The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(4)

It’d taken him over a millennia to find the cure for his son in the alternate time; I did not doubt he’d give much more than that to regain his beloved Carrots. And if he had to kill a few humans along the way to see it happen... Rumpel was no villain, but he was certainly no hero either. He existed in a shady gray realm somewhere between the two. His conscience for the past few centuries had been Shayera. Without her, I feared what he might get up to. Unfortunately, I could do nothing to stop that particular train wreck.

I had far more pressing matters to attend to.

Baba Yaga and her mate had returned, albeit quite reluctantly and with the words that they’d remain only so long as absolutely necessary. As the most powerful witch in all of Kingdom, Baba had enchanted the Hearts Castle so that it no longer would be affected by chaos magic of any sort. She and her family had left only this morning, promising to do the same for the rest of Kingdom.

Baba had also shared one important fact she’d learned with me.

Kingdom and Earth were on different timelines now. But not entirely either. One of the first things I’d done upon discovering a changed Kingdom was to try to track down as many of the happily-ever-afters either Danika or I were responsible for.

My list had been piteously short—only two couples—and had occurred more toward the beginning of my tenure as godmother thousands of years ago. I’d discovered that both parties had died of natural causes long, long ago. Nothing I could do for either of them now. But once I’d turned my eye toward Danika’s couples, I began to notice the trend.

Some were still together. But most weren’t.

Jinni and Paz’s bloodline was, surprisingly enough, well and whole. In fact, they had great-great-great-several-dozen-times-removed-grandchildren some living in Kingdom, but a great many had also returned to Earth to find their own happily-ever-afters. However, as I’d first suspected after that vision of Hook brandishing his sword at me back in the mirror realm, I could find no trace of Hook and Trishelle’s timeline on Earth or in Kingdom.

Though there was a rumor that Trishelle did in fact exist in Earth. There’d been a very fleeting sighting that gave us hope. Rumpel had been searching the realm for Betty and believed he’d spotted the blonde bombshell, though he’d cautioned that he could not be certain either since she’d appeared much changed.

It would have been lovely if the dark king had gone after both women, but the devil was consumed only with returning his Shayera to him, and to rot with anyone else. He’d gone after Betty, to kidnap her and bring her back to Kingdom whether she wanted to go or not.

Perish the thought and goddess save her, but I’d never seen that devil so determined to reset his happily-ever-after.

Knowing that Betty existed, and possibly so did Trishelle, gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d find the right Alice too. And after Alice, then I’d sort out the messy Hook and Trishelle affair. I’d cast a quick net for the pirate king earlier in the week and had yet to find him. But the Jolly Roger could travel between planes of reality, and I hoped with all my might that’s where he was now. The very last thing I needed was to have yet another couple missing like I did with Wolf and his Red. Which worried me exceedingly because if they were gone, or had simply never been, then the Piper’s mate would be vanished and the poor girl trapped inside that strange maze all alone.

I glanced at Danika Moon from the corner of my eye. She was a Moon no longer— she and Jericho had never reconciled in this new world, though she was no longer cursed in form either. I knew theirs was a story I’d need to get around to eventually; I simply had no time at present.

In the days we’d been plotting how to save Kingdom, Danika had spoken very little, barely even budging from her seat at the opposite end of the massive table. She didn’t eat. Hardly blinked. And only breathed when required.

Sadness seemed like it’d been permanently etched on her pretty face. Within days she’d appeared to age many lifetimes. Her skin was pale, her luscious nut-brown hair now dull and hanging limply over her shoulder. Even her normally dazzling and sparkling spider-silk gown looked as though it’d seen better days.

The only true movement out of her was the constant shifting of her eyes. When she’d first arrived, she’d sobbed, murmuring constantly about the warring timelines in her head.

I suspected many of my answers could be found trapped inside her; the only problem was getting Danika to snap out of her stupor. I could easily use my dark magick to pull the answers out of her mind, but those kinds of spells could be deadly to a mind as fractured as hers currently seemed to be. If I mucked around in there too much, I could completely shatter her tenuous grip on reality.

I frowned, feeling hopeless and lost. I had, of course, reached out to the Creator, hoping against hope that maybe It would deign to answer me now that my faculties had been restored. But so far there’d been nothing but heavy silence. Though I still felt Its eyes upon me, I also knew It would not answer me.

Not yet anyway. Impatience beat at my chest. The one question I needed answered more than any other was, why? Why did some couples get to keep their happily-ever-afters while others didn’t?

But that was a riddle I had no answer for. Why had Calypso and Hades been torn apart but none of the other dark queens? Why had Jinni and Paz remained while all the rest had been thrown into chaos? What was the common thread here?

The harder I pondered, the more confused I became, and the more confused I became, the harder and harder it became not to sink into my own depression. Wasn’t I supposed to be Pink the Benevolent? Wasn’t that my fate, my destiny?