The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(40)
Sticky buns in the shape of rabbits with little bowler hats upon their heads and canes in their furry little paws. Cookies in the shape of an odd-looking feline with sickle-shaped teeth and crystalized sugar eyes that almost seemed to glow. Little tea sandwiches that looked more like a deck of cards. And bottles full of blue glowing liquid with tiny little notes wrapped around the necks reading Drink me.
The teacups too were the most amazing things I’d ever seen. Paper thin and crafted of the finest bone china and painted with scenes I’d never before imagined. One of a swaddled child lying beneath a beam of purest moonlight. Another with a garden of flowers who bore almost humanlike faces.
But the one I liked the most was the teapot itself. The picture painted upon it was of a shadowed man sitting on a throne with lightning cracking behind him and dozens of black birds down around his feet. The lightning in this one was actually moving and dancing like real lightning would. And there was rain driving down around the man’s shoulders. And a scrollwork of black calligraphy kept magically racing across the top and bottom of the pot, moving like a ticker tape.
But the words moved so fast it was impossible for me to see what it read; I’d catch a glimpse of a word here or there but nothing that made any sense.
“Dreary. Tapping. Darkness.”
I frowned, staring harder. I wasn’t sure why it was that I could craft these sorts of things, but I wasn’t all that concerned by it either. Hatter had magic too, so maybe it was a death thing. But I was exceedingly curious about those words. Something about them resonated deeply within me.
But why?
“What is this, Alice?” Hatter asked, forcing me to pull my gaze away from the hypnotic words.
“What?” I frowned, then shook my head, feeling a little like I was coming out of a fog. “The tea? I guess your story inspired me.”
He reached for the cup that bore the image of the child and lifted it high, staring at the painting with a cold, dead look.
And I was right back to feeling terrible about all this. I was seconds away from vanishing it all when I noticed his hand give a slight tremor. I frowned.
“Hatter? Are you—”
Blinking and looking at me almost wildly, he suddenly smiled so wide that I didn’t know what to do. The shock of seeing him do something other than frown was so disconcerting that all I could do was stare at him in silence.
He was beautiful.
My gods, he was breathtaking with the way the sun splayed behind him and the way his dark eyes danced with some secret mirth, and how his full lips twitched as though holding in a secret.
A devil in the guise of an angel... The words pierced my mind, bringing me up short. Because those words hadn’t been ones I’d just thought of—more like they’d always been there but’d once been trapped and now they’d broken free.
“I am thirsty, Alice.” He sniffed. “And this all looks wonderful. Tea?”
He lifted the pot, which was now just a pot. There were no ticker tape words, no driving rain or piercing lightning. Just a meadow scene with a trail of heated steam curling from the spout.
Frowning, I lifted my cup. He poured and began chatting animatedly after that.
“One cube of sugar, am I right?” he asked quickly. And before I could even answer that yes, he was correct, he dropped the cube in, stirred quickly, then proceeded to make his own tea.
He wouldn’t take sugar.
I wasn’t sure how I knew that. But I smiled when he took the first sip of his tea without it.
“Thank you for this,” he said a moment later, reaching for one of the card-shaped tea sandwiches.
“Believe it or not”—I grinned weakly—“I loved doing high tea back in Honolulu. There were teahouses everywhere there, though I tended to prefer the more British style of tea as opposed to the Japanese. I know, that’s heresy considering my ancestry. So let’s keep that a secret.”
He gave a low, rumbling chuckle that made my insides feel funny and tingly. I curled my toes in the soft blades of grass beneath my feet.
The snow had almost entirely melted now. When I’d found him this morning, his skin had been tinged blue, but now the sun was out and butterflies with magnificent wings of orange and black flitted around us.
Flowers and leaves bloomed upon the trees that just yesterday had been nothing more than twigs. The smell of spring was all around, and I was sitting with the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my entire life, drinking tea.
This was pretty much as perfect an afterlife as I could imagine.
“I promise to never tell,” he said with a short laugh.
The first bite of the tea sandwich made me moan. I’d always been a good cook, and magic or not, I’d definitely had a hand in the creation of all of this, including the chicken salad sandwiches with just a hint of tarragon and lemon zest. They were delicious. And judging by the appreciative glance in Hatter’s eyes, he’d agree.
“You’re an excellent cook, Alice,” he said after he’d stuffed a third one down his throat.
I beamed, feeling giddy by his compliment. “Well, I didn’t exactly slave away. But I know flavor profiles. I was a baker in life, like I said. Used to make cupcakes. All sorts of crazy creations, the names of which completely escape me right now, but I had customers lining up around my building to get to them. I used to make the most amazing things. Like tequila-lime frosting with a lavender-based white cake and a candied orange rind in the middle. I mean, it sounds like it shouldn’t work. And yet they always did. It was like magic really.” Realizing I was getting weird about food again, I gave a weak grin and nibbled on the last bit of my sandwich.