The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(2)

I’d come to this strange, madcap world so long ago that my memories of Earth were vague, wispy recollections. This place, this strangely glorious place, was my home. And the thought of my dream ever coming true, it terrified me. Caused my heart to race, my pulse to throb on the back of my tongue, fear to grip me in its icy claws.

Hatter was beside me in a minute, gripping my shoulders. In moments the lights flickered on, but our bed was a garden and our lights the soft blue glow of luminous mushroom caps.

A cool breeze licked at my body, cooling my heated flesh instantly. I shivered, heart still racing violently inside my chest.

He gripped my shoulders in his strong, capable hands, turning me to face him, those devilish eyes of his so beautiful even in their worry. “Again?” he asked roughly, rubbing my shoulder with his thumb.

I trembled, sliding my eyes shut as I shook my head. “Something’s coming, Hatter. Something awful. Something that will destroy us. I feel it. I know it. I—”

“I believe you,” he said instantly, then dragged me against his chest and hugged me tight as my fingers dug into his nude back. His nose was in my hair, inhaling my scent.

It’s what he did when he was nervous. And I knew he was, because every muscle in his body trembled.

For the past three weeks, I’d suffered terrible nightmares. And at first I’d shrugged them off as merely the by-product of an overactive imagination—the madness of Wonderland, something I was normally immune to.

Then I’d begun to worry that even in Kingdom, maybe somehow my cancer had come back and was affecting me. But Hatter had taken me to the Caterpillar, and she’d been able to spy inside my brain, proclaiming me as cured as the Hatter himself. A little mad, but all the more wonderful for it.

Now though... The dreams had shifted.

I could taste them. Feel them.

Feel Hatter being ripped from me. Feel the loss of our daughter and grandchildren. Everything that made me, me and him, him—gone in an instant.

My heart shattered.

My soul screamed.

My hands shook as I buried my face in his chest. I’d rarely been prone to premonitions, but with my having been a part of this realm so long now, the madness and magic had leached into me as surely as it’d leached into my mate. Wonderland was preparing me. Wonderland was sharing its secret with me: something terrible this way came.

Feeling as though I might puke, I shivered. “This is real, Hatter. I don’t know how I know this. Or why I know this, but I feel almost as though Wonderland is trying to warn us.”

Pulling back just enough so that he could peer into my eyes, he looked at me intently. “Wonderland has bonded to you, my heartbeat. If you say this is an omen, then I have no choice but to believe.”

The canopy of leaves that created our four-poster bed began to thicken and swell, the leaves themselves broadening, growing larger than our own bodies, and crawling closer to us as though they meant to encase us.

But I did not sense malice from the magic, rather as though Wonderland were in the beginnings of birthing pains and trying to shield us from the worst of it.

“What do we do, Alice?” he asked, and my heart swelled with agony and also love for him.

No other man could hear what I’d just told him and believe so easily. But Hatter never doubted me. Always I felt his love, his deep devotion to me. We were lovers, but we were so much more than that. We were one soul. One heart. He was me, and I was him. It’s how we’d always been.

We were two parts of the same whole. I wasn’t me without him, and the same went for him. I was the sun to his moon. The night to his day. The very first whisper of breath to new life and the very final one to death. We could not exist whole without the other. Especially after we’d bonded souls in a very literal sense with the Stones of Veritas. If anything ever happened to my Hatter, I would feel it, and the same went for him.

Yes, it was intense. But that’s who we were. Who we’d always been.

I blinked, swallowing back the pain as I forced myself to speak the nightmare to life. “You leave me, Hatter. And I leave you. Separated by time and distance.”

He shook his head in denial, but I felt the sands of time slipping through the hourglass of our lives. We were down to the final grains, and I had to make him strong for us both.

“Where I go, you will not follow. I do not know where I’ll wind up, but I need you to find me. Never stop searching for me, Hatter. Make me remember you. And know that no matter what I may say or do in that new life, very deep down in a hidden recess of my soul, I am there and I am fighting and I will come back to you.”

“Alice!” He shook, jumping to his knees as his hands dug into my biceps almost painfully, his eyes wild and alive with panic, his dark, shaggy hair hanging long upon his shoulders.

I had to touch him. One final time. Frame his beloved face. I loved this man with all my dark soul. “Hatter, you must give me the seed of your power. It’s the only way.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head as I recalled the vision.

I didn’t understand any of this; all I knew was I had to obey. Before we lost each other forever. If I didn’t do this, if he didn’t do this, there was no saving either one of us. We’d be separated eternally.

I placed my fist gently against the beat of his heart, pleading silently with my eyes for him to trust me.