The edge grows closer, closer, closer, the darkness swallowing the land rapidly now. We’re running out of time.
“Decide now,” I grunt, curling my fingers in Tiger’s tunic just in case we have to jerk her backward. “We’re running out of time.” This is going to be a last chance, no time between grabbing Wolfbane and getting through the door. The edge is crawling far too close for comfort, getting close to Wolfbane where he stands before the door.
I watch as Tiger Lily meets Wolfbane’s eyes, as he holds himself still even with the world collapsing around him. “I wouldn’t blame you if you stepped through that door without me,” Wolfbane murmurs, gritting his jaw, but I see longing there. He doesn’t want to die, but he won’t ask Tiger to save him either.
“I know you wouldn’t,” she whispers back, and though it should be lost in the roaring around us, it still echoes.
“Decide now, Daughter,” I growl, watching the edge. I take a tiny step backwards, putting tension in her tunic and Wendy does the same, curling her hand on the other side. If it comes to it, we’ll all be falling through the door in a tangled mess, but at least we’ll be alive. But Tiger doesn’t move. “We’re out of time!” When she still doesn’t move, I clench my fist tighter and take another step back, putting more tension on the Chieftess. “Tiger!”
With a frown, Tiger reaches her hand out toward Wolfbane, making the decision to save him, to see if he can change. Relief fills those blue eyes, and the Crocodile takes a step toward his sister, his hand reaching for hers.
But I know we’re too late the same time Wolfbane does. His eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to say something—I’m not sure what—before the land buckles beneath him.
Tiger screams and reaches out, but our hands on her tunic keep her from diving after him as the darkness swallows the Crocodile. The place he once stood is gone. The Chieftess chokes on her scream as we yank her backward through the door, all three of us tumbling in a heap into the light behind us.
The moment we slam into what I suspect is the floor, someone grabs us and drags us backward quickly, a sound like thunder cracking around us so loud, it makes me cringe.
The large door slams shut behind us. . .
. . .and Neverland disappears forever.
Chapter Thirty-Four
THE WHITE RABBIT
I stand there and stare in confusion even as the Daughters of Neverland—or wherever they’ll claim now—fall through the door behind us. The moment Atlas slams the door shut, a long, thick crack opens down the middle. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a door die, the first time I’ve ever witnessed something so momentous. I don’t know how to handle the situation except to stare at Wendy in awe.
Her face is tear-streaked and splattered with blood, her eyes swollen, but she’s still glorious as she stands and stares at the door that had only opened with the death of her brothers.
“It’s the same door we should have went through for Neverland,” I whisper, stepping up beside her. “The same door I first went through when I found myself in your world.”
“I don’t get it,” she croaks. “It’s your door.”
“And yet only your ‘key’ opened it.” I frown and meet her eyes. “I have no answers for you, Wendy Darling, only that I’m thankful you made it through.”
The door shines black in the bright light of the hall of doors, the skull and crossbones that have always graced it split by the large crack. I’m tempted to open it now and see what happens, but I don’t have the nerve. Last time, we ended up in the Grimm Forest. What would happen now that there’s no Neverland at all to find?
Everyone fills the halls, so many, we’re packed in relatively tight. They’d lost people on the way out, but still, there had to be at least seventy people left. It doesn’t sound like many, not in the grand scheme of things, but it’s seventy people we saved from a fate perhaps worse than death.
Tink tilts her head where Atlas supports her. The wounds on her back aren’t healing, great smears of blood on the floor where she’d landed and been dragged backward. I’m not sure if it’s because Neverland is gone, or some other magic at work, but if her back isn’t stitching itself back together normally, I have to wonder if she can regrow her wings. I decide I’m not going to ask her. That seems a cruel fate for a being meant to soar the skies.
“So what do we do now?” the pixie asks.
We’ve spent so much time running, trying to escape, we haven’t given much thought to what we’d do once we were successful, another happy thought we suppressed until we knew for sure. Now, I stare at the Pixie Queen with few options.
“You could come to my world,” Atlas shrugs, looking down at Tink. “And by my world, I mean Wonderland.”
I straighten my waistcoat and look out over the group of mismatched people again. We all look worse for wear, covered in grime and blood, as if we were in a battle. I suppose we were, even without including the last fight with the Lost. We’d battled something far greater, an entire world determined to blink them from existence.
“I’ll open any door you’d like,” I tell them, “but we should go talk to Hatter and Clara first. They might offer something far more generous than I can.”
An agreeance echoes through the hall and I take Jupiter’s hand, moving through the crowd back to the door that leads to Wonderland. I take a deep breath. The last time we opened a door, it led to the wrong world. I can only hope there’s no glitch this time, that we step out into Wonderland.
I insert my key into the lock and turn my wrist, Jupiter holding tightly to my other hand. I know she’s thinking the same thing, wondering what we’ll walk into. Flam and Doe mentioned Wonderland has been having the same issue with creatures showing up that we’d witnessed in Neverland. Perhaps, they’d fixed the problem. All the doors in the hall are sealed shut as they should be, so they can’t be coming from there.
The door unlocks with a resounding click, and the moment we step through, leaving enough room for the others to come in behind us, I pause, my eyes widening at the sight before me.
“White?” Jupiter asks, her eyes just as wide as mine. She’s walked through the Wonderland door with me enough to know when something is wrong. We’ve all been through the door.
“It was the right door,” I whisper, and while that’s true, there’s still something wrong. We’re in Wonderland, but before us, instead of the forest, we’re looking right at Hatter’s house, except it’s all wrong. It’s almost like we stand on the edge of two worlds, a forest and. . .an ocean? I touch my hand to the wall of water cutting through the Hatter’s house, bisecting the entire clearing. It meets up with the edge of my door, so it’s near my shoulder. It looks like there’s an invisible wall holding it back, but my hand slides through the barrier easily, wetting my hand and leaving droplets when I pull it back out.
“That’s the Hatter’s house,” Atlas says, staring in surprise at the black cottage before us. “It should have been a few hours walk away from the door.”
“But it’s cut in half,” Tink frowns. “He lives in that? How does he handle the water?”
“It was whole when we left,” I murmur, stepping further inside my world. In the distance, I can see strange structures, great beasts flapping through the skies. “And there was no water.”
“What in the fucking hell is going on?” Calypso asks. She’s been quiet until now, up until some sort of large kraken-like creature swims past on the other side of the water wall. It’s giant eye stares at us for a second, but upon sensing our power, it dismisses us as a meal and swims away.
“I’m as confused as you are,” Cheshire growls, but he pulls his blade as if he expects a fight. I don’t blame him. Everything feels wrong, off, too many powers crashing against each other.
As we stare at the half of Hatter’s house not in the water—the door thankfully on the dry side—the front door opens. Hatter and Clara come tumbling out, both frazzled. Hatter’s jacket is shredded in places, giving him more of an edgy appear
ance than normal. Clara is dressed in normal clothing rather than her empress outfit, her armor over top of it missing pieces. I wonder where Hatter’s armor is. A large tiger comes bounding out of the house behind them and I stare at it in shock. What in the actual fuck is happening? I press my hand to my forehead. I need to sit down.
“Thank wonder you’re here!” Clara exclaims, her eyes dancing across our group, picking out those with power and those who need help. “You’re never going to believe this but—”
Before she can finish, the world around us flares brightly and the earth begins to move. The water sucks back away from hatter’s house, leaving sea creatures suddenly flopping on dry land, but in the distance, another wall I can’t comprehend from this distance moves, shimmering as if it’s filled with too many colors.
“Is Wonderland dying?” Cheshire snarls, staring around at everything shifting. I know what he’s thinking. Are we going to have to face evacuating yet another world? Everyone panics, worried we escaped one world only to drop into another one ending, but Hatter shakes his head.
“It’s worst than that,” he admits. He doesn’t sway even though the ground shakes, as if he’s used to the motion, and that worries me more than anything else. “The worlds are merging.”
Jupiter stares at him with wide eyes, no doubt trying to pick apart his words to find the meaning.
In the end, it’s Wendy who steps forward, even after all her pain, even though she just lost her world and her brothers within the same minute, and asks what we’re all thinking. “Which worlds?”
Hatter takes off his surprisingly intact top hat and holds it to his chest, far wearier and more worried than I’ve ever seen him. Even battling Alice for centuries, I’ve never seen him so. My anxiety shoots up even more when he meets our eyes one by one, before settling on mine, the one with access to the worlds, the one who knows how many there are.
“All of them,” he murmurs just as the shaking stops. “All the worlds are merging.”
Silence, and then in the distance, something large howls.
Cheshire grunts and drags Calypso close, staring at the chaos around us with new eyes.
Jupiter seems to battle excitement and panic, before settling on the one word that perfectly sums up this entire situation. “Fuck.”
But me? I turn around and try to step back through the door, desperate to check each one. I shove passed person after person, pulling out my key. I open the one to the Grimm Forest and look inside. I meet the eyes of the Hatter. “No,” I growl, slamming it shut and opening the next. Still Hatter. “No!” I go down the line, but each time, the door drops me in the same exact place, right in front of the Mad Hatter’s house.
In the end, it’s Jupiter who grabs my hand and tugs me back through with the others, her face focused on mine, working on calming me down. What am I if my key does nothing? Am I even a son anymore?
“White,” she murmurs, cupping my chin and directing my gaze to hers. “Look at me. I need you to answer a question.”
I swallow thickly. “Yes?”
She takes a deep breath. “How many worlds are there? How many doors?”
As I look off into the distance, watching Clara and Hatter leading everyone towards his half-waterlogged home, I barely get the words out past my lips. I can barely say them.
“Dozens,” I choke. “Jupiter, there’s dozens of worlds morphing into one. I can think of at least five dozen off the top of my head.”
Flam stands before us, his eyes following some sort of creature closely as it flies overhead. I track his gaze, finding the beast, and whatever it is distracts me enough from the predicament to wrinkle my brow in confusion. “What the fuck is that?” I ask him because there’s recognition in the Flamingo’s eyes.
He turns to me, his face hard, his shoulders tense. I expect something profound, perhaps some new beast he once encountered, maybe something that eats people, but instead, he purses his lips. “It’s a flying monkey.”
“I don’t understand. . .” Jupiter murmurs, watching it fly away with curiosity.
“You don’t want to,” Flam grunts before turning and following the others, leaving us to stand there in confusion.
“Well,” Jupiter says, forcing a smile to her face. “I said I wanted an adventure.”
“Is it too late to cancel the adventure?” I ask, grimacing.
“If only it was a video game.” Jupiter grins. “But then again, if we’re playing a game, I’d probably whoop your ass at it, bunny rabbit.”
Even with the world going to shit around us, even with weird creatures flying overhead and the water wall in the distance, I smile at my mate. At least I have her. At least we’ll face this new world together.
“Careful, Dream Walker, or I might feed you to the flying monkey,” I tease, taking her hand.
“Come on,” she winks. “I’ll seduce you with interesting scientific facts.”
Together we walk into the Hatter’s house, and for a second, we pretend as if the world isn’t as mad as the March Hare outside. For a moment, we ignore the chaos and take the cup of tea the Hatter offers us.
After all, there’s nothing quite as refreshing as a cup of Hatter’s chamomile. . .
Chapter Thirty-Five
ATLAS
Tink and I sit on the roof of Hatter’s house together, the shingles now thankfully dry, staring out at a world that doesn’t make sense. In the distance, there’s Wonderland and the crumbling black castle left after Alice. It still stands but it’s mostly been left to decay, all manner of strange creatures moving into the empty halls. Clara had refused to take up residence there, but she’d also refused to tear it down, claiming it’s a part of our history even if none dare enter the structure anymore. I can’t blame her. None of us want to set foot in the halls that still scream with the lives taken there. None of us want anywhere near those sorts of phantoms. The after effects of the war mostly had us trying to bring Wonderland back to its old self, and though we lack a Queen, we have an Empress who cares for the creatures and people of this world far more than anyone else ever could. Besides, Wonderland seems to know what it was doing putting us all together, each of us powerful in our own right.
And now there’s even more power centered here. If the worlds weren’t going insane, I’d have been worried what Wonderland would think of the Daughters here.
While I can see the castle, and the beginnings of the maze in the distance, there’s also trees I don’t recognize. Where Wonderland trees are almost a skewed version of normal trees, these trees are black. I can’t imagine how many different worlds will be crashing together, can’t imagine what that’ll mean for the size of this world. Right now, I can’t get over what looks like the Eiffel Tower in the distance. It’s massive, something I never thought I’d see in a skyline in my lifetime. We aren’t exactly made of enough money to travel to Paris.
“I wonder which one it is,” I muse out loud, shaking my head at the absurdity of this new world. There’s a good chance it’s not Paris at all. There’s a good chance it’s Las Vegas. If I thought Wonderland was mad as the Hatter, I’m being proven wrong. This world is even more insane.
Sighing, I glance over at Tink where she sits beside me, scanning the horizon the same as I am. This has to be even more insane for her than it is me, for all the Daughters. Though Wendy was born in my world, she’d been in Neverland a long time. But Tink and Tiger Lily were made there. Both know nothing else. To step from a dark and dangerous world to one that could be even more dangerous, I can’t imagine the stress.
Taking her hand in mine, smoothing my thumb over the black lines forever etched into her skin as a history of the world she lost, her penance for failing at her job, I tug until she meets my eyes. “This isn’t something I ever expected, facing a new world like this, but I’m glad we can do it together.”
Tink nods, a soft smile on her lips that I’d hoped to see in Neverland, but I’m thankful I see it now. My pixie is slowly opening up for me. “It’ll test ou
r strength and our will, I think, but I’m looking forward to a different adventure.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask, tilting my head. “That it’ll test us?” Ideally, we’d just create our own borders between worlds once they stop moving, if they stop moving. We’re in unknown territory now. We don’t know what to expect.
“There are monsters in every world, and now, their playground has gotten much larger.” Her vibrant eyes meet mine. “Do you think a monster will mind a border? Or do you think they’re more likely to explore?”
My eyes widen at the realization. It hits me all at once, that there could be hundreds of Alices, that there can be dozens of Crocodiles just waiting to pounce. What sort of creatures have been released on other worlds during this merging? “I never thought of it like that,” I grunt. “Shit, I should warn the others!”
“Not yet,” Tink murmurs, moving closer until she can rest her head on my shoulder.
In Neverland, it was always dark on the island, no sunlight to be had. Here, in the distance, three suns begin to crest with the dawn. There used to be only one sun. I try not to question too much how there’s now three.
I wrap my arm around her and tug her close, my arm brushing the mottled flesh where her wings used to be. I try not to flinch, but as usual Tink notices. It makes me sad every time to see the wounds healed and the wings not growing, so I can imagine what the pixie feels. She’d given up her wings for me, and though she might have thought they’d grow back, she’d grounded herself to save me. It’s a debt I can never repay, one I’ll spend the rest of my time making up for.
“Don’t feel sad for me, Berserker,” she chides. “We’ve talked about this.”
I swallow all the things I want to say and instead just hold her and settle for gentle words. “You gave them up to save me,” I whisper. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to no longer—”
Wicked as a Pixie (Daughters of Neverland Book 3) Page 21