“Stop.”
My brows dipped. “What?”
“Stop this, fairy. You look as though you wait for a monster to come and feast on your bones.”
I blew out a heavy breath. “I do not.”
“Fae, if you could have seen your face when that mule kicked over that crate—”
I glowered at him.
“That.” He pointed. “That look exactly. Will you bloody relax? There’s nothing at all happening here.”
I rubbed at my forehead. “Don’t you understand, Prince? I’m being tested. Tried somehow.”
“What makes you say so?” he asked with infinite patience, but it still set my teeth on edge.
And I knew it wasn’t because of him, but rather my unmet expectations. I was waiting for the bogeyman, and he wasn’t showing. All of which was driving me even more nervous and erratic.
He took my hand away. “Talk to me, wee one. What’s the matter?”
I watched the people milling past. The faces I’d never seen and yet somehow seemed familiar all the same. The stalls. The vendors. The smells of leather and polished wood, of roasted meats and sweets.
My memory was long, and sometimes things got lost over time, but something about all of this felt disquietingly familiar. It wasn’t in my head—I really had seen this.
“Talk to me,” he said again.
I growled, shrugging hard. “I don’t know, Syrith. I don’t know, okay. But I don’t like this. I’ve been here before.”
“What? Here?” He spread an arm.
He sounded dubious, and honestly, I felt a little mad. I shook my head. “Not here exactly. I mean—” I sighed. “I don’t know what I mean. Obviously, it wasn’t gray like this, and...” I watched a child run by using a stick to move a wheel before him, and I frowned harder. “Just something feels familiar. I can’t explain it.”
Grunting, I turned my face aside, but he grasped my chin very gently and turned me back to him. Jeweled eyes studied me with fierce intelligence.
“If you say you’ve seen this before, then I believe you. Were there monsters there?”
“What?” I gave a nervous laugh.
“In your vision, were there monsters in this place before?”
Twisting my lips, I suddenly knew what he was getting at. “I know what you’re trying to do, dragon. It won’t work.”
His cocky grin revealed a small scar above his cheekbone I’d not noticed before. The color was a pale white compared to the darker tone of his skin, and my fingers clenched as I wondered what the texture of that scar might feel like.
“I think it already has,” he said in his husky drawl.
That was when I realized I was smiling.
Again.
Something I’d begun to do with some regularity in these past two days. I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. And to answer your question, no, there were no monsters.”
Then he took my hand in his, twining our fingers together. And again I knew this meant nothing, so why did my heart suddenly feel as though it might beat right out of my chest?
“Then let us enjoy what is left of this day, shall we?”
He tugged, and again I followed, now feeling silly and foolish about the whole thing.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I asked after a while of staring at diaphanous scarves printed with images of birds and animals. If I squinted really hard, sometimes I could even make out a flicker of color.
He glanced down at me from the corner of his eyes. “Are you not accustomed to kindness, fairy?”
I shrugged, deciding not to answer that question. If I did, I’d have to confess to my past sins. To the hatred I’d instilled in so many.
“It was just a question.”
“Hmm,” he said after a moment, but there was a look on his face now. One I couldn’t quite decipher.
One I wanted to figure out.
But why?
Why was I suddenly so curious about this male?
We didn’t speak again after that. Syrith pointed at a building, as if asking whether I’d like to go in or not. I shrugged, not paying much mind to where we were going; I was too busy wondering about this man who I didn’t know at all but who seemed determined to save me from myself.
It was only when we passed the door’s threshold and I looked up did all my prior feelings of anxiety come crashing down around me.
“Oh my gods,” I moaned, staring at the racks and racks of men’s top hats. “Oh my gods, Syrith,” I croaked, “we have to go. We have to go now!”
“Galeta, what’s—”
But I didn’t give him a chance to finish. I yanked out of his hand, racing for the door, feeling my stomach heave as the memories came crashing down around me. I latched onto the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. I tried harder. Yanking with all my might.
“Galeta, stop,” Syrith cautioned, then his hands were on my waist and he was pulling me back, but I was wild, desperate, and clawing for a way out.
“The magic, fairy. Don’t you see it? We can’t leave. You must stop.”
Through the blinding tears, I saw the dark stain of black magic gathering like a poison toward the door, the windows, and any other avenues of egress.
Tears streamed down my face as I twirled around, shaking my head no, because I knew exactly what was about to transpire.
“And just where is my gorgeous Hatter?”
That high-pitched, lilting voice turned my blood to ice and my heart to a chunk of stone. My eyes went wide as I watched an Asian beauty saunter up toward the cash register.
Dressed in a gown of sterling-gray taffeta with a cinched bodice, she had long black hair that tumbled gracefully down her slim back. I covered my mouth with my hands and shook my head.
From a hidden doorway, a man stepped out. Tall, devilishly handsome, and with peaked dark brows. His hair wasn’t quite so shaggy. It was neatly trimmed, and in color, his eyes would have been a molten brown. His jaw was square and rugged, his features exotic and alluring.
His gaze was completely clear eyed and sane.
This was Hatter before the madness took him.
This was the Hatter before I’d interfered.
And this...was my monster.
Memories of my past exposed for all to see.
“My lovely Alice”—he held out his hand to her, and she took it—“to what do I owe this pleasure?”
Alice Hu—the original of the Alices—smiled broadly. “I’ve come to steal you away, my lover. Come with me.”
Chapter 10: In Which Love Is Turned to Hate
Syrith
She’d frozen up on me.
I stared at Galeta gazing on in horror at Hatter and his Alice. I knew of both. Having been born and raised in Wonderland, I was familiar with the Hatter and his bride.
But something about this version of Alice felt different. A little off somehow. She looked exactly the same. But there was a gleam in her eyes, a curving of her lips that felt forced. Felt calculated.
The scene before us quickly shifted, transforming into another. Of two lovers rolling in a massive bed. Hatter and Alice nothing but a tangled heap of intertwined limbs and heady moans.
Uncomfortable with spying during something so intimate, I shifted on the balls of my feet, looking toward Galeta again. Tears spilled thick and heavy down her cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” I whispered. “You look upset. But aren’t they—”
Her lips thinned, and a look of anguished pain crossed her lovely features. “You don’t understand, Prince. This isn’t Hatter and his Alice. This is the first Alice Hu. The one who turned him mad with grief.”
I frowned. I’d never heard of the first Alice. “What did she do?”
Galeta’s face crumpled as she whispered, “She broke his heart.”
I looked back at the couple.
Alice Hu looked happy. Giddy, even. There was a sparkle in her eyes. I knew the sparkle for what it was because I’d seen it in my mother’s when she looked upon the fac
e of my father.
Love.
The scene shifted yet again.
This time it was Alice and Hatter walking amongst a garden of singing flowers.
“Do you love me?” she whispered, stopping their meanderings as she turned him toward her.
When Hatter gazed down upon Alice, I saw the same sparkle in his dark eyes.
“With all my soul.”
Her long lashes flickered, and a soft, sensual smile curved her lips.
“And you, Alice? Do you love me?”
Her dark eyes danced. “Run with me, Hatter. Run far and fast. Only run...”
The echoes of their laughter danced around us.
The scene shifted yet again, but this time only Alice stood in the room. A room full of clocks tick, tock, ticking. She was wringing her hands and pacing to and fro.
Galeta suddenly inhaled, wrapping her arms tightly around her. Jerked from studying the image of the woman before me, I looked at the fairy. Her face was stricken with grief, her eyes huge.
“Galeta?”
Her long lashes were clumped together from her tears as she looked up at me. “Syrith, please don’t jud—”
Then a burst of color caught my eye, causing me to look up just in time to witness the transformation of the gray world into one brimming over with saturated shades of pigment. Lush blacks and blues. Deep greens. And passionate reds.
Alice was even prettier in this version, but my eyes were for the tiny fairy flitting before her. The vision Galeta smiled serenely.
“So you are the infamous Alice Hu sent to tame our Mad Hatter?” Vision Galeta murmured.
Alice’s smile of greeting slowly slipped. “Excuse me?”
Galeta’s clear blue eyes sparkled with gleeful anticipation. Her tiny fangs poked out from beneath her cocky grin. “Oh, dear me, did I give away the happy ending?”
Her tone was wicked and cutting and full of terrible laughter.
“What? What are... Who are...”
Rolling her eyes, Galeta flitted forward. Until her feet were able to touch down upon the woman’s shoulder. “Oh, come, come, Alice girl, use your words. Think before you speak, and all that twaddle.”
She waved the wand in her hand, causing twirls of blue magic to spark in the air. Alice glanced sharply at the little woman perched on her shoulder.
“What in the hell are you talking about, demon spawn?”
Galeta snorted, touching a light hand to her chest. “Demon spawn, am I? Has that imbecilic Danika been getting into your ear? Don’t you know, dear child? Or has she fooled you too?”
I didn’t trust the avarice in vision Galeta’s eyes, and an uneasy feeling slithered through my gut. Apparently Alice felt the same, because she shook the tiny fae off her shoulder, taking several steps back.
“Know what?” she demanded, her small hands clenched tight to her sides.
Galeta brushed at her ice-spun gown and chuckled. “Temper. Temper. And why should I tell you now? I only came to do a good deed. To save a woman from a fate worse than death.”
“What? Death?” Alice’s eyes grew huge in her now-pale face.
“Mm. Truly.” Galeta nodded. “But since you don’t seem inclined to hear me out, best if I should—”
She was turning, as though to leave, but Alice’s hand shot out.
What Alice didn’t see, but I did, was the sudden spiteful gleam glowing through the wee fae’s eyes. I bit down on my back teeth, grinding them hard. Beside me, I felt the real Galeta go ramrod stiff.
“No, wait,” Alice whispered. “Please, tell me what you’ve come to say.”
The wee fairy tilted up her chin, sniffing delicately as though offended. “I really shouldn’t now. You’re a terrible girl, but”—a slow grin stretched one corner of her mouth—“I just can’t seem to help myself. I know something about the Hatter, Alice. Something dreadful. Do you not wish to know to whom you’ll be wedding yourself?”
Alice’s words were stiff and fearful as she said, “What do you know?”
Galeta shook her head, causing her ringlets to bob. “What I’m about to tell you, you can never tell Danika. She’d never believe you. She’s so blinded by her love for her bad boys that she cannot see beyond it.”
Alice’s eyes searched the wee fairy’s. “I vow it.”
The Blue nodded. “Your Hatter is positively mad.”
“No.” Alice shook her head. “No, he can’t be. I just spoke with him this morning.”
The fairy flicked her wrist, silencing Alice’s protests. “Oh yes, my dear. Quite. It’s a slow disease of the mind but a disease all the same.”
“But surely Danika—”
“Like I said”—the fairy shrugged—“she’s too blinded by love. You could never have children, Alice. Not sane ones, anyway. You’d be fastened forever to a creature too mad to endure.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The fairy grinned. “If hearing doesn’t convince you, then perhaps seeing would.”
With a flick of her wrist, a bubble appeared between them. And an image coalesced within.
And there was the Hatter, sitting on a chair in the middle of an empty field, quoting Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” as rain poured down upon him. His face was blank. His hands shaking. And his eyes burned with madness.
Alice gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. “No. This is a lie.”
“Is it, Alice? Is it really?”
“But my Hatter—”
The fairy rolled her eyes, bursting the image within the bubble. Her face contorted into one of anger. “Let us not pretend that he is your anything—you wanted his power.”
Alice sucked in a sharp breath, trembling hard. “Lies!”
At that, Galeta tipped her head back and let roll a cackling laugh. “Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”
Those words echoed like a ghost’s wail between us, and all the color began to once more leech out until the world was nothing but a canvas of gray.
The scene faded, leaving us standing alone in an empty stretch of field. With no people and no laughter.
I stared at the back of Galeta’s head. Her shoulders were moving, but no sounds came out of her. I knew she was crying.
With a start, she turned on her heel and fled back to the safety of the hut. I watched her go, trying to reconcile the double-crossing fairy with the haunted woman running away from me.
I couldn’t even understand what it was that I’d seen, but I knew whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
~*~
Galeta
He came into the hut hours later, his eyes hooded and thoughtful but also distant and nowhere near as warm as they’d been only this morning. I didn’t know Syrith, but he was all I had in this place. The thought of him hating me too, it made me feel sick and empty.
I’d sat before the fire, staring into black flames, not moving, and reliving what I’d done all those years ago. It wasn’t as if Hatter’s life was the only one I’d ruined, but seeing the images again, reliving them one by one, I’d been ashamed of myself.
And not just for what I’d done, but because another had been there to witness my shame. I looked up at him, silently awaiting his reproach, knowing he had questions I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer.
These were my memories. My past. They didn’t involve him.
And yet somehow Syrith was tied to it now. Whatever this magic was at work here, he’d been the one to activate it.
Why?
He was as quiet as a field mouse as he took a seat on the opposite side of the couch, a stain of life against the relentless wash of gray.
The muscle in his jaw twitched as he bit down on his back teeth, and the silence in the room was deafening.
No longer able to look at him, I turned back to watching the fire. Seeing but not really seeing. My mind was consumed by the past. By what I’d done.
Hatter’s wasn’t the only happily ever after I’d ruined, but he’d been one of the first. One min
ute stretched into two. Three. Four. Until finally I couldn’t handle it anymore. Fidgeting on my bum, I could no longer bear his crushing silence.
“I’m sure you’re wondering what it was you saw back there,” I said, voice almost robotic, eyes staring blankly ahead.
I felt his movements. His body sliding around until he faced me full on. “What did I see back there?”
It would be so easy to snap at him. I might not have my wand on hand, which helped me to focus and channel my powers, but I could still hurt him if I cared to do so.
I could turn his skin to wood, his heart to stone, his mind to mush. Not as if I hadn’t done it before. To others before him. Nameless faces down through time who’d annoyed me in some form or fashion.
I remembered the stark terror in each and every gaze seconds before I’d snuffed the life from them.
Looking down at my hands, I gave my head a minute shake. How could anything like me ever hope to find redemption? Be forgiven?
Did I even want forgiveness?
The idea was a startling one. I’d never cared before.
But without the hum of darkness being an ever-present burden inside of me, I found myself tired and weary, found myself opening up Pandora’s box and allowing those memories I’d kept caged for years to slowly leak out.
Something like me deserved death, surely.
“Talk to me, fairy. Tell me what it is you did.”
His words were low, cajoling, as though he spoke to a wild and frightened beast. It was only when I twirled on him that I realized why. My nails had tipped to claws, and I’d shoved them through my thighs, causing beads of blood to well up and stain the pale blue of my dress. My fangs were out and exposed, and I knew I wore a mask of violence and hate.
With a grunt that sounded torn from the lips of a dying animal, I yanked my claws out, wrapped my arms tight around my middle, and rocked for a moment. The sting of the cuts helped to ground and focus me.
“Galeta,” he said again slowly. This time daring to lay a hand upon my upper arm but not moving it. “Sometimes talking helps.”
“How would you know?” I hissed, yanking away from his burning touch. I could handle hate, could handle antipathy—it was what I’d learned to deal with all my life. What I could not handle was his gentle kindness.