by Marie Hall
There were no crickets chirping or birds singing. The grass was high and waving at knee level and ahead there were curls of steam.
“Is that water?” he asked.
Lissa nodded. “Do you see the bushes all around?”
She was right, there was thick, bushy overgrowth surrounding the fog of steam. “Yes.”
“Those are forget me bushes, don’t touch them, it steals memories.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Have you been here before, Lissa?”
“No.” She shook her head and started forward again.
Following close, Aeric sensed that something wasn’t right. Lissa said she didn’t know this place, but she moved as one who did. There was a very small trail, one easily missed unless you knew where to look for it, that led safely through the ring of forget me nots.
At the center of it was a large pond that glowed a silvery lavender in the dim light of the setting sun. And beside it was a large beech tree.
Running to the tree, she inserted her hand into a knot of wood no bigger than a fist and pulled something out.
“Here,” she turned with a smile. “I found it.”
Blinking between the netting in her hand and her smiling face, a horrible sinking feeling slunk through his stomach. “You’ve been here before. How did you know where the net was? You’ve never seen it, and yet you led me straight to it.”
“I don’t know,” she said it slowly, haltingly, and the smile she’d been wearing disappeared. Thick frown lines scrawled upon her forehead and she shook her head. “I’ve never been here before.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You have been here. Lissa, I could never have found this. It’s too hidden. What aren’t you telling me?”
Her shoulders slumped when he snatched the net out of her hands; the sick wash of betrayal overcoming him again. “Why are you lying?”
There were tears swimming in her eyes now. “I swear I’m not. I don’t know how I knew how to get here, I just…knew. I saw threads of blue and I followed it.” She spread her arms and took a step toward him. “Aeric, please, you have to believe me.”
“Threads of blue. Lissa, there haven’t been any scraps around, I’ve been studying the trail the whole way.”
“I promise, Aeric, I saw it.”
Something large rustled through the bush behind him. Twirling, knife at the ready, Aeric expected to see Chrysalis jump out at him.
But there was nothing. “Lissa.” He turned. But she wasn’t where she’d been just seconds ago.
She was now to the left of him, and it was Lissa, but she wasn’t looking at him the same. There was fire in her eyes and a rumbling growl emanated from her throat.
She looked like a wild woman with all the scratches on her arms and chest. Brambles were stuck in her dark, dark hair.
“Lissa, what are you doing?”
“I’m not, Lissa,” she spat and then laughed and the sound chilled him to the marrow.
His brain kept trying to compute what it was that he was seeing. It was Lissa, but it definitely wasn’t her.
And then there was a spark of a memory in his brain, one that was now so obvious in hindsight he couldn’t believe it’d taken his mind so long to figure it out. The first day he’d fought Chrysalis she’d appeared to him with black, black hair and electric blue eyes. The smudge he thought he’d noticed under Lissa’s eye last night was now a dark bleeding heart in the exact same spot.
“No,” he breathed, shaking his head, knife gripped lax in his hands. “No, it can’t be.”
Wind rammed at tree branches, bowed thick trunks. Aeric covered his eyes as dirt and debris slapped his face, fighting hard to stand his ground.
Chrysalis stood in the center of the swirl, calm and collected. Nothing touched her, not even the wind. She was controlling this, she was controlling all of this.
“Lissa, stop, what are you doing?” he snapped, refusing to accept that he was right, to believe that she’d managed to fool him in that way. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She laughed. “You already have, man.”
He jerked. “What did you call me?”
Her smile was wide and sickle shaped. “I am going to kill you.” She lifted her hands and that’s when he noticed that her claws were out, looking a lot like cat claws.
“Show yourself for who you really are!” he demanded of her, convinced that Wonderland was playing with his mind. Because the woman he’d loved last night and the woman in front of him now, it wasn’t the same woman. He knew it. Felt it to be true, deep in his soul.
She advanced slowly.
His heart tripped. Her pale skin was deeply grooved with scratches and gouges. The heart under her eye dripped inky black tears.
This was a predator. A killer. He’d felt her power once, coming against her was like coming against a lioness—graceful, painfully beautiful, and utterly deadly. Black hair swayed as she moved.
Aeric grit his teeth as he reached into his pocket for the net. Lissa had found the hiding place, it was the last thing she’d done before she’d disappeared. And when he’d asked her how she’d known exactly where to find it, for a split second he’d seen a flash of something in her eyes.
There’d been fear, liquid and thick.
“It’s been you all along!” he hissed.
She laughed. “Now you know, man.”
Then she jumped.
Aeric didn’t have time to think, the moment she landed on him, the small bit of netting blazed to life like a wild flame, covering her body.
Chrysalis tumbled to the ground with a loud oomph. The harder she struggled the tighter the net drew on her, like a python’s coils, until her body began to turn a pale bluish-purple.
He dropped to his knees and yanked on the netting. Trying in vain to relax its grip. He had questions and now that he knew who she really was, she was going to answer them.
Chrysalis held up a weak hand and rasped out, “No, don’t. Don’t let me out again.”
“You’ll die and I’ll be damned if I let that happen before you admit the truth.”
“No.” She shook her head and stopped fighting, stopped striving to get out. “No, I’m fine. If I relax, so will it.” As if on cue, the rope did relax and the color of her skin returned to normal. “And I will tell you everything.”
Leaning back on his heels, Aeric wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and realizing he finally had a chance to really look at her, study her, he did.
Taking measure of the countless scrapes and scratches all over. He hadn’t remembered Lissa getting cut up on their walk here, but maybe she had and he’d not been paying attention.
He brushed his fingers over the flesh and she shivered. Her eyes widened and they were no longer manic, or confused. They were clear and vital and electrifyingly blue, just like the shade Lissa’s hair had once been.
“How?” he asked, sick that he hadn’t made the connection all along. Hadn’t realized his travel mate was also the monster he’d been searching for the entire time. “And goddess help you if you lie.”
Her bow shaped lips tipped down. The movements so eerily similar he laughed, a sound full of disdain and without humor. “You must have thought me a fool,” he spat.
Now that he had her, his panic and fear for Lissa turned to white-hot rage. Clenching his jaw, he shot to his feet and backed away, then pointed at her.
She just shook her head, but still refused to speak. To defend her position. As if there was one really.
But he wanted there to be something, he wanted her to tell him something. Give him any form of consolation. Because he’d fallen in love with Lissa, and just like Claudia, she’d betrayed him too.
They always did.
“Don’t try to deny it.”
“I won’t,” she finally spoke, casting her eyes to the side. “I never meant for any of this to happen to you.”
“You must think me incredibly stupid, I might have fallen for the ruse, but I’m no fool. The entire trip was y
ou screwing with my head, my mind…” the rest would be left unsaid, he refused to give her anything else.
She frowned. Her delicate features were pinched and so unbelievably lovely he could hardly stand to look upon her. Seeing her was seeing Lissa. The shrug of her long, slender neck. The sweep of her brows and the slope of her cat like eyes. Her slashing cheekbones, how could he have been so blind! All along he’d felt as though the clue were staring at him, and it had been. Through her eyes.
In his life coincidences simply didn’t exist. Not with the level and frequency they’d experienced along the way, and yet he’d been able… no, more than able, he’d been willing to shrug them aside because he hadn’t wanted to believe it was true. Hadn’t wanted to see it, because if he had he would have had to have taken her in. The hope and possibility she represented would have died right along with her, so he’d kept pushing it aside, pretending it away, refusing to see the obvious because he’d wanted her too damn much and the whole time he’d been falling, she’d been playing him.
Swiping at the air he marched back and forth. “The sinkholes, Rumpel, Pillar… you plotted it all, all of it. Stealing Lissa—”
“I am Lissa,” she whispered with eyes still downcast.
He laughed, so furious his vision turned red. With fingers clenched tightly to his sides, he shook his head. “Aye, that’s been made clear.”
“But Lissa is not me.”
His nostrils flared.
Finally turning her eyes to his, her look pleaded that he listen. His anger was frosty and so intense he wasn’t sure whether to continue on with this charade or just throttle her. She knew who he was, what he’d do if he found out. Aeric was a killer. His jaw clenched and the anger beat, it throbbed and screamed.
“Explain yourself.” The words came out more of a hiss than a command, because he was on the razor’s edge of completely losing his mind.
She licked her lips, then rubbed the back of her hand upon her cheek like a cat licking its paw. He should have seen it.
Aeric cleared his throat, swallowing the words thick on his tongue.
“I’m moon cursed.”
The tattoo under her eye flared brightly at the mention of the curse. He nodded, wondering why Lissa had never carried the tattoo until the very end.
This time when she sat up, the netting didn’t fight her, but it did stay fitted to her. Brushing the wild mass of hair out of her eyes, she nibbled on the corner of her lip.
“I share this body with two others,” she finally said on a long sigh.
“What do you mean? You’re possessed? By ghosts, demons, what?”
“No.” She shook her head, looking agitated again.
It occurred to Aeric just then that she spoke much more lucid than normal. He’d had no idea what Danika meant when she said the net was made of truth, or even how that could contain Chrysalis, but perhaps it was more than just forcing someone to speak truth, maybe it forced them to be true too.
Be who they really were. Which meant Lissa had never actually existed. The thought made his chest ache.
“There are two of me. And then there’s reflection. She’s the bad one.”
“I don’t understand.” He was trying, really he was. But her words made him more confused than ever. “You’re a triplet.”
She grunted. “No. There are just different parts of me, and when she manifests I become her. Not just in talk or speech, but I literally change who I am. Like a split personality if you will.”
“Then wouldn’t that make reflection part of you too?” What she was saying made no sense. If she was admitting to hosting many souls, peoples…goddess only knew what, then that meant reflection (this supposed great evil) was as much her as Lissa had been. By her own words anyway.
She squeezed her eyes shut, lower lip wiggling as if she fought back tears. “I don’t know. I remember I was not born with reflection, reflection came upon me.”
Brushing his fingers through his hair, he slowly tried to reason through her explanation. “But you were born with your split?”
“Yes. But nobody knew I was. I kept her secret. Because I did not want to scare my family. Danika grew concerned when she’d seen reflection manifest and I understood she didn’t want me to speak of it. So I never told my family. But I used to be able to control her. Reflection is mad, I do not like her, but I cannot control her. When I turned eighteen she grew stronger. And it first it was easy to do what she wanted. Because I didn’t hurt anything, it was just a bit of magic. But she was always hungry and made me…” she blinked with a vacant, haunted stare, “do things.”
“What sorts of things?” he asked, having a feeling he already knew.
Her eyes locked with his. “Kill.”
“Every other time I’ve looked at you I’ve seen this empty, vacant stare. How is it that your speaking so rationally?”
She shrugged. “The net. It clears my mind. Reflection is still inside me,” her fingers fluttered around her head, “but she’s trapped, she’s angry, she does not like this. But I can think now. It’s why I led you to me.”
It took every ounce of restraint he possessed not to growl at her. “Led me to you?”
“I had to shield myself from reflection. The only way to do that was to fool you all. I had to use Lissa, I didn’t like it. I had to use you too.” Her words came out stilted and soft, as if against her will. “It was the only way.”
Aeric wasn’t sure whether to believe that. It would be easy to lie to get herself out of this mess. He’d seen many others do it before. But something about this was beginning to make sense.
Or maybe, as with Lissa, his better judgment was corrupt and he was trying to force a square peg into a round hole because letting go of Lissa, of that night under the stars when they’d loved and laughed and revealed their innermost souls, had felt so real that to believe otherwise felt wrong.
All his life, Aeric had been a fighter. It’s what he’d been born to do, when the curse of the sands had become his, he’d not fought it; he’d learned to accept it, adapt to it. But he’d always yearned for more, always believed that even he could find a destiny greater than slaughter and death.
He’d thought he’d found that with Lissa. It was why he kept clinging, kept hoping that Chrysalis would make this right. Would absolve Lissa’s guilt, would open his eyes and his heart and make him see.
“How come Lissa never had the bleeding heart?” It was bothering him enough to ask.
“I told you, hunter, I am Lissa, but she is not me. I’ve always been aware of Lissa, but she’s never known of me. So I sent her to you but I shielded her. Kept her diminished, by doing so I was able to control what you saw. You stabbed me, if you’d seen her covered in the markings of a fight, you’d have known immediately.”
“Is that why she was solid in cat form?”
“Yes, because it wouldn’t matter what there was, the fur covered her. It wasn’t until almost at the end of our quest that my ability to shield her no longer functioned.”
“Explain from the beginning.”
She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her slim body and rocking softly. “I don’t have a lot of time, reflection is growing stronger, when she comes I cannot control myself. I will tell you what I can before she returns, but know this, man, no matter what she says or how she looks, I do not want her in me anymore. I know that now.”
He clipped a hard nod.
“When I was born,” she began. “I was cursed by the moon. My parents tried for years to hide my affliction, but I always knew I was different. As I grew older I learned of my different side, Lissa was fun and carefree. Completely harmless. Then one day I noticed another presence and realized it’d always been lurking deep, deep down.” She grimaced as she briefly rested her palm upon her heart. “It was dark, but it was quiet and easy to pretend it was nothing. Until the day it showed itself. Manifested itself in front of Danika. The fairy knew immediately. She tried to teach me how to control the evil, how to bury it d
eep and keep it away and at first the spells worked. I could contain the darkness, but as I grew, it grew stronger. Reflection is powerful, she does not know everything I do, only what I tell her. Lissa knows nothing of any of us, she is young, spirited, and very innocent.”
He had no time to dwell on those words. “How many of you are there exactly, are there more than three?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“I don’t believe this story. I can’t.”
She snorted. “It is my story, man, and yet you tell me it is an impossibility. It is very possible. You see me here,” she pointed in front of her, “but do you not also see me there?”
Frowning, he followed her finger and couldn’t believe his eyes. A misty figure hovered between trees. A blue spirit with billowing black hair floating behind her as she vanished behind a thick trunk. Suddenly a memory came to him, Lissa mentioning once or twice that when she’d seen Chrysalis only she’d been in ghostly form.
How long had Chrysalis been doing this to Lissa?
“Who you just saw was Lissa, my split. But when Lissa is in control, that is how she sees me.”
“You were the one guiding her here?” His heart jerked at the realization. Was that how Lissa knew to come here exactly? Had she been following the trail of a ghost?
Chrysalis nodded softly, as if answering his unspoken question.
“Lissa tells me you’ve walked these woods since age four. Is that true?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“But you’ve been locked in the Hatter’s garden for ages, how is that possible?”
“I am the daughter of the Hatter, there’s much I can do, I walked these woods as a shade for many years. Learning it, exploring it, mimicking its madness.”
“Have I even been in Wonderland?”
“You are in Wonderland now.”
“Yes, but a Wonderland I barely recognized. You say you led me here, to you, so that we could speak. Did you drug me at Pillar’s? Was that you too? Just how much of this journey did you plot?”
She shook her head, but knowledge seemed to twinkle back at him. “I did not tell the caterpillar to give you anything. Though I’ll admit that I did lead you to her to find me there. Or rather Lissa.”