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C ATH ’ S NERVES WERE STRETCHED TAFFY thin as she made her way back through the rows of snapping tents.

This time, there was no excitement for the carnival food or pretty baubles.

Her head was too full of Jest and the knowledge that she was a coward.

Was she so afraid to disappoint her parents and the King, that she was willing to put their happiness before her own?

“Cath! There you are!” Mary Ann was rushing toward her, black skirt bunched up in both fists and hair tumbling from her blue-and-yellow bonnet. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“What’s happened?” Cath glanced around and noticed, for the first time, how empty the beach felt.

“Nothing, yet. But the contest started ten minutes ago and they’re going to get to your cake any minute, but you have to be present if you’re to win!”

“Conte—? Oh! The contest!”

Mary Ann shot her a disgruntled look. “You forgot?”

“No, of course not, I was just… I…”

Mary Ann grabbed her wrist. “You best not have. I’ve been dreaming about those twenty gold crowns all morning, imagining all that we can do with them to bring the bakery to life.

” Relaxing, she shot Cath a bright smile and pointed up at her bonnet.

“I really do think there’s something about this hat.

Is yours from the Marvelous Millinery too? It’s quite charming. ”

“Why, yes, it…” Catherine paused, one hand reaching for the squishy brim of her hat, the ridiculous macaron. She realized with a start that her mother, who should have thrown a fit at the impropriety of her daughter wearing such a garish thing, had said nothing. Had not even seemed to notice it.

What had Hatta said? Something about capturing charisma in headwear—but what did that mean?

She thought of Margaret Mearle at the King’s tea party and how she looked almost pretty in her rosebud fastener.

She thought of Mary Ann’s burgeoning dreams. She thought of the chef’s hat she’d picked off the hat shop walls, when Hatta had mentioned unconventional decisions, moments before she thought to offer her macarons as proof of her talent.

Cath’s mouth twitched with delight, with the marvelousness of her discovery.

Hatta was selling exquisite, magical hats.

Mary Ann hauled Catherine into the grandstand tent.

All of the seats were full, with countless more guests standing at the back.

Five judges were seated at a draped table on the stage—the King and Knave of Hearts, the Duke of Tuskany, Mr. Caterpillar, and the Turtle that Cath had loaned her handkerchief to.

Before each of them was a blue-frosted cupcake with raspberry-pink sugar crystals being dug into by the forkful.

With the exception of the Turtle, that is, whose plate held only blue-frosted crumbs.

Most of the sugar crystals had stuck to his pointed upper lip.

The White Rabbit stood at a podium on the side of the stage. Once all the judges had sampled the cupcakes, Mr. Rabbit bellowed, “The judges will give their scores for the berry berry cupcakes made by the Vine and Flower Society!”

Three potted plants had been set on the contestants’ stand at the front, holding one another’s leaves.

“Berry good!” yelled the King.

“Berry gone!” yelled the Turtle .

“Could have used some ground pepper on top,” suggested the Duke, to which Catherine traded wary glances with Mary Ann, and Mary Ann mouthed back to her, Pepper?

Mr. Caterpillar removed the hookah from his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke across the table. The other judges coughed politely and leaned away.

Jack, the Knave, threw his fork down beside his cupcake, having tasted only a single bite. “Rubbish,” he muttered.

The potted flowers bobbed their blossoming heads at one another—pleased with the judges’ scores. Three footmen came forward to carry their planters off the stand, while another group of courtiers brought out the next dish—squares of right-side-up pineapple cake from Lady Margaret Mearle.

Margaret took her place on the competitor’s platform and squared her already-rather-rectangular shoulders. From his seat at the judging table, the Duke’s pink-tinged skin turned flaming red. He tried to smile at Margaret around his protruding tusks.

Margaret sneered and turned her chin haughtily away.

The Duke deflated.

Trying to still the fluttering in her stomach, Catherine looked out at the crowd and spotted her mother and father in the front row. They would have no idea that she’d submitted an entry into the contest, and she wasn’t sure how they would react.

Behind her parents sat Peter Peter and his wife, whose pallor was only slightly improved from when Cath had last seen her, though her eyes remained glossy and ill-looking. She was staring hungrily at the case that held the contest desserts.

Cath peeled her gaze away before Sir Peter could notice her, hoping he wouldn’t be suspicious over her spiced pumpkin cake. But why should he? He was by no means the only pumpkin grower in Hearts. He had no reason to suspect she’d stolen one from his patch .

She hoped.

Her eye drifted farther back and landed on Hatta himself.

He loitered at the back of the tent, the ribbon from his top hat whipping in the wind from the beach.

He noticed her, too, and cast a nod in her direction, indicating the macaron hat.

But he turned away before she could return the nod, his whole demeanor changing.

In a moment he’d dropped the broody stance and smiled his rare, friendly smile.

Then Jest was there, too, squeezing Hatta’s shoulder in greeting.

Her heart twinged, still too raw from their recent encounter.

The White Rabbit cleared his throat and Catherine forced her attention back to the stage. “What have the judges to say on Lady Mearle’s entry?”

“Pineappley pleasant!” yelled the King.

“Pleasantly gone!” yelled the Turtle, scraping up the last bits of cake.

“Would be better upside down,” said Jack, tipping back in his chair and staring at the tent’s ceiling.

“Upside down is a fine way to be,” agreed the Caterpillar. He had taken off one pair of house slippers and was pressing the bottoms of his bare feet into his cake. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time upside down myself.”

After a nervous clearing of his throat and a scratching of his ear, the Duke said, “Well—I thought it was splendid. Just the perfect amount of pineapple and… turned upward-downside just the right way, if I do say so myself. Well done, Lady Mearle. I could not have asked for a more satisfying dessert!”

Catherine rolled her eyes, but Margaret had developed a tiny grin as she was ushered away from the contestants’ stand.

“Next!” demanded the White Rabbit.

Cheshire’s floating head appeared, and slices of a tuna tart were presented to the judges. Cath blanched and turned away. Her gaze latched back on to Jest.

He was watching her across the tent .

They both quickly looked down, and she hoped she wasn’t the only one blushing.

“It’s fishy fa-fabulous,” stammered the King, his face looking a little green.

“Fabulously gone!” yelled the Turtle, revealing yet another empty plate.

The other three judges refused to try it, and within minutes of the tart being removed from the table, Cheshire was gobbling down his own creation offstage.

“Next up,” said the Rabbit, “is a spiced pumpkin cake from Lady Catherine Pinkerton of Rock Turtle Cove.”

Mary Ann’s fingers laced through hers, squeezing tight.

“Come with me,” Cath said, pulling her forward. “We’ll win it together.”

They marched between the rows of onlookers to take their spot at the front.

Five slices of the cake were brought to the table.

Cath risked a glance at her parents—her father’s bushy eyebrows were raised in curiosity, while her mother was red-faced with borderline betrayal.

Cath smiled weakly before facing the judges.

The King was beaming at her, and the Turtle’s face, too, lit up in recognition.

“The macaron girl!” he whispered excitedly.

Catherine tipped her macaron hat to him.

The Turtle leaned to the side, bumping into the Knave with his hard shell. “I’ve had her baking before,” he said. “She’s wondrous. And also brave… so very brave.”

Her skin tingled. Though her most prominent memories of the Jabberwock attack revolved around the tragic loss of the Lion, she took a moment to be proud that the Turtle, at least, had been spared. She had helped save his life.

Not noticing her pleasure, or not caring, Jack snorted.

His face turned cherry red. “ Wondrous seems a bit excessive. She’s adequate.

Maybe. On a good day.” His scowl deepened as he peered at Catherine and her hat.

“Don’t know what anyone sees in her, what with her delicious tarts, or her big doe eyes or unnaturally shiny hair.

” He folded his arms over his chest and turned his nose into the air.

“Lady Pinkerton is highly overrated, if you ask me.”

Mr. Rabbit cleared his throat. “We ask that the judges refrain from previous biases on the contestants.”

Ducking his head, the Turtle shoveled his first bite of pumpkin cake into his mouth, but the King was distracted, gazing starry-eyed at Catherine. She shuffled her feet.

Beside him, the Turtle moaned in sweets-filled ecstasy, his bowler hat tipping on his head. The other judges had just picked up their forks when the King pushed back his chair and stood.

“I cannot call myself an unbiased judge, your honorable Mr. Rabbit, our most thoughtful master of ceremonies!” His eyes glistened with barely contained joy.

Cath’s stomach sank. She started to shake her head, but the King continued, “I am full of bias. I am the definition of bias! For this very pumpkin cake set before us was made by the ever-charming Lady Catherine Pinkerton, a girl that is someday to be my bride!”

Ice blew over Catherine’s frame, freezing her feet to the platform, plastering her panicked smile onto her cheeks.

The King looked at her with pride that should not have belonged to him. “So you see, for any contest in which she is a participant, I will say to you, yes! She must be the winner! She wins it all, my heart, my joy!”

Catherine felt a hundred eyes boring into her, but she was petrified, unable to look away from the King.

This was a nightmare.

“What a queen you will make, Lady Pinkerton, cake baker and happiness maker! Oh, oh, somebody write that down! Jest—there you are! Write that down! I shall include it in my next poem!” The King clutched his stomach, overcome with a bevy of giggles.

The crowd stirred. Their whispers flooded the tent. Cath sensed her mother’s overzealous glee. She could imagine how quickly the gossip would spread outward from this little festival on this little beach, like a pebble dropped into a pond.

Mortification washed over her.

I haven’t said yes , she wanted to tell them all. I haven’t accepted him. I’m not his bride, despite what he says.

She had opened her mouth, her body pulsing with denial, when a scream cut through the tent.