a stifling embrace.

Catherine realized with a start that her mother was crying. “We were so worried!”

“What for?” Cath struggled to extricate herself. “I left the ball early and came right home. I didn’t think you’d be so upset. I wasn’t feeling well and…”

“No, no, darling, it’s fine, it’s just—” She dissolved into sobs as Cath’s father appeared over them, pressing a hand to his heart. His face was slack with relief.

“What’s going on?” said Cath, spotting Mary Ann, too, in the doorway. “What’s happened?”

“We didn’t know where you were,” her mother cried, “and there was… there was…”

“An attack,” her father answered, his voice somber.

Cath stared at him, trying to read his expression in the unsteady lamplight. “An attack?”

“Not just any attack!” Her mother pulled back and squeezed Cath’s shoulders. “A Jabberwock!”

Her eyes widened.

“It attacked the castle,” said her father, looking strained and exhausted. “Shattered one of the windows and took two of the courtiers right from the ballroom floor. Then it just flew off with them…”

Cath pressed a hand to her chest. The Jabberwock was a creature of nightmares and myth, of tales told by firelight to frighten little children into good behavior. It was a monster said to live amid the twining and tangled Tulgey Wood, far away in the country of Chess.

As far as Cath knew, no Jabberwock had been sighted in Hearts for countless generations. Stories told of them being hunted by great knights centuries ago, until the last of the Jabberwock was slain by a king who carried the mythical Vorpal Sword.

“It was e-enormous,” her mother stammered, “and terrifying, and I didn’t know where you were!” Her sobs overtook her again.

“It’s all right, Mama.” Cath squeezed her tight. “I’ve been home all night. ”

“And still dreaming, I see,” said her father.

Her mother pulled back and gawked at the thorny rosebush. “Not another one. What is going on in that head of yours?”

Cath gulped. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

Her mother slumped back and rubbed the tears still caught in her eyes. “Good heavens, Catherine. If you’re going to dream, try to dream up something useful.”

Cath knotted her fingers in the blanket. “Well, we can have fresh rose water, at least, and maybe I’ll bake up some rose macarons—”

“No, no, no. I don’t mean useful as in things you can bake with or cook with. I mean useful. Like a crown!”

“A crown?”

Her mother hid her face behind her thick fingers.

“Oh, this night has shredded my poor old nerves. First that awful Cheshire Cat appears right when the King is getting ready to make his announcement, then you’re nowhere to be found, then the Jabberwock—” She shuddered.

“And now a rose tree growing up in the middle of my house. Honestly, Catherine!”

“I don’t mean to argue, Mama, but a crown doesn’t really do much of anything. Just sits on one’s head, quite useless. Oh, I suppose it sparkles.”

“Focus, child. Don’t you see? The King intended to ask for your hand in marriage. Tonight!”

Mary Ann gasped, and Cath felt like her own feigned surprise was a bit sluggish. “Why, what an absurd suggestion,” she said, chuckling. “The King? Certainly not.”

The Marquess awkwardly cleared his throat, startling her mother, who spun to him with flapping arms. “Yes, yes, we’re done with you, darling,” she said. “Go on to bed. We need to have a mother-to-daughter chat.”

Her father looked grateful to be sent away. Dark circles were beneath his eyes as he leaned over Cath and placed a kiss on the top of her head. “I’m glad you’re safe. ”

“Good night, Papa.”

Mary Ann curtsied to him as he left, then cast an excited smile in Cath’s direction. “I’ll just… bring up some tea?” she suggested. “To calm everyone’s nerves.”

“Thank you, Mary Ann,” said the Marchioness.

She waited until she and Cath were alone before taking Cath’s hands into both of hers.

“My dear, sweet, stupid child,” she started, and Cath’s shoulders tensed in defiance.

“It is not absurd at all. The King means to make you his bride. Now, I am overjoyed that you made it home safely, but that doesn’t excuse your absence, not on such an occasion as this. Where were you?”

Memories of chocolate caramels and unlaced corsets flashed through Catherine’s mind.

She blinked, all innocence. “As I said, I was feeling poorly and thought I should leave so as not to cause a scene. I didn’t want to interrupt the lovely time you and Papa seemed to be having, so I took one of the royal carriages. Besides, I think you’re mistaken about the King.”

Her mother’s face turned red as a cabbage. “I am not mistaken, you doltish girl. You should be engaged by now.”

“But His Majesty has never shown me any preference. Well, other than for my baking. But even if he had, we’ve had no courtship. No time to—”

“He is the King! What need does he have of courtship? He asks and you say yes, that is all the courtship required.” She heaved an exhausted sigh.

“Or, it would have been. Now that you disappeared at the most inopportune moment, who knows what’s to become of his affections?

He could be jilted—his attachment may be permanently severed! ”

Catherine pursed her lips, trying to disguise the influx of hope beneath a veil of concern. “If the King wished to request my hand in marriage, I should hope his attachment wouldn’t be so flimsy as that. And I’m still not convinced of his intentions.”

“Oh, he very much intended. And he had better still intend, or you will be confined to this room until you learn when it is and is not appropriate to leave a ball!” She hesitated. “Wild, murderous beasts notwithstanding. You must fix this, Catherine!”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to apologize for leaving the gala prematurely. I expect you to be around the next time a man makes you an offer that will make you a queen. We must think of some way to ensure we haven’t lost his good graces. Something to keep him from changing his mind, not when we were so close!”

“But what if I don’t…” She trailed off, curling her knees up to her chest.

“What if you don’t what? Spit it out, child.”

She gulped. Hesitated. Sagged. “What if I don’t see His Majesty for a while? We can’t very well call on the King, and we have no invitations, do we?”

Her mother smugly tilted her nose up. “In fact, we do have an invitation. We have been asked to afternoon tea in the castle gardens in three days’ time.

” She snapped her fingers. “I know! You shall bring His Majesty a gift! That will be the perfect excuse to approach him. He is fond of your sweets.” She stood and took to pacing the room, the light from the lamp casting a restless shadow over the walls. “What do you think he’d like?”

“Anything, I suppose.”

“Why are you being difficult?”

Cath shrugged. “I don’t mean to be, Mama. What about those rose macarons I mentioned?”