The Mad King (The Dark Kings)

by Jovee Winters

  I was counting on that bond to still exist within the hearts of each of the fractured fairy tales. Magic was such a strange and maddening thing sometimes.

  Danika squeezed her eyes shut. “It hurts, Galeta. Hurts to remember. And when I try”—she whimpered, voice reed thin and painful to hear—“my head feels as though it might explode. All these memories tumbling in one after another. What was. What isn’t. I can hardly think clearly.”

  Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes, and my jaw wobbled. Fighting back my own tears, I knuckled the shimmering wetness from her lashes and nodded.

  “I know, dear, but this is very, very important. Wonderland isn’t as it once was.”

  At that, her eyes shot open and a look of impending doom overtook her delicate features. “What? But... but Hatter lives.”

  I closed my eyes, recalling my travels through the strange and twisted land, now twisted no more. Flutterbys did not fly. Spoon-billed storks now no longer had a spoon as a bill but an actual beak. The trees did not burst with sweets and branches of slithering ring-tailed snakes. And there were no singing flowers to fill the night with song.

  The land withered without its magic, turning into a forest full of the everyday, ordinary dreariness of life. Something had happened to Hatter before the rift, other than the obvious loss of his true Alice. Before the curse had happened, he’d lost his magic. It was the only thing that made sense, because if he’d retained it, the power of Wonderland should still beat strongly.

  Where that magic was, I did not know. But maybe, just maybe, Hatter would.

  “Hatter lives, but with the other Alice. And I cannot say for certain, but Wonderland has certainly not accepted her. Though she stayed, he has become horribly sane.”

  She shuddered.

  And I understood why. Sanity was a great thing, if you were anyone other than our beloved Hatter. The tales were clear; Hatter was mad. Without his madness, he wasn’t our Hatter. He was simply a man. Just another character in a world of fairy tales no one knew and no one cared about.

  Scrubbing at her cheeks with the palms of her hands, Danika breathed out a heavy sigh. “I knew when I first brought that one to him that she was off. Though my body buzzed with the knowledge of her, it wasn’t her he was meant to be with. It was the great-granddaughter. Galeta, if the other Alice stayed, there’s a very good chance my Alice was never born.”

  The blood turned to rivers of ice in my veins, and I shook my head vehemently. I’d already rejected that notion once, and I would not accept it now, not even coming from her. “No. No. I won’t believe that. The Creator had a reason for all this.”

  At the mention of Its name, her pretty face twisted into a tight snarl.

  “What! What then? You tell me, because none of this makes sense. Malvena? The Heartsong? Do you not remember them? The Black? The creation of the Heartsong to take the darkness? Little knowing that you were the true embodiment of all evil. What was the purpose of each of them? What? What!” She shrieked, pounding her fist on the table with such force that the wood groaned.

  Malvena...

  The name jogged my memory. I’d not thought of her in so long I’d almost forgotten. But now that I could remember who I was, who I really was, I also remembered that when I was first created, there’d been no Black among us. Only the darkness of the seed of evil.

  Who Malvena truly had been, I had no idea. But I hoped, hoped that one of us, somewhere, would learn something. Would be able to put these maddening pieces of the puzzle together, would be able to make sense of all this nonsense.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Danika. But that is the very least of our worries now. We must save him. Save her. They’re bound. Tethered. Which means somewhere in these cosmos, she exists. His soul has been irrevocably linked to hers, and I have to believe that the magic of true love is still the most powerful magic of all.”

  “You believe.” She snorted as the tears rushed in torrents now. “I had a husband. I remember him. I loved him so much. True love you say... Where is he now? Back in that moon? If he knew me, if Jericho knew me even a little, there’d be nothing that would keep him away. But our story never happened. In this timeline you’ve always been good, kind, and there was no moon seed hidden away in your cupboard for me to steal.”

  She shook her head, huffing at the tears dripping from the corners of her eyes. Laughter tinged with madness spilled off her tongue. “He doesn’t even know I exist.”

  I was losing her. Desperate that she stay with me, that she not lose herself to the insanity of too many thoughts and lives tumbling through her splintered mind, I grabbed her shoulders and shook her roughly, digging my claws in just enough to nearly break skin.

  She hissed, going still beneath me.

  “Stop! Stop now!” I barked. “Listen to me, and listen to me well, Danika Moon. If you want to save the world we knew, then I need you with me. Tell me where Alice should be; even if you don’t believe she lives, you must answer me. Tell me please!”

  But Danika was slipping from me. Her tears were so thick I knew she could not see me. And though my claws had now broken skin, her entire body quaked beneath my hands.

  Four words whispered on the winds before I lost her completely.

  “Honolulu. Mad Hatter’s Cupcakery.”

  Chapter 4

  Alice

  I lay in bed, surrounded by those I loved, calling out to him until my throat bled raw.

  He never came.

  Beep.

  Whoosh.

  Gasping breath.

  Rattling lungs.

  Fingers weakened as I gripped the sheets.

  He’d promised me.

  At thirteen.

  My Hatter. My truest and only love. I’d thought he’d been real. Believed he’d been as real as me. At thirteen, it’d been the memory of his coming to me that’d caused me to fight that tumor then. To try to get better. And he had come.

  Or at least I thought he had.

  I’d seen an image of his smiling and far more handsome face than I’d ever dreamed possible after reading his story in the book.

  My parents hadn’t believed me when I’d told them of my miracle. They’d sent me to a psychiatrist, and for years I had forgotten all about him. I’d moved on. Until the tumor had returned a few months ago, and with it the clarity of memories buried under years of denial.

  “Are you real?” I mumbled in my fevered delirium, floating in a numbed haze of morphine and pain as I once again floated back to that time when I’d called and he’d answered.

  I am...

  I shook as I heard the deep and sonorous treble of his words echo through time and space. The words the devil-eyed and gorgeous man had once whispered to me so long ago.

  “You’re. So. Beautiful.” Each word was excruciating to push past my lips, each one ending on a desperate gasp for air. But I was caught up in the past. Caught up in the moment that the Hatter had come for me.

  Voices echoed around me in the room, yanking me, reluctant, back into the present, into the pain of the now. The heated whispers of my mother. Father. Sister. And my best friend Tabby.

  I was only twenty-four. Leaving them all far too soon. I hoped they’d forgive me for this. Hoped they’d understand.

  Footsteps pounded out the door as someone’s breath caught on a violent sob. At a guess, I’d say Tabby had left. I was surprised she’d stayed as long as she had. My best friend had never done well when around illness, let alone near death.

  “Who is she talking to?” My mother’s voice?

  I wanted to tell her it was okay. But I’d used all the breath I’d had left in me. I had seconds left, and I knew it. Being lucid, being here with them, it hurt too much.

  I’d fought for as long as I could, but I could no longer stay. I had to let go, and they had to let me go.

  “She’s lost herself in that book again,” a man’s voice said. Maybe my father’s. Maybe not.

  Everything has beauty. But not everyone sees
it...

  A tear leaked from the corner of my eye as my heart broke into a million bitter shards of pain and regret. Those had been the words Hatter had whispered to me when I’d only been thirteen and had confessed with a youthful heart full to bursting with love how beautiful I’d thought him to be.

  Hatter. My Hatter. You never came for me... And now I must go into that long cold night. It was senseless, this overwhelming aching, loneliness I felt for a fictional character in a fictional story.

  But I knew I wasn’t crazy.

  Or maybe I was.

  He had come for me once.

  Or maybe he hadn’t.

  He’d ruined me for all men.

  At least that part was true enough. Hatter had been all things to me in life.

  Wherever he was now, whether real and living or merely ink upon the pages of a book, I hoped he was happy. And though I knew he’d not come to me this time, I whispered to him upon the breeze, pushing the magic of belief into each pain-filled thought, knowing in my fevered delirium that somewhere in the eternal vastness of reality and fiction, he’d hear me and know, feeling as if my heart truly shattered with my parting words.

  And with those final thoughts, I released the very last breath my body held and slipped into the void of infinite darkness.

  ~*~

  Hatter

  Rolling over in bed, I gathered the lumpy body pillow tight to me. My dreams tonight were restless. Painful.

  My breathing heavy.

  Alice and I shared a room, but for many years now we’d stopped sharing a bed. We now slept in separate beds on opposite ends of the room. Even so, my tossing and turning had irritated her throughout the night. She’d thrown no less than three pillows at my head, demanding I shut up and stop moving or she’d kick me out. Finally she’d made good on her threat. I’d been forced to move into the living room, to the too-small couch before the hearth, staring at the dancing flames until sleep had claimed me once again.

  I grunted, kicking out a leg. My chest began to ache, and I rubbed at it. Gently at first, then with more pressure. Was I dying?

  Was that possible?

  And yet I knew something was terribly and horribly wrong with me tonight. My skin crawled with beads of sweat, shivered with the rush of electrical sparks. And then, just as I took my next breath, I felt the breath of fire consume me.

  Excruciating and unbelievable pain shot through me. My eyes were open, but I did not see my home. Instead, I heard a voice.

  The voice of my Alice. And yet not my Alice. The voice was frail. Bitterly weak, but full of yearning and love.

  Let us always meet each other with a smile. For a smile is the beginning of love...

  Then, like someone had taken a pair of cutting shears and snipped my soul string in halves, my heart suddenly seized. My vision turned black. Pain shot through every inch of me. And I roared, body trembling and in unbearable agony.

  I dropped to my knees, grabbing my skull and screaming to the heavens as I felt a vital and necessary part of me wither and die.

  ~*~

  Galeta

  “NO!” I screamed at the vision bubble floating before me.

  Jerking from my seat, gripping the edges of the table, I stared dumbfounded at the image of a sickly, skeletal woman breathing her last.

  I’d just found her.

  Only to see the beautiful life slip from her.

  Alice couldn’t be dead.

  This couldn’t be happening. Fingers and hands twitching, I spun from my spot at the table. Restless and cagey, unable to believe or accept that what I’d seen had really just happened.

  “This can’t be.”

  My gaze zoomed around the room as I yanked on the tips of my hair, tugging at them roughly to try to jog an idea loose. My mind churned with a million different possibilities.

  What could I do? What could I do?

  There was no coming back from death. Death was final.

  Death was...

  “Hades!”

  Manic laughter spilled off my tongue even as my heart beat violently within me. The Lord of the Underworld rarely gave up his dead.

  But goddess help him if he denied me this. Kingdom had no idea who I was. Who I really was. Maybe it was time to start showing them I wasn’t to be messed with. Ever. I was no longer the Blue, now I was the Pink, and I’d fight like hell to get back every single lost happily-ever-after.

  “Aphrodite! Come to me!” I shouted, not giving a damn that I’d just ordered a goddess about.

  The beams above my head shook, and the castle itself shuddered at the power that rolled off my tongue. In moments I felt the compression of air behind me and knew the goddess had come.

  Whirling, I didn’t bother to greet her.

  “Alice has died. Hades must reach into the ether and bring her back. I don’t care what you have to do, but you get her to the underworld.”

  The goddess of love looked flummoxed by my ordering her about. Dressed in a gown of sheer, blinding light, she blinked prettily several times before giving herself a good shake and saying, “Alice Hu. I know who she is. But I don’t know why you think Hades would care to bring her back from her final destination to his. She means nothing to him. Not to be rude, but...”

  “Can’t you see? Don’t you understand?”

  She blinked, giving me wide eyes, and I blurted out the words on my tongue without thinking twice.

  With a growl, I tossed up my hands. “Because if you want to save Hades and Calypso, you need to save Hatter and Alice first. Their happily-ever-after is the only way to fix everyone else’s.”

  “What?” She took a step forward, clenching her fists. “But what could they possibly have to do with—”

  Heart racing so fast I felt dizzy, I slashed my hand through the air, shushing her. “I know you’re a goddess and none of this matters to you, but if you want to fix your fri—”

  Frowning prettily, she shook her head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Pink. I do care, deeply. I may be a goddess, but I’ve grown attached to many of your world. If you say Hatter and Alice will fix my Hades and Caly, then I’ll do whatever you need. Worry not; I will get the little mortal to the underworld one way or another. And Hatter?”

  “Is about to get a visit from one very pissed-off fairy godmother.”

  “We’re going to fix this.” Aphrodite tried to reassure me, but I was sick and terrified, and nothing short of the timelines reversing again could possibly ease my mind.

  I nodded. “There’s no choice now. Please hurry, Goddess. Please.”

  Without a word of good-bye, Aphrodite vanished, and I wilted against the edge of the table. I’d lied.

  I had no idea how Alice and Hatter could possibly help save Hades and Caly, but I’d do whatever I must to ensure Kingdom’s restoration, even if it meant betraying the kindness of a goddess to get it done. One way or another, I’d just have to make sure that Hatter and Alice could do what I’d so arrogantly boasted they could.

  Grabbing Danika’s hand, I gripped tight. “Damn you, Danika. Get yourself together, now! Your Alice has died, and time is not our friend.”

  “But... but... she lives?” Wetness coated her eyes as large tears dripped down her cheeks. Her fingers clenched grooves into the wood grain, so hard did she claw at it.

  “She lived. And now we must do whatever we can to get her back and our Hatter to the underworld.”

  The first spark of life I’d seen out of the godmother finally crossed her eyes. Fury mingled with determination burned bright in her cerulean gaze.

  “How?”

  Tearing open a time portal, I didn’t bother answering her. Because the truth was, I had no bloody idea how to do any of it. I was just praying that by the time we arrived at Hatter’s, I’d somehow have it figured out.

  “Gods help us all,” I whispered.

  Chapter 5

  Hatter

  It’d been many hours since I’d felt like I’d died. I no longer felt dead, but I did feel void
. Hollow. My hand was on my chest as I felt the organ beating inside my rib cage.

  It was a steady rhythm.

  Whoosh.

  Whoosh.

  Whoosh.

  But it was wrong too. Every third or fourth beat it simply stopped. Skipped. Made me catch my breath and shudder each and every time.

  Alice came out of the bedroom, tying a black silk sash around her long onyx-colored hair, eyeing me dubiously.

  “You look like hell,” she said with a slight curl of her lip. “I wish you’d get washed up, brush out your hair. Do something.”

  She huffed, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at me before walking toward the kitchen to heat a pot of water in the teakettle.

  “You know we’re supposed to entertain Tweedled—”

  “Not today,” I snapped before setting my jaw and glowering at my hands.

  Why wouldn’t they stop shaking? Ever since I’d shoved myself up off the floor, they continued to quake violently.

  My teeth clacked and every small muscle in my face twitched rapid-fire. After that ungodly roar I’d let loose earlier, Alice should have come running to see to my safety, but she looked neither concerned nor all that interested in what could have happened to me last night.

  “Cancel the tea. I feel unwell.” My voice came out gruff and strained.

  “What!” she shrieked and slammed the metal pot down on the counter, causing me to grimace and setting my teeth on edge. “We can’t just cancel. He’s our friend—”

  Head throbbing and temper frayed, I didn’t censor my thoughts.

  “No”—I glared at her—“you mean he’s your friend. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the sly looks being passed between the two of—”

  Her footsteps rushed toward me, and in the same instant that I smelled her thick scent of verbena, I felt a sharp and stinging slap to my left cheek.

  Her breaths came in rapid torrents as her chest rose and fell; her eyes were alive with fury. “How dare you! Who are you to talk to me in such a fashion?” she spat.

  I was in no mood to check my tongue this morning.