The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(7)

My fingers shook when I grabbed her hand, squeezing down gently, adding just enough pressure to keep her eyes trained and focused on my own.

“Now listen to me carefully, moon flower”—I would never cease in trying to remind Danika of just who she once was, and the fae trembled—“I have no link to Hatter, Hook, Jinni, Wolf, or even Gerard. Because they belonged to you.”

The only reason Rumpel was able to trace Betty was because of his own link to their daughter. Shayera no longer existed, she’d never been born, and yet the magic that’d bound their souls still burned as bright as a flame within him.

I was counting on that bond to still exist within the hearts of each of the fractured fairy tales. Magic was such a strange and maddening thing sometimes.

Danika squeezed her eyes shut. “It hurts, Galeta. Hurts to remember. And when I try”—she whimpered, voice reed thin and painful to hear—“my head feels as though it might explode. All these memories tumbling in one after another. What was. What isn’t. I can hardly think clearly.”

Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes, and my jaw wobbled. Fighting back my own tears, I knuckled the shimmering wetness from her lashes and nodded.

“I know, dear, but this is very, very important. Wonderland isn’t as it once was.”

At that, her eyes shot open and a look of impending doom overtook her delicate features. “What? But... but Hatter lives.”

I closed my eyes, recalling my travels through the strange and twisted land, now twisted no more. Flutterbys did not fly. Spoon-billed storks now no longer had a spoon as a bill but an actual beak. The trees did not burst with sweets and branches of slithering ring-tailed snakes. And there were no singing flowers to fill the night with song.

The land withered without its magic, turning into a forest full of the everyday, ordinary dreariness of life. Something had happened to Hatter before the rift, other than the obvious loss of his true Alice. Before the curse had happened, he’d lost his magic. It was the only thing that made sense, because if he’d retained it, the power of Wonderland should still beat strongly.

Where that magic was, I did not know. But maybe, just maybe, Hatter would.

“Hatter lives, but with the other Alice. And I cannot say for certain, but Wonderland has certainly not accepted her. Though she stayed, he has become horribly sane.”

She shuddered.

And I understood why. Sanity was a great thing, if you were anyone other than our beloved Hatter. The tales were clear; Hatter was mad. Without his madness, he wasn’t our Hatter. He was simply a man. Just another character in a world of fairy tales no one knew and no one cared about.

Scrubbing at her cheeks with the palms of her hands, Danika breathed out a heavy sigh. “I knew when I first brought that one to him that she was off. Though my body buzzed with the knowledge of her, it wasn’t her he was meant to be with. It was the great-granddaughter. Galeta, if the other Alice stayed, there’s a very good chance my Alice was never born.”

The blood turned to rivers of ice in my veins, and I shook my head vehemently. I’d already rejected that notion once, and I would not accept it now, not even coming from her. “No. No. I won’t believe that. The Creator had a reason for all this.”

At the mention of Its name, her pretty face twisted into a tight snarl.

“What! What then? You tell me, because none of this makes sense. Malvena? The Heartsong? Do you not remember them? The Black? The creation of the Heartsong to take the darkness? Little knowing that you were the true embodiment of all evil. What was the purpose of each of them? What? What!” She shrieked, pounding her fist on the table with such force that the wood groaned.

Malvena...

The name jogged my memory. I’d not thought of her in so long I’d almost forgotten. But now that I could remember who I was, who I really was, I also remembered that when I was first created, there’d been no Black among us. Only the darkness of the seed of evil.

Who Malvena truly had been, I had no idea. But I hoped, hoped that one of us, somewhere, would learn something. Would be able to put these maddening pieces of the puzzle together, would be able to make sense of all this nonsense.

I shook my head. “I don’t know, Danika. But that is the very least of our worries now. We must save him. Save her. They’re bound. Tethered. Which means somewhere in these cosmos, she exists. His soul has been irrevocably linked to hers, and I have to believe that the magic of true love is still the most powerful magic of all.”

“You believe.” She snorted as the tears rushed in torrents now. “I had a husband. I remember him. I loved him so much. True love you say... Where is he now? Back in that moon? If he knew me, if Jericho knew me even a little, there’d be nothing that would keep him away. But our story never happened. In this timeline you’ve always been good, kind, and there was no moon seed hidden away in your cupboard for me to steal.”

She shook her head, huffing at the tears dripping from the corners of her eyes. Laughter tinged with madness spilled off her tongue. “He doesn’t even know I exist.”

I was losing her. Desperate that she stay with me, that she not lose herself to the insanity of too many thoughts and lives tumbling through her splintered mind, I grabbed her shoulders and shook her roughly, digging my claws in just enough to nearly break skin.

She hissed, going still beneath me.

“Stop! Stop now!” I barked. “Listen to me, and listen to me well, Danika Moon. If you want to save the world we knew, then I need you with me. Tell me where Alice should be; even if you don’t believe she lives, you must answer me. Tell me please!”