The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(53)

“The land knew, Alice. And so it shared its soul with me to give to you. I no more know how to give it back than you do.”

Closing my eyes, I silently commanded the magic back into the land. But it was like my feet were made of iron from which no magic could pass through. I was brimming over with it, but it refused to leave my body.

Wonderland knew what I was doing. The wind whipped suddenly through the trees. The ground shook. And just as my body felt like a supercharged live wire of power, it all stopped. Frowning, I stared at my hands, which now glowed with the golden currents of Wonderland’s soul. With a growl of frustration, I whipped my fingers back and forth, trying to shake it off me like a dog shaking off bathwater, but it was no use. It clung like glue.

Again and again I tried. But always with the same results.

Nothing.

“I don’t know how to do this.” I looked up at him, feeling helpless and hopeless all over again.

Hatter framed my cheek with his palm, and though I knew he didn’t blame me for this, I read the keen faith in his eyes that I not only could, but would, do this. I didn’t want to let him down, ever, but I wasn’t sure I could do it at all.

“I think I might could help with that.”

An unfamiliar male voice thick with an Irish brogue interrupted our conversation, causing both Hatter and me to start and sit up quickly from our perch on the wishing well. We turned swiftly around to stare at a man I’d never seen before.

Dressed in rags, he was an odd-looking creature with longish hair that gleamed almost quicksilver and sharp and radiant steel-blue eyes that burned with intelligence. He was, I had to admit, a very fine-looking male, though a little more on the hairy side than I preferred with a thick but meticulously trimmed beard on his square jawline.

He wasn’t a youth, but he wasn’t old either—he looked to be in his midthirties. And the way he grinned at me—as if he knew a secret—there was an echo of familiarity to it. Like I’d seen it once before. Possibly even many times before. But that wasn’t likely; I could never have forgotten this face.

“Who are you?” Hatter asked, voice steady but deep. And I couldn’t help but lean tighter into his side, clutching the back of his pin-striped jacket with my hand. I’d lost him once before. Call me skittish, but I wasn’t sure I trusted this good-looking lumberjack not to try to rip us apart again.

The lumberjack bowed, the movement both regal and lithe, and I found myself murmuring, “I know you. How do I know you? ”

Again, he grinned, as though he’d heard me, but I knew I’d not said the words above a whisper.

“I am only a friend who wishes to see his world back in balance once more.”

“And you think you know how to do that?” Hatter asked.

Giving a one-shouldered shrug, the lumberjack glanced around. “I’d say I’d be a tad better at it than you are.”

I growled, feeling feral at the thought of anyone denigrating my mate. It was Hatter’s grip on my forearm that kept my feet planted firmly beside his.

A flash of humor blazed through the strange male’s eyes. “Temper, temper, Alice. And yet you always did have one, didn’t you?”

“This is not the same Alice,” my lover said, gently rubbing his thumb in circles upon my elbow.

We’d had a long chat about my dear great-grandmother during our travel home. A dear great-grandmother who we’d mistakenly believed had been kidnapped, or even murdered, so many years ago. To discover she’d actually been in Wonderland all that time, playing house with my mate... I remembered why I hadn’t much liked her in the other life either.

Seemed that no matter which timeline my great-grandmother moved in, she existed only to make others miserable. I was happy Hatter hadn’t killed her when Galeta had given him the chance—I would not want that harridan’s death on his conscience—but I was ecstatic that, for now at least, I would not have to actually see her face-to-face. It would take me at least a hundred years to get over the betrayal of what she’d done to her family and to my mate.

I was no saint by any means. A part of me greatly resented the fact that while I lay dying on Earth, she’d been playing patty-cake with my Hatter. But I found that I could move past it, knowing just how deeply he truly did love me and that all this was the result of a curse neither one of us could have circumvented.

“Never said she was, now did I, O mad one?”

Hatter’s brows furrowed, as did mine.

“What?” I asked. “You remember? But how is that poss—”

Lumberjack held up his hands, stalling my question. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just say I have my ways and leave it at that. Been waitin’ a long time for you to return, True Alice.”

And this time when he nodded at me, a beam of sunlight struck his eyes, causing them to flash liquid silver.

I gasped. “Cheshy?”

Lips curling up wickedly at the corners, he grinned with that familiar grin of his I’d known near all my life. There was now no doubt in my mind that this stranger was none other than the mad, sometimes vanishing feline who’d taunted and teased all of Wonderland so mercilessly for so long.

“Cheshire?” Hatter said quickly, coming to the same conclusion I had. “But—”

“Miss me?” He winked.

“Yes. You’re, you’re—”