‘I am not going to be the Queen!’ she yelled, and relished a spark of pride when the Hatter jumped at her raised voice. She continued with chilling composure, ‘The King has not proposed, but should he, I have every intention of rejecting him.’

He gawked at her, disbelief written sharp across his features. ‘I don’t believe that.’

‘Believe what you will, but stop changing the subject. These hats – Mary Ann’s bonnet makes her capable of bigger dreams, and Margaret was certainly changed when she was wearing that rose, and now the Turtle . . . that darling Turtle . . .’

‘The Mock Turtle, you mean. Call him what he is.’

‘He was a real turtle before he put on that!’ She gestured to the bowler hat. ‘How can you be so callous? If this was your doing—’

‘The hat had nothing to do with his transformation. I only have it because he came to me this morning asking for my help. I tried my best to assist him, but he was beyond my reach. Wretched creature he’s become, but not yet desperate enough.’

‘You were going to give him a different hat to change him back?’

He waved his arm through the air. ‘You misunderstand completely, but it’s no business of yours.’

‘But your hats do change people. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve felt it. They’re dangerous, Hatta. You have to stop!’

Their gazes warred with each other, a heady silence punctuated with the drum of Cath’s heartbeat.

Hatta looked away first. Rounding back to his seat, he collapsed into it and folded his hands over his stomach. ‘My hats are not dangerous, and I will not have you spreading such damning rumours.’ His lips thinned. ‘But they are special. They are unique from any other hats found in the great Kingdom of Hearts, and as I told you before, I come from a long line of very fine hatters.’

‘I’m not interested in solicitations.’

‘You asked a question. I’m answering it.’

‘I wish you would do it in fewer words.’

He smirked. ‘Yes. Fine. They change people. They improve them. But that does not mean this hat was at fault for the Mock Turtle. Satisfied?’

‘Not at all. How are you doing it?’

‘I don’t do anything. I only make my creations from . . . unique materials.’

‘Unique in what way?’

He studied her for a long time and she began to doubt he would answer the question, before he finally said, ‘The materials with which my hats are crafted all come from the lands of the Red and White Queens.’

A shiver skittered down her back. ‘Of course. You’re from Chess, like Jest and Raven.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘He told you that?’

‘Yes. Because he trusts me.’ Her voice had an edge, and she could see the jolt of annoyance that flashed over Hatta’s features.

His jaw tightened, but he seemed to make the conscious decision to not be riled. He leaned back and picked some lint from his waistcoat. ‘I’m sure he had his reasons for telling you as much. But I am from Hearts originally. Grew up in my father’s hat shop before his untimely end encouraged me to search for my fate elsewhere, lest a similar fate find me. I found that fate in Chess.’

‘But . . . how? How did you find it?’

He shrugged. ‘A maze, a looking glass, a well . . . an abundance of desperation. It’s not all that important. What is important is that my journey taught me how I could avoid the madness that’s plagued my ancestors, and also how I could become the greatest hatter who has ever lived, on either side of the Looking Glass.’

He examined his nails. ‘I met Jest there, and he introduced me to the White King and Haigha. I was poor and alone, but the King granted me a pawnship, and it was determined that Haigha and I would become his royal messengers, skirting the edges of the battlefield to run correspondence between the Red and White Queendoms. On our travels I collected materials to be turned into hats for the Queen upon my return. I gathered pebbles and flowers and bones and I began to develop my reputation. Not just as a pawn or a messenger, but a hatter. The finest of hatters.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Cath. ‘You went there to escape the fate of your father, so you wouldn’t go mad. Why become a hatter again?’

He held up a finger. ‘That is the trick of it. You see, Time works differently in Chess.’ He pulled out his pocket watch and let it dangle like a pendulum over his desk. ‘Sometimes he moves forward and sometimes he moves backward, sometimes he goes fast or slow and sometimes he pauses altogether. But as long as I keep moving, as long as I am always moving in the opposite direction from Time, he can never find me, and I can never meet my fate.’

His voice had a strange cadence to it, almost harmonizing with the quiet tick-ticking of the watch, and Cath wondered again if he was already mad, despite what he said.

She swallowed back these thoughts, determined to hear his story to the end. ‘But now you’ve come back to Hearts.’

‘So I have.’ He snapped his fist around the watch and dropped it back into his pocket. ‘Jest and Raven required a guide to help them across the Looking Glass, and the King and Queen needed a messenger to report back on their . . .’ He hesitated.

‘Mission,’ Cath supplied. ‘Jest told me they’re on a mission to stop a war.’

His face turned briefly sour again. ‘And did he tell you what the mission is?’