The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(45)

Leonard.

As if he’d heard his name called, the mouse gave me one bobbing nod before scampering back down his hole. And then just like that, all the movement ceased. The plants were just plants again, the miniatures nothing but pretty works of art. And the mouse was looking for any crumbs of food.

I’d been shown a vision, and it only strengthened my resolve to do this. Though I knew the sacrifice I made, it was worth it if only to see Wonderland restored to the magical place I knew it could be again.

I could only use the magic of true love once.

My heart ached, knowing that as I did this, I gave up any chance to prove to Jericho who I really was. But a mother’s love was deep and unconditional, and it was all I had to give.

And whispering into that golden orb’s pulsing magical soul, I told it to go to him. The orb would have to battle through the darkness to get there. But it was a magic that not even Hades could deny. I only hoped that it arrived in time.

And when it bobbed away from me, beginning its journey toward the underworld, I turned my eyes briefly up to the moon and whispered a heartfelt “I’m sorry, my beloved. Forgive me for what I’ve done.”

*

Alice

Such unbearable sadness beat at me that it felt like a millstone tied to my neck, dragging and pulling me under. Staring into the deepest night from high above the clouds, I was embraced by velvety twilight and the silvery glow of millions of stars. And I couldn’t help but imagine that Hatter would probably like it here. He seemed like the type who lived for the strange and unusual. I smiled wistfully and looked down toward my left. To where I knew he would be sheltered within a thick grove of trees.

Even now I was aware of him.

And thanks to the dreams, I was beginning to suspect there was so much more to his story than what he was telling me.

Standing, I wiped at the back of my pants, dusting off broken bits of twig and moss.

Why did I have magic?

That question would answer everything, I knew it. I’d lived in a land of no magic. Mundane. Boring. Sameness. There’d been sleight of hand, movie magic, and maybe even the occasional miracle.

But the real stuff, like transforming myself into a bird or creating a flower from nothing, that simply didn’t happen. Not in my world.

I’d winged over much of Elysium today, studying the spirits below me. Looking for any trace, any sign, of that kind of magic.

And I’d not found it.

I found ladies dancing. Not upon clouds or streamers of gold, but upon grassy, verdant knolls. Some men fought with swords, laughing and jesting as they drank tankards of ale and sang bar songs that seemed universal no matter what part of the world you’d come from.

But I hadn’t seen anyone transform into something like me. I hadn’t seen any other parts of Elysium change and alter as they often did around me. There was no snowfall or the roll of wind and thunder, just perpetual sunshine and blue skies.

People seemed happy and perfectly, boringly normal.

Clutching at my breast, I stared at the copse of trees hiding him. And in that moment I did not think of him as Hatter, but as “mine.”

Click.

Click.

Click.

I gasped, rocking suddenly back on my heels as though pushed by a giant’s hand, because suddenly a great swell of magic had just steamrolled through me. And I remembered why I’d gone to the river.

To forget him.

Because he’d betrayed me.

Images bombarded me then. Lying in that hospital bed, crying out for him. Believing myself mad and sick in the head.

“He never came.”

I sucked in a sharp, trembling breath and could not fight the tears anymore. They came in torrents.

I didn’t know how it was that I could remember—Lethe was supposed to have stripped me of it all—and yet I did.

With an angry and sharp cry, I jumped out of that nest, transforming mid-fall into my powerful alter ego, and winged toward him, crying out as I went, letting all the world hear my rage and sorrow.

I landed several wing strokes later, dropping with a jarring thud to the ground, not at all trying to hide my arrival, and stared at him through angry, beady eyes.

He looked up, weariness etched on every line of his face, and he did not get up, but there was a knowing look in his gaze that told me he knew I’d come awake.

Shifting, I stared at him coldly.

And time stretched her infinite fingers between us. The silence grew foreboding and fraught with tension. And I didn’t know what to say to him anymore. He’d lied to me.

None of that story he’d shown me had been real. True.

How could it have been?

Unless it hadn’t involved me at all and he really had had a great love he’d come to the underworld to look for.

That thought snatched the breath right out of me and caused my knees to suddenly buckle beneath me. I landed in a heap, digging my fingers into the ground and shaking my head as his image turned into a wavering mirage of tears.

“Why?” I croaked, hating to see the look of anguish in his eyes even as I cursed him for not coming to me when I’d still been alive.

I knew my reaction was irrational, but I couldn’t understand or process how it was that a man I’d almost come to believe couldn’t be anything other than myth now sat before me.

“Alice, I—”

And I couldn’t help my response to the sound of my name falling off his lips. Lashes fluttering, I cocked my head as my heart squeezed like a vise inside me.