“My protégé thinks we should still accompany you. At least part of the way, to make sure you put some distance between you and what happened. She raises a good point. Leaving you alone with that sword and no food would not be wise. There is another village one day’s ride from here. From there it’s four, maybe five days on foot to Findest, half that if you can find a ride. I can take you that far, but then I need to return to my Gateway. And you’re coming with me.” She aimed a finger at Haruka as she headed for the edge of the water, where Chou now rolled around in the shallows.
Haruka watched her for a moment, then turned back to Alice. “Sorry I can’t get her to agree to more.”
“No, no. This … this is good. It’s something, which is better than nothing. Besides, she’s right, too. Leaving any of the Gateways unprotected isn’t smart right now.” That thought sent her mind wandering to wondering about the Duchess and the Tweedles. What about their Gateway, which had definitely been left unprotected for a while now?
“I’ve never seen that many Nightmares in one place.” Haruka folded her arms around herself.
Flashes of the fight on the football field danced across Alice’s mind. The sight of half-formed monsters clawing their way across the grass piling together to form that … that thing? Was forever burned into her memory. “I have.”
Twenty-One
AND
The Black Knight had to get away. With an injury like this, he’d be overpowered easily. He pushed through the ether, putting as much distance between himself and the battle as he could. The pain intensified. His limbs started trembling. He couldn’t maintain the fade.
Dropping it, he fell to the ground and tumbled a short distance. He barely managed to push out of it to avoid breaking his arms. Landing on his stomach, he lay there in the grass, trying to focus on anything but the pain. Images flashed against his mind, solid, almost tangible.
He was on the ground, pain radiating through him. Bodies lay around him. Friends. Comrades. Blood stained their faces, flesh torn here and there, eyes gazing lifeless at the heavens.
All around him the roars of monsters and of warriors mingled as they clashed. The woman from before was nowhere to be found, but a dark figure was there. It moved through the bodies like an armored wraith, driving a black blade into giving flesh. There were screams, so shrill, so terrified, like nails against glass.
The Black Knight tried to push himself up, but he couldn’t. Agony once again robbed him of strength. The wraith continued to approach, leaving writhing forms in its wake. People shifted, twisted, contorting into monsters. Spindly legs erupted from bloated tissue. Single limbs split into two or three. Claws extended from what used to be fingers.
The figure stopped when it reached him. Standing over him in silence, its helmeted head angled downward, gazing at him.
“P-please,” he started, furious with himself. He’d sworn, whatever happened, he would never beg. “Don’t do this.” He held his hands up, a flimsy shield against whatever this thing would do.
It reached for him. Everything went white. Fingers closed around his.
The Black Knight jolted with a cry as he was pulled up. He tried to fight, but the wound in his side sent him flailing. Arms caught him around the torso and pulled, dragging him until something hard pressed against his back.
“Easy.”
A familiar voice sent a chill up his spine.
Chess knelt in front of him, those dull eyes peering into his through the helmet. “You’re badly injured, so go slow.” He offered his hand.
The Black Knight slapped it away. “Do not touch me.”
Looking unbothered, Chess stood and glanced around. “The Eye wasn’t in the pub. Your target has escaped. The mission is a failure. We should return to Her Majesty for the contingency plan.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Chess looked down at him. Even though his expression hadn’t changed, the Black Knight felt judged, and small in the face of that judgment. Anger quickly filled the wound in his pride, and he wanted to be nowhere near Her Majesty’s new favorite.
“What happened on your end of things?” the Black Knight asked.
“The assault was successful in breaching the wards, but they mounted a swift counterattack and were able to escape through the Veil.”
His eyebrows lifted. “So they’re here?”
“The Duchess, Lady Xelon, Princes Odabeth, a human girl, and Addison Hatta.”
The sound of Hatta’s name rang between his ears like a bell, louder and louder, threatening to split his skull from the inside. He groaned as everything went fuzzy again. Chess’s face faded, replaced with Hatta’s.
He leaned in over the Black Knight, arching an eyebrow. “Doesn’t look too bad. You’ll have a nasty bump, though.”
The Black Knight heard himself groan in response, then speak, though his lips didn’t move. “I feel concussed. I’m concussed.”
“Are you now?”
“Absolutely. You’ll have to bring me habishums in bed and massage my feet.”
Hatta snorted. “You hit your head, Humphrey, not your feet.”
“You made me hit my head, so I’m holding you responsible for my complete recovery. You’re not to leave my side until I’m fully healed.”
Hatta chuckled. “Oh the burden,” he murmured even as he leaned in.
The Black Knight felt himself drawn forward, his heart racing, his breath catching. Then something knocked against the side of his head.
The image faded, replaced with Chess’s face inches from his own as Hatta’s had been.
“Knight?” Chess shifted around as if trying to see through the helmet. “Knight. Are you conscious?”
“Yes, though if you get any closer, you won’t be.”
Chess drew back, but otherwise didn’t respond to the threat. “I said that we need to go, Her Majesty expects us to return, but you didn’t seem to hear me. Knight?”
“That’s not my name,” he snapped.
“What is your name?”
He glanced away, shame cooling his anger to a simmer. “Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t have a name. He’d never had a name—Her Majesty simply called him her knight. It hadn’t bothered him before, but now … By the Breaking, what was wrong with him? “Go without me. I won’t be far behind.”
Chess seemed hesitant, still staring at him.
“I dropped my sword, I need to go back for it. Won’t take long. Go on.”
Chess nodded. Stepping back, a swath of shadow rose from his feet, consuming his entire body before it, and he vanished.
Spitting a curse, the Black Knight pushed himself up and felt around at his hips. A small medallion came free from a hidden slit in the material of his armor. He crushed the pendant in his hand, then sprinkled the Dust against his sluggishly bleeding wound.
“Dnem em,” he murmured before gasping as the Verse took hold. Heat flashed along his side as flesh mended. The binding was temporary, but it would hold long enough.
Groaning, he carefully worked his way to standing, planting his feet wide in order to maintain his balance. He pressed a hand to his chest, pulling at the darkness swirling through him.
“To me,” he murmured.
Almost instantly, the air began to split around him. Fiends padded forward, hushed whispers following them.
“Where…” His vision doubled, and he shook his head, steeling himself. “Where is the girl?”
“Gone,” one of the Fiends rasped.
“But alive?” he asked.
“Thanks to you,” another answered.
The relief he felt surprised him, but he pushed it aside.
“That is not what the mistress intended,” a voice hissed.
“Change of plans.” He tried to sound nonchalant, despite the fatigue pulling at him. “Find the one known as Addison Hatta. He is here. In Wonderland. Run him down.”
Twenty-Two
PAIN
Addison had dealt with pain for as long as he could rememb
er. Injuries when he trained to be a knight, wounds earned in service to his queen, scars from battles with the Nightmares, then with those who’d turned against Portentia, and finally when he had to turn against her himself. The pain didn’t end there, either.
There was pain when Portentia’s daughters locked her away, even though he knew it was for the good of all. There was pain when he was tried for treason. There was pain when the Verse for his exile was burned into him, and there was pain every day after when that Verse kept him from venturing too far or staying too long in his homeland.
As a knight, pain was his constant companion.
So when the burn of his injuries combined with the ache at his center—the exile Verse digging through him with each step—started to get to him, he knew something was very, very wrong.
“Wait,” he called in a gasp, his hands pressed to the twisting in his side. “Wait.”
Xelon and Courtney turned from where they both stopped a short distance ahead of him.
“I need to rest a moment.” Not only was he hurting, he was out of breath, and his vision had started to wane a bit at the edges.
Courtney’s worried gaze bounced between him and Xelon as the knight eyed him with those piercing white eyes of hers.
“If we stop for too long, it’ll be dark before we reach the village,” Xelon called.
“I know.” Relieved, Addison lowered himself onto one of the boulders scattered around them. He focused on evening out his breathing. “I know.” The way Xelon put that statement meant they could pause, but only for a little while. He’d take anything.
Xelon backtracked to his side and knelt next to him. “Let me see,” she coaxed, then peeled his shirt up when he moved his hands. A dark look crossed her face. It was brief, but he saw it.
“That bad?” he asked.
“Bad enough.” She lowered his shirt and pressed his hand back to the area. It twinged, but the sensation just melted into what was already throbbing through him. “We’ll rest for a bit, but we need to get you help as much as we need to get somewhere safe before nightfall.”
Addison nodded. “Just a few minutes.”
Xelon pushed to stand and glanced around. “I’ll see if I can’t find something to take the edge off. Keep an eye on him?” she said to Courtney.
“Two eyes.” Courtney moved over and settled herself onto the ground beside his boulder. She eyed him up and down, her brow furrowed. “You can’t go dying on us, now. I know Xelon can carry you, but I can’t handle the stress of having to tell Alice we couldn’t keep her bae alive.”
Addison felt the smile stretch his face, both at the mention of Alice’s name and the joke. “Bae?”
“You know, bae, baby, boo-thang, boyfriend.” Courtney waved a hand at him. “Whatever they call it in Wonderland.” She lowered it to her lap and played her gaze over the area. “Which is where we are, right now. I never thought I’d ever see this place. I mean, I imagined it, when Alice talked about it, but I thought regular people couldn’t come here.”
“A human or two has been known to blunder their way through a weak point in the Veil.” Addison shifted to lower himself to the ground, hissing faintly as the pain flared briefly before he tilted back against the rock, same as Courtney.
“Careful,” she said, eyeing him. “I was serious about that not-wanting-to-tell-Alice-you’re-dead thing.”
“Takes more than … whatever happened to get rid of me. I’ll be around for a while longer, I promise.”
“Good.” Courtney nodded. She fidgeted with something in her lap. A shoe, he realized, one of those ridiculously high, pointy ones. That was when he noticed her feet were bare.
“Looks like you lost one.” He pointed at the heel when she looked at him questioningly.
“Oh, yeah. Back in the river. I almost went in after it; these were my favorite red bottoms.” By her tone, he deduced this meant the shoe was important.
Alice had been similarly distraught when her shoes were ruined. He hoped she was well, wherever she was, likely with Romi. There was a bit of bad blood between him and the other Gateway guardian, all entirely his fault of course.
Courtney held the shoe up. “A fallen warrior, its mate served me well.” Her shoulders sagged with an overly dramatic sigh.
“So you’re carrying that one around as a memento?”
“I figured it I could at least use it as a weapon.” She swung the heel in a stabbing motion. “Like in the movies.”
Addison chuckled, and instantly regretted it as his side protested. “I’m sorry. About your shoe, that is. And that you’ve been caught up in all of this.”
“There are always more shoes, and as long as I make it home in one piece, there’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s not like you dragged me here. The Duchess did that.”
He laughed again and winced with a faint groan. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“Sorry! Sorry.” She grinned. Then her attention shifted to somewhere over his shoulder and her expression fell. All color fled her face, and fear washed over it.
That’s when Addison heard the growl. Strewth, he should’ve been paying attention! He turned, reaching up for his sword. His vision went white with the pain. He grabbed at empty air.
The Fiend came at them from the side.
Something pierced the top of the monster’s head, pinning it to the dirt just inches shy of Addison’s legs. The beast bucked, then fell still, its body twitching. It started to crack and pop, collapsing in on itself.
Xelon gripped the end of a makeshift spear. She must have just grabbed it off of a tree; the branch still had leaves sticking out here and there. Looking to the two of them, she pressed a finger to her lips in a signal for silence.
Beside him, Courtney had curled in on herself, her back pressed to the rock, her hands clapped over her mouth as she trembled and panted, her nostrils flared. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes and spilled over her fingers, but she didn’t scream. She barely whimpered.
Xelon glanced over her shoulder before ducking down with Addison and Courtney behind the boulder. She shifted upward just enough to peek over the top, then dropped back down again. Addison wanted to look himself, but the wound in his side wouldn’t let him.
As if sensing this, Xelon lifted two fingers, then signaled they were some distance away. Behind her, the body continued to pop and fizzle, dissolving into the ground. Without a purge, it would re-form later, but they couldn’t worry about that now.
Signaling them to stay silent and to follow her, Xelon yanked her makeshift spear free, then crept away from the boulder in a crouch that was bound to exacerbate Addison’s wound, but it couldn’t be helped. He gestured for Courtney to go first, and when she hesitated, pulled her along with him.
Bent forward like that, it felt like his side was tearing at some hidden seam as they crouch-ran from boulder to boulder, putting distance between them and the Fiends he didn’t look back for but was sure were there. He made certain to keep hold of Courtney, which slowed him as well.
Xelon stopped behind another boulder large enough to conceal the three of them and gestured for them to halt. Addison nearly collapsed against it, his side screaming. Sweat poured over his face. He wasn’t going to be able to keep this up.
“There are at least two more,” Xelon whispered. “I spotted them in the distance. I don’t think they know we’re here.”
“Yet,” Addison said between pants. “Can’t stay here. Too exposed.”
“W-what if we make a run for it?” Courtney’s voice trembled just as hard as she did. “Can we reach the town?”
Xelon looked to Courtney, then to Addison, then back over the rock. She didn’t have to say anything for him to know what she was thinking. If they ran, he’d only slow them down, and the noise and movement would certainly attract the Fiends; this brush wasn’t dense enough to conceal the three of them.
“You can if you leave me,” Addison murmured.
“No.” Xelon didn’t look at him.
“I’ll only slow you down. If you go now, you can—”
“She said no,” Courtney snapped, then covered her mouth, her eyes wide.
“We’re not leaving you here.” Xelon kept watch a few seconds more before lowering herself behind the rock and looking out over their surroundings.
A few more boulders dotted the area, but there weren’t enough large ones to keep them hidden, and leap-frogging behind them would be painfully slow going, literally.
Xelon must have come to the same conclusion because she cursed softly. “There are only two of them. If I circle around, I can take them by surprise, one at a time.”
“If you’re not leaving me behind, then I’m not letting you face those things unarmed by yourself.”
“I’m armed.” She held up the stick, the end where she’d broken it off into a point spattered with ichor.
“You can’t defend yourself with that,” he grunted.
“You can have my shoe.” Courtney thrust it toward the White Knight, who simply blinked at it, then her. “It’s a stiletto!”
“Keep the shoe,” Hatta murmured.
Courtney clutched it against herself, heel out as if she was more than prepared to kill something with it.
“No leaving me behind, no suicide missions.” Addison shut his eyes briefly as wave after wave of agony crashed through him. “What else?”
“We run,” Xelon said. “Like she said.”
“I’ll slow you down,” he repeated.
“I’ll fight them off,” Xelon countered.
“We both will.” Courtney looked terrified but lifted her shoe.
Addison smiled. “Good news is if these things are after us, they’re likely not after Anastasia and the princess.” And the Eye was safe.
“Silver linings.” Xelon peeked back over the boulder. “I don’t see them. It’s now or never.” She looked to Addison. “You going to make it?”
He shifted around into a crouch, with no small amount of difficulty. His side was burning, and the darkness at the edges of his vision kept waxing and waning dangerously.
“Do I have a choice?” Beside him, Courtney readied herself to run.
A Dream So Dark Page 18