The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(20)

Her glowing blue form moved on without looking back at me once. Tears dripped steadily down both her cheeks as she floated away.

And for the first time in a long time, I began to wonder. Wonder at her tale. At her story. Who she’d been in this life and the one before it.

Alice Hu was gone, and I was once again alone with my thoughts and solitude.

I did not want to believe Aphrodite, and yet I could not seem to forget the haunting sadness that crushed Alice’s small spirit to the point that I still tasted the tangy breadth and weight of her agony.

*

Hatter

“Why can I not go to her!” I growled, glaring hotly at both Danika and Galeta as they sat down to my table for a spot of tea and crumpets. “We sit here, doing nothing. Day in and day out, and you both just—”

Danika frowned, curling her fingers around her delicate bone china teacup. But Galeta shoved to her feet, staring fixedly at me.

“There is nothing we can do right now, Hatter. Not until, or even unless, Hades decides to allow you entrance into his realm. Only the dead may pass through.”

Stopping my pacing, I bit out, “Then kill me.”

Danika gasped, hands shaking so violently tea slopped over the rim of her cup.

I curled my nose. “I don’t bloody care. But I need to go to her. I need—”

“You know that’s not how this works. Hades saved her because he opted to. But there is nothing saying he’d do the same for you. You and she are not of his world, and your soul... Only the Creator knows where you’d wind up. No. We wait. You wait.” Galeta’s words were sharp and snappy, and I glowered at her.

My days were getting harder, but the nights were the worst for me. In the week since learning of Alice’s fate, I’d been plagued with nightmares, continued memories of a life together I hardly remembered at all except in the deepest recesses of my subconscious.

Desperation clawed at me, made me reckless and impatient and foolish. Aphrodite had come to us days ago with astonishment and hope brimming in her ice-blue eyes; Hades had saved Alice after all. Tears had even fallen down her cheeks, but I suspected those tears had nothing to do with Alice or me.

Either way, it didn’t matter. All that did was that Alice was safe. For now.

Her obvious shock at that revelation had shaken me to my core. Rather than being relieved by it though, I’d grown frantic instead. What if the Lord of the Underworld changed his mind and decided to send her back? What if he never allowed me to go to her? What if—

“You’ve gone a lifetime without her, Hatter,” Danika’s gentle voice cajoled. “We’re so very close now. Surely you can wait a few more days?”

Stopping my pacing, I shook my head, not even sure what the words on my tongue were at the moment. All I knew was I felt myself sinking into a quagmire of depression the likes of which I’d never known.

Half the time my thoughts were scattered, like dandelion fluff blowing in the winds. Incoherent and nonsensical. And though my dreams revealed to me the man I once was, I knew what I felt now, and it was nothing like the madness that’d afflicted me in the other life.

Then I’d been able to manage the madness by the constant influx of Alices into my life. But I knew my Alice now. She was my beacon. My tower. My madness would only continue to grow and consume me, eventually obliterating me completely without her to ground me in the present.

I wasn’t sure if I’d regained all my memories of her yet, but I recalled the very last one, where I’d given her nearly all my magic. Though I’d not understood why, I’d trusted her completely. But the giving had left me barely enough to be able to find her in this new life.

Which might have been enough, had I not given so much of my reserves to the other Alice. Every day I grew weaker, and I knew there’d come a point where I’d no longer have enough in me to find my Alice again.

That thought skated like black ice through my veins, turned my blood to crystal and made me feel dead inside. There was a tiny string in my soul, a golden thread that wound through her and me.

I felt it now.

Felt it the moment she’d died.

But the presence was soft, barely a whisper of sound. I couldn’t lose Alice.

Not again.

If Hades didn’t agree to let me in soon, I’d do something insane. I knew I would. I had to hang on; it was the only way. But the madness pressed in on all sides, and I knew I could not last long without her.

Crossing my hands behind my back, I marched to and fro as nonsensical words beat at my skull. Like a great rushing geyser of water caught behind a fracturing dam, the pressure of it consumed me. Opening my mouth, I gave the words life.

“It was many and many a year ago, In a Kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by me.”

I caught Galeta and Danika sharing a worried frown from the corner of my eye. But I could no more stop the words than I could stop the sun from rising in the morning. And for a moment, while I recited that poem, I could breathe.





Chapter 8


Alice


I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here.

The days just rolled and blended into each other. It’d been a shock when Hades, Lord of the Underworld—and total myth—had reached into the darkness I’d been floating in and snatched me out of the velvet embrace of death.