by Marie Hall
“Aye?” His brow twitched with an amused expression.
Heart squeezing with so much love it bordered on pain, she pulled up higher and whispered against his lips, “Real magic happened when I first met you, Jericho.”
He didn’t speak again and neither did she, but honestly… what they were doing, didn’t need words. Didn’t you know that already, lovies?
Danika laughed, because for right now the world, her life, her heart… it was all perfect. Jericho was here and that was everything.
Her heart had finally found its way back home.
Author’s Note
If you enjoyed this story and want to know when my next Kingdom book will drop make sure to sign up for my newsletter. I promise to never spam with it, but I will let you know when I have an upcoming release coming out. In fact, the long awaited Huntsman’s Prey is next! Keep reading for a sneak peek of the first chapter, or if you’ve read out of order, make sure to check out my books page below as it will show you the exact order the books should be read in!
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The Huntsman’s Prey: Sneak Peek
The rattling of leaves sounded like the rustling of dry bones. Trees—their trunks twisted and distorted from the magic imbued within the very soil of Wonderland—reached long, gnarly branches out toward Danika.
The stars shone a brilliant silver, winking from within the navy blue sky. A sickle shaped smile of sharp teeth gleamed from inside shadow and somewhere a voice howled. The haunting sound raised goose bumps on her arms and the fine hairs on the back of her neck.
She flew within the shelter of a hollow, staring at the ground below littered with the twisted, distorted bodies of sightless carcasses. Hundreds of dead animals, with limbs torn off and throats ripped open. A brutal slaughter that brought tears to her eyes.
It’d been eighteen years since she’d married off the last of her Bad Five, eighteen years of peace and quiet, eighteen years of being lulled into a false sense that all was well within her world.
But all was not well. She’d suspected this time was coming, had seen a glimpse of the future first time she’d laid eyes on the child. Danika had tried to deny it, tried to wish it away, to hope that desire could stop reality.
Her heart bled to hear the sounds of the lonely, constant cries shuddering through the woods. The teeth returned, floating right in front of her face.
“Cheshire?” Dragonfly wings buzzed softly behind her back.
A face materialized around the teeth, a ghostly distortion of fur and stripes. Then a body followed suit, until finally a fluffy tabby stared back at her with eyes the color of an inkwell.
“Godmother?” His lazy drawl echoed with laughter. “What are you doing in my woods?”
She scoffed. “Your woods. You wish you fat alley cat. These woods belong to the Hatter.”
Cheshire did a strange rolling shoulder lift while he licked his paw. Danika shook her head, much as she loved Hatter, his woods were one she rarely visited and dreaded staying inside of for too long. The sensuous curl of white fog wrapped itself around the cat’s body, as if he were readying to vanish into the ether once again.
She may not like the cat, but she preferred his company to being alone in this warped portion of Kingdom.
“Have you seen the creature?” she asked quietly, heart thumping loudly as she strained to hear every creak, groan, and whistle surrounding them.
“Mmmm. I have,” he purred, long and loud and low, the rumbling vibrations of it causing his fur to stir and fluff. “Beautiful madness.”
“Where is it?” She hugged her arms to her chest, the howls had stopped, which meant it could now be anywhere. She wanted to leave, wanted to leave now.
“It? You mean she. Do you not?”
She closed her eyes. To think of it as anything other than an it would make this task impossible. Oh goddess, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to Alice and Hatter, they’d gone through so much, this shouldn’t have happened. How she wished she had Miriam’s wise guidance once again, her truest and best friend would have known what to do, how to fix this.
“I meant exactly what I said. Where did you see it last?” She lifted her chin, voice stern, refusing to allow an ounce of sympathy to leak into her words.
His smile stretched from ear to ear, full of nothing but sharp, little teeth that made him look frighteningly macabre. An impossibly long tongue licked at the fur around his eyes.
“Silver girds her loins, fire ripples at her feet.”
It was never easy trying to decipher Cheshire when he decided to be willfully obtuse.
“Where is she? It?” She shook her head, realizing her slip of the tongue.
Cheshire’s smile grew wider. “You should not do what you want to do. There can be another way.”
Her nostrils flared. “How can you say that to me?” She snapped, anger whipped through her veins, slipped off her tongue. “Do you not think I’ve thought of a million different ideas, a million different ways to change this outcome? All of them… all of them end like this. You’ve seen the carcasses, it will only get worse. I feared this outcome when it was first born, feared her birthday might trigger the monster.” She threw up her hands with a defeated hitch in her voice. “I can’t save it. It… she’s gone mad.”
The cat floated into the air, the lower half of its body beginning to slowly fade from sight. “Are we not all a little mad?”
“Hatter was a little mad. What this… creature has become, it’s more than a little mad. There is no reason, no soul, it’s slipped into darkness. I know what Jericho has said, to believe and hope that she can be saved, but each year I’ve lost my tenuous grip on it until now there is nothing but a wisp of it left. So you tell me, cat, you say there can be another way, Jericho says the same, show me then. Prove me wrong.” She closed her eyes as her words trembled thanks to the lump building in her throat. Clearing it quickly, she pinned him with a hard stare. “I saw her, gazed into soulless eyes, how can you save something like that? Tell me.”
Cheshire simply stared as his features began to grow fuzzy and distorted, looking like a figure within a fun house mirror. “Not to beat a dead horse, godmother, but aren’t we all a little mad? Deal with it as you deal with me, become mad yourself.”
The cat vanished in a puff of white fog.
Become mad yourself. That was his best advice? No wonder she never asked the cat for anything. To the right of a her a bush suddenly shook, heavy breathing echoed through the sudden stillness.
Yanking her wand from the pocket of her vest, Danika tore open a rift in time and flew quickly into it, leaving whatever that madness was behind. She needed to talk to Alice and Hatter, needed to tell them the truth, and she needed to find the Huntsman.
But how could you tell someone you loved that in order to save Wonderland they’d have to kill the one thing in the world they loved most?
Marie’s Books:
Kingdom Series:
Bad Boys Collection
Her Mad Hatter, Book 1 (FREE EVERYWHERE based on Alice in Wonderland)
Gerard’s Beauty, Book 2 (Based on Beauty and the Beast)
Red and Her Wolf, Book 3 (Based on Little Red Riding Hood)
Jinni’s Wish, Book 4 (Based on Arabian Nights)
Hook’s Pan, Book 5 (Based on Peter Pan)
Danika’s Surprise (A short story)
Hatter’s Treasure (A short story, ONLY AVAILABLE in A Fractured Fairy Tale Collection)
A Tale of Hidden Kingdom
Moon’s Flower, Book 6 (A story of Hidden Kingdom)
Dark Princess Collection
The Huntsman’s Prey, Book 7 (Coming in 2014)
Night Series (Urban Fantasy with Romantic Elements)
Crimson Night, Book 1
All Hallows Night, Book 2 (Coming 2014)
Eternal Lover’s Series (Paranormal Romance)
Death’s Lover, Book 1
Death’s Redemption, Book 2 (Coming 2014)
Chaos Time Series
(YA Time Travel Serial)
Sable
Slayde
Moments Series (NA Contemporary Romance)
A Moment, Book 1
Right Now, Book 2
Tor and Jaime’s Story, (COMING 2014)
About the Author:
Marie Hall is a USA TODAY BESTSELLING author who loves books that make you think, or feel something. Preferably both. And while she's a total girly girl and loves glitter and rainbows, she's just as happy when she's writing about the dark underbelly of society. Well, if things like zombies, and vampires, and werewolves, and mermaids existed. (Although she has it on good authority that mermaids do in fact exist, because the internet told her so.)
She's married to the love of her life, a sexy beast of a caveman who likes to refer to himself as Big Hunk. She has two awesome kids, lives in Hawaii, loves cooking and occasionally has been known to crochet. She also really loves talking about herself in the third person.
If you want to see what new creations she's got up her sleeves check out her Website and make sure to sign up for her newsletter, or contact her personally at [email protected]