The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(31)

“No!” I roared, finally able to move, finally able to reason as she slipped over the edge. My vision turned hazy and my heart beat so hard I could taste the pulse of it on the back of my tongue. I raced to the drop, sure in the knowledge that I would see her beautiful body twisted and broken on the rocks below.

But instead I saw her transform mid-fall into the stunning visage of an ice bird, feathers a pale blue, wings thick with hoarfrost and rime, and glowing a shade of pearlescent white, like freshly fallen snow on a sunny winter morning.

The world danced with frosty chaos, and her melancholy song lingered upon the winds, reaching out to me and plucking at my heartstrings. I did not realize I cried until I could no longer make out the sights around me. I watched her wing away from me, and I dropped to my knees, reaching out my hand to her, silently pleading she return.

But Alice left me alone in the cold, wintery embrace of the world she’d crafted.





Chapter 11


Alice


I do not know how I turned into that bird, but now I could turn into other things too. I drifted between trees, nothing now but a raven with wings of jeweled ebony, and I watched him.

The stranger who’d sworn he’d known me, the one who’d come after me. Who’d looked upon me with love, longing, ferocity, and desperation. There’d been madness burning in his dark gaze. And I’d felt something inside me snap. Pull and ache. I did not want to know him, and yet I could not ignore him.

I’d winged away only an hour, then I’d promptly returned to him in the guise of a field mouse, watching as he sat in the snow, staring straight ahead in that wintery landscape with a bleakness of gaze that matched the ferocity of the storm surrounding him.

He was a spirit lost.

Whoever this man was, I did not know him. He was wrong about that. And yet... I could not forget him either. I’d flirted with the idea of returning to Lethe, just for a moment, just to dip my finger in its cold, cold waters, but I’d just as quickly dismissed the idea.

I liked watching him.

He was brooding.

Silent.

And seemed so lost that it tore my heart in two.

It’d been only hours since he’d attacked me, and I warred with my instinct to go to him or run away. I’d allowed no spirit close to me, only Amara, and she only briefly.

But something about this male intrigued me despite myself.

“I know you watch me,” he said, voice deep and scratchy and guttural, and my neck feathers ruffled with shock.

I snapped my beak several times back at him. How could he have possibly known that?

“I will not bother you again, spirit,” he said, voice practically monotone as he continued to stare straight ahead. The wind whispered through his hair, riffling the dark strands. “I would not do that to you.”

He had not lifted his voice, but somehow the strength of it rang all around me.

Swallowing, I knew I had to choose one of two options. Leave. Or stay.

But why did I want to stay? He was handsome, to be sure. In a broody, dark kind of way. There was something about him, something I found oddly appealing. But also terrifying.

My heart beat erratically at the sight of him, and my body ached. Deep down, so deep I wasn’t even sure where the ache was, only that it was there.

But why?

Why?

“You were not who I thought you were, female. Please forgive me for my transgression against you. I will leave now.”

And it was only when he reached down to do exactly that, that I made my decision.

Drawing from that endless wellspring of something powerful inside me, I transformed again. To my human form. But this time I did away with the hospital gown, opting for a pair of comfy jeans and a pale pink sweater. Then, squaring my shoulders, I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind my grove of trees.

*

Hatter

I thought seeing her again might be easier, but it wasn’t. It was infinitely harder. She did not wear the fanciful gowns I’d grown accustomed to seeing the past month in the moving images of her, but she’d never looked more beautiful to me.

I drank in the sight of her like a drowning man.

She was dressed in the mundane clothes of her world. But she could have been wearing a potato sack and nothing else, and I’d still have thought her the most beautiful creature I’d ever beheld.

Her skin was the same honeyed shade I remembered adoring in the other life. That alluring widow’s peak of hers drew a wistful smile from me. Once I’d had the honor of being able to kiss the tip of my finger before pressing down upon it. It seemed to have been one of my favorite forms of expressing my love for her.

Her lips were supple, full, and tempting, her eyes that enticing shade of melted chocolate that’d so infatuated me right from the very beginning. Even before I’d been willing to admit to myself just how very much I’d fallen under her spell from the moment I’d seen her drop to the cold, hard ground in Wonderland.

Then she’d been wearing a sexy pair of nightclothes, a cami and shorts with vivid drawings of her Earth’s version of Alice in Wonderland upon it. She’d also worn a smile, one so sultry and unwittingly hypnotic that I’d instantly fallen under her spell.

I’d grown angry at her for it too, treating her roughly, imagining that she was just as conniving as her great-grandmother. Only there’d been no artifice in Alice, not then and not now.