The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(3)
“I do, my Alice. I always have.”
I nodded, biting my lower lip. “I know. We have only minutes, my dark heart. I wish we had more time, but we don’t. Please hurry.”
Without another word, he did as I asked. Closing his eyes, Hatter whispered words beneath his breath, and as he did coils of glittering gold wound out of his chest like dazzling serpents. Those same serpents shoved instantly through my chest, and I sucked in a sharp breath as I felt the pressure and fullness of his power wind rapidly down my soul. Tighter. Tighter. And tighter still until I felt I would drown from it.
The final flick of a serpent’s tail exiting his chest and entering my own rocketed through me, and then there was silence. I clutched my hand to my breast. The heaviness of that magic still coiling and slinking inside me made me feel full, but also much less frantic. We could not exist without the other; he would find me again. I knew it.
Wonderland had always been linked to me from the moment Hatter had declared me his own, but now I felt the pull and life of it. Felt the soul of its madness beat like bats’ wings within me. That wonderfully strange magic all its own, where up wasn’t always up and the sky was sometimes beneath you.
The pitter-patter of insects marched like a drone in the back of my mind; animals slinked, slithered, and crawled; and humans whispered nonsense among themselves. I was tied to it at all and all of it tied to me. And for a moment I was in awe of the absolute power my mate had kept protected within him. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes, and I felt a fullness of love for Hatter I’d not known was possible before.
He was so bloody amazing, and I wasn’t sure I could survive the loss of him.
Hatter clenched my fingers tight. “You have nearly all my magic now, Alice. Anything I possess now is there to find you again. But are you sure? Is this truly—”
And then the earth shook and trembled. The skies above our gardens turned bloody and the clouds black, and on the wind whispered a gathering roll of dark magick.
Tears burned my throat as I shook my head, desperate to deny what I knew came next. We held each other tight, and the very last words I whispered to him were these: “Let us always meet each other with a smile. For a smile is the beginning of love...”
Then we kissed until the curse ripped us out of each other’s arms.
Chapter 3
Galeta
Present Day
Syrith gripped my hand tight as I stood at the head of the long polished mahogany table in his massive royal estate. I hung my head to my chest, breathing deeply, shaken to my core by a mixture of overwhelming exhaustion and a runoff of several days’ worth of adrenaline.
It’d taken days to help the rest of the assembled crowd get over their shock, not to mention it hadn’t been easy tracking down the other queens in the game. When the magic had been released, everyone still inside the games had been scattered to the four corners of the universe.
It’d become apparent to me after the shock had worn off that the games had been so much more than a place to find love matches. Each of us had our strengths. For Fiera it’d been the elemental regions of Olympus. Considering that Calypso no longer recognized any of us, let alone her best friend of over five centuries, Aphrodite, our only hope of reaching her was through her sister.
Though the sisters weren’t exactly on the friendliest terms, and I was fairly certain that had Fiera been anything other than an elemental herself, going to her sister might have resulted in her demise. But I’d had no choice but to assign her the unenviable task of forcing Calypso to reshape into maiden form and try to remember all she’d lost.
Fiera, and the mate she’d been assigned to—but whom she seemed to have about as much chemistry with as a snoring sloth—had left only an hour ago. The love games had been a giant farce for Fiera, and that fact was only impressing itself upon me now. That goddess had had a hand in nearly every one of the five queens stories, and I had to wonder if her only purpose for being in the games in the first place had been for what came after the games.
Somehow I didn’t believe the Creator was that shortsighted. And though Fiera’s story intrigued me, there wasn’t time to dwell on it right now. Aphrodite had left with Fiera and her companion as well. The goddess of love was determined to mend Calypso and Hades, and since Calypso had tried to drown and curse her as she had Fable, Dite had instead decided to turn her attention to the Lord of the Underworld.
That assignment, however, was only marginally better. Even in the land of the living, rumors stirred of his terrible temper and foul mood. The Hades before the boom and the Hades after were two completely different men. Before, he’d been standoffish but amiable; now he wanted no company other than his dead and his bleak, cold winters.
The other queen—Tymanon—I would task with speaking to the three Fates. Much harder a journey than it might sound. The Fates weren’t known to be the most kindly of the pantheon. But they had answers to questions I desperately needed.
Rumpelstiltskin had left four days ago, frenzied, furious, and determined to get Gerard and Betty back together again come hell or high water. I rather worried there might be blood on his hands before it was all said and done. He was as determined a fellow as any I’d ever encountered, and having had my own run-ins with Rumpel in times past, I knew that once set on a task, he’d be unswerving in his dedication to make it so.