The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(13)

Wetting her lips, she finally turned to look at me. Her obvious sadness beat at me as she whispered, “She died. She died this morning, Hatter.”

Like someone had just taken a fist to my gut, I sucked in a sharp breath, grabbing my chest as my heart began palpitating furiously. And I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe her death this morning was tied to the symptoms I’d been feeling all day. I wasn’t even aware tears had gathered in my eyes until I could no longer see anything but blurred shapes.

“What?” I shook my head, because none of this made sense. Snatching my hand away from Danika’s grip, I stood and paced before the couch. I couldn’t understand my visceral reaction over a woman I’d never known, or why Danika spoke of an alternate timeline. “I-I don’t—”

She hopped to her feet, moving into my space and making me pause my cagey pacing. Only once I’d stopped walking did I notice how violently my hands trembled. Danika’s gaze flicked down to them, and her lips tipped into a frown.

“Somewhere inside you, you have to remember her, Hatter.”

“I don’t! I don’t!” I said it, and yet I couldn’t stop the tears, the feeling that someone had just ripped my heart in two. My reaction made no sense. I began to pull at my hair.

“You do!” She snapped right back. “You do, because in that life you traded the Stones of Veritas. She was your true and perfect mate in every way. She was and remains the love of your life. For always. That’s how that magic works. You’ve forgotten her, but you know as well as I that you’re not whole. You feel it. You may not want to acknowledge it, but you know it’s true.”

Her voice was raw, and angry and tears tracked down her cheeks.

“I’m not supposed to do this, Hatter, but I’ve never been known for following the rules.”

Before I knew what she was about, she clasped my hands in an unforgiving and punishing grip and placed them none too gently against her temples. Visions suddenly exploded in my mind.

Lives. Peoples. Kingdom.

But different. So very, very different.

Wonderland was a swirl of chaotic and fantastical images. Trees with faces. Flowers that sang. Animals that spoke.

And at the heart of it was me. And her.

Alice.

A gothic rose with her sharp widow’s peak and exotic, cat-shaped eyes. Dressed in burgundy crushed-velvet gowns, with a jaunty cap upon her lovely head and lace-trimmed black gloves.

The images gathered into a tight helix, becoming so real that I felt myself falling into them, forgetting that what I witnessed couldn’t possibly be real, because it felt real. Smelled real.

For a moment I was watching myself with an Alice who was and wasn’t my Alice, and then I was him.

In his head, staring down into the lovely eyes of the female I’d known for so long but whom I didn’t know at all.

She smiled. “You’re doing it again, my love.”

I frowned. “Doing what?”

How was this happening? How was I here? How was I feeling the slow caress of her hands running down my biceps, feeling the curl of heat lapping against my own? Feeling the thrum of such raw power that I’d not felt ever since falling into Wonderland what felt like a lifetime ago?

Alice snuggled into me, gripping my vest in her small hands and tugging me down until our faces were so close I tasted the wash of her cinnamon and vanilla lick against my lips.

My heart trembled.

“Looking at me like you’re falling in love with me all over again.”

I blinked, and my body moved. Not away from her, but toward her, drawn like a magnet to her iron shavings. And it was as normal as breathing to plant my hand upon her lower back, draw her into my side, press us so close no air existed between the contact points.

She shivered. And I shook my head with wonder. Awe. I knew this wasn’t my Alice, and yet... And yet she was.

My eyes caressed the lines of the face I knew so well. The softly rounded jawline. The slashing cheekbones and Cupid’s bow lip. My pulse fluttered as my fingers slid beneath her tapered corset and began to tap a sonnet against her deliciously warm, golden-brown skin.

Laugh lines that’d never been there before peeked out at me as her lips tipped into a sultry grin. And I knew this Alice smiled at me often, unlike the other who rarely laughed or found pleasure in much of anything.

“Maybe I am,” I murmured. “Maybe I’m finally seeing you, Alice.”

Her laughter was like the tinkle of bells. “And so you always say. How did I get to be so lucky, my beautiful madness?”

My brows gathered. But then her finger was there, smoothing out the worry creasing them.

“I would never see you frown, Hatter. It pains me.”

Blinking back heat from my eyes, I snatched her fingers into mine and kissed her knuckles tenderly. I couldn’t understand my instant bond to her, but this was right. The pain that’d torn me up inside was now gone. And for the first time, I could take a breath free of pain.

I’d never experienced this before in my life, but being with this Alice made me feel whole.

I didn’t think. Simply reacted. Leaning down, I went to kiss her. To mark myself upon her somehow, but then I was ripped free of the image. Yanked out of the body holding hers, and though I roared at the loss of her, though I tried to scrabble my way back into her arms, my fight was in vain.