The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(52)
“Hatter!” she shrieked. Then, opening her arms, she rushed me, tackling me so hard that I fell off the stool. Weaving a quick bit of magic, I created a soft cushion for us to land on. “Oh my gods, Hatter. You came for me. You came for me. You didn’t forget me. But I forgot you. My Hatter. My beloved. You never gave up on me. You fought, just like you promised.”
Knuckling the tears from her eyes even as my own fell, I could no longer speak. I was crying too hard. I’d lost her. I’d lost our other life. But Alice had saved me, believing I could do the same for her.
And I hadn’t.
“Alice. I did forget you. I’m so sorry. How can you ever forgive me—I can hardly forgive myself. So many years without you, my love. You suffered. You died. You—”
“Hatter.” She shook her head, staring down at me with the type of burning love that rarely existed.
We had the type of love that was built solely for fairy tales. Something so raw, so pure, it could destroy us or save us.
“How can I blame you when I forgot you too? Oh, my darling. And I thought I loved you then. But there could never be another for me. Ever.”
She lowered her lips to mine, pressing down so gently, our tears mingling upon our tongues. But I needed her, and she needed me.
I wasn’t sure when it happened, but suddenly we were up again. And dancing. Our music playing through the breeze again. Together we swayed, bodies pressed tight as we kissed, as we reacquainted ourselves with the touch of each other’s flesh.
The sweet tang of hers. Vanilla and honey and cinnamon. She licked and suckled at the hollow of my throat, causing my skin to prickle and ache.
We continued to dance even as I vanished our clothes with a flick of my wrist. I ran my hands along her curves, sliding them slow and possessively down the soft swell of her arse, marveling in the prickles of her flesh beneath my hot touch.
My skin did the same as she scratched and clawed at my back. We never stopped moving, our magic binding us tighter than ever, drawing us closer. I slipped inside her welcoming warmth and she gasped, arching back and exposing the long line of her swan’s neck and the softly rounded curves of her lush breasts.
Dancing for me as I danced for her. We moved as one. Our music wound through our souls before dancing upon the air in bursts of kaleidoscopic colors.
And when we’d finished, I looked at her and gravely said, “Now, my lovely rose, can we please leave here before I perish?”
Breasts bouncing merrily, she peppered my cheeks and forehead with kisses before saying, “Yes. Please gods, get us out of here.”
Epilogue
Alice
Standing now in the only place I’d ever felt at home, I stared at a world both familiar and foreign.
As promised, Hades had given me back my life and given both Hatter and I stern instructions to never return to the underworld. There’d been great sorrow in his words, and I couldn’t help but worry about the god of death. Silly, I know. But I also knew we owed a very great deal to him.
I only hoped that someday he too might find his own happily-ever-after.
I wish I could say that with the return of my memories, all the sadness that’d blanketed me was gone. But there was a giant hole in my heart still.
For our daughter and our grandchildren. Soon we would journey to find the Huntsman. It was a terrible pain to know that he existed without the great love of his life. And having so recently been void of any and all hope in my own life, I knew he likely fared no better.
I didn’t know what was to come concerning our Chrysalis. But I would never stop hoping and believing that the magic that’d restored my lover to me would also give us back our daughter.
The spiraling tunnel of deepest shadow finally opened, and instantly I knew where we were.
The towering trees on all sides. The pretty blue cottage. The cherry-red door and the creeping vines of ivy and teacup roses crawling like fingers up the sides of the walls. But everything was topsy-turvy now and so very wrong. This was a pretty little English cottage that could be found anywhere on Earth.
Not Wonderland.
Clenching Hatter’s fingers tight, I shook my head. “What’s happened to our home, Hatter?”
There was no magic, no life, no wonder to this place. There were no flutterbys to greet me. No flowers to sing hello. No mangy and sly cat to tease us as he fluttered in and out of existence.
Hatter had kept a choke hold on my hand from the very moment I’d awakened. And he’d still not eased his grip. Using his free hand to loosen his black silk bow tie, he shook his head.
“When you left me, Alice, so too went the magic. I had only a very little left, not nearly enough for the land to thrive as it should have.”
Reaching up for his whisker-roughened cheek, I scratched at it delicately with my long, pointed nails now resembling claws. I was wild magic in this place again. Beneath my feet, I felt the tremors of this world, as though it stirred from a long slumber.
The magic of this place beat inside me. I simply wasn’t sure how to give it back.
“How did you give it to me in the first place, my love?” I asked him.
His gaze was unfocused and morose as he stared into the thick grove of trees that now looked more like stately, mundane maples than the fire maples they’d once been, with leaves gleaming like a burnished flame in the sun. These leaves were simply green and waving docilely in the gentle breeze.