The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(85)

“You know, you could be a gentleman and help me up instead of staring at me like I’ve grown a third eye.” Her cheeks burned when he jerked her up.

His hands rested casually on her hips. It seemed like he found any reason to touch her now. Not that she minded; she only wished it wouldn’t always be so hot and cold with him.

She crossed her arms and huffed.

He grinned and her heart jerked. He was breathtaking when he did that.

She turned her face to the side, and then her eyes widened when she finally noticed where they were. And the moment she noticed, the cave came alive with a roar of ticktocks.

Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of clocks hung and sat in every conceivable corner of the place. They were mounted inside the rock face, beneath the thick sheet of glass she walked on. Funny ones, nautical ones, bedroom clocks, grand domed clocks with large golden chimes dangling beneath; she’d never known there were so many different types.

Each clock was set at a different time so that some rang the top of the hour while others were just starting a day’s rotation, and some even spun in reverse.

“What is this place?”

He dropped her hand and walked to the center of the room, spreading his arms wide. “My ticktock life. Six o’clock, teatime. Don’t be late. Time. My time.” He was mumbling again, his eyes glazed, lost in a different time and place, looking lovingly at each clock.

It was easy to believe he was crazy when he looked like that. His smile became a frown. He looked at her, and the madness evaporated. “I’ve lost my way, Alice. I’m no good. I’m lost in time. Pieces of myself. Do you understand?”

She’d started walking toward him before she was even aware of doing it. Like he was the spark to her fire, she needed to touch him, needed it as much as she needed her next breath. She reached, smoothing her fingers over his pinched brows, and he shuddered.

“What happened to you, Hatter?”

He took her hand, fingers tight on her wrist.

“Is it Wonderland? Has the magic made you crazy?”

He shook his head, eyes wounded, distant. She gripped the side of his face, forcing his eyes back to her and away from the madness that always pulled at him.

“I am time here. Don’t you see?”

What did that mean? “Are you saying you are time?”

He nodded.

“You?”

“Sometimes...,” he whispered, “sometimes I wish I could leave.” His voice was so low she barely heard him. As if he was afraid to speak too loud. “To be free, unhindered. To work with my hands.” He blinked, and she knew by the way his shoulders tensed up that he struggled to remember something. “But I can never leave. And you never stay.”

She dropped her hands. “But I’ve never been here before, Hatter.”

He gripped his hair with his hands and yanked, hair stuck out in different directions. “Always you. Haunting me, driving me crazy. Making me want what I cannot have.”

She denied it, shaking her head so hard the top hat slipped off. “Hatter, that wasn’t me. That was my great-grandmother. I’m not her!”

He growled and walked up to a cherrywood mantel that appeared like a specter behind him. He rubbed his fingers against a clock face with the obsessive compulsion of a man who’d done it many times before.

“All the same,” he muttered, “you all come, so beautiful. Smells—” He shuddered. “Gods, you all smell so good and I want you, but you’re all selfish, spoiled, and the land says no. And so you go and you never look back; you never remember the man lost in time. Time moves and it gets easier. I can breathe; I can forget. But then it’s time again and I’m weary, weary... weary of you all.”

She covered her mouth, a lump in her throat and hot tears behind her eyes. He didn’t want her at all. Danika was wrong—he couldn’t forget her great-grandmother or apparently any of the others. She wasn’t special to him. How could she be? They barely knew each other. She was just a face passing through.

He turned, brown eyes sparking with frosty hints of frightening anger. “And then you. You’re the worst of them. Quoting poems, telling me”—he swallowed—“things that I cannot believe. Trying to understand me. Always touching me. The heat of your body reaches to me. None of the others did that, none of the others cared. They only wanted the power or they wanted to go. You want to go too, don’t you, Alice?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

She lifted her chin. “Because I’m not.”

“Why!” His face contorted into a mask of rage, and it was more than anger. Pain glittered in the depths of his eyes.

Alice squeezed her eyes shut, her truth burning the tip of her tongue. Did he really want to know, did she have the strength to tell him?

She gazed at him. Others might see him and see anger, fury, blinding rage. But she couldn’t. “Because...” She swallowed, opening herself up to someone in a way she’d never dreamed to do again. “When I was thirteen, I—” had brain cancer. She couldn’t say it. She desperately wanted to. Wanted to explain, but she didn’t have the strength to dip into memories that brought back nothing but pain and paralyzing fear.

“What?” he demanded. “I share my soul with you, and you give me nothing? What!” he demanded, and her heart bled.