Chapter 1

Forward: Galeta the Pink

A mess. That’s what this is. One giant, enormous, never-before-heard-of quandary. And the worst of it is, it’s all my fault.

Look, I have to be bold. Brave. Fearless. All the things I’ve never been to fix this kettle of fish we now find ourselves in, but the truth is I’m not sure how to solve it, or whether I even can.

Everything’s changed. Magic has altered. Even the landscape has shifted. Places that once were are now different. They’re still there but no longer the same.

Everything is topsy-turvy, and I don’t know how to make sense of this. It’s been a week since Harpy took the magic from me. Since the world I once knew was no more.

And nothing at all is what I thought.

At first I thought time had altered, but I quickly realized that not every one of Danika’s couples were affected by this transformation.

Though many of Dani’s Bad Five are altered.

The Wolf and his beloved Heartsong have been separated. And worse still, I can find neither one of them. It’s as though they’ve simply vanished into the ether, as though they’d never been at all. The only proof of their ever having existed is the stony presence of their son still trapped in the hidden realm Calypso and Aphrodite fashioned for him along with Rayale—the Pied Piper—during the games.

And speaking of the elemental goddess Calypso, disaster doesn’t even begin to describe what’s happened to both her and Hades.

Their case would be the most tragic to me, considering how many other lives are affected by the loss of them, but in truth, there is one loss far greater than all the rest.

Wonderland is no more.

The madcap, beautiful realm is now nothing more than a mundane woodland full of mundane flowers and mundane animals. The insanity is almost entirely all gone. Flowers no longer sing. The March Hare is little more than a fluffy, brown-furred bunny with only an occasional lapse into lunacy. Trouser-and-tie-wearing skinks and stunks no longer wander the woods quoting Frost as they drink their tea. Even Leonard, Hatter’s longtime chef and beloved mouse, is naught but a chittering rodent in search of grains and nuts.

Only Hatter owns magic, and even so it is very, very little. Enough to occasionally fashion a bit of whimsy to please Other Alice’s avarice, but that is it.

My fear is that once the magic’s gone, can Hatter ever be saved? Can the fairy tales be saved? The ramifications what it would mean to lose Wonderland is too great a thought to bear. Magic is vital to the institution of Kingdom itself.

Every thread of everyday life is woven by it. To lose its magic would be to lose the very heart of our world.

Only now have I realized that the very beating epicenter of Kingdom starts right there. The tales and so many of the stories bloomed from that madness. To bring it back, I must somehow make the Hatter remember, for he is the very soul of that realm. And so now I have no choice but to journey and do the impossible. I must make Hatter fall in love with his Alice—his real Alice—again.

But Other Alice is in the way, and I’m not even certain whether Hatter’s true Alice is still alive, or for that matter was born at all. With her great-grandmother now a part of Kingdom, I have my doubts that our Alice was ever created.

I wish I understood why the Creator allowed this nightmare to happen. Why taking that seed of darkness from me caused all this chaos. I can only hope that in time I’ll learn why It saved me at all, knowing how disastrous the outcome would be to everyone else.

No matter what happens to me through all this though, I’m determined to right this sinking ship.

I’m a godmother; this is exactly what my kind does. But nothing at all is right with this new world. And I’m quite certain that no fairy godmother has ever before faced the challenges in front of me now.

I will fix this.

I will fix all this.

Somehow.

I hope.

Oh, Goddess, I hope.

So I guess there is only one way to start this tale.

Once.

Upon.

Another.

Time...

~Galeta the Pink, one of the thirteen keepers of the Tales

Chapter 2

Alice

Before the BOOM

Rolling over, I grunted. Gripping the pillow and sheets, tearing at the thin fabric with nails that could almost rival claws. Lost in the surreal reality of a dream that felt more alive than imaginary.

Rip.

I froze in place with panic.

Dreams. Nightmares. All of it is flooding through me.

A swirl of colors. Of chaos. Noise.

Screams.

Cries.

Whimpers.

Begging.

Pleading.

Families being ripped apart. Children vanishing. Lovers no longer knowing the names of their beloved. Utter and total bedlam.

A ripping. A tearing asunder. Then darkness. Lost to me forever. Never the same again. Never the same.

I screamed, shooting up in bed and clutching the sheets to my sweaty chest as I stared with unseeing eyes at the walls of our bedroom—Hatter’s and mine.

I’d come to this strange, madcap world so long ago that my memories of Earth were vague, wispy recollections. This place, this strangely glorious place, was my home. And the thought of my dream ever coming true, it terrified me. Caused my heart to race, my pulse to throb on the back of my tongue, fear to grip me in its icy claws.

Hatter was beside me in a minute, gripping my shoulders. In moments the lights flickered on, but our bed was a garden and our lights the soft blue glow of luminous mushroom caps.

A cool breeze licked at my body, cooling my heated flesh instantly. I shivered, heart still racing violently inside my chest.

He gripped my shoulders in his strong, capable hands, turning me to face him, those devilish eyes of his so beautiful even in their worry. “Again?” he asked roughly, rubbing my shoulder with his thumb.

I trembled, sliding my eyes shut as I shook my head. “Something’s coming, Hatter. Something awful. Something that will destroy us. I feel it. I know it. I—”

“I believe you,” he said instantly, then dragged me against his chest and hugged me tight as my fingers dug into his nude back. His nose was in my hair, inhaling my scent.

It’s what he did when he was nervous. And I knew he was, because every muscle in his body trembled.

For the past three weeks, I’d suffered terrible nightmares. And at first I’d shrugged them off as merely the by-product of an overactive imagination—the madness of Wonderland, something I was normally immune to.

Then I’d begun to worry that even in Kingdom, maybe somehow my cancer had come back and was affecting me. But Hatter had taken me to the Caterpillar, and she’d been able to spy inside my brain, proclaiming me as cured as the Hatter himself. A little mad, but all the more wonderful for it.

Now though... The dreams had shifted.

I could taste them. Feel them.

Feel Hatter being ripped from me. Feel the loss of our daughter and grandchildren. Everything that made me, me and him, him—gone in an instant.

My heart shattered.

My soul screamed.

My hands shook as I buried my face in his chest. I’d rarely been prone to premonitions, but with my having been a part of this realm so long now, the madness and magic had leached into me as surely as it’d leached into my mate. Wonderland was preparing me. Wonderland was sharing its secret with me: something terrible this way came.

Feeling as though I might puke, I shivered. “This is real, Hatter. I don’t know how I know this. Or why I know this, but I feel almost as though Wonderland is trying to warn us.”

Pulling back just enough so that he could peer into my eyes, he looked at me intently. “Wonderland has bonded to you, my heartbeat. If you say this is an omen, then I have no choice but to believe.”

The canopy of leaves that created our four-poster bed began to thicken and swell, the leaves themselves broadening, growing larger than our own bodies, and crawling closer to us as though they meant to encase us.

But I did not sense malice from the magic, rather as though Wonderland were in the beginnings of birthing pains and trying to shield us from the worst of it.

“What do we do, Alice?” he asked, and my heart swelled with agony and also love for him.

No other man could hear what I’d just told him and believe so easily. But Hatter never doubted me. Always I felt his love, his deep devotion to me. We were lovers, but we were so much more than that. We were one soul. One heart. He was me, and I was him. It’s how we’d always been.

We were two parts of the same whole. I wasn’t me without him, and the same went for him. I was the sun to his moon. The night to his day. The very first whisper of breath to new life and the very final one to death. We could not exist whole without the other. Especially after we’d bonded souls in a very literal sense with the Stones of Veritas. If anything ever happened to my Hatter, I would feel it, and the same went for him.

Yes, it was intense. But that’s who we were. Who we’d always been.

I blinked, swallowing back the pain as I forced myself to speak the nightmare to life. “You leave me, Hatter. And I leave you. Separated by time and distance.”

He shook his head in denial, but I felt the sands of time slipping through the hourglass of our lives. We were down to the final grains, and I had to make him strong for us both.

“Where I go, you will not follow. I do not know where I’ll wind up, but I need you to find me. Never stop searching for me, Hatter. Make me remember you. And know that no matter what I may say or do in that new life, very deep down in a hidden recess of my soul, I am there and I am fighting and I will come back to you.”

“Alice!” He shook, jumping to his knees as his hands dug into my biceps almost painfully, his eyes wild and alive with panic, his dark, shaggy hair hanging long upon his shoulders.

I had to touch him. One final time. Frame his beloved face. I loved this man with all my dark soul. “Hatter, you must give me the seed of your power. It’s the only way.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head as I recalled the vision.

I didn’t understand any of this; all I knew was I had to obey. Before we lost each other forever. If I didn’t do this, if he didn’t do this, there was no saving either one of us. We’d be separated eternally.

I placed my fist gently against the beat of his heart, pleading silently with my eyes for him to trust me.

“I do, my Alice. I always have.”

I nodded, biting my lower lip. “I know. We have only minutes, my dark heart. I wish we had more time, but we don’t. Please hurry.”

Without another word, he did as I asked. Closing his eyes, Hatter whispered words beneath his breath, and as he did coils of glittering gold wound out of his chest like dazzling serpents. Those same serpents shoved instantly through my chest, and I sucked in a sharp breath as I felt the pressure and fullness of his power wind rapidly down my soul. Tighter. Tighter. And tighter still until I felt I would drown from it.

The final flick of a serpent’s tail exiting his chest and entering my own rocketed through me, and then there was silence. I clutched my hand to my breast. The heaviness of that magic still coiling and slinking inside me made me feel full, but also much less frantic. We could not exist without the other; he would find me again. I knew it.

Wonderland had always been linked to me from the moment Hatter had declared me his own, but now I felt the pull and life of it. Felt the soul of its madness beat like bats’ wings within me. That wonderfully strange magic all its own, where up wasn’t always up and the sky was sometimes beneath you.

The pitter-patter of insects marched like a drone in the back of my mind; animals slinked, slithered, and crawled; and humans whispered nonsense among themselves. I was tied to it at all and all of it tied to me. And for a moment I was in awe of the absolute power my mate had kept protected within him. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes, and I felt a fullness of love for Hatter I’d not known was possible before.

He was so bloody amazing, and I wasn’t sure I could survive the loss of him.

Hatter clenched my fingers tight. “You have nearly all my magic now, Alice. Anything I possess now is there to find you again. But are you sure? Is this truly—”

And then the earth shook and trembled. The skies above our gardens turned bloody and the clouds black, and on the wind whispered a gathering roll of dark magick.

Tears burned my throat as I shook my head, desperate to deny what I knew came next. We held each other tight, and the very last words I whispered to him were these: “Let us always meet each other with a smile. For a smile is the beginning of love...”

Then we kissed until the curse ripped us out of each other’s arms.

Chapter 3

Galeta

Present Day

Syrith gripped my hand tight as I stood at the head of the long polished mahogany table in his massive royal estate. I hung my head to my chest, breathing deeply, shaken to my core by a mixture of overwhelming exhaustion and a runoff of several days’ worth of adrenaline.

It’d taken days to help the rest of the assembled crowd get over their shock, not to mention it hadn’t been easy tracking down the other queens in the game. When the magic had been released, everyone still inside the games had been scattered to the four corners of the universe.

It’d become apparent to me after the shock had worn off that the games had been so much more than a place to find love matches. Each of us had our strengths. For Fiera it’d been the elemental regions of Olympus. Considering that Calypso no longer recognized any of us, let alone her best friend of over five centuries, Aphrodite, our only hope of reaching her was through her sister.

Though the sisters weren’t exactly on the friendliest terms, and I was fairly certain that had Fiera been anything other than an elemental herself, going to her sister might have resulted in her demise. But I’d had no choice but to assign her the unenviable task of forcing Calypso to reshape into maiden form and try to remember all she’d lost.

Fiera, and the mate she’d been assigned to—but whom she seemed to have about as much chemistry with as a snoring sloth—had left only an hour ago. The love games had been a giant farce for Fiera, and that fact was only impressing itself upon me now. That goddess had had a hand in nearly every one of the five queens stories, and I had to wonder if her only purpose for being in the games in the first place had been for what came after the games.

Somehow I didn’t believe the Creator was that shortsighted. And though Fiera’s story intrigued me, there wasn’t time to dwell on it right now. Aphrodite had left with Fiera and her companion as well. The goddess of love was determined to mend Calypso and Hades, and since Calypso had tried to drown and curse her as she had Fable, Dite had instead decided to turn her attention to the Lord of the Underworld.

That assignment, however, was only marginally better. Even in the land of the living, rumors stirred of his terrible temper and foul mood. The Hades before the boom and the Hades after were two completely different men. Before, he’d been standoffish but amiable; now he wanted no company other than his dead and his bleak, cold winters.

The other queen—Tymanon—I would task with speaking to the three Fates. Much harder a journey than it might sound. The Fates weren’t known to be the most kindly of the pantheon. But they had answers to questions I desperately needed.

Rumpelstiltskin had left four days ago, frenzied, furious, and determined to get Gerard and Betty back together again come hell or high water. I rather worried there might be blood on his hands before it was all said and done. He was as determined a fellow as any I’d ever encountered, and having had my own run-ins with Rumpel in times past, I knew that once set on a task, he’d be unswerving in his dedication to make it so.

It’d taken him over a millennia to find the cure for his son in the alternate time; I did not doubt he’d give much more than that to regain his beloved Carrots. And if he had to kill a few humans along the way to see it happen... Rumpel was no villain, but he was certainly no hero either. He existed in a shady gray realm somewhere between the two. His conscience for the past few centuries had been Shayera. Without her, I feared what he might get up to. Unfortunately, I could do nothing to stop that particular train wreck.

I had far more pressing matters to attend to.

Baba Yaga and her mate had returned, albeit quite reluctantly and with the words that they’d remain only so long as absolutely necessary. As the most powerful witch in all of Kingdom, Baba had enchanted the Hearts Castle so that it no longer would be affected by chaos magic of any sort. She and her family had left only this morning, promising to do the same for the rest of Kingdom.

Baba had also shared one important fact she’d learned with me.

Kingdom and Earth were on different timelines now. But not entirely either. One of the first things I’d done upon discovering a changed Kingdom was to try to track down as many of the happily-ever-afters either Danika or I were responsible for.

My list had been piteously short—only two couples—and had occurred more toward the beginning of my tenure as godmother thousands of years ago. I’d discovered that both parties had died of natural causes long, long ago. Nothing I could do for either of them now. But once I’d turned my eye toward Danika’s couples, I began to notice the trend.

Some were still together. But most weren’t.

Jinni and Paz’s bloodline was, surprisingly enough, well and whole. In fact, they had great-great-great-several-dozen-times-removed-grandchildren some living in Kingdom, but a great many had also returned to Earth to find their own happily-ever-afters. However, as I’d first suspected after that vision of Hook brandishing his sword at me back in the mirror realm, I could find no trace of Hook and Trishelle’s timeline on Earth or in Kingdom.

Though there was a rumor that Trishelle did in fact exist in Earth. There’d been a very fleeting sighting that gave us hope. Rumpel had been searching the realm for Betty and believed he’d spotted the blonde bombshell, though he’d cautioned that he could not be certain either since she’d appeared much changed.

It would have been lovely if the dark king had gone after both women, but the devil was consumed only with returning his Shayera to him, and to rot with anyone else. He’d gone after Betty, to kidnap her and bring her back to Kingdom whether she wanted to go or not.

Perish the thought and goddess save her, but I’d never seen that devil so determined to reset his happily-ever-after.

Knowing that Betty existed, and possibly so did Trishelle, gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d find the right Alice too. And after Alice, then I’d sort out the messy Hook and Trishelle affair. I’d cast a quick net for the pirate king earlier in the week and had yet to find him. But the Jolly Roger could travel between planes of reality, and I hoped with all my might that’s where he was now. The very last thing I needed was to have yet another couple missing like I did with Wolf and his Red. Which worried me exceedingly because if they were gone, or had simply never been, then the Piper’s mate would be vanished and the poor girl trapped inside that strange maze all alone.

I glanced at Danika Moon from the corner of my eye. She was a Moon no longer— she and Jericho had never reconciled in this new world, though she was no longer cursed in form either. I knew theirs was a story I’d need to get around to eventually; I simply had no time at present.

In the days we’d been plotting how to save Kingdom, Danika had spoken very little, barely even budging from her seat at the opposite end of the massive table. She didn’t eat. Hardly blinked. And only breathed when required.

Sadness seemed like it’d been permanently etched on her pretty face. Within days she’d appeared to age many lifetimes. Her skin was pale, her luscious nut-brown hair now dull and hanging limply over her shoulder. Even her normally dazzling and sparkling spider-silk gown looked as though it’d seen better days.

The only true movement out of her was the constant shifting of her eyes. When she’d first arrived, she’d sobbed, murmuring constantly about the warring timelines in her head.

I suspected many of my answers could be found trapped inside her; the only problem was getting Danika to snap out of her stupor. I could easily use my dark magick to pull the answers out of her mind, but those kinds of spells could be deadly to a mind as fractured as hers currently seemed to be. If I mucked around in there too much, I could completely shatter her tenuous grip on reality.

I frowned, feeling hopeless and lost. I had, of course, reached out to the Creator, hoping against hope that maybe It would deign to answer me now that my faculties had been restored. But so far there’d been nothing but heavy silence. Though I still felt Its eyes upon me, I also knew It would not answer me.

Not yet anyway. Impatience beat at my chest. The one question I needed answered more than any other was, why? Why did some couples get to keep their happily-ever-afters while others didn’t?

But that was a riddle I had no answer for. Why had Calypso and Hades been torn apart but none of the other dark queens? Why had Jinni and Paz remained while all the rest had been thrown into chaos? What was the common thread here?

The harder I pondered, the more confused I became, and the more confused I became, the harder and harder it became not to sink into my own depression. Wasn’t I supposed to be Pink the Benevolent? Wasn’t that my fate, my destiny?

I glowered, staring at a polished whorl of wood with unseeing eyes. None of this was fair. Or benevolent. And Syrith might hate me for it, but I’d give my sanity back in a second if only I could snap my fingers and fix it all.

Syrith clenched my fingers tight, and though I knew he’d not heard my thoughts, he knew me well enough to know the winding trail I followed.

“Fairy,” he said gruffly, yanking me back from my dark thoughts. “Whatever it is you’re thinking, stop now.”

His jewel-green eyes hooked mine. I sighed heavily, shaking my head.

“I know this burden is great, but please, do not lose heart. No matter what’s happened, I know we can fix this.” His words rang with surety and blind faith.

My lips thinned and my stomach flopped to my knees. I wanted nothing more than to live up to his expectations of me, but this felt far beyond my capabilities.

The hall was very nearly empty, save for the centauress and the satyr still awaiting my orders on where they should head next. I could finally give in to my need to unburden myself just a little.

I knew Syrith would never judge me as weak or helpless, not him. It was okay to not have to pretend to have it all together. Closing my eyes briefly, I shuddered into his powerful chest, trembling as he wrapped his strong arms about me.

I clutched his back, fisting his shirt through my fingers. “Syrith, I must go soon. And where I go, you cannot come. I fear for you, my love. I do not know what comes next. If another blast of magic were to ripple through our world, there’s no saying you’d survive the next—”

Quieting my words with the press of his finger to my lips, he said, “Hush now. Nothing will happen to me. You’ve had Baba ward the walls of this castle. Wild magic cannot harm me in here. I vow to you I will not set foot outside the gates, though it galls me to let you go without me. I’ll stay back and bring as many denizens here as I can. We’ll feed and house them. We’ll protect them, Galeta. Only promise to return to me.”

Looking up at him with tears clinging to my lashes, I was sure I could never love anyone else the way I loved him. Syrith would forever own my soul; he was the strength that beat in me. He was the reason I’d fought so bloody hard to release my demons. Because I’d wanted to be a better woman. For him. Wanted him to be proud of me the way I was of him.

Syrith was my bulwark, and I would perish without him.

“I love you,” I whispered. “In case I’ve never told you that enough, never doubt my devotion to you, my mate.” Then, leaning up, I tipped his jaw toward me and our lips met in a passionate, yet all too brief, kiss.

He nodded. “Always, my fairy.” With one final kiss to my forehead, he squeezed my fingers tightly, gazed at me with all the longing in his soul, then turned on his heel and left the great hall.

Having him leave felt a little like a small death.

I did not know my fate. Did not know if, at the end of all of this, I’d ever return to my mate again. But he trusted me, believed in me... No one ever had before. His faith in me meant everything. I could not bear to let him down.

With one final shudder, I squared my shoulders, huffed my tears dry, and turned, lifting my chin high as I gazed at the centauress who’d been kind enough to give me my time with him.

Finally she bowed her head in greeting.

Tymanon was a lovely centaur. Strong. Capable. And also very likely the most intelligent creature in all of Kingdom. She had an innate sixth sense that would make her invaluable to the task assigned her.

I would someday pen her tale, and though I’d hoped to be able to do it much sooner, I knew the centauress would understand. Petra stood strong and fearless beside her. He didn’t talk much, but I could sense the honor that beat at the very core of him.

“How may we help, Pink?” Tymanon asked with that naturally sultry, feminine tone of hers.

Glancing between the two of them, I clenched my fingers around the base of my wand. I knew what I was about to ask them, the journey it would take them on, but I also knew that they were the only two capable of such a trek.

“You are truly the wisest among us, Tymanon, a centauress without equal. Therefore, I’ve assigned you the task of speaking to the three Fates.”

She frowned, far too perceptive not to understand the precarious undertaking at hand. “The Fates? They never give anything without something in return.”

Nodding, I turned my palm over, and after a sudden flash of brilliant neon pink, opened it to reveal a three small but brilliant seed pearls. “Of course you are correct. That is why you will give them these.”

She reached out her hand, and I gently tipped the seeds into it. The seedlings were warm to the touch and would give the holder an instant feeling of euphoria. A blush spread through her pretty cheeks. Blinking, she looked up at me.

I knew what she wanted to know before she asked. “Yes, they are three of the six seeds of wisdom,” I said, patting my pocket to indicate I still held on to the other half of the set. “Anyone who possesses even just one seed would be able to see into the cornucopia of worlds crafted by the Creator Itself. Trust me when I say the Fates will be no problem for you.”

Gingerly, she placed the seedlings inside the leather pouch belted around her waist before quickly tying it shut. “And what would you have me ask of them?”

“You will know the questions when you get there. Think deeply, centaur. I know my orders seem vague. But I am following a beating, an instinct inside me that tells me you must be the one to ask the question, for only you would ask the right one. The Fates are punctilious about only answering the barest minimum, so no matter what you do, be as specific as possible. You must force the proper answers out of them, or you’ll know just as much when you leave as when you arrived.”

She nodded, and I did not doubt that the centauress would prevail. Against the Fates at least. There was nothing the centaurs loved more than a good riddle. But I had to warn her of the very real dangers posed to her and Petra as well. For she was correct, the Fates would very likely want more.

“You should know, however, that if you do choose to agree to this journey, they might require more than just the seedlings. A task. No doubt a terrible and deadly one would be asked of you. And if I were you, I know I would not want to go into anything without knowing exactly what it is I’d be walking into.”

She snorted, the sound a lot like that of a neighing mare. “Fear is a weakness of the flesh and nothing more. But forewarned is forearmed. Knowing what I do of the Fates, I have no doubt the task would be a difficult one, but I am not without my own strengths.”

I knew the way a centaur fought. They might be wise, beautiful, and fascinating creatures, but they were also exceedingly deadly if pushed to it.

“Would you happen to know where they’d send us?” she asked.

I shook my head, causing my wavy hair to sway around my jawline. “I do not know. The Fates know you come, but their minds haven’t settled on a course of action yet.”

Her full lips curved into a half grin. “I see the rumors of you are true.”

Knowing I’d just revealed one of my many abilities—that of second sight—I gave a hard nod. For so long I’d kept my powers hidden from the world, feeling as though I could never fully reveal myself or my gifts to others. It was foreign to me to be so exposed to another, but I was a new fairy now, and I had a world to fix. Pride and fear must take a backseat to my old hubris.

“If you know so much, how is it that you do not know what’s caused this madness? You have second sight. Surely you must have some idea. I do.” She lifted a shapely brow in challenge.

Curious, I wondered what it was she thought had caused this. But I knew that was a rabbit trail I had no time to indulge. One thing I was sure of, all this had happened because of me.

I just didn’t know why other than the obvious. At first I’d believed it’d only been the couples I’d meddled with, but as far as I knew, I’d never meddled in Hades and Calypso’s affair, much less Hook and Trishelle’s. So if it wasn’t my meddling, what was it?

“I wish second sight would answer all my questions. Sadly, that’s not how my particular talent works. Because of the Creator’s fingers in all this, there are many blank spots for me. I know some,” I admitted softly. “But not enough to speak definitively, and so I’d rather say nothing at all. The only way to unravel this mystery is to do it slowly and methodically. Which is precisely why I’ve chosen you to speak with the Fates. Learn all you can. And when you are ready to return to me, merely speak my name and I will come for you.”

She nodded as her fingers toyed with the leather strap around her chest. “And you? Where do you hie off to now?”

Again, I glanced back at Danika. She’d still not moved from her spot. “I have so very many to see to. But for now, my primary concern is the Hatter. Wonderland is suffering at the loss of him and his true Alice.”

She nodded. “Be well, Galeta the Pink.”

“And you, Tymanon. And you. May the gods have mercy on us all.”

When the hall was entirely cleared save for Dani and me, I turned toward her. Once, she’d been the godmother to the Bad Boys, in an alternate timeline. Somewhere in her head, surely she must remember the love she’d once held for them.

Pulling out the seat beside her, I lightly ran my clawed hand across her pale one.

Startled, she yelped, shifting in her seat so fast that she very nearly toppled backward. I had to grab hold of her chair to keep her steady.

“Dani, it’s just me. Just me,” I murmured softly, looking into her panicked gaze.

Her pulse fluttered like manic butterfly wings in her throat, so violently that even I saw its beat. It was difficult not to tear up at the sight of what Danika had become.

A shell of her former self. Once such a fierce and tiny warrior, now she was losing herself to the madness of seeing the memories of two worlds, one of which no longer existed but that had left a lasting impact on our new reality.

“Galeta?” she whispered brokenly, giving her head a tiny shake and blinking several times.

I nodded. “That’s right, love. It’s me.”

Her brows gathered into a deep frown. “I do not like you.” She said the words in a distant fog, then shook her head again. “And yet I do. Once so cruel. Now no more. What has happened to me?” She moaned and clutched her temple.

I swallowed the lump in my throat; I’d done this poor fairy such harm in my former life. I wished I could fix her, wave my wand and make her whole again. But I’d tried, and nothing seemed to help her. The magic had affected all of us differently.

It seemed cruel that I was exempt, considering I was the catalyst for this mess.

“We’re going to fix you, sweetheart.” I patted her hand. “I promise. But in order to do that, we first need to fix your happily-ever-afters.”

There was nothing more sacred in this life to a fairy godmother than the knowledge that her couples were happily loving and living and eating bonbons in some fabulously wealthy setting all their livelong days. Danika would never truly heal until her “children” were seen to.

My fingers shook when I grabbed her hand, squeezing down gently, adding just enough pressure to keep her eyes trained and focused on my own.

“Now listen to me carefully, moon flower”—I would never cease in trying to remind Danika of just who she once was, and the fae trembled—“I have no link to Hatter, Hook, Jinni, Wolf, or even Gerard. Because they belonged to you.”

The only reason Rumpel was able to trace Betty was because of his own link to their daughter. Shayera no longer existed, she’d never been born, and yet the magic that’d bound their souls still burned as bright as a flame within him.

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.

I still felt unwell. Still felt discombobulated and dizzy with panic. Something terrible had happened today. Something I knew had altered me forever, I just couldn’t figure out what. Or how.

Or even why.

My stomach heaved.

“Apologize to me, Edgar.”

Lips curling back from my teeth, I clenched my fists tight. “Don’t call me that. It’s not my name.”

She mock laughed, a kind of high-pitched, teetering sound full of disdain. “What kind of fool name is Hatter anyway? Edgar at least sounds strong and powerful.”

I had a name. I’d simply never bothered to share it with Alice, always feeling, perhaps even subconsciously, that to share a name was to share part of one’s soul with another.

It’d been some time now since I’d come to believe that the stories of Alice and Hatter were all wrong. Once upon a time, I’d been just as convinced as the rest of Kingdom that there could be no Hatter without his Alice. And I’d tried, damn my soul to the very pits of the underworld, I’d tried to make those stories a reality.

I’d put on a brave smile. Laughed. Even pretended to be okay with her cold and aloof attitude concerning me. Turned a blind eye to the many trysts she’d carried on behind my back. Because always I’d believed that I could only be Hatter with Alice by my side.

But today I was tired. Today I was sick. And I was through pretending not to care. I cared too damned much. If she’d only show me a shred of kindness, of thoughtfulness, maybe I’d try harder.

She opened her mouth, no doubt to continue our verbal spat, when the air in my home squeezed to the point of pain. She gasped, and I looked up to see a time portal seal shut behind two fairies I knew well.

Galeta the Pink. And Danika, godmother of visions and wishes. I frowned, quickly noting their harried expressions.

The Pink’s eyes were bloodshot and the whites wide with panic. Danika looked dead on her feet and leaned on Galeta’s shoulder for support.

It was Alice who spoke first.

“Why are you back!” she spat. And I knew she wasn’t angry with them. Her sting was for me, they’d simply caught the brunt of it.

Danika flinched, but Galeta eyed Alice with steel in her golden-eyed gaze.

“You,” she said slowly, but with power shivering behind that one word.

This time it was Alice’s turn to grimace. It wasn’t often a fairy godmother turned her wrath upon you, but when she did, the outcome could be painful.

“Tell me everything. Now, girl,” she spat right back, matching Alice’s fury with her own.

Danika listed, her dragonfly wings swishing almost drunkenly behind her. Realizing that she truly wasn’t well, I was able to focus on something other than my own panic. I raced to my godmother, where I eased her gently out of Galeta’s hands and made her sit on the couch where I’d previously been.

Once I was sure she wouldn’t crash upon her face, I tried to walk away, but the wee fae snatched my hand back and gripped it with punishing strength.

“Stay.” She shivered. “Stay with me, Hatter.”

A nagging and terrible feeling festered in the pit of my stomach, but I did as she asked, sitting beside her and gently stroking the back of her cold, cold hand.

“Danika,” I whispered, “what is the matter?” I’d never seen my godmother so ill at ease.

But she stared with her eyes fixed upon the hearth and the dancing flames within. The only movement to her was the constant flow of tears dripping one after the other from her right eye.

I looked up to Galeta for answers, but the Pink’s gimlet gaze was fixed on Alice.

“Speak. Now!” she snapped, causing Alice to twitch. “How is that she lives and you’ve been here all this time?”

Frowning, I stared from one to the other, confused and still reeling from the events of this morning.

“Wh-who?” Alice stuttered.

“Alice Hu. Your great-granddaughter. How! When did you return to Earth, and why did you leave your family? How did you get back to this realm?” She punctuated each question with the snap of her fist to her open palm.

Alice shook her head violently, causing the tips of her hair to sway around her waist as she took one slow step back. “I don’t. I—”

“Don’t lie to me, girl. Your great-granddaughter perished this morning, and goddess help you if I can’t get her back.”

“Wait a minute!” I barked. My head was pounding, my stomach still heaving. This nonsensical conversation only made me feel worse, and I wasn’t exactly careful with how I spoke to either of them. “What the bloody blazes is going on here? Who is Alice Hu? You mean her?” I pointed to Alice.

Alice’s dark eyes were anguished, but she refused to look at me. Galeta, on the other hand, finally did turn to me. Gold eyes were alive with panicked determination and fury.

Shocked to my core by the sight of the Pink—normally so calm and kindly—so frazzled, I did the same as Alice and took a step back as though I could escape her wrath somehow if I did.

Instantly her features softened, and she gripped the bridge of her nose. “Dear gods above, Hatter.” She sighed. “You don’t know. You truly don’t have a clue, do you?”

“Don’t.” Alice shook her head.

And where Galeta had seemed to be softening just a moment ago, she suddenly whirled on Alice, her hands curved and her nails clawlike. There was a wildness to her, danger. This was not the same fairy I’d known almost all my life. She was rabid. A wild, spitting thing that seemed quite capable of disemboweling someone if she was angry enough.

“You, you damned little fool. Did you never tell him the truth?” she demanded, voice rising in pitch with each word. “Let him believe you loved him? Oh, I remember our conversation well, original Alice. You didn’t love him. Alice and Hatter were fated. Your bloodline, in fact. It was so easy to believe it was you. But deep down, deep down I always sensed it wasn’t. Because true love requires two, not one.” She held up two fingers. “You wanted Hatter’s power even then. The magic of Wonderland at your disposal. Youthfulness, that’s what mattered to you, wasn’t it, little Alice Hu?”

I stood absolutely still, waiting to hear Alice deny it but knowing deep down she couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Even if the words passed her lips, they wouldn’t be truth.

When I’d first met Alice, I’d hoped it was her. I’d even half convinced myself in the beginning, thinking myself in love. But her coldness, her aloof manner, had quickly soured me, had revealed to me that Alice hadn’t truly wanted me.

And so I’d let her leave me. Hoping that if it was true love, she’d return. She’d find a way. One year she was gone. Three hundred and sixty-five miserable days in which time I’d again convinced myself she was the one.

But when she’d returned, I’d known. I’d felt it the moment we’d kissed.

Absolutely nothing.

It was why I’d held on to the Stones of Veritas. Why I’d never given her a piece of my soul, why I’d always told myself it was because we weren’t ready. But the truth was that deep down, I’d known I’d made the biggest mistake of my eternal life.

Alice rolled her eyes. “Gods above, you don’t know how good it feels not to have to pretend anymore. No, I never loved him.” She snorted. “How could I? I had everything on Earth. The only thing I’d lacked was immortality. And I left it all behind for him.” Her lip curled, the revulsion evident. “And you’re a damned fool, Hatter, if you ever once convinced yourself that it was love.”

I blinked, still to my very core. Not that it hurt, hearing those words, but hearing the strength of her disgust wasn’t fun either. My brows dipped.

“Then why do you stay? Why pretend at all? Why not run off with one of your many paramours?” I snapped.

Tossing her head back, she laughed, but the sound was cruel and biting. “For the magic, of course. The magic that dies off every single day. You’re pathetic, Hatter. Can’t even control your power anymore. Who are you? Nothing,” she bit out. “You are—”

Galeta snapped her fingers, and suddenly Alice’s words ceased midsentence. She was still, frozen in form. Arms raised and fingers pointing furiously at me, face contorted into a mask of fury and disgust.

“There. Now we don’t have to listen to her vile, filthy tongue another second. Gods above, how did you do it for so long?” Galeta rolled her eyes and shuddered, plucking at her gown as though to ward off evil.

Astonished by what the gentle Pink had just done, I could merely stare at the statue that’d once been a very living and breathing Alice.

Still as beautiful as she’d ever been, but as cold as the marble she’d now become. “Is she... Is she dead?” I asked without tearing my eyes off her.

“No. Though I’m sure none would truly miss her.”

Finally I was able to pull my gaze away and looked to the fairy. “Who are you?” I asked with a slight shake of my head. This was not the same Pink. Not the fairy who’d been known for weaving and shaping rainbows in her wake.

This fairy had a vicious streak a mile wide, and though I did not sense malice from her, Alice certainly hadn’t gotten on her good side.

She sighed, gripping her fingers together before giving her head a slight shake. “This is not at all the way I’d hoped to start things off with you, Hatter. Truly, you must believe me. But something very dreadful has happened here, and I do not know how or if you can ever believe me. But I must tell y—”

“No.”

The voice was Danika’s. Her nails dug so forcefully into my hand that I felt the burn of my skin beginning to tear. But I would not pull away.

“No, Galeta. The onus falls to me. He and she, they are mine. And he would not believe mere words anyway. I must show him the truth. The truth trapped in here.” She tapped her temple. “He must know it.” Her words were thin and scratchy but strong in conviction.

Galeta swallowed hard, and relief eased her tight brows just a bit. Then, closing her eyes, she nodded once. “Do it, Dani. If you think you’re strong enough for this, then do it.”

“Do what?” I demanded, that terrible feeling in my gut beginning to make itself known once again, turning my knees weak and my breathing rapid. “What is going on here? I’ve had a hell of a morning, and I can’t bear anym—”

Danika gave a short burst of laughter. “You think you’ve had it rough, Hatter? You have no idea what’s to come. This world is a mess. Everything. Almost all of it is lost.”

“All of what?”

Slapping her free hand on top of mine, she gripped tight. “The happily-ever-afters. Your happily-ever-after.”

“Alice was never my happily-ever-after,” I said with a confident shake of my head, feeling like a massive burden had been lifted off my shoulders with that admission.

But she batted my words away with a flick of her wrist. “You’re wrong there, Hatter. It’s not this Alice that you’ve waited your whole life for. But the other. I know what this Alice did. I saw into her heart. You let her leave, years ago. You let her walk away from you, didn’t you? She returned to Earth.”

It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t treat it as one. “Yes. Of course. It was what you cautioned me to do. You once told me that if you loved something let it go. If it returned, it was yours, but if it didn’t, it never was. I did as you told me, Dani.”

A strangled sound like a mix between a laugh and a sob tore from her throat. “I did. Didn’t I.” She gave me a weak smile. “In this life anyway. Because I was a fool. And I didn’t know the Gray.”

The Gray? There was no Gray. What was Danika raving about? I shifted on my seat, uncomfortable and antsy. But the wee fae held me fast, refusing to let me up.

“Two lives, Hatter. This one. And that one. This one is wrong. All wrong.”

I couldn’t make sense of her words. I shook my head.

“You know it too.” She snorted. “This Alice married when she returned to Earth. She is still mated to that male. Did you know that? Did she tell you? I’m sure she did not. But it is fact. It is how your Alice came to be. The bloodline continued on as it should have. That did not change. But this Alice grew bored with the mundane and wanted the power of Wonderland to herself. So she struck a bargain with a fairy that no longer exists. That fairy returned her here. To you. She didn’t care that she’d left a child and husband behind, because it’d only ever been her greed she’d obeyed. She came and pledged herself to you, vowing her undying love. But Hatter, it wasn’t real. It never was. Why do you think Wonderland dies? Why your magic whimpers inside your soul?”

Swallowing audibly, I blinked several times, feeling as though my world had just been upended. Alice was married to another. We’d not slept with each other for ages, but we had slept together. And like an addlepated, lovestruck fool, I’d tried so damned hard to make her fall in love with me in the beginning.

Nearly used up what little bits of magic remained mine to keep her happy. Depleted my stores to the point that I felt weakened by it now.

Danika squeezed my fingers tight, and this time it was she who grounded me back in the present.

“She abandoned her child. How could she?” I grunted.

But Danika shook her head, a frown creasing her forehead. “Though I wish we had time to chat, Hatter, we have none. What you need to know is this—in the alternate timeline which has been lost us, you were mated too. To your true Alice. And she’s in trouble.”

Not that I believed that, but I asked the question hammering away at me nonetheless. “Trouble how?”

Danika’s mouth snapped shut, and her gaze shot toward the Pink. Her entire body tensed up and her wings stilled.

Curious more than I should have been, I asked again, “Trouble how, Danika? What’s happened to this other Alice?”

Wetting her lips, she finally turned to look at me. Her obvious sadness beat at me as she whispered, “She died. She died this morning, Hatter.”

Like someone had just taken a fist to my gut, I sucked in a sharp breath, grabbing my chest as my heart began palpitating furiously. And I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe her death this morning was tied to the symptoms I’d been feeling all day. I wasn’t even aware tears had gathered in my eyes until I could no longer see anything but blurred shapes.

“What?” I shook my head, because none of this made sense. Snatching my hand away from Danika’s grip, I stood and paced before the couch. I couldn’t understand my visceral reaction over a woman I’d never known, or why Danika spoke of an alternate timeline. “I-I don’t—”

She hopped to her feet, moving into my space and making me pause my cagey pacing. Only once I’d stopped walking did I notice how violently my hands trembled. Danika’s gaze flicked down to them, and her lips tipped into a frown.

“Somewhere inside you, you have to remember her, Hatter.”

“I don’t! I don’t!” I said it, and yet I couldn’t stop the tears, the feeling that someone had just ripped my heart in two. My reaction made no sense. I began to pull at my hair.

“You do!” She snapped right back. “You do, because in that life you traded the Stones of Veritas. She was your true and perfect mate in every way. She was and remains the love of your life. For always. That’s how that magic works. You’ve forgotten her, but you know as well as I that you’re not whole. You feel it. You may not want to acknowledge it, but you know it’s true.”

Her voice was raw, and angry and tears tracked down her cheeks.

“I’m not supposed to do this, Hatter, but I’ve never been known for following the rules.”

Before I knew what she was about, she clasped my hands in an unforgiving and punishing grip and placed them none too gently against her temples. Visions suddenly exploded in my mind.

Lives. Peoples. Kingdom.

But different. So very, very different.

Wonderland was a swirl of chaotic and fantastical images. Trees with faces. Flowers that sang. Animals that spoke.

And at the heart of it was me. And her.

Alice.

A gothic rose with her sharp widow’s peak and exotic, cat-shaped eyes. Dressed in burgundy crushed-velvet gowns, with a jaunty cap upon her lovely head and lace-trimmed black gloves.

The images gathered into a tight helix, becoming so real that I felt myself falling into them, forgetting that what I witnessed couldn’t possibly be real, because it felt real. Smelled real.

For a moment I was watching myself with an Alice who was and wasn’t my Alice, and then I was him.

In his head, staring down into the lovely eyes of the female I’d known for so long but whom I didn’t know at all.

She smiled. “You’re doing it again, my love.”

I frowned. “Doing what?”

How was this happening? How was I here? How was I feeling the slow caress of her hands running down my biceps, feeling the curl of heat lapping against my own? Feeling the thrum of such raw power that I’d not felt ever since falling into Wonderland what felt like a lifetime ago?

Alice snuggled into me, gripping my vest in her small hands and tugging me down until our faces were so close I tasted the wash of her cinnamon and vanilla lick against my lips.

My heart trembled.

“Looking at me like you’re falling in love with me all over again.”

I blinked, and my body moved. Not away from her, but toward her, drawn like a magnet to her iron shavings. And it was as normal as breathing to plant my hand upon her lower back, draw her into my side, press us so close no air existed between the contact points.

She shivered. And I shook my head with wonder. Awe. I knew this wasn’t my Alice, and yet... And yet she was.

My eyes caressed the lines of the face I knew so well. The softly rounded jawline. The slashing cheekbones and Cupid’s bow lip. My pulse fluttered as my fingers slid beneath her tapered corset and began to tap a sonnet against her deliciously warm, golden-brown skin.

Laugh lines that’d never been there before peeked out at me as her lips tipped into a sultry grin. And I knew this Alice smiled at me often, unlike the other who rarely laughed or found pleasure in much of anything.

“Maybe I am,” I murmured. “Maybe I’m finally seeing you, Alice.”

Her laughter was like the tinkle of bells. “And so you always say. How did I get to be so lucky, my beautiful madness?”

My brows gathered. But then her finger was there, smoothing out the worry creasing them.

“I would never see you frown, Hatter. It pains me.”

Blinking back heat from my eyes, I snatched her fingers into mine and kissed her knuckles tenderly. I couldn’t understand my instant bond to her, but this was right. The pain that’d torn me up inside was now gone. And for the first time, I could take a breath free of pain.

I’d never experienced this before in my life, but being with this Alice made me feel whole.

I didn’t think. Simply reacted. Leaning down, I went to kiss her. To mark myself upon her somehow, but then I was ripped free of the image. Yanked out of the body holding hers, and though I roared at the loss of her, though I tried to scrabble my way back into her arms, my fight was in vain.

Images rolled past my mind’s eye again. And all around I drowned in the scent of cinnamon and vanilla. Chest aching from the loss of her, I tried to reach into one memory after another, tried to anchor myself into the scene as I had before, but my fingers sifted through Alice’s lovely frame like ghosts drifting on the breeze.

I wasn’t sure how long I traipsed through Danika’s memories of us. Maybe an eternity. Maybe no time at all.

But as I watched, as I moved through that alternate life, I began to warm up. Began to remember what would happen before the memory showed me what actually did.

And it wasn’t that I was remembering Alice, not in the sense that I remembered the one here in this time with me, but some part of me knew that other Alice.

The part that’d somehow bound and tethered myself to her in that time. I wasn’t sure how this was even possible. How my soul could yearn for something it’d never known in this life, and yet it did.

I now understood the stories of Hatter and his Alice.

But the couple in the vision, it was hard to believe that really could have been me. I’d been mad. Reciting poetry late into the night, with her wearing nothing but a smile for me.

Our love was so intense, so volatile, that the world around us had transformed because of it. And as I watched, I began to learn her. She loved baking. On Earth and even in Wonderland, she’d been renowned for her cupcakes.

But there’d been so much more to Alice than that.

She loved her gardens.

Loved to dance and sing for me. She had a beautiful voice too. Angelic. Sylphlike. Haunting and ethereal, like the woman herself. And she’d had her own magic. She’d weave the most magnificent gowns that seemed to have a life of their own the way they moved upon her and in the breeze. Like rolling waves of water and flame. Sparkling and alive.

I smiled as I watched her run through the haunted woods at night, leaving behind a trail of golden light as Wonderland came alive beneath her feet. Terrifying monsters bowed down to her.

Anything Alice came in contact with had no choice but to love her, marvel at the sight of her. With her exotic scrollwork makeup that moved upon her skin like worshipping serpents only helping to add intrigue and appeal to a woman who already exuded it from her every pore.

My heart beat so furiously I grabbed at my chest, falling in love with the creature in this life just as I had apparently in the other.

Images rushed through me of our long and happy life together.

I froze at the sight of a cherubic face that bore her eyes and my sly smile. A daughter.

We’d had a daughter.

Wonder stole my breath as that gorgeous, tiny little creature tossed herself into my arms, and suddenly Wonderland bloomed for her just as it had for her mother.

A daughter. I clenched my fists, aching for the sudden loss of her.

But soon our daughter vanished, and it was just Alice and me again, sitting at a table loaded with teas and cakes and friends and family. Most faces I didn’t know in this life, but they seemed as familiar to me as breathing in that one.

Making love beneath the stars. In a wall of water. In a garden bursting with flowers. Any and everywhere, marking our love through every part of Wonderland.

And finally... dancing beneath the starlight in a field of verdant poppies bursting with every color of the rainbow all around us.

I love you.

Her whispered words echoed through and around me.

And I watched as the man in her arms, the man who looked remarkably like me but who wasn’t me, bent forward and claimed her lips.

And I you. Always, my Alice. Always and forever...

Ripped from the memories, I was once again back in my cabin in Wonderland, staring not at Alice but into Danika’s bright blue eyes, and jealousy burned through my heart at the man who’d once had her. Even if it’d been me, it wasn’t me now.

I’d never known her touch.

Her love.

Her smiles or wonder.

Envy choked me, and tears ran unchecked down my tears.

“Now you know,” Danika said softly.

Swallowing hard, I couldn’t breathe properly. That terrible ache that’d abated when her memory had been with me was back now, choking me. Suffocating. Drowning me.

Galeta cleared her throat. “What would you do to get her back, Hatter?”

The words came from deep inside me. “Anything. I would do anything to make her mine again.”

My words were broken, my voice scratchy. But I meant it. Every word.

Galeta nodded. “And if I told you you’d have to go into hell?”

“I would do it.”

She smiled. “Good. Because that’s exactly where you’re going. The underworld. And Hades...” She sighed. “He isn’t the easiest to deal with right now. But if you want her back, Hatter, then there is no other way.”

“I don’t care. Kill me. Send me to her. Do whatever you need to do. Only give me a chance. What do I do?”

Galeta’s lashes fluttered as she gave a strangled cry. “Pray with all your might and heart that Aphrodite can get that dour man to let you in.”

“I’d storm the gates for her, Galeta. I can’t wait around another second. I have to get her back.”

Her lips thinned. “We’ve done what we could. And the only thing left to do now is hope that Aphrodite will bring us good news. But I can say this, Hatter. When I came here, I was certain there was less than a one percent chance of success.”

“And now?”

“Maybe two,” Danika said softly, her voice not as strong as it’d been earlier. Releasing my hands, she scooted back on her heels, sinking back down into the couch moments later and shaking her head. “But two is better than the nothing we had before. And if you can do this—”

Galeta nodded. “Then maybe we can fix them all.”

Chapter 6

Aphrodite

Asking forgiveness later was much better than asking for permission to begin with. At least that’s what I told myself as I forced my way through the locked gates of the underworld.

Bones secured together by thick bands of ice—a deterrent to most anyone, except a determined goddess hell-bent on fixing the happily-ever-after of her two best friends in all the worlds. With an angry flick of my fingers, I sprayed a neon-red band of my power at the ice, melting it instantly and causing the bones to drop with a plink to the hard ground beneath.

At the breach, Cerberus lifted two of his three heads and stared unerringly in my direction. I stilled; not even the gods liked Hades’s “pet.”

Once, Cerberus had loved me. I’d had no need to fear the mangy mongrel then. But that’d been another time and another life. He growled low, hackles rising, exposing his long and wickedly sharp canines.

I thinned my lips. Nothing was as it should be anymore. Even my beloved Hephaestus seemed cold and distant. He’d not forgotten me as Hades had Caly, but the pantheon wasn’t what it’d once been either. A giant part of that was the downfall of both Hades and Caly. I’m sure my bestie would have cackled to know just how important she’d become to us all.

Once, I’d thought my life had been perfect. And then I’d met Caly and finally gotten to know Hades, and it’d been that day I realized what it truly meant to love something. I’d always admired Hephaestus, but only after witnessing the love blossom between death and life had I learned how to love my own mate the way he’d needed me to. I was lost without my Hephy, but he no longer knew me, not as he once had. To him I was still a spoiled, rotten goddess consumed with lust, love, and all things beautiful.

I sighed sadly.

Holding up a hand, I rocked back on my heels, staring down the hellhound with a confidence I did not feel.

The dog heads slobbered, continuing to growl low in the back of his throats. He could not kill me, but he could hurt me. If I wasn’t so bloody determined to fix Hades and Caly, I would never have dared to intrude upon the Lord of the Underworld’s domain without an invitation first. I never had before he and Calypso had become a permanent fixture in my life.

“Cere, c’mon,” I wheedled. “You know me. Or you did once. I was your friend. Great mates, you and I. Don’t you remember?”

The massive beast with a shaggy coat of coarse ebony hair and burning red eyes tipped its centermost head, staring at me as though uncertain whether I was friend or foe. But the other two heads weren’t nearly as conflicted. The fetid stench of his breath punched me full force in the face. I curled my nose in disgust.

I never liked using my powers against those I considered my friend. Because I wanted them to love me for who I really was, not because of some magical compulsion to obey.

But Cerberus’s hackles were beginning to rise, and I was a little nervous at the moment. I might not die, but I could feel pain. Bringing my hand to my lips, I blew him a kiss. Floating, sparkling bits of glittering red lips shot straight through his nostrils, going deep into his lungs as he inhaled.

Instantly the beast stilled, one of his heads began to whine and whimper, and his powerful tail thudded roughly against the lava-rock hardness of the ground beneath him.

Blowing out a heavy breath, I scooted past him and took a moment to nod at the floating spirits who’d drawn close during the commotion to gaze upon me.

Many gasped, awed by the sight of a goddess among them.

My name echoed through the night, and I knew it was only a matter of time before Hades discovered me in his lands. Again.

Once, this would have been no problem. I’d known his palace as well as my own. I’d been a vaunted guest. Family in every sense of the word.

I remembered the parties Caly and I had thrown with some regularity.

The masquerade balls we’d put on for the newly arrived spirits. She’d been so beloved by them all. As had he.

But the world that’d once burst with beautiful magic was now cold and depressing. The trees that’d once been adorned with thousands upon thousands of jeweled leaves were now skeletal and barren.

The darkened sky that’d shone with the light of millions of silvery stars was now covered with thick bands of tight, black clouds. The winds howled, and fat flakes of snow drove through the sky.

The palace that’d once shone brighter than a full moon was now dank, gray, and foreboding. It hurt me deeply to see that, but I had hope it would not always remain so.

Somehow I’d make Caly and Hades remember each other. I would awaken their love. Because if I couldn’t, then no one else could.

Setting my jaw, I lifted my gown of sunlight and raced up the long flight of stairs leading to the palace landing.

I could have simply popped myself into existence right in the dark lord’s throne room, but I didn’t. Because I’d wanted him to know I came in peace. That I was here not as a goddess demanding her due but as a friend.

But as I stood before the iron-dipped bone gates that led into the palace, I wondered whether I’d made the wrong choice.

These gates would never have been closed to me before.

I knew Hades was aware of my presence. The breeze itself whispered of it.

Clenching my jaw, I said, “Please, Hades. Open to me. Do not do this again.”

For the past week, I’d come each and every day to this gate. And each and every day he’d kept them sealed to me. Me, and everyone else.

Once Hades had moved freely among his dead.

Loving them as a father, and they loving him right back. But I witnessed none of that warmth anymore. The dead were no more welcome here than I was.

I’d hoped that by showing him I would not force myself into his home, he’d see that I wasn’t what the rest of the pantheon was. Hoped that maybe he’d become curious, that his anger or coldness or whatever this was would abate just enough for him to try to figure out why I continued to come day after day, night after night.

“Please, Hades. If you would only hear me out. If you would only—”

A loud groaning split the night, and then the gate began to slowly rise before me.

I yelped, shocked that my plan had finally worked. That he was finally letting me in.

The palace was dark. No flames were lit within. But every square inch was permanently etched into my brain. I knew the walkways, the halls, the rooms.

Moving toward his throne room was simple enough. But studying the décor, I found the differences startlingly obvious too.

Calypso had had a hand in nearly every room, transforming Hades’s dark domain into something tropical and cheerful, a beautiful mix of vivid shades the color of a coral reef teeming with life.

Even the walls themselves had been transformed into thick glass that’d revealed the beautiful undulations of colorful fish swimming to and fro within. Sea kelp and massively giant pearls had adorned the exposed timber beams above my head.

The palace had been fit for the queen of the sea.

Now... there were skull chandeliers and sconces, creamy white and macabre as they stared back at me with hollow, empty sockets that burned with the buttery glow of candlelight.

Chain mail armor hung upon skeletal remains. The heads of beasts too were mounted upon the walls, their visage twisted and snarling. A Minotaur stared at me with its sightless eyes, its black fur looking matted with an age-darkened stain of blood and gore.

Goblins. Satyrs with long curving horns. Even the heads of lovely but deadly water sirens had their heads fixed on pikes.

I remembered the alternate world because Galeta had shared those memories with me, helping me unlock the visions of who Hades had once been.

And what I remembered of the man before Calypso had found him nude and bound before the pantheon of his peers wasn’t this at all. He’d been aloof, but not frightening. Not cold or terrifying. He’d simply kept to himself because he’d always been so very different from the rest of us.

I hated to admit that once upon a time I’d been anything less than I am now. But I had been. I’d been petty. Interested only in what benefitted me. Calypso had changed me for the better too.

Though she had the temper of an angry shrew at the best of times and the mercurial moods of the seas she called home, Calypso had brought out the very best in those she’d decided to love.

I missed her dearly, and seeing Hades’s palace now—though he had likely forgotten her—I knew that he, too, suffered from the loss of her.

Clenching my fingers, I tried to focus on something other than my dark thoughts, allowing muscle memory to guide me straight to his throne room.

And there he was, just as I’d known he would be.

Big.

Brawny.

Beautiful.

Hades wore no shirt, his dark skin covered in gooseflesh from the constant howling winds batting against him. On his lap rested the gleaming sword of Damocles.

The symbolism did not escape me, and my heart shook at the tortures he must be enduring, the emptiness he no doubt felt but had no way to understand.

Long black hair that badly needed a trim covered his eyes. Heavily hooded, dark eyes gazed down upon me.

He was an awe-inspiring figure sitting upon his throne of thorns and blood-dipped bones. Dead and dying flowers crawled up the black walls behind him. It’d been some time now since Persephone had visited last.

In this life, just as in the other, Hades and she weren’t even remotely friendly. But without the loving hand of a female goddess beside Hades, the underworld truly suffered. As did the man himself.

“What do you want, Love?” He demanded, voice booming richly to the rafters.

From the corner of my eye, I caught the slithering movement of coils crawling between withering vines of ivy. Wetting my lips, I smothered my revulsion at all the death surrounding me.

“Five days you come. Now you’re here, and you say nothing.” He snarled, then lifted his hand and pointed a finger at the door behind me. “Go then! I’ve no time for—”

Gnashing my front teeth, I plastered on a tight smile. I’d not let him intimidate me. I was a god too.

Squaring my shoulders, I looked directly at him. “I have a request for you, my old fr—” Old habits die hard, and I gave myself a slight shake, clearing my throat as a reminder that this man was not my old friend. “Hades. My Hades.”

He frowned, thick brows furrowing deeply as he stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

“A request?” He scoffed. “And what makes you think I’d be inclined to honor any request from you vermin in the above?”

Increasing the strength of the light that my gown was built of to hide my actions from his prying eyes, I clenched my fists so tight that my nails pierced the palms. I had to get my temper under control.

None of this was his fault.

He did not remember.

He did not know me.

But he would.

I vowed it by all that was holy and honorable. He would. It wasn’t easy being patient. Patience had never been my forte. It’d been Calypso’s, ironically enough. Still waters ran deep, and hers had run deepest of all.

I just had to keep reminding myself that Hades had finally let me in, and small step though it was, progress had been made.

Then something Hades had said finally snared my thoughts. He’d called Olympus the above.

Only a water dweller referred to the worlds as two distinct strata. The above. And the below. Always Hades had called Olympus, Olympus. Until he’d wedded Calypso.

I bit my bottom lip. I knew it was reaching to think that maybe some part of him remembered his previous world. His happy ending.

But I was desperate. If maybe, just maybe, a tiny part of the real Hades was buried down deep inside him, there might be a way to reach him. To make him do the impossible.

I just needed to gently remind him that there was more to life than death, than pain, than torture, than suffering.

“I know you do not know me well, great Lord of the Underworld,” I began, clutching my fingers tight before me as though in prayerful supplication, “but I would have you know that I would be your truest and greatest ally if you would only let me.”

His face instantly transformed from cold displeasure to scornful fury. “You mock me!” he hissed.

I frowned. “Of course not.”

Terrible laughter echoed through the great hall. “Do you believe me a fool, Aphrodite? Spoiled daughter of Zeus.” His nose curled with disgust. “Think to come and make sport of me? To bed me, perhaps? Always a game to you, is it not?”

The heat of his eyes as he raked them boldly down my form made me want to cry. My throat clogged with tears.

Just who did he think I was?

But no sooner had I asked myself that question than I knew the answer. My stories were mostly true. My seductions. Bed sports. My vanity was legendary. But for the past many centuries, I’d worked hard at changing my selfishness. I’d become someone others trusted. Loved even.

Maybe in this world, Aphrodite was still all those things to be hated and reviled. But I knew who I’d once been, and I would stop at nothing until the rest of the world saw me for who I really was.

True.

Yes, I loved sex. Love. And romance. But I was so much more than that.

Shaking my head, I glared at him. “Think what you want, Uncle. But know this, my words are true. And so is my heart. The underworld is melancholy, and I feel the tremors, the cold sting of death, even in my palace above the clouds. I wish to help you, but only if you let me.”

His nostrils flared as his fingers dug into his armrest. The silver-clawed gloves he wore carved grooves into the heads. “Why?”

I swallowed hard. The question had been demanding, but not so much angry as confused.

“Why do you care how I suffer? You never have before.”

I closed my eyes. Dear Zeus, if he only knew the truth. I’d grown to love Hades deeply. Cared for his welfare even above my own. But apparently the Aphrodite of this world cared naught for the plight of others.

Knowing I couldn’t tell him the truth just yet, I opted to give him an abridged version of it. “Let’s just say I understand you.”

He snorted. “Understand me. You, with all your fripperies and finery? Your bevy of nude males adorning your bed while your pathetic mate hammers away at his forge day and night, turning a blind eye to your thousands of—”

“Stop it,” I cried with a strangled gasp. “Just stop it. You know nothing of me, Hades. You never have.”

He turned his face to the side, and I watched as a thick muscle twitched in his jaw several times. The silence stretching between us to the point that it grew tense and uncomfortable.

I shouldn’t have come.

But what else was I to do?

Hades had once told me that the journey of a thousand miles began with the first step. He’d been so right.

A deep thinker, he was.

It was why he’d never grown attached to any of us in Olympus. He’d always been so much better than us.

I blinked. Was it possible that the anger he wore now was still only a shield? Was it possible that maybe, buried beneath the spiny prickles, was the same soulful, caring man?

“You did not deserve my words,” he murmured thickly, pulling me away from my newfound epiphany. “It was wrong of me.” He didn’t look at me.

Yes! He was still in there. Hope bloomed like a sunburst inside me. Breath hitching a little, I nodded. “You’re right. I didn’t. Open your eyes, Uncle. Can you not see how very similar you and I are?”

Finally he did turn to look at me, confusion etched tight upon his brow and bracketing small lines around his mouth.

“How can you say so? I sit alone in this palace. Never visited. Never known. Missed by none. All the worlds worship you.”

I shook my head. “Who cares?”

“What?” He sounded genuinely confused.

I shrugged. “I don’t care a whit for the worship of others. All I want, all I know, is that it is far greater to have a few know and love me, and me them, than to have the idle worship of billions who know me not at all.”

“Who are you? You are not the Aphrodite I know.”

I grinned, then sniffed delicately and gave a slight shake of my head. “Just a woman who wants to make things right.”

“What things?” He leaned forward, the hand that’d been caressing the sword on his lap stilling as though he listened to me with every single molecule of his being.

I wet my lips. “I have a friend. Two of them really. They’ve been torn apart.”

“Ah.” His dark eyes lit and he snorted. “Of course. Let me guess. One has died, and you want me to get that soul for you.” Leaning back on his throne, he curled his lip disdainfully. “You tricked me for just a moment, more fool I.”

Irritated that he’d so quickly think poorly of me, I stomped my foot. “For just one second, get your head of your ass and listen to me, you pompous, arrogant—”

His lips twitching with dark amusement made me pause. I’d expected an inferno of fury to rage at me, not to see him chuckle.

“There you are, little goddess. Telling me of being changed...” He laughed. “Do please continue prattling on and telling me how very horrid I am.” He gestured lazily with a flick of his wrist as he leaned heavily back against his throne.

Clamping my lips shut, I sucked in a sharp breath. I would not lose my head. Not now. I’d been given an audience with him, and I had a suspicion that should I leave now, I’d not be granted this opportunity again.

“You think you have everyone pegged, Death. But you don’t.”

He nodded as if in agreement, but his eyes sparkled with arrogance. I pressed on anyway. If I was going to be cast out of his presence, he was going to know why I’d come.

“I am no whore. I love. Deeply. And there are two I love more than any other in all the worlds, and they’ve been torn apart. Death didn’t separate them, but a curse. A curse neither one remembers. And the worlds tremble from the loss of them. Their children mourn. Ripped apart. Many of them vanished into the ether. One of them drowned eternally if she’d not been frozen in form by a fairy with a kind heart.”

He snorted. “Sounds wonderful.”

“You damned ignorant ass. You want to know who my friends are. You. You and Calypso—the greatest love of your life.”

His eyes widened and he went completely still and for just a second. A second in which I dared to hope. My breath caught and I leaned forward, searching his face for any sliver of remembrance.

But then his head tipped back, and a giant peal of booming laughter echoed like the ghostly wails of death all around me.

“Right. You’re hilarious, goddess. Whatever you say.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m telling the truth. And if you want any chance of getting her back, ever, you’ll do as I say right now. There is a spirit from Earth that’s passed away just this morning. Her name is Alice Hu. She is mate to the Hatter of Kingdom.”

“And I care why? Let her go to the afterlife she’s destined to.”

Taking a step forward, I shook my fist at him. “You want to save yourself, want to find your own happiness? Then save her.”

He continued to chuckle. “Whatever you say, little goddess. Thank you for this most entertaining—”

I shook my head. “The Fates told me this, Hades. You may think me an airhead, and that is your right.”

Instantly his humor vanished and his shoulders stiffened and a whispered “What?” escaped him.

“But you know them. Know they do not lie. Save that girl and maybe you might just save your pathetic excuse for a miserable life!”

I didn’t hang around to witness him mock me again. I vanished, fleeing back to my palace with tears shimmering in my eyes. Fury. Shame. Humiliation. It all warred within me. I’d lied to him. The Fates had told me nothing, but I’d known that if I told him it’d been a fairy from another land who’d sent me to him, he’d never listen to me.

Collapsing onto my bed of dazzling lights, I stared with unseeing eyes at the golden walls and choked on my tears. I’d blown it.

My horrible temper had gotten the better of me, and I’d lost my loves forever.

Chapter 7

Hades

––––––––

I’d tried to go on about my business.

Which, admittedly, wasn’t much at present.

All around me raged snow and ice. But I didn’t shiver, because I’d been cold for so long now that I hardly felt it at all.

I didn’t move from my throne, just stared at the room I’d kept myself shut in for the past century.

In all that time, no god had come to me. Not Persephone. Demeter. Zeus. No one. And the very last goddess I’d ever expected to come to me here would have been the vain and silly Aphrodite.

I frowned, tapping my fingers on my armrest in agitation.

Why had she come?

But more important than that, why did I now get the distinct impression she’d meant every word she’d said?

Had I judged her too harshly?

Just yesterday I would have said no. But today, witnessing the way her shoulders had drooped, the way she’d practically withered before me when I’d told her what I really thought of her... I realized that maybe I’d lost complete touch with reality.

Surrounded by my dead, but interacting with none. I was alone.

And I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been, even when Persephone used to make her presence felt.

Mulling over those thoughts, my mind inevitably took a turn toward Calypso. I blinked, shaking my head as I tried to imagine that in any reality Calypso had ever been mine.

It wasn’t possible.

She was nothing but water. She mingled with none, was said to have the most violent of tempers and was a virgin elemental.

Aphrodite must have lied.

And yet... And yet she said the Fates had told her truth.

It couldn’t possibly be possible. Not even remotely likely. Death and water. I snorted.

Death and life. Perhaps. Maybe I could understand it a little. It was why Persephone and I were tied together in myths. Though we loathed the very sight of each other now, I could reason why the mortals had deceived themselves into believing the story’s veracity.

But what was Calypso to me?

Absolutely nothing.

A terrible grating sound echoed through my chambers, and it was only when I glanced down that I noted I’d shoved my fist through an ebony skull, cracking my throne down the right side.

I didn’t want to believe any of this. I was meant to be alone. Always. Forever. It was my lot in life.

And yet... And yet...

Sighing, I did something reckless. I acted without thinking.

Standing for the first time in over a year, I called the darkness to me. The endless funnel of death that twisted and whirled with the souls of millions headed toward their own version of the afterlife, and I reached a heavy hand inside.

The dead crowded me, pleading with me to take them to Elysium, to not let them fade off into the darkness pulling at them. But I cared not a whit for any of them. There was only one I’d come for today.

I called forth the one soul Aphrodite had promised me would change my own lot in this damned existence I called life. “Come to me, Alice Hu. I know you’re here,” I crooned, wiggling my fingers like bait toward her.

And then I sensed her.

Swirling madness and beauty. Fragmented memories of a woman split in two. I frowned. One woman was of this time. Normal. Mundane. Nothing all that interesting. But there was a wisp of a memory that coiled tight to her soul. And I caught a glimpse of that memory, of a woman dressed in gothic gowns with exotic face paint and a ready smile. And all around her bloomed strange and wonderful creations that brimmed over with magic.

But the image didn’t last long. It was as fleeting as a flake of snow upon sun-warmed lands. Not sure whether I’d seen what I’d thought I’d seen, I dismissed the image as a mere quirk of mucking around too long in the darkness of lost souls.

“Take my hand,” I commanded the fragile spirit.

She did not say a word, but I felt the coolness of her touch press against my own. Were any mortal to touch me, they’d perish in an instant, but the dead were immune to my sting. I yanked her through the portal of darkness, and the blur of blue light took form before me.

Confused me all over again. Because this woman looked just like the one I’d glimpsed in the all-too-brief image of before. How could two separate memories of the same woman exist?

It wasn’t possible.

Mortals lived only one life. But her spirit reflected a duality that I’d never witnessed in another before. She’d been here, but she’d once been there also.

But where was there?

I studied her, lost to my own deep contemplations. And having the patience of the dead, she stood there quietly and let me. This Alice confused me mightily.

She was not dressed in the gothic attire, and there was no smile upon her face. But her beauty was the same. Almond-shaped eyes with liquid brown irises that seemed like warmed chocolate. A small, heart-shaped face framed by a silky fall of ebony hair. And at the center of her forehead was a prominent widow’s peak. She was dressed in death as she’d last been in life—in a hospital gown—and I would have known, even had I not been who I was, that Alice had died a tragic death.

No more tragic than many others, but still, disease had ravaged her body. Though death returned you to your purest and most perfect form, I recognized the stench of cancer upon her.

When I allowed a dead into my Elysian fields, whatever form of death had taken them would be mine to bear. It was why my body was covered in scars. But when a soul came to me like hers did, there was nothing left for me to take. Because the sickness had taken it all from them.

Why was Aphrodite so sure this frail-looking spirit could do anything for me? What was so special about this human?

No sooner had I thought it than I recalled the brief glimpse of magic I’d seen from the different reality. Was it possible Aphrodite had spoken truth then?

Had Calypso and I truly been something in an alternate life? And if so, why did I not know it anymore?

I’d never before seen a spirit like Alice’s. There were two very distinct and separate life threads coiled up within her. What the bloody hell was this?

A crystalline tear rolled down her honey-colored flesh, and it jerked me from my musings. I did not greet her. Did not even speak with her. I simply whispered a command for her to go to the fields of Elysium.

Her glowing blue form moved on without looking back at me once. Tears dripped steadily down both her cheeks as she floated away.

And for the first time in a long time, I began to wonder. Wonder at her tale. At her story. Who she’d been in this life and the one before it.

Alice Hu was gone, and I was once again alone with my thoughts and solitude.

I did not want to believe Aphrodite, and yet I could not seem to forget the haunting sadness that crushed Alice’s small spirit to the point that I still tasted the tangy breadth and weight of her agony.

~*~

Hatter

“Why can I not go to her!” I growled, glaring hotly at both Danika and Galeta as they sat down to my table for a spot of tea and crumpets. “We sit here, doing nothing. Day in and day out, and you both just—”

Danika frowned, curling her fingers around her delicate bone china teacup. But Galeta shoved to her feet, staring fixedly at me.

“There is nothing we can do right now, Hatter. Not until, or even unless, Hades decides to allow you entrance into his realm. Only the dead may pass through.”

Stopping my pacing, I bit out, “Then kill me.”

Danika gasped, hands shaking so violently tea slopped over the rim of her cup.

I curled my nose. “I don’t bloody care. But I need to go to her. I need—”

“You know that’s not how this works. Hades saved her because he opted to. But there is nothing saying he’d do the same for you. You and she are not of his world, and your soul... Only the Creator knows where you’d wind up. No. We wait. You wait.” Galeta’s words were sharp and snappy, and I glowered at her.

My days were getting harder, but the nights were the worst for me. In the week since learning of Alice’s fate, I’d been plagued with nightmares, continued memories of a life together I hardly remembered at all except in the deepest recesses of my subconscious.

Desperation clawed at me, made me reckless and impatient and foolish. Aphrodite had come to us days ago with astonishment and hope brimming in her ice-blue eyes; Hades had saved Alice after all. Tears had even fallen down her cheeks, but I suspected those tears had nothing to do with Alice or me.

Either way, it didn’t matter. All that did was that Alice was safe. For now.

Her obvious shock at that revelation had shaken me to my core. Rather than being relieved by it though, I’d grown frantic instead. What if the Lord of the Underworld changed his mind and decided to send her back? What if he never allowed me to go to her? What if—

“You’ve gone a lifetime without her, Hatter,” Danika’s gentle voice cajoled. “We’re so very close now. Surely you can wait a few more days?”

Stopping my pacing, I shook my head, not even sure what the words on my tongue were at the moment. All I knew was I felt myself sinking into a quagmire of depression the likes of which I’d never known.

Half the time my thoughts were scattered, like dandelion fluff blowing in the winds. Incoherent and nonsensical. And though my dreams revealed to me the man I once was, I knew what I felt now, and it was nothing like the madness that’d afflicted me in the other life.

Then I’d been able to manage the madness by the constant influx of Alices into my life. But I knew my Alice now. She was my beacon. My tower. My madness would only continue to grow and consume me, eventually obliterating me completely without her to ground me in the present.

I wasn’t sure if I’d regained all my memories of her yet, but I recalled the very last one, where I’d given her nearly all my magic. Though I’d not understood why, I’d trusted her completely. But the giving had left me barely enough to be able to find her in this new life.

Which might have been enough, had I not given so much of my reserves to the other Alice. Every day I grew weaker, and I knew there’d come a point where I’d no longer have enough in me to find my Alice again.

That thought skated like black ice through my veins, turned my blood to crystal and made me feel dead inside. There was a tiny string in my soul, a golden thread that wound through her and me.

I felt it now.

Felt it the moment she’d died.

But the presence was soft, barely a whisper of sound. I couldn’t lose Alice.

Not again.

If Hades didn’t agree to let me in soon, I’d do something insane. I knew I would. I had to hang on; it was the only way. But the madness pressed in on all sides, and I knew I could not last long without her.

Crossing my hands behind my back, I marched to and fro as nonsensical words beat at my skull. Like a great rushing geyser of water caught behind a fracturing dam, the pressure of it consumed me. Opening my mouth, I gave the words life.

“It was many and many a year ago, / In a Kingdom by the sea, / That a maiden there lived whom you may know / By the name of Annabel Lee; / And this maiden she lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by me.”

I caught Galeta and Danika sharing a worried frown from the corner of my eye. But I could no more stop the words than I could stop the sun from rising in the morning. And for a moment, while I recited that poem, I could breathe.

Chapter 8

Alice

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here.

The days just rolled and blended into each other. It’d been a shock when Hades, Lord of the Underworld—and total myth—had reached into the darkness I’d been floating in and snatched me out of the velvet embrace of death.

I hadn’t known what to say or what to think, so I’d simply stared at him as he’d studied me. I’d known of the Greek myths, gone to college, read a few books about them, and had been convinced they were nothing more than ancient fairy tales.

And yet the hulking beast of a man had snatched me away from that blessed darkness as easily as swatting a gnat.

I’d had myself pretty much convinced by the time I’d croaked that all the Wonderland nonsense that’d filled my head had been nothing more than my disease-addled brain gasping its last. My parents had always told me I was wrong. My friends had even occasionally mocked my belief in something more, and eventually I’d come to the conclusion that I really was insane.

The underworld proved otherwise. If this existed, was it really a far stretch to believe Wonderland did too? I didn’t think so.

I should be happy in this new place I now found myself in. Raised with a loose Buddhist belief system, I’d expected my death to result in an eventual rebirth of some sort. But not this. Not an actual afterlife.

My only hope had been that I wouldn’t return to the Earth some kind of disgusting bug. But I hadn’t wanted to be human again either. Being human sucked. It hurt.

My life had been nothing but pain and doctors and illness. Screw that. I’d wanted a nice, safe afterlife. Something badass but simple, where life was little more than eating, sex, and babies. The blessed numbness of being an animal, that’s what I’d been hoping for. I hadn’t wanted to think about love. Lust. Pain. Sorrow. War. Pride. Disease. Fear.

Basically I was hoping for a brain the size of a walnut where none of those poisonous emotions could ever affect me again.

And though parts of Elysium were as beautiful as the name itself, with rolling rivers, blue skies, and lush fields of wildflowers, it did not bring me any sort of contentment.

In fact, my moods were so dark that I’d scared off the other spirits who’d tried at first to get to know me. But I wouldn’t speak to them. Wouldn’t even acknowledge them, and if that was rude of me, I honestly didn’t care. Eventually they’d gotten the hint and drifted off to their safe and perfectly perfect afterlives, murmuring about me behind my back.

Too weird.

Odd.

Mad.

I scoffed, like I cared. They were nothing to me. I wasn’t here to make friends or dance and party my way through the afterlife. In fact, I still didn’t know why I was here. All I knew was the memories of who I’d once been, they were still in me.

The dreamer.

The loner.

The baker.

The lover of all things Alice and Hatter.

My breath caught on a sob. Wasn’t death supposed to cure the hurt? Wasn’t it supposed to make it all better?

There was no way for me to convey just how miserable I was.

How bleak this otherwise beautiful world looked to me. How empty. I sat, surrounded by some of the prettiest flowers I’d ever seen, and felt absolutely nothing as I plucked off one petal after another after another, leaching them all of any sort of beauty, turning them as withered and dreary as I was inside.

And each day that rolled by turned a little bleaker. A little more gray. Literally draining the colors from my surroundings, which had once been so pretty. When I’d first arrived, this place had been heaven.

But it was now becoming my personal brand of hell.

Above, the sky was turning a haunting shade of gray. The winds were no longer calm, but cool and beating at me. The flowers were nearly all stripped. And no life buzzed around me.

Fat flakes of snow had begun to drop.

I wasn’t sure how or why this was happening. When I looked at other portions of Elysium, they were still bucolic and nauseatingly fairy-talesque. It was only where I stood that the world died. I knew it wasn’t me affecting this change; I was pathetically human. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I’d been brought to a place I didn’t belong. I should still be out there, floating in the darkness, waiting to turn into a dung beetle or something else. Anything else.

The truth was, though, I actually preferred this bleakness to the too-perfect, sunshiny place it’d once been. I glanced to the left, my attention snared by a couple dancing and, yes, frolicking together.

Remember those old cartoons, where time seems to move in slow motion and the couple running through a field of flowers never tear their eyes off each other as they run in ways that defy gravity, practically floating on air as little heart-shaped bubbles float around their faces? This was that, times a million.

My upper lip curled with disgust.

The lovers stumbled over into my side of the field, giggling stupidly as they fell into one another’s arms with a loud “oomph.”

“Are you hurt?” she asked, shoving luscious locks of brown hair out of her deep blue eyes.

Smiling up at her from where he still lay, he shook his head. “The only wound I could ever suffer again, Delilah, would be if you were to ever leave me.”

And at first I wanted to laugh at how asinine that line had been. Like c’mon, seriously? That was more pathetic than Romeo and Juliet, and way, way too smooth. And yet I saw the way her eyes softened as she gazed down upon him and how gently his fingertips ran along the creaminess of her smooth cheek, and deep down I knew it hadn’t been a line at all.

Something painful ripped through my chest, made me clutch at it with now-trembling fingers, and I didn’t stop to censor myself, because I was suddenly and profoundly angry.

“He doesn’t mean it.” I bit out the biggest lie I’d ever uttered.

They both looked over to me in surprised shock, and I curled my upper lip, feeling feral and cranky. “Get off my lawn.”

Jeez, all I needed now was a cane and a hunched back and I’d be the stereotype of the crotchety old grandma. I knew that, and yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

“Well, I’m—” the girl started, but again I was in no mood to even pretend at playing nice.

“I said, off!” And this time when I did, they suddenly went tumbling away, head over feet, back onto their side of the field, sputtering as they went. It’d been as if some great big wind had shoved them back.

Blinking, and a teeny bit shocked by their sudden absence myself, I frowned. What the hell had that been? Almost like... magic? Turning my hand palm side up, I stared at it with horrified fascination, noticing the slight tremor to it that hadn’t been there before. Had I—

No.

“Don’t be stupid, Alice,” I murmured, but couldn’t quite get my heart to stop galloping in my chest. Giving my head a good shake, I rubbed at my brow. I was dead, I shouldn’t be capable of getting headaches, and yet I was. There was a doozy coming on.

I’d never been a hateful person in life, but I was quickly becoming a bitter one in death. No matter how many times I tried not to think back to the last thought I’d suffered in life, my thoughts always invariably returned there.

Hatter hadn’t come for me.

Of course, being dead and all, it was stupid to think he ever would have. I’d been so sure of him, even when the rest of the world had told me I was insane.

When my friends refused to be my friends anymore. When my own family had turned on me, their faces angry and their tempers frayed when I dared to make mention of him. I’d been so sure, I’d built my entire self around him and that world.

I’d memorized every line of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Had themed my cupcakery after him. Everything that’d been me had been centered around him.

“A beautiful lie,” I whispered, and my voice sounded like the melodic strains of ghost song. “All a lie.”

And just as they had every day since coming here, my eyes flooded with tears, which clogged up my throat with heat. Everything I thought I’d ever known had been nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

I’d been sick. And I’d denied it for so long. But it had to be true. As much as I’d loved him, had he been real, he would have come for me. I knew that to be as certain as the setting of the sun each night. And so my mind flip-flopped as it always did. Just because Hades was real, didn’t mean Hatter was.

Closing my eyes, I fisted my hospital gown and sobbed bitter tears, broken to my very core. Which was just stupid. I didn’t understand why a lie, or fabrication, or whatever the heck he really was, could mess me up this way.

I didn’t understand why it was that I felt so achingly empty. Like less than half a person. All my life I’d been sure in the knowledge that there was more to me than what the rest of the world got to see.

That it was only a matter of time before I discovered what that “moreness” really was. Even now, a spirit with far too good a memory, I still felt that giant moreness within me. Something buried deep, but very much living and breathing, just waiting on me to remember.

I snorted. God, I was stupid. There wasn’t more to me. This was who I was, a giant failure at life who’d clung to a wasted hope of something that had never been real. I was nothing. No one. Just another human being who’d had her time and moved on and would soon be forgotten by all.

I sniffed at the stupid tears raining down my cheeks again. The wind howled, and icy chunks the size of my thumbnail pelted my head. It stung, but I couldn’t seem to make myself move. I was sinking into an existential crisis of epic proportions right now. God, the afterlife sucked.

And then a memory stopped my morose thoughts cold. A class I’d taken in college as a way to make an easy A, before it’d dawned on me that I had no desire to be white-collar anything and that my real passion lay with baking.

The class had been religions of the ancient world. In it there’d been a section covering Greek mythos, but most especially the underworld.

I blinked, then jumped to my feet and shook my head as that memory guided me as though by unseen forces forward.

There were five rivers in the underworld.

Acheron, the river of woe.

Cocytus, the river of lamentation.

Phlegethon, the river of fire.

Styx, the river of hate and the unbreakable oath.

And finally, Lethe—the river of forgetfulness.

Swiping at the tears streaming down my cheeks, I picked up my pace, moving first at a trot, then a light jog, until finally I was at an all-out sprint. I pumped my arms and my legs as I barreled through the perfectly even terrain covered in golden rays of sunshine and full of perfectly happy, perfectly nauseating people.

I followed the winding trail of the river until suddenly it began to bisect into different paths, turning into two, then three, four, until finally there were five separate branches spiraling off into different locations.

Heaving for breath, I studied the people standing beside each of the tributaries. The river of fire was easy enough to figure out.

As were Acheron and Cocytus when the people who’d drunk from them began to wail and gnash their teeth. Why in the heck anyone would willingly add more woe to their eternal sentence was beyond me; then again, maybe the big guys in black cowls standing behind them and looking vaguely reaperesque while holding those scary-looking sickles to their backs might have something to do with it too.

I grimaced. Poor schmucks. Glad I wasn’t them.

Which left only two choices.

I watched the souls gathering around both rivers. Some stood, gazing on in longing but not moving forward. Others knelt and chugged the water, then looked up and simply stared dead ahead.

There was nothing obvious about either channel that would make me confident enough to move forward. I wrung my hands together. If I choose wrong, it would not end well for me.

And as I stood there for what seemed an eternity, studying the souls, I felt movement to my left. Frowning, I turned quickly and spotted a petite, pretty woman with ivory skin and long, flowing hair of auburn.

Her glass-green eyes were sad and haunted, and I couldn’t help but shiver at her obvious pain.

“You’re looking for Lethe, aren’t you?” she asked, and her voice had a sweet, gentle melody to it.

I’d not tried to get to know anyone the entire time I’d been here, not wanting to waste my time on any of them, but something about this soul made me instantly and weirdly trust her.

Which made me rock back on my heels and not trust her.

“I guess,” I said slowly. “I mean, I was thinking about it.”

Blinking several times, her long red lashes oddly reminding me of fluttering butterfly wings, she turned to me head-on.

Her skin was so pale it was practically translucent, and I could see the thin blue veins running behind it. But with her wild mane of curly hair, and waiflike features, she was nothing short of gorgeous. More than that, every so often when she’d move, a beam of light would strike her body, making her practically gleam like light refracted on crystal. She was also dressed in a style that didn’t seem in the slightest bit modern.

Made me think of someone on the back lot of a Hollywood film. I wouldn’t call her teal gown a toga, but it moved like a diaphanous cloud around her and was held at her shoulders with ornamental pins. Clearly she was human, and yet she looked almost like a goddess. Humans didn’t glow.

She sniffed. “What’s your name, girl?”

There was a hint of authority in her voice that I responded to.

“Alice Hu,” I said, cocking my head and wondering what it was about her that made me so readily want to talk.

Her long, thin fingers lightly brushed at her chest. “My name is Amara.” Her lips curved into a fleeting smile. “I died a long time ago.” Eyes taking on a faraway gleam, she stared past my shoulder, looking into her past even as she continued speaking almost in monotone. “So long that there are none left who’d remember me. I had a good family. A happy one.”

She sniffed again, the sound both wistful and longing. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me her life story, but I was morbidly curious, so I stayed put, even knowing I was bound to hear something I wouldn’t like.

“We didn’t have much, but we had each other, and it was enough.” She wet her lips, halting and taking a deep breath before plunging on. “I was very beautiful, and my family very poor. Then he came.”

My nostrils flared and my fingers clenched as I sensed whatever she was about to say next would be a terrible train wreck I should look away from.

“Aegaeon.” A muscle in her jaw twitched, and a lone tear spilled out the corner of her left eye, rolling slowly, hypnotically, down her pale cheek. “Tall. Beautiful. Feminine features that were also surprisingly male. He was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and he stole my heart instantly. Incredibly wealthy, he offered to pay off my family’s debts for me. I was only thirteen.” She sniffed again, and this time there was humor mixed with shame.

I gasped. “But that’s child abuse! I can’t believe he thought he could—”

Frowning and snapping out of her trance, she shook her head. “Not in my world. Liaisons between youths and men were quite common and even accepted. I’m of the old world, you see. But though Aegaeon was rich beyond imagining, my family did not like him at all. And so they did something practically unheard of in that time. My father told him no, but I snuck out of my room, found him, and demanded that he take me away anyway. All he had to do was secure my family’s happiness. He vowed to do all that. And so I kept my word and followed him gladly. At first he was wonderful. And I did not think I could know any greater joy than to always be his.”

She closed her eyes, swallowing hard.

Her story sickened me. The fact that a grown man could see a thirteen-year-old girl and believe—at any point in history—that it was perfectly acceptable was nauseating. But Amara’s obvious pain beat at me. I still wasn’t sure I should trust her, and yet I found that I did. Though I sensed she wasn’t exactly what she seemed, I didn’t think her dangerous to me. Reluctantly, I stayed where I was.

“Then I began to age.” She brushed her fingers against her forehead, her eyes. “Wrinkles. Lines. He did not like it. Aegaeon wanted a nubile youth, not a woman grown. At first it was simply insults. But then it became physical. I didn’t know what to think at first, so I allowed him to do to me as he would. He was rich. I was not.”

She shrugged as if it were the obvious and only choice she’d had, but my fingers clenched tight, and dead or not, I found myself wanting to find that sick bastard and beat him to a bloody pulp until he died all over again.

“We were not wedded—without his support I’d be out on the streets to fend for myself. I had no place to turn. The first time he punched me, he shattered my eye socket. Left me blind in that eye for the rest of my life. He was sorry, of course.” She waved her fingers airily. “Vowed he’d never do it again. And I believed him. Things were good again. For a time.” Her words ended on a soft sigh.

I shook my head, wanting to ask her to stop. I didn’t need this. I was here to forget my own past, not to learn of hers. Not to feel sympathy for someone I’d not remember the moment that water passed my lips.

As if she knew what I’d been thinking, she looked askance at me, pretty eyes wide and knowing in her beautiful face. And my impatience and fury at that pedophile abated just a little.

Soft pink lips tipped at the corners and I couldn’t understand how, for even a moment, Aegaeon could ever believe Amara to be anything other than utter perfection. If she’d been alive in my time, she’d have no doubt graced the covers of the Victoria Secret catalog, Vogue, and whatever else was high-end and posh. Even old, she’d have been a stunner.

“A few days later, I bumped into my male cousin at the market. We talked. That was all. But rumors did what they always do, and when they reached Aegaeon’s ears, the rage returned. I almost died after that beating; it took months to heal and I never walked right again. Little by little, Aegaeon broke me. Turned me from something beautiful into something deformed and twisted, where no man would ever want me, would ever try to take me away from him. In the end, I took a blade to my own throat to escape him.” Her smile was weak, and the tears ran freely down both cheeks now.

My sadness mingled with hers as I asked, “Why would you tell me this?”

“Because though the latter years of my life were the most miserable, I would never want to forget the love I once knew. The memories of a family that I cherished until the day of my death. They sustain me even now, and I know someday I will find them again.”

“Where are they? Shouldn’t they have come here with you?”

She shrugged. “The underworld is vast. But I will never stop searching. Lethe is to your left.” She pointed, and I glanced over, noting the empty gazes of those who’d drunk from its waters. “But know this, little Alice Hu. If you take too much of those addictive waters, you won’t simply forget your life, you’ll forget it all. You’ll be nothing more than a shell. There is no returning from that. So make sure it’s really what you want.”

Clenching my jaw, I shook my head and gripped my chest. Her story hurt me deeply, but I wasn’t Amara. Yes, I’d had a good family. But they would never come here. And it hurt to know that I would always be alone and trapped in this hell. I didn’t want to remember everything. Didn’t want to remember the hope, the disappointment, or the reality that I would always be alone in a land where I had nothing and no one I loved.

“I see that you’re determined, and so I will share with you one final bit of information I have learned. I do not know whether it is true or not, but I’ve been told that if you were to merely dip your finger in its waters and trace your lips, you’ll only lose a very little bit.”

My eyes widened. I’d wanted to lose it all, but if there was a way to erase the pain but leave my good memories intact, wasn’t it worth a shot?

I wet my lips, the first faint stirrings of hope I’d felt in a very long time fluttering in me. “If that’s the case, then why wouldn’t you try to erase Aegaeon from your memories?”

Amara held up her hands. “Because I do not know if it’s true, and I would never risk losing my family over him a second time. But if your heart is fixed, then I pray for your sake that it works.”

I looked back to the river, heart thundering in my chest with nerves. Drink my fill and remember nothing at all. Be numb to everything, but always empty. That thought was bleak and depressing. Dip my finger in the water and taste of it, possibly lose only the pain, but keep the rest. Was it a risk worth taking?

That strange, echoing emptiness inside me pitched violently, opening up the fissure that’d closed for just a moment while talking with Amara. Yes, anything was better than this hollow yearning for a man I’d never known at all.

And yet my feet refused to move.

And so there I stood on the bank, watching others practically throw themselves into the waters as they sank beneath the coolness with ghosts and tears in their eyes and coming back up with nothing but a void, empty gazes staring back at me.

I needed peace, but was this really the way?

That same sense of disquieting “something” held me back, and even as I damned my inability to make any sort of decision, I was also strangely comforted that there was an escape for me, as long as I could work up the nerve to go take it.

~*~

Aphrodite

Marching up to Hades’s throne, I shook my head and gathered my teal-colored chiton in my hands with barely checked rage at the Lord of the Underworld.

His gaze flickered briefly to my face before he began shaking his head. “And so you’ve returned?” he said, voice sounding as dead as the souls surrounding him.

Angry, frustrated, I shoved at the tendrils of amber hair curling prettily around my face. “I found her,” I spat without preamble.

A dark brow twitched, slowly rising on his broad forehead before lowering. “And so you have. You are fortunate I do not toss you out on your pretty little arse for continuing to interfere in the lives of my—”

“Your what!” I snapped, my frustration over the entire situation taking over. “You ignore them all. You sit here on your throne day in and day out and you shut out the world around you. Those people”—I shot my hand out—“need to feel your presence. They need to know you’re real, that you love them, that you—”

He growled, the sound echoing through his vast chambers like the snarl of a demon ripping out from the bowels of hell. An all too appropriate visualization for my uncle right now—his hair looked unwashed and unkempt. He was still surrounded by a field of raging snowfall and clinging to that damned sword like all the answers to life could be found in it.

“You do not belong here, Aphrodite! You overstep yourself, coming to my lands. Trying to tell me what—”

Crossing my arms, I snarled, “Oh, shut your pretty face, Uncle, and listen to me for once! She is even now agonizing over her decision to dip herself into the river Lethe. Look, believe me or not, that’s not my problem.” I slashed a hand viciously through the air. “But I am telling you that Alice Hu is your best shot at finding purpose and meaning again. If you let her forget herself, then that magic she and the Hatter forged in the alternate timeline will forever disappear right along with her. The lives of so many hinge upon them.”

Lowering my voice, feeling cold and empty inside even as the rage still coiled tighter around my heart, I hiccupped on a sob. “Can’t you see, can’t you feel that what I told you before was true? Is there no part of you, Uncle, that doesn’t want more than this bleak existence you’ve made for yourself?”

His features were shuttered as he stared hard at me, and it was all I could do not to cry. I was a goddess, used to getting my way in all things. But with Hades I wasn’t even certain I could use force on him. My uncle had always been different than the rest of our pantheon. And even if I could twist his actions, I could never do that to him. The choice had to be his alone—it was the only way this could work.

I blinked, feeling broken and desperate. Wringing my hands, I whispered, “I went to her, as one of your own, and told her that if she merely dips a finger into the waters of Lethe she will only forget the pain. I had to give her hope, you see. I had to make her believe she has choices.”

His jaw muscle twitched. “You know that even touching the waters is far too dangerous for a spirit. Its coolness is addictive, its waters intoxicating. She might not be strong enough to resist its siren lure for more.”

I nodded miserably. “I know. But a person with no options is a person without hope. You’ve got to help her, Hades. You’ve got to allow Hatter to come here.”

Adjusting his position on his throne, a small spark of hope flared in my chest as I felt him truly give me his undivided attention for the first time. His beautiful dark blue eyes narrowed intelligently as he said, “I have listened to the little spirit’s soul, as you asked. Hatter is the very reason for her depression. I do not believe she would enjoy seeing him here.”

“No, you’re wrong.” I clutched my hands together. I had to make him see, had to make him believe, or bringing Alice here had been for nothing at all. “He is her heartbeat and she his. She just doesn’t remember. But he can make her, he can unlock her memories, her true memories, and restore order to Kingdom.”

He snorted. “And what is Kingdom to me? I do not care, nor do I—”

“She resides in Kingdom, Uncle. Surely you know this. I’ve caught you peeking in on Calypso.”

“You spy on me?” A growl reverberated through his words, rocking the very foundation of the ebony-colored marble floor beneath my feet. I notched my chin and held his fiery gaze.

“Aye. I do. And I will not apologize for it. You know who I am and why this is so important to me. I would see you all restored. Please, Uncle, I would give you anything in return if you would just believe in me.”

Closing my eyes, I held perfectly still. I’d played my last hand. My final ace. There was nothing more precious in all the pantheon than to be owed a favor. It didn’t matter what he asked of me, I would grant it.

And judging by the way I felt the tension in the room suddenly thicken, I knew I’d finally gotten to him.

“Anything?” His question echoed like rolling thunder through the chamber.

Opening my eyes, I didn’t flinch at the sudden greed in his gaze as I said, “Anything at all.”

“Leave. Leave my realm and never return.”

I gasped, not sure why I was surprised, but I was. “What?”

“Go. Your entrance here is barred. Now go!”

And with those words, I was cast out of the underworld. Startled, confused, I stared at my opulent chambers and clutched at my heavily beating chest.

This couldn’t be how it all ended.

It just couldn’t be.

Chapter 9

Hades

A promise made was a promise kept.

I could no more tolerate Aphrodite’s censorious gaze or her constant meddling in my affairs, but she had stirred a curiosity in me I’d been unable to forget.

She was right. I did study Calypso.

In the waters of a world that I knew not, I watched the elemental goddess, curious for the first time in a long time as to how it could possibly have been her and me.

And something restless in me came to life. Like a caged lion, I paced back and forth, drowning in so many questions.

First and foremost, how I could possibly have forgotten someone who supposedly meant the world to me? Not that I believed Aphrodite entirely, but I’d been making inquiries of late.

I told no one, but I had made a visit to the sands of time, and I’d asked Time only one question.

Had time moved?

His answer had been simply... yes.

For days since visiting Time, I’d pondered all that that could mean. Was Aphrodite lying? I no longer thought so.

And though I could not fathom a world in which I’d ever known love or true joy, I grew more and more curious by it. And so I watched Calypso.

Studied her lithe movements, her violent tempers, and bit by bit, little by little, I found myself at times fidgeting and restless. But Calypso was an elemental. A primordial form of us, not as evolved or as intelligent.

Everyone knew primordials were primitive and far too ancient to ever change. They simply weren’t as developed as the rest of us.

And then one day I’d heard her song carried upon the currents of my own waters. The song was haunting, melodic, and full of angst. It’d touched me deeply. And though it’d only lasted a few moments, I could not seem to forget it.

Calypso had no form. She was simply water. But in that song, I’d heard a reflection of my own soul. I couldn’t understand it and couldn’t hope to make sense of it, but I had to know more.

Feeling irrational but determined, I set out to find and study this mysterious little human that Aphrodite seemed to care so much about. If unlocking Alice Hu’s past was the key to learning my own, then there was no other choice.

~*~

Alice

I felt his eyes on me. The Lord of the Underworld watching me, his mood pensive. I knew he was rethinking his decision to bring me here. Or at least it’s what I’d suspected. For many days now he’d visited me, always keeping to the periphery of my vision, but not trying to hide either. Letting me know he was there, though keeping enough space to put me at ease.

Hades was as tortured as I was. It wasn’t hard to figure that out. I felt it to the very marrow of my being.

The depths of his depression and loneliness. How swirls and torrents of ice and snow always seemed to follow in his wake, even if he walked through the fields of Elysium, which were supposed to be eternally green and verdant.

Flowers withered and died beneath his feet.

The ground shuddered.

The skies turned gray.

A lot like what happened with me. We were two sides of the same coin, and in that at least, I felt a strange kinship to him.

For some time now, I’d heard the chatter among the dead. Something was terribly wrong with their Lord of the Underworld. The dead were not happy. They spoke of a time when Persephone had first arrived here, when for a period, things had been better. Livelier. But it had been some time since Spring had made her presence known, and things were just different.

Sitting on the banks of the river Lethe, I ran my fingers through the water, watching in a numbed haze as the waters of forgetfulness dripped from between my slender fingers. It’d been days since I’d spoken with Amara, and though I’d not yet drunk of the water (that I recall), I was starting to forget things.

Maybe it was because I played in the water so long. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was I was starting to feel better. I could no longer remember what it was that’d brought me to these waters; the only thing I remembered with any sort of clarity was the memory of that pain. So deep, so all-consuming that there’d been no peace even in death.

It must have been awful, whatever it’d been that brought me here. I still remembered parts of my past. My living. Though it was hazy and there were holes in my memories, images that simply felt smudged out and blurred around the edges so that I couldn’t really recall much of anything.

Emptiness coursed through my veins. I’d come to forget. And now I had. But suddenly I worried that I’d made a terrible decision, because whatever it was I’d forgotten felt like it’d once been vital, necessary. There was a hole inside me, a yawning emptiness that stretched like fingers toward infinity.

I shivered and then sniffed, wiping at the near-constant, fat tears coursing down both cheeks.

“Why do you cry, little human?” The voice was deep, melodious, and made me tremble from the raw power trapped behind the words.

Looking up, I stared into the dark eyes of Hades himself. Trapped within the depth of his gaze licked bright curls of fire. He was nothing like the Disney version I’d grown up on. He didn’t have the head of blue flame or the angular, sharp features that nearly always connoted a villain in disguise. Hades was a beautiful man.

Dark, shaggy hair that made my heart clench with the echoing memories of that which had been lost to me. Dark eyes and swarthy features.

A devil...

I frowned, wondering where that thought had come from.

Moving slowly, seeming not to want to startle me, he knelt beside me. The circle of grass around his booted feet began to slowly curl inward, turning from a deep jeweled green to a light jade, to yellow, brown, before turning to particles of ash and blowing away on the chilly breeze.

Snow drifted lazily around his shoulders.

“Why does she fight for you, little Alice Hu?” he asked, voice grown thoughtful.

I blinked, realizing he still waited on me to speak. I swallowed hard. Grabbing hold of my stomach, I forced myself to speak, though my vocal chords were woefully out of practice and no part of me wanted to.

It felt so much easier to breathe when I was numb.

“No one... wants me,” I croaked haltingly, voice rough from disuse.

His strong jaw clenched and his shaggy brows lowered into a tight vee. “You’re wrong there, spirit.”

I shook my head, feeling the malaise begin to wind through me again. Tipping my hand over, I held very still as a flake of snow drifted upon it, and was pleasantly surprised to note it did not melt.

It was a beautiful, jeweled thing, with seven spikes and a glassy flower at its center. Starlike shapes surrounded it, framed in frost. I smiled. I’d always loved winter. Or at least the idea of it. Having grown up in Oahu, I’d never seen it for myself. But a memory tried to worm through my mind.

Something tugged at my consciousness.

Amorphous visions of moving shapes rolled through my mind. Black skies and gray clouds, snow falling like powdered sugar all around. Something warm burned through my belly, curling and winding snakelike in on itself.

That heat began to undulate up my arms, settling into my fingers. I didn’t know what I was doing.

I couldn’t understand it, but suddenly I blew on that tiny flake of snow, and that heat, it rolled past my lips and caressed that snowflake. Next thing I knew, one flake turned into a mound of it, and piercing through the layer swayed a delicate, ice-kissed red rose.

Hades grunted with what seemed like shock, and I went absolutely still.

“You have magic?” His astonishment was evident as he reached for the flower, plucking it out of my hand.

I shook my head. “No. I’m human. I’m nothing.”

That flower looked far more delicate gripped between his long, strong fingers. A muscle in his jaw clenched as he studied me closely.

“No, little spirit. Human or no, you’re certainly not nothing. Who were you?”

Rubbing my stomach, which now hurt, I blinked several times. I never would have believed that simply touching my fingers to the waters could have dulled my mind, could have erased the memories, but I’d known nothing of the underworld. I was suddenly very grateful I’d not actually drunk from it if just touching the water could make me feel this slow and stupid.

Trying to remember what it was that’d brought me here... It hurt. Like, physically hurt. Brought the sharp bursts of that fire back, making me shudder, tremble, as sweat worked along my brows and down my back.

“Ssh.” He patted my shoulder gently. “Relax, little one. I would never harm you.”

“Hades was a devil,” I said without thinking.

And for the first time, a whisper of a smile ghosted past his lips, and for just a moment sunlight sparkled upon the cascade of winter, causing it to glimmer like glitter.

I sucked in a sharp breath as another memory tried to push through. A shadow of darkness sitting upon a throne... Rain and lightning, and a field of madness, and love...

Tears gathered forcefully, burning the back of my throat, and a pain so wide and deep and unyielding consumed me so that I felt I might actually die from it. It left me breathless, left me choking and gasping and desperate, and without thinking, I dipped a finger into the water. Instantly the pain quieted, causing the suffocating desires to float away like red balloons drifting slowly skyward.

Hades grabbed my hand. “Stop, Alice. You must stop. Play no more in these waters. There is something in you, something that might be... might be valuable to me too. I didn’t believe Aphrodite when she came to me, but I do now.”

The entreaty in his voice captured my attention, and I closed my eyes, feeling calm again. Serene, the pain of memories all but gone.

“Alice, if I ask you to trust me, can you?”

I did not know him at all, but he seemed a nice enough man. Besides, it wasn’t like I could die again. Laughter bubbled up my throat.

“Come with me, little spirit,” he said as he stood and held out his hand to me.

I took Hades’s hand, thinking to myself that he was far nicer than the devil should be.

I didn’t care where he led me; it was so nice not to hurt anymore. And maybe, if I was lucky, in time I’d simply fade away and cease to be, and all these weird and painful memories would vanish right along with me.

Chapter 10

Hatter

Days turned to weeks and then weeks to a month.

I felt my mind devolving. Felt a terrible madness creeping into me. Desperation. Impotence. Rage. All of it mingling into one horrible and sickening reality.

I’d lost my Alice forever.

The Alice of my former life.

The Alice who’d once meant everything to me. Whom I’d once meant everything to.

Galeta, who’d been unable to remain continuously after the first week, came as often as she could. But it was Danika who kept by my side, daily sharing memories with me.

Both of us suffering in our own way.

It wasn’t just my life Danika revealed to me during our nightly streaming of the alternate Kingdom memories, I saw all our lives. Those of us she’d called her Bad Five. I also saw her life. Her and Jericho’s, the man in the moon who seemed to remember her no more.

I gave all the memories my attention, but none nearly so much as my own. I drank in the sight of Alice whenever she appeared to me. Falling harder, and deeper, and more madly in love than I’d ever been before.

It wasn’t possible that any man, woman, or creature could love anyone as I did her. And it wasn’t simply for her beauty alone.

It was for the soul that lived inside her. I rubbed at my chest as I watched us make love on a bed of spongy brain coral, glued to the vision bubbles as she laughed and teased me. As she’d tackle me to the ground and remind me over and over that I was her man, her lover, her world.

To know that I’d once known such great love and that I’d lost it forever... It was a sorrow I could scarcely describe. The pain sliced me like a knife, so that even taking a breath was no luxury at all.

Waking up in the mornings alone and always wondering why it was that Hades had denied her and me the chance to ever meet. Wondering why it was that I’d only learned of her true existence once it was far too late to do anything about it.

I hated the capricious gods. Hated the world. My life. My existence.

And with that hate came a slowly devolving quagmire of madness that consumed my mind. I found myself turning back into the man I’d been in that other life.

Life made no sense. Reality made no sense. Only the abstract, the foolish, and the ironic seemed to bring a smile to my face.

The paradox was that a storm brewed inside my soul, but outside, Wonderland was beautiful and normal and rational, even though nothing about this situation was rational or made even the slightest bit of sense.

Each night I could only sleep after conjuring up a small cake. It wasn’t much in the way of magic, but it made me feel stupidly closer to her. The cakes always tasted abysmal, and I found myself wishing I could either grow tall or short or maybe even just disappear altogether, but it was just cake. Rotten and unfulfilling and empty.

Danika was curled up on my left side with my arm draped over her shoulder as I sat stiff as a board upon my couch. We reached out to each other for comfort and support neither one of us truly had to give.

Both of us shed silent tears as we watched the remnants of a life that were now nothing more than pictures on a screen. The hurt shouldn’t be this consuming, this painful... I’d never really known this Alice.

But we’d traded souls when we’d traded the Stones of Veritas. A cool, lovely cocoon of warmth flowed like a gentle current through my veins, reminding me all over again that none of this was our imagination, that this strange and alternate life had once been our reality, because nestled inside me was a delicate string of Alice’s soul.

Which meant if she was in me, I was still in her. If I suffered, how much more did she right now?

The vision bubbles shifted, revealing to me a crying Alice. The undulating scrollwork of the black makeup she wore beneath her eyes dripped tears as she held our daughter and looked up at me to make the sun witch’s curse go away.

I swallowed hard as agony pierced every square inch of me.

And then there was a burst of dark energy that caused both Danika and me to practically jump off the couch and whirl as one to face the ominous visage of a Greek god.

I’d never personally seen Hades before. But I could well imagine that this towering pillar of black death could be none other than he.

The man was close to seven feet in height, with long black hair that trailed to midway down his bare chest and a face that seemed both gaunt and fleshed out. And every so often, when the light would strike his features a certain way, I could swear I saw a mask of glinting bone beneath. His eyes glowed with flame, and in his hand he gripped a silver-handled sword that practically gleamed blue in the dim lighting of my cottage.

Hard eyes turned first toward Danika, giving her a quick but thorough once-over before turning back to me. His gaze was sharp, intelligent, and focused.

And the madness that’d teased at me for the past month suddenly seemed to vanish like a thick fog over dark waters. Clarity of thought and mind returned to me with just the promise of finally getting to see my Alice again. Hope bloomed like a blade, piercing through my heart and leaving me feeling breathless.

“You are the male they refer to as Hatter.”

The words weren’t phrased as a question, so I didn’t treat it as one. Instead, I clenched my fists and took a step forward.

“Take me to her. Take me to Alice,” I barked, knowing Hades could likely end my pathetic existence if he had a wish to, but not giving a right damn at the moment.

He nodded thoughtfully, as if coming to some sort of conclusion. His words were deep and sonorous as he said, “I will take you to her. But first, I must warn you of what you are walking into.”

“I don’t care. I just need to see her. I just need to be with her.”

He lifted a peaked brow, snorting forcefully as though irritated or annoyed, but I didn’t care. Nothing mattered now except her. The rapid beat of my heart was a jarring, almost painful thing inside my chest. Impatience clawed at me. I’d all but given up on ever getting to see her, but I was so close now I could taste it. Any sacrifice would be worth the cost.

Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to speak with a calm I did not feel. “Even death could not keep me from her. If I must die to go to—”

Hades lifted a hand, stalling my words immediately. I had no choice but to react to the strength of the power emanating from him and promptly snapped my mouth shut.

“Death is almost certainly what you will reap for your troubles. But I would be no man of honor if I didn’t at least warn you. You live. She does not. She exists in a world no mortal may enter. Only gods, like myself, and those already dead do not suffer death’s sting. But not one such as you. Every day you walk among my people, you will lose a little more strength, weakening to the point you eventually collapse. It is a slow and very painful way to die. Your only chance at returning to your world is if she chooses to follow you out of there. But know this, Mad Hatter, if she does not follow you out in three days’ time, not only will you perish, but you will simply cease to be. There will be no afterlife for you. Now ask yourself, is that a sacrifice you’re truly willing to make?”

My lips clamped shut as the enormity of his words hit me like a sledgehammer to my chest. Not simply death, but a complete obliteration of self. I blinked. Three days wasn’t enough time. Not for something like this.

“I need more time,” I pleaded. “Three days isn’t enough, it’s not—”

He shook his head, dark eyes flashing fire. “Three days is all you get. And it is a sight more than I’ve ever granted another. You are not the first despondent come to me, begging me to return a loved one. You are, however, the only one I’ve ever invited in. Take it or leave it.”

I swallowed hard, a greasy knot of fear and desperation slicking my gut. “Her soul and mine are joined. If I perish, will she also?”

His nostrils flared, but he answered without the growl of anger behind it. “No. I’ve granted her safe haven in my realm, Alice will remain forever with me. And you should know, I rather enjoy her company.”

An immediate surge of jealousy whipped through my veins. I’d never really been a jealous man. I’d known of Other Alice’s many paramours and had always turned my head and shrugged it off. But the thought of anyone, even a god of death, knowing my Alice made me feel homicidal and full of rage.

Hades’s lips twitched, and a flash of humor washed across his stern features lightning fast—there one second, gone the next, as if the Lord of the Underworld did not know how to laugh.

“I’ve never understood love, or the sappy sentiment that comes along with it, though I’ve witnessed it aplenty among my spirits and marveled at the depth of such powerful emotions us gods seem completely incapable of even mimicking. But I think perhaps I am beginning to.”

Did he love Alice? And on the tail end of that terrible thought came another. Did she love him? My eyes widened and my chest ached.

Hades shook his head, and the humor was long vanished from him. “It is not your Alice to whom I refer. Only know this: she has come to mean a great deal to me. If I believe for even a moment that you mean her harm, I will toss you from Elysium, and she will be lost to you forever. Have I made myself clear?”

Wetting my lips, I shook my head. “I would never harm her. She is the other half of me. You must know this; otherwise, you wouldn’t have come here. Would you?”

I knew my suspicions were correct by the all too brief and sudden lowering of his eyes, as if he gave me a silent yes.

“Then follow me, boy.” He turned, and suddenly where he’d stood was now a space of vast and endless darkness so all-consuming that light seemed completely incapable of entering in. Hades stood to the side, waiting on me with a look in his eyes that said he tested me even now.

What would I do?

Fear hammered away at my chest. Could I really do this? Could I make her remember me in just three days’ time? We had a lifetime of memories and a life built together over the centuries—it seemed an impossible task. I was crushed by failure already.

Small fingers suddenly clamped onto my wrists like a vise, and when I glanced up, I was shocked to note that at some point Danika had walked over to me. She’d been silent as death the past week, moving very little, if at all.

But there was a fire glowing from inside her now, and when she spoke, she did so with authority and conviction of heart.

“Three days. It’s all you had before. And it was enough. I will not abandon you, Hatter. Should you need me, all you have to do is call my name and I will hear you.”

“No.” Hades shook his head hard. “Neither you nor anyone else may enter my realm. If he is to win her back, he must do it alone. Those are my terms.”

Danika clenched her fingers together tight, looking at Hades with a silent plea burning in her eyes. But the god of death was unyielding in his decree and only stared at her with haughty disdain.

Sighing and with voice trembling, Danika looked back to me and said, “Then go to her, Hatter. Go to her and bring her back. Bring our darling girl back.”

And though my feet felt full of lead, I nodded at her, turned, and stepped into the all-consuming darkness of death’s door.

I fell. For what seemed an eternity. But there was no light. No sounds. Nothing. And as I continued to fall, I wondered if I’d made a terrible choice. What if Hades had lied? What if Alice wasn’t wherever it was that he was taking me to? Or was he even taking me anywhere at all?

And with those thoughts came the return of that madness, and words spewed out of my throat as I tried in vain to calm myself.

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

And with those final words, I fell painfully hard into land. Shoulder and arm jarred so forcefully that I couldn’t help the grunt that passed my lips. Dazed, confused, I blinked several times, wondering if the wailing winds of winter and the dreary grayness of sky was real or if I had died after all and hadn’t been obliterated into nothingness as Hades had vowed.

But then an awareness, a... a feeling so all-consuming and desperate raced across my skin that I shoved up on my arms, ignoring the immediate burst of pain that movement brought with it. And as I looked straight ahead, my soul suddenly trembled.

Jumping to my feet, I stood mute and in awe.

There she was. My heart. My compass.

The very breath and heartbeat of me.

She looked worn. Weary. Exhausted.

Her body was still as shapely as it’d been in the visions, but there was a weariness etched on her features that felt fixed and permanent, as though she’d rarely known a moment’s happiness in life. Her hair was limp, and she wore none of the fancy dresses, jewels, or makeup I’d once known her in. Instead, she wore a hospital gown. Her legs and feet were bare, but she did not seem bothered by the cold surrounding her. Her toenails were painted a vivid red, and a ghost of a grin tipped the corners of my lips. She’d always loved the color red.

And with each beat of my heart, the only words I could hear were: My goddess. My lover. My heart.

There’d never been anything more beautiful than Alice. Yes, she looked similar in form to the other Alice, but there was an innate beauty to her that Other Alice could never hope to mimic.

This was the Alice of legend. This was my Alice. And I would know her anywhere, no matter if a curse drove us apart over and over and over again. That surety deep in my soul spread like heat all through me.

“My Alice.” The whisper tore through my heart and spilled off my tongue, ringing with such purity and truth that for just a moment, even the gloom of her afterlife lifted and a bright beam of light bathed her in its golden finery.

I flicked a glance down once again to her bare toes, and my lips twitched at the sudden memory of our first meeting.

Liquid brown eyes the color of rich earth stared back at me curiously, and though something inside me froze at the emptiness of her gaze, the wait to get to see her, the need of our meeting, it all overwhelmed me and I threw caution to the wind.

“You,” I all but croaked, overcome by my emotions and the unbearable strain of feeling a lifetime’s worth of agony suddenly wash away at my first glimpse of her. I took a step toward her and tried not to panic when she rocked back on her heels and held up her hands warily.

I shook my head, blinking, mind at war with my own heart. I wanted to rush to her. Wanted to declare my undying and faithful devotion to her. Wanted to beg her forgiveness and plead with her to let us start anew.

I loved her more now than I’d ever known could be possible before. My heart beat again, and I felt the stir of our magic move like feelers through the air, saw the world around us practically inhale with the promise of it, impatient just as I was for my first taste of her.

To hold her again. To know her again. To have her look upon me as she once had. It was a desperate madness beating within me.

“Who are you?” she asked, and though her voice rang out like a choir of angels, I felt as though someone had just taken a millstone and tied it around my neck. Subconsciously, my fingers grazed my chest above the spot of my beating heart.

Brows gathering deeply, I shook my head. “Is it really you? After all this time, can it be that I stand before an angel?”

Panic flitted briefly in her gaze, and the world around us that’d been a painting of gentle snowfall was now a swirling chaos of ice and thick bands of frost. Alice was doing this. This was my magic, and it lived and breathed like a roaring dragon inside her heart.

And though my soul trembled with the pain of what she’d gone through, I’d never been more proud of her. Wherever she went, she took the madness of Wonderland with her, and consequently me as well. I just had to make her remember that. Remember us.

Taking a measured step forward, I felt a moment’s triumph when she didn’t back up. Mere feet separated us, and there was nowhere she could run. I had the forest behind me; she had nothing but an impossibly long cliff face behind her. I was pretty certain she couldn’t die again, but I doubted she’d want to risk injury either.

She cocked her head, studying me like a frightened but intelligent bird. Her eyes were raking, exacting, distant, cold.

She had to remember me.

Hades’s word was law here. Unless she remembered me, Alice could never leave. If I didn’t mean to her what I thought I did, then all was lost. My heart literally skipped a painful beat, and a bleakness began to stain my soul.

“I do not know you,” she finally said.

And her words tore at me, left me reeling, left me gasping for breath and hearing a buzzing in my ears. I shook my head. “No,” I said before I thought better of it. “No.” My voice shook hard. “No. You do know me. I’m—”

“Nothing,” she finished. “You’re nothing to me.”

As though someone had just shoved their fist through my chest, my mouth flopped open like that of a dying fish gasping its last on land. This didn’t make sense. We were destined. Soul mates. Her soul beat in me—that’s why I’d been so easily able to remember. Surely she could feel me inside her.

There was a sharpness, a hardness, to her features. Anger. Confusion. Vexation. But her palm was pressed to her chest, and her luminous eyes watered now, and I knew, knew she felt me in her.

“You do know me!” I growled, then rushed to her, reaching out for her arms, desperate to latch on and never let go. I would kiss her. The kiss of truest love, then she would know, then she would remember.

And just before I took her in my arms, her eyes widened and terror bled through her whites, and like a wraith she danced just out of my hold. Running, running, running furiously toward the cliff’s edge.

I watched in horror, too stunned to speak a word, silently screaming in my head for her to slow down. But she didn’t.

She raced up to the very edge. My heart thundered in my chest, threatening to tear loose. She would stop. She must stop. She had to stop.

“No!” I roared, finally able to move, finally able to reason as she slipped over the edge. My vision turned hazy and my heart beat so hard I could taste the pulse of it on the back of my tongue. I raced to the drop, sure in the knowledge that I would see her beautiful body twisted and broken on the rocks below.

But instead I saw her transform mid-fall into the stunning visage of an ice bird, feathers a pale blue, wings thick with hoarfrost and rime, and glowing a shade of pearlescent white, like freshly fallen snow on a sunny winter morning.

The world danced with frosty chaos, and her melancholy song lingered upon the winds, reaching out to me and plucking at my heartstrings. I did not realize I cried until I could no longer make out the sights around me. I watched her wing away from me, and I dropped to my knees, reaching out my hand to her, silently pleading she return.

But Alice left me alone in the cold, wintery embrace of the world she’d crafted.

Chapter 11

Alice

I do not know how I turned into that bird, but now I could turn into other things too. I drifted between trees, nothing now but a raven with wings of jeweled ebony, and I watched him.

The stranger who’d sworn he’d known me, the one who’d come after me. Who’d looked upon me with love, longing, ferocity, and desperation. There’d been madness burning in his dark gaze. And I’d felt something inside me snap. Pull and ache. I did not want to know him, and yet I could not ignore him.

I’d winged away only an hour, then I’d promptly returned to him in the guise of a field mouse, watching as he sat in the snow, staring straight ahead in that wintery landscape with a bleakness of gaze that matched the ferocity of the storm surrounding him.

He was a spirit lost.

Whoever this man was, I did not know him. He was wrong about that. And yet... I could not forget him either. I’d flirted with the idea of returning to Lethe, just for a moment, just to dip my finger in its cold, cold waters, but I’d just as quickly dismissed the idea.

I liked watching him.

He was brooding.

Silent.

And seemed so lost that it tore my heart in two.

It’d been only hours since he’d attacked me, and I warred with my instinct to go to him or run away. I’d allowed no spirit close to me, only Amara, and she only briefly.

But something about this male intrigued me despite myself.

“I know you watch me,” he said, voice deep and scratchy and guttural, and my neck feathers ruffled with shock.

I snapped my beak several times back at him. How could he have possibly known that?

“I will not bother you again, spirit,” he said, voice practically monotone as he continued to stare straight ahead. The wind whispered through his hair, riffling the dark strands. “I would not do that to you.”

He had not lifted his voice, but somehow the strength of it rang all around me.

Swallowing, I knew I had to choose one of two options. Leave. Or stay.

But why did I want to stay? He was handsome, to be sure. In a broody, dark kind of way. There was something about him, something I found oddly appealing. But also terrifying.

My heart beat erratically at the sight of him, and my body ached. Deep down, so deep I wasn’t even sure where the ache was, only that it was there.

But why?

Why?

“You were not who I thought you were, female. Please forgive me for my transgression against you. I will leave now.”

And it was only when he reached down to do exactly that, that I made my decision.

Drawing from that endless wellspring of something powerful inside me, I transformed again. To my human form. But this time I did away with the hospital gown, opting for a pair of comfy jeans and a pale pink sweater. Then, squaring my shoulders, I took a deep breath and stepped out from behind my grove of trees.

~*~

Hatter

I thought seeing her again might be easier, but it wasn’t. It was infinitely harder. She did not wear the fanciful gowns I’d grown accustomed to seeing the past month in the moving images of her, but she’d never looked more beautiful to me.

I drank in the sight of her like a drowning man.

She was dressed in the mundane clothes of her world. But she could have been wearing a potato sack and nothing else, and I’d still have thought her the most beautiful creature I’d ever beheld.

Her skin was the same honeyed shade I remembered adoring in the other life. That alluring widow’s peak of hers drew a wistful smile from me. Once I’d had the honor of being able to kiss the tip of my finger before pressing down upon it. It seemed to have been one of my favorite forms of expressing my love for her.

Her lips were supple, full, and tempting, her eyes that enticing shade of melted chocolate that’d so infatuated me right from the very beginning. Even before I’d been willing to admit to myself just how very much I’d fallen under her spell from the moment I’d seen her drop to the cold, hard ground in Wonderland.

Then she’d been wearing a sexy pair of nightclothes, a cami and shorts with vivid drawings of her Earth’s version of Alice in Wonderland upon it. She’d also worn a smile, one so sultry and unwittingly hypnotic that I’d instantly fallen under her spell.

I’d grown angry at her for it too, treating her roughly, imagining that she was just as conniving as her great-grandmother. Only there’d been no artifice in Alice, not then and not now.

Because now there was no sultry smile of greeting upon her lips. No hopeful twinkle in her hypnotic eyes as she gazed upon me. The only things that greeted me now were wariness and even a touch of fear.

Her lips weren’t curved up but tipped downward, and there was a tight crease between her brows. And it hit me then, as it hadn’t before, that we were standing now in the underworld and my Alice was dead.

She was before me. But she was dead.

I swallowed hard, agony making it difficult to breathe. I should have found her sooner. Should have saved her. Should have heard her call. In the other life, she’d called to me at her time of death, and I’d been able to dispatch Danika to her in time. To rescue her. To save her from death’s kiss.

But this time I’d heard nothing.

I’d felt nothing.

I’d let her down.

Feeling suddenly woozy and sick, I listed forward, clutching the snow-covered grass like a lifeline as I tried to breathe through the cloying dizziness of just how badly I’d let her down.

Let us down.

“Sir,” she said, and my soul cleaved in two.

I was sir now. Not her hatter. Not her lover.

I laughed.

The sound was so full of pain that I was shamed by it, but I could not stop it. I was lost to the icy grip of madness, sinking farther and farther into despair. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t get her back. Not in three days. Maybe not ever.

She gripped my shoulder tightly.

“My God, sir, what’s wrong? Don’t you realize you’re a ghost now? You’re not supposed to get sick. What’s the matter, what’s—”

Feeling wretched but not wanting to torture her with it, I tried as best I could to shake off the stupor of desolation and forced myself to meet her bright and worried gaze.

And it was terrible of me, but I couldn’t help but lean into her touch, even knowing it wasn’t love that caused her to hold me but rather very real fear for my sanity. Alice had found me once before on the verge of near total collapse, and I was ashamed to admit I felt myself very nearly there again. So I imagined that it was love that held me fast, and for just a moment I was able to gather the dregs of sanity that remained me and smile sadly back at her.

“I am fine. Really,” I said again when she didn’t look convinced the first time.

Far too soon she released me, and it was all I could do not to sink back into that despair and depression. But she was with me now, and I could be strong for her. For Alice, I could be anything she needed me to be.

So I fought my inner demons, and I smiled brightly. Well enough that the doubt finally lifted from her gaze.

Twisting her lips, she nodded slowly. “Well, okay, if you say so. Do you mind if I sit with you for a while? Just to make sure you’re really feeling better?” she rushed on to say.

Goddess, yes! I wanted to cry. Wanted to take her into my arms, hold her close, and never let go. But I’d succumbed to desire once already and almost lost her. It was difficult, but I kept my hands to my side and only dipped a short nod at her.

She sat beside me but left a good foot of space between us, and I closed my eyes. There may as well have been an ocean between us, that was how great the distance felt. Curling my fingers into the grass, I began to yank up great big clumps.

I was here.

She was here.

And nothing at all was the same.

Silence stretched long between us, and though I knew that if I didn’t do or say something soon, she’d leave, I was paralyzed by fear. This was the woman of my soul, my life, my everything. Always we’d been able to share everything with one another, but now I was a perfect stranger to my Alice.

I was nothing.

I was no one.

I was empty.

“What’s your name, male?” she asked delicately, so softly that I almost hadn’t heard it above the din of the whistling winter wind.

She’d said male. Alice had originally hailed from Earth before she’d fallen down the rabbit hole and into my heart forever. She would never have referred to anyone as a male on Earth, but it was an idiom she’d picked up after her long life among Kingdomers.

Whipping my head around, I had to shake it several times just to be able to gather my thoughts into some semblance of coherence. And for a split second, an infinite moment in time, I felt hope gather and bloom in a brilliant roar inside me. Right before the curse had flung her from my arms, she’d promised me that deep down inside she’d fight. She’d remember. I only needed to be strong and bring her back.

I knew I was clinging to threads here, but threads were all I currently had.

“Hatter,” I said quickly and without thought, then froze, realizing what I’d just done. Hades had told me of Alice’s hatred for Hatter now. How could I have been so stupi—

“Oh,” she said sweetly, “that’s a strange name. My name’s Alice.”

She held out her hand to me as though to shake it in greeting, but all I could do was stare down at her fingers in numbed horror.

She did not know me.

Alice did not know me at all. And that hope that I’d felt just seconds ago was razed to the ground in a fiery heap of rubble.

The smile of greeting soon slipped from her lips, and just as she was about to lower her hand—no doubt believing I did not wish to shake it—I scooped it up, slipping my palm against hers and trying like hell to fight the sudden trembling that coursed through every inch of me at the first true touch of her exquisite flesh to my own.

My Alice.

This was my Alice.

My lover.

My everything.

Her palm was as callused as I’d known it would be. Like me, she’d worked with her hands all her life. She’d had strong hands, but yet delicate too. Hands that’d run over every inch of my naked body with tender, loving devotion.

I swallowed painfully. “Good... good to meet you.” I forced the lie past my lips. Forced myself to act as though I didn’t know her, but I did. I knew everything about her.

Everything.

My entire world had revolved around her and our daughter Chrysalis for so long that Alice was as familiar to me as my own flesh. Because she was me, and I was her.

“So,” she said a second later, letting go of my hand before curling her fingers so tightly upon her lap that her knuckles whitened, “what was that earlier? Why did you act like you knew me?”

And for just a moment, I wanted to tell her the truth, tell her everything. But I already knew I couldn’t. I’d tried before, and she’d flown away from me like a frightened animal.

Alice had died believing I did not care. And whether she remembered me now or not, someplace deep within her knew. She was talking to me now. And that had to be enough.

So I swallowed my terror at the thought of losing her all over again and stayed as close to the truth as I could without frightening her away.

“You scared me,” she finally said, words soft and fragile.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I did not intend to. I am new here you see, and you reminded me of someone.”

Her brows lifted. “I do?”

Notching my knees, I wrapped my arms around them, simply to give my hands something to do, and nodded. “Aye. A woman I loved a long time ago and who loved me once too.”

Her lips twisted as her body began to slowly move away. I gripped her forearm, refusing to let her go this time, and violently shook my head.

“But I was wrong. You are not her. And I am sorry for scaring you as I did. But please don’t go. I know no one here. And your company”—I breathed, aching so deep in my chest that I wondered if I might actually die before the three days were up—“is a salve to my weary mind.”

She glanced down at my hand, and though I did not want to, I forced my fingers to relax and release her.

She rubbed at the spot where my hand had been, and for a moment I was sure she would flee again, leave me here in this desolate wasteland, alone and dying. But she didn’t.

Alice stayed.

“What was her name? The girl you loved.”

Closing my eyes, I forced aside the imprint of her name on my tongue and whispered brokenly, “She had many names, but only one I can give you.”

Lifting her brows, she seemed curious despite her misgivings, and if that was all I could get, then I would make the most of it.

“Mine.”

She swallowed, and I gave her a weak smile, feeling sentimental and foolish. But then she patted my hand, the touch featherlight and quick, but enough to make me feel as if she’d scorched me.

“That must have been nice,” she murmured, then shook her head. “Being a ‘mine.’” She finger quoted. “I was never anyone’s mine.”

My lashes fluttered heavily; my stomach ached. I wanted to tell her. The words settled like lead on the tip of my tongue, but I checked my words and let her continue to believe that lie.

“Well, Hatter, you’ve caught me on a good day. I am relatively new too and know no one here. So I guess that means we have an eternity to talk about your ‘mine.’ Tell me, what did she look like?”

I shook my head, lost as to what I could possibly say to her, when an absurd idea suddenly struck me. Inside my chest, I felt the faint stirrings of my magic, more alive now because of her proximity.

It was a stupid, silly idea and likely wouldn’t work at all. But I’d seen Danika do this times aplenty, and I couldn’t help but think that maybe I might be able to keep Alice with me longer if I made sure she was entertained.

“Alice,” I said slowly, “if I ask you something wild, would you trust me?”

She frowned deeply, leaning away, but I shook my head.

“It’s nothing like you’re thinking, I’m sure.”

A short burst of laughter dropped off her tongue, the sound so achingly familiar that my eyes began to burn with a wet sheen. But I couldn’t give in to the loss of her, not now. Not when I was finally back with her.

“And how would you know what I’m thinking?” she asked dulcetly.

A ghost of smile whispered past my lips. “It wasn’t hard. But I want to show you something. I have magic, you see. But in order to use it, I need to link hands.”

Again she gave me a look like she didn’t trust me, and she was right. I wasn’t exactly being honest. Though I felt the dregs of my magic stirring, it wasn’t my magic I wanted to tap into, but hers.

Because her power had once been my own, I knew how to harness it to my will.

“I would weave a story for you,” I said brokenly. “One of love, heartbreak, and possibly, maybe even redemption.”

“Possibly redemption? Wouldn’t you know if your romance was redeemed?”

I nodded. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” I grinned, giving her the best nonanswer I could.

Wind riffled long strands of her thick, jet-black hair, causing it to twist like a serpent through the air. My palm ached. Literally hurt with the memory of how often I’d been able to touch her at will. An act I’d taken for granted once.

I swallowed hard.

And maybe it was the haunting sadness lingering in my eyes that swayed her, but finally she reached over and oh so slowly linked hands with me.

Heart thundering like galloping hooves in my chest, I fought to breathe normally. Just the touch of her flesh, the feel of velvety skin that was at once soft and hard. The only memories I had were ones I’d discovered during my time with Danika, but for just a moment I could remember this intimacy. Remember a time when it had been mine. There were moments of such clarity, where then and now collided and I truly could recall what we’d once been. The memories were always fleeting but carried a wallop with them, leaving a lasting impression on my soul that no amount of time or distance could ever erase.

We’d been the world to each other once. To know that kind of love even once was a miracle—could I really be so fortunate to know it again?

She began to tense up beside me, and I knew if I lingered too much longer on our past, I’d lose the very tenuous thread of trust building between us. Squeezing my eyes shut, I focused on the pulsing orb of power within her. Our power.

The golden warmth of it curled around me instantly, like an old friend coming home, and I couldn’t help the small sigh that slipped from me. I didn’t need much, and I wouldn’t take much. Until we were returned to Wonderland, we could not replenish our stores.

Using what was available around me, I fashioned fantastical creatures of whimsy.

First a male, built of frost and snow. He stood no higher than my thigh and was built of solid blue ice. His hair was nothing more than swirls of snow, and on his form he wore dead leaves for trousers and a vest. His top hat was made of woven twigs. Alice sucked in a sharp breath, blinking rapidly, and though she fought the smile, I saw the whisper of it trace across her brows.

Next, I built the female. But unlike the male, she was a true thing of beauty and magic. Her body was built of the greenest glowing moss, her form exceedingly lovely and feminine. Her eyes were interlinked strands of vines, and her lips glowed the coral red of miniature poppy blooms. Her long, winding hair was long, supple blades of jewel-green grass, and her curve-hugging gown was built of hundreds of miniature budding blooms of white, cream, and pink that wrapped around her figure like a princess gown, much the same way Alice’s gowns once had.

“Oh, Hatter,” my Alice whispered, and when I turned to look at her, her fingers trembled upon her soft pink lips as wetness shimmered in her eyes.

I was sure she had no idea what her two tiny words had just done to me, the way they’d made my world feel like it’d suddenly tilted upon its axis, and so I couldn’t resist giving her fingers a tiny squeeze.

She didn’t look back at me, but I knew she was aware by the way her body oh so slowly and torturously moved against mine. Alice might not remember, but someplace deep inside, there was a part of her that did. The part of her that had promised to fight for me, for us.

Taking a deep breath, I began our story.

“Once upon a time, there was a man named Hatter. Madness, insanity, and folly were his lot in life. And though he wanted to live, he felt death’s touch lingering always close by.”

The ice male looked around, my words giving him life, animation. He glanced around the wasteland of snow and ice with a look so mournful and full of loneliness that I wondered if Alice knew how very little acting was involved in this.

“Hatter was lost. Dying. And all alone. Until her. Until she who was everything came into his world and made him whole again...”

Chapter 12

Alice

I’d never been as entertained as I was today. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time since my death that I’d laughed so much, watching those beautiful nature sculptures walk through the motions of Hatter’s tale. A natural storyteller he was, and it was so easy to lose myself in the whimsy of his tale.

How the two had first met.

The female, fallen through a rabbit hole of all things, landing in a garden of singing flowers as they’d honked and jeered at her. How confused and dazed and even dazzled she’d been by the strangeness of that world, and then she’d turned her eyes upon Hatter, and there’d been a visible transformation in the female.

It was the strangest thing, but watching that female miniature react to the world and her situations as she had, I was sure I would have acted no differently. Hatter had been high-handed in his mannerisms, forcing her to walk over the rugged and stony terrain barefoot. But then there’d been a moment, at the tree with limbs that weren’t wood at all but snakes, where he’d rescued the female and I’d had to gasp.

Because that poem he’d recited about snakes of all things had brought a lump to my throat. There the Hatter had stood before a beast capable of ending him, protecting a female he’d vowed he’d wanted nothing to do with. And I could see it for the lie it was.

Whether the Hatter had realized it or not, his “mine” had gotten to him from the very beginning. Then there’d been the scene after that where he’d finally relented on the hard pace and had taken her to a fairy river to bathe her feet in the magicked waters, healing the bruises and cuts instantly.

I couldn’t help but sigh as I watched the two of them begin to slowly fall in love.

But then I’d gone from sighing to laughing as that rascally male had dragged his female through door after door into a land brimming with madness and chaos. It was almost as good as watching a movie on the screen.

I was enraptured by the strange tale that seemed so foreign and yet weirdly familiar all at the same time.

Now the pair had arrived at the Hatter’s cottage, inside a teapot of all things, when the miniatures suddenly faded back to their original forms, slipping to the ground in mounds of grass and snow.

Frowning, I shook my head, staring up at the real Hatter beside me. “What? Why? I was just getting into it.”

But no sooner had I asked the question than I noticed a pale sheen to his flesh that’d not been there before. His eyes looked shaded and tired; there were dark circles beneath his eyes.

It was clear he was exhausted and I felt guilty for not realizing it sooner. I wasn’t sure why he seemed not to be faring as well as all the other ghosts I’d encountered in my time here, but maybe he’d been cursed somehow.

“You’re tired,” I said quickly, and he nodded, dragging his knees to his chest to hug them tight.

“I hate to agree with you on that, but I am rather.”

I’d vowed to keep my distance from all ghosts, but I was starting to become a softie I guess. First Amara, now Hatter. I bit the corner of my lip, knowing I should leave but not really ready to yet either.

There was something about this quiet man I kind of liked.

Dark eyes hooked mine, and as if reading my thoughts, he said, “You don’t have to go yet. If you don’t want to.”

I sniffed. “I should though. Let you rest.”

But he was shaking his head. “I’ll be fine, Alice. I just need a minute is all. I have an idea. If you’d like, let us play a game.”

Lifting a brow, I gave him an incredulous look. “A game? What sort of game?”

He laughed. And the sound of it was rich and warm and hypnotizing, and my skin tingled everywhere. Feeling suddenly weird and rethinking my decision to stay, I turned my face aside for a moment, fighting back the blush threatening to work itself loose.

I’d never had this type of visceral reaction to a man before. I grabbed hold of my lower stomach.

“Twenty questions,” he said, causing me to look back at him, grateful that my skin was darker and hid the heat of the blush.

“Twenty is an awful lot. How about one honest and truthful question?”

It was his turn for his brows to twitch. “Not much of a game then. Ten.”

“Three,” I countered.

“Deal,” he said smoothly, and my mouth flopped open. I couldn’t help feeling as though he’d just gotten the upper hand somehow.

“Cheeky bastard,” I said with a grin to take the sting out of my words. “You played me.”

He shrugged one shoulder unrepentantly.

Needing to feel more in charge of this “game” than I currently did—not having a clue what exactly I’d gotten myself into here—I lifted a finger. “But I’ll answer only one question a day, so make it count, Hatter.”

The smile that’d taken hold of his face slipped for a millisecond, replaced with a sorrow so deep that I found myself automatically rubbing at my chest. How had this male died?

And who, really, was his female?

I had so many questions, and now I’d imposed a one-question-a-day limit and wanted to kick myself for it.

“Then that’s perfect, Alice,” he said steadily, never breaking eye contact with me. “So ask, ask me anything.”

Of all the questions hammering away at me, there was only one I really wanted to know. “What was her name? Her real name?”

His full bottom lip tipped up at the corner, and his eyes began to glow, and for just a moment I completely forgot how to breathe.

He was gorgeous.

Strange how the mind worked.

I knew he was broken up about his past love, but I couldn’t help but envy whoever she had really been. I didn’t know him, and it felt stupid to even think it, but deep down I felt an attachment.

Silly, I know.

And it wasn’t like I’d die if I never got to see him again, been there done that, but I really, really wanted to see him again.

He’d scared me earlier, and I’d reacted in a way I never had before. I’d flown. Literally flown away from him. Because from the moment I’d seen this strange, quirky, and beautiful male, something deep inside me had screamed an exultant “There you are.”

It still didn’t make sense to me, and it terrified me not a little, but it was honest.

He shook his head, causing the shaggy ends of his black hair to drape across his eyes, and I had to dig my fingers into my jeans to keep from reaching out to him.

“No. Not yet. It’s not time yet.”

I frowned, wanting to argue the point. Wanting to tell him that learning her true name couldn’t possibly affect anything since I was sure I didn’t know her. Ignoring my furiously beating heart, I tried to remind myself that whatever had been done to Hatter, the end result had been death. And maybe she’d had something to do with it.

Maybe she hadn’t.

But when he spoke of her, the echoing pain behind his words was palpable. So I swallowed my need to know and gave a clipped nod.

“I don’t like it, but I get it. So if you won’t answer that, then maybe you’ll answer this. What was your job before you died?”

That question obviously was a good one, because he relaxed, leaning back on his hands and staring off into the distance with the ghostly remnants of a smile fixed upon his lips.

“I don’t exactly have a typical job. I was simply the caretaker to Wonderland.” He glanced quickly my way, as though he waited to see if something he’d just said had made some sort of an impact on me. Since I didn’t have a clue why, I nodded for him to continue. And he did, with a soft sigh. “But I guess if I had to describe it, my job was simply to love her. And that’s what I tried to do, to the very best of myself.”

I hated the fact that my heart suddenly trembled at those cheesy words. Because they were—they were so cheesy. That was some serious romance-novel stuff there. Men didn’t act like him.

But then, I couldn’t deny the sincerity and conviction in his words, and coming from him, they weren’t cheesy at all. I had a feeling that whoever the lucky girl had been, she’d known just how loved she really was.

“Oh,” I found myself whispering. “That’s um... wow. Yeah, that’s some intense stuff there.” Then I laughed, because I felt suddenly overheated and flushed, and the world around us was no longer howling with bitter cold, but a gentle zephyr blew, and tight buds of springtime flowers had started peeking out from beneath the canvas of melting snow.

I still didn’t know why my moods could alter this world the way they did, and it was kind of embarrassing that he might one day realize my surroundings were completely tied to my emotions, but he didn’t seem fazed by it. So I took a deep breath and hid my shaking fingers beneath my butt.

“Well, fair is fair, I guess. You answered mine. Now ask yours.”

Those deeply searching eyes of his that seemed to look beneath my skin into my very soul fixed upon my face as he asked, “What did you love most in life?”

I frowned. Huh?

Of all the questions he could have asked, I’d not expected such a benign one. And I was slightly disappointed by it, truth be told. But I’d signed on to play this silly game, and so I would.

Looking over his shoulder, I began to think of my life. There were holes in there, thanks to my dipping my finger in Lethe, but I could remember bits and pieces. I grinned. “Well, I guess if you asked my friends and family, they would have said baking. I opened up a bakery—cupcakes, in fact.” I frowned, trying to recall what in the heck I’d named the place, but the name completely eluded me. Wrinkling my nose and getting frustrated, I shook my head. Didn’t matter right now. “But, while I did like baking, I think I actually liked singing more. Is that weird?”

“No,” he said softly. “Music has a magic all its own.”

Again I was snared by the thought that there was something about Hatter that felt unbelievably familiar. Maybe it was the ache in his voice, so similar to what I’d felt when I’d decided to visit the river Lethe. Or maybe it was those dark, expressive eyes that looked haunted and desperate.

He cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and looked quickly away.

Realizing I’d been traipsing through a strange set of thoughts, I also cleared my throat and gave a self-effacing chuckle. “Yeah. Right. Jeez. I’m in a weird mood today. I think it’s time to go.”

He nodded, barely sparing me a glance. Standing, I took a step back and then another. But when I glanced behind me and realized he’d not moved an inch and was still staring straight ahead with the look of a man devastated by his lot in death, I knew I couldn’t just leave things this way.

Walking back to him, I hesitated only a second before grasping his shoulder, marveling at the strength of his flesh beneath my fingers. He was so warm. I’d had no idea we’d still be warm in death, but Hatter burned with the delicious heat of the sun itself, making me feel less cold and more alive for just a moment.

He looked up at me, a question in his eyes. And I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry you lost her, Hatter. And I hope... I hope—” I bit my bottom lip, not really wanting to say these next words at all, but knowing I needed to make him smile if only for a second. “I hope you find her again.”

Feeling weird, like I was overstepping or something, I went to move away. But he clenched down on my fingers swiftly, squeezing them tight. Not enough to hurt. My breath hitched.

“I do too, Alice. With all my heart and soul. I do too.”

His words burned through my heart that night.

~*~

Hatter

The sun had gone down on day one, and as I sat here in the cold, trying to keep my teeth from clacking together as I shivered violently, I shook my head.

“She doesn’t remember me at all.”

“Did you think she would?”

The voice was deeply masculine, and I didn’t need to look up to know that Hades had found his way to me.

I glanced up in time to see the Lord of the Underworld kneel before me with narrowed eyes as his gaze raked over me.

“You’re blue. My dead do not turn blue. She will eventually figure out you’re not dead, and when she does, how do you think she’ll react, male?”

He shook his head, sighing deeply and causing the winter chill to increase tenfold, making me feel as though I might die of frost.

“You will not die. At least not for another two days. But already I can see the life being leached from you. How can you bear this? Why would you want to?”

I frowned, sensing he did not mock me so much as marvel at what he surely thought was my folly. I pitied the god just then.

“Have you never known love at all, Hades?”

He snorted. “Me? Know love? I think you’ve mistaken me for my niece. We gods do not care for the sentiment.”

I shook my head, wondering if I’d ever feel warm again. “I don’t believe that.”

“And you would know how?”

The answer was so obvious I was surprised he couldn’t see it for himself. “Because you’re here. You were watching her before you even let me step through your gates. And you still watch her. You’re curious, Hades, admit it.”

He chuckled, causing the snow-dusted plains beneath my bottom to grumble and groan. So powerful and yet so naïve. I shook my head, looking away.

“No. You never will. Because you’re a god and you think you already know everything, don’t you?”

Fire licked through his eyes, casting a glow upon the pristine snow around me.

“If you weren’t already going to die in two days, I’d kill you now for your impertinence.”

I snorted. “Your threats mean nothing to me, Lord of Death. Without her, I have nothing anyway.”

“So you would build your whole life and who you are upon the expectation of another? Pitiful.” He sneered.

I shrugged. I didn’t know how to explain what Alice and I had in any way that made any kind of sense.

“I existed before her, Hades. But I was a shell. In that life and in this one. I couldn’t begin to explain what Alice did for me. Her gentleness. Her love. Her fire. It lit an undying flame inside my heart, made me see myself as she did. I was tired, but she gave me purpose and hope. I need Alice like I need my next breath. She is not just my love or my lover, she is my very soul. And unless you’ve ever felt that, you could never possibly understand the depths I’d be willing to walk in order to save her. Even if she doesn’t choose me again, as long as I know she’s happy, I could die feeling as though I’d accomplished something worthwhile in this life.”

He laughed. But he stared at me. Like I confused him. Like he wanted to understand, but he just couldn’t.

He shook his head. “That sounds dreadful.”

My lips twitched as the cold sank deeper and deeper within my bones. Feeling a weariness of soul, I rested my cheek upon my knees and murmured, “If you say so.”

Then, closing my eyes, I told myself I only needed to rest a bit so as to regain my strength. But I knew when I woke in the morning, I would not feel better.

Somehow, someway, I had to keep fighting. It was the only way to save Alice.

~*~

Hades

I watched the madman sink into the fog of delirium. I had not lied when I’d told him how taxing it would be for a living to walk among the dead.

Already he was dying. And coming from Kingdom as he did, I knew the male had never even known the sting of illness before.

Hatter might not even have a day left to him. I shook my head and stood.

Immediately I sensed the presence of another. It wasn’t difficult to figure out it was her, though not in human form. She’d transformed again. Into a field mouse, hidden in the twigs back by a copse of trees.

Aphrodite had been right; the two souls were inexorably linked. I’d known the moment I’d seen Alice dip her fingers into the water that she would eventually succumb to its lure and drink.

She was wrong. It wasn’t the water that’d wiped her memory of all traces of Hatter. It’d been me. I’d replaced memories of reality with small snatches of fantasy, namely her drinking from Lethe. A fact that never actually occurred.

And I’d done it for a very simple reason.

What Lethe wrought could never be undone. But if the male and Alice were truly a fated pair, then I would lift the curse. I was not accustomed to giving up my dead, but I had my reasons.

Clenching down on my back teeth, I muttered a curse beneath my breath and did something I hadn’t done in over a thousand years. I left my underworld for the golden clouds of Olympus.

The sunlight stung my eyes and made me hiss.

Firebirds screamed as they raced through the air, trying to outmaneuver Apollo’s burning chariot across the sky.

Standing on a hill overlooking the palace of the three Fates, I glowered at the stone building. I had my doubts that Aphrodite had spoken with them. But I was equally as sure that she believed the rest of her story.

Frolicking nymphs and satyrs dashed through flowering bushes as they chased and ran away. I curled my lip in disgust at their obvious show of foreplay. I’d never much cared for the games of lust.

“Come to savor the wares?” a masculine but high-pitched voice asked just over my left shoulder.

I didn’t turn, knowing to whom I spoke. “Hermes. Checking up on me? My brother sent you, has he?”

The messenger god chuckled, and finally I turned, staring at the man who would forever look a boy of sixteen. He was youthful and spry; constant running around tended to do that to a body. He had blond hair the color of Apollo’s burnished sun and eyes as blue as the skies he called home. Dressed in the casual clothes of the modern world, a jacket and formfitting jeans with his ever-present winged shoes on his feet, he grinned cheekily.

“Well, not often the Lord of Death sees fit to grace us with his presence.”

Not an answer, and yet I’d not actually expected one.

“Want me to fetch a nymph for you? Heard it’s been a while.” He grinned, glancing quickly down between my legs and snorting.

I sighed, already exhausted by my kind, and I’d only just gotten here.

“No,” I said. “Where is Aphrodite?”

That question seemed to take him aback, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Hate to say this, Deathy, but I don’t think you’ll be getting any sex from that one. Rumor has it she’s been locked up in her castle beneath the waves these past few days and has threatened to cut off anyone’s balls who dares to approach.” Covering the side of his mouth with his hand, he glanced from side to side quickly before leaning in and saying in a stage whisper, “She and the twisted one are on the outs, you see.”

Feeling strangely protective all of a sudden, I snapped at the imbecile. “Get out of my way, you gossiping whoreson.”

Then I shoved past him, unnecessary since I traveled through a time portal, and made my way directly into Aphrodite’s luxurious sex suite.

The place was gilded with gold and dripping with diamonds from every conceivable corner. Upon her floors were rugs of thick, plush animal skins as white as freshly fallen snow. A massive mirror took up one entire wall, and at the very center of the opulent room sat a bed that could easily sleep twenty.

Aphrodite was notorious for her orgies.

But instead of finding a bevy of naked men and women giving in to her every whim, I only found Aphrodite lying on the center of it, wearing a very mundane-looking gown of spun white cotton, her blond hair loose and looking tangled.

She did not cry out when I entered, simply sat up slowly, as though she wore the cares of the world upon her small shoulders.

Aphrodite wore no glamour today, and I was taken aback by the sight of her. This was the real woman who hid behind the gowns of spun sunlight, whose flesh glowed, golden and alive.

She looked tired.

There were dark circles under her eyes, as though she’d been crying for days. But for all that, she was still one of the most beautiful woman I’d ever known. I rather liked her without the magic, though I’d never say so.

“Hades?” she asked quietly, looking at me strangely. “Why are you here?”

Taking a deep breath, I licked my front teeth. Now that I was here, I wasn’t really sure why I’d come, to be honest. I’d kicked her out of my realm, mocked her, made her feel a fool.

I frowned, shoved my fingers through my hair, and looked at her directly. “You never spoke with the Fates. Did you?”

The visible swallow and shudder she gave was answer enough, and my heart sank.

Crawling forward on her hands and knees, gripping her sheets so tight that her knuckles whitened, she shook her head vehemently. “No, but before you say another word, know this. The rest was the absolute truth. I need you to believe in them as I do.”

“Who told you to get to me? Why?”

Twisting her thick hair through her fingers, she looked nervous. And not at all like the confident goddess I’d always known her to be. I didn’t know what to make of this startling revelation, but there was an epiphany growing inside me. One that seemed so obvious now in hindsight that I was ashamed I’d not realized it sooner.

“It was the fairy queen of Kingdom—Galeta. And I would trust her word as surely as I would trust that of the Fates. I did not lie to you, Hades, Calypso is your lost mate.”

“And how do Hatter and Alice fit into this?”

I had my suspicions, which had blossomed after speaking with Hatter, but I would hold that thought close to the vest. For now.

She shrugged, and that movement alone seemed to wear her out.

It was inconceivable to me that I should care about this slip of a woman I’d never had feelings for before. But I was seeing Aphrodite in a new light today. And I felt heartily ashamed of myself.

“I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “But I would do anything to—”

Unable to be in her presence a moment longer, I turned on my heel, tore open a portal, and returned to the safety and isolation of my underworld.

I would have to eventually apologize to Aphrodite for my actions, but if I’d been forced to remain in her presence a moment longer, I might have given in to my shame in public.

Sitting upon my throne and with tears burning in my eyes, I flicked my wrist. For days now I’d been spying on Calypso, and this time was no different.

I watched the elemental with new eyes.

She sat on a cliff, staring down at her beloved sea. She was not in human form, but she was more solid than she had been before. More like a pillar of water in the shape of a coral. And though I could not see her face, I knew her eyes were trained upon the sea she loved so well.

I looked at that water too, wondering what it was about it that called to the elemental so. Water was just water. You drank it, bathed in it, cooked with it, but there was no more to it than that.

But as I watched her study it, I knew it was so much more than that to her. To her, it was life. Beauty. Wonder.

I frowned.

Where had those thoughts come from? Blinking, I tried to shake the nonsense from my head, but all of a sudden I caught movement from the corner of my eye. It was Calypso, and though she still bore no recognizable form, I felt her eyes upon me. Her gaze met mine across time and distance, and though I knew she did not see me, she was clearly aware of being watched.

My spine stiffened and my breathing hitched. Curling my fingers into my throne’s armrest, I leaned forward, not wanting to be caught, and yet also perversely desirous she do just that, that somehow she’d figure out it was I who spied upon her.

Calypso’s tempers were legendary. The sea could be calm, but it could also be chaotic, wild, and tempestuous. My pulse quickened at the thought of what she might try to do to me.

But only a second later, she turned and sailed from the cliff’s edge and back into the sea, vanished from my view. I rubbed at my chest and wondered what in the hell to do next.

Chapter 13

Alice

I laughed when the moss miniature tossed a bun at the back of the Hatter’s head. Covering my belly with one hand and my mouth with the other, I gave in to a fit of laughter such as I’d never known.

Beside me, Hatter smiled, but he continued on with his story. And once again I found myself marveling at the world I imagined from the words he spoke.

Fish with buckteeth. And giant, man-eating frogs that could swallow a person whole and wind them up in an entirely new world of wonder. Skunks passed out and belly up, sleeping off a night of drunken revelry. It all seemed ridiculous and impossible, except that he spoke in a way that let me know he believed every word of it.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t an analogy of some sort, or even wishful thinking on his part. I couldn’t imagine a world like the one he fashioned, but it was fun to try.

My very favorite part of his story was the wonder of his home. The gardens where they’d had tea. And a little mouse had catered to their every whim. And the dawning realization that the female too had magic.

I shook my head. “I cannot believe this kind of wonder actually exists.”

We got all the way to the end of the story this time. And I watched with stupid tears shimmering in my eyes and a lump in my throat, feeling ridiculously jealous because a bit off moss and grass was told by a bit of ice and twigs just how treasured she was by him.

No sooner had those magical words been spoken than the figurines collapsed back into a heap of grass and snow at our feet. Closing his eyes, Hatter leaned back on his hands, looking far more exhausted today than he had yesterday.

I frowned, feeling more worried than I had a right to. But why did he always look so ill? I was beginning to suspect he’d been cursed somehow, but why, and how?

“It did. But not anymore,” he said slowly, as if each word was a struggle.

I shook my head. “Not anymore? Why’s that?”

Dark eyes looked wearily back at me. “Because when she left, she took the light with her.” His smile was sad, and his words spoken without cruelty, but I felt the sting of them anyway.

“Oh, that is sad.”

He gave a weak grin. “Not your fault. Not hers either. Life can be cruel, Alice. But”—he straightened his shoulders—“we had it better than most. We had many lifetimes together. I suppose to some that would make us lucky and not cursed.”

I thinned my lips, not really sure he was buying what he was selling, but it was obvious he wanted to move on from thinking such sad thoughts, so I agreed with a reluctant nod. “If you say so.”

His cheek rested wearily on his knees, and I didn’t think of anything other than wanting somehow to make him feel better. Using a bit of the magic inside me, I twirled my finger, causing a golden, spiraling glow to dance through the air.

When the light dissipated, a table and chairs stood before us, and heaped upon the wrought iron surface were platters of tea cakes, cupcakes, and vanilla-honey tea.

He sat still as a statue, staring at the tea things as though they were a snake intent on striking him.

Which made me feel suddenly foolish and silly. I twisted my lips, dragging my fingers through the jean crease at my knee. “I um, thought that maybe”—I waved my fingers—“you might be hungry and want to eat something with me.”

His nostrils flared, and a tight muscle in his jaw twitched. “You made tea and cakes.” He said it slowly, and though he sounded none too pleased about it, I couldn’t help but shiver to hear that deliciously deep English accent of his roll with the vowels.

Giving a wimpy chuckle, I swallowed once. “Um, well yes. You showed me that garden scene, and I was suddenly hungry for some. But maybe I shouldn’t have done this. It was stupid. I am stupid. I’ll go now. I’m sorry, so sor—”

I made to stand, but his arm shot out like a laser, and his hand clamped down on my elbow, holding me tight.

“No. Don’t go, Alice. And you aren’t silly.”

Feeling so unbelievably stupid and selfish, I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I am silly. This was your thing with her. I shouldn’t have done this. I just didn’t think, and I—”

But he was standing now and holding out his hand to me, looking down at me with a closed expression that felt full of some unnamed emotion. Hatter looked like a man drowning, and it was so stupid that I should care about a stranger like this when I hadn’t cared for anyone else in my time since being here, but I hadn’t lied when I said his emotions at times seemed so real to me that I felt myself choking on the on the weight of them.

His grip was absolute as he led me around to the chair, and only then did he release me in order to pull it out so that I might sit.

Casting him one final, worried frown, I did sit. And looked at the stuff I’d conjured without even thinking of it.

Sticky buns in the shape of rabbits with little bowler hats upon their heads and canes in their furry little paws. Cookies in the shape of an odd-looking feline with sickle-shaped teeth and crystalized sugar eyes that almost seemed to glow. Little tea sandwiches that looked more like a deck of cards. And bottles full of blue glowing liquid with tiny little notes wrapped around the necks reading Drink me.

The teacups too were the most amazing things I’d ever seen. Paper thin and crafted of the finest bone china and painted with scenes I’d never before imagined. One of a swaddled child lying beneath a beam of purest moonlight. Another with a garden of flowers who bore almost humanlike faces.

But the one I liked the most was the teapot itself. The picture painted upon it was of a shadowed man sitting on a throne with lightning cracking behind him and dozens of black birds down around his feet. The lightning in this one was actually moving and dancing like real lightning would. And there was rain driving down around the man’s shoulders. And a scrollwork of black calligraphy kept magically racing across the top and bottom of the pot, moving like a ticker tape.

But the words moved so fast it was impossible for me to see what it read; I’d catch a glimpse of a word here or there but nothing that made any sense.

“Dreary. Tapping. Darkness.”

I frowned, staring harder. I wasn’t sure why it was that I could craft these sorts of things, but I wasn’t all that concerned by it either. Hatter had magic too, so maybe it was a death thing. But I was exceedingly curious about those words. Something about them resonated deeply within me.

But why?

“What is this, Alice?” Hatter asked, forcing me to pull my gaze away from the hypnotic words.

“What?” I frowned, then shook my head, feeling a little like I was coming out of a fog. “The tea? I guess your story inspired me.”

He reached for the cup that bore the image of the child and lifted it high, staring at the painting with a cold, dead look.

And I was right back to feeling terrible about all this. I was seconds away from vanishing it all when I noticed his hand give a slight tremor. I frowned.

“Hatter? Are you—”

Blinking and looking at me almost wildly, he suddenly smiled so wide that I didn’t know what to do. The shock of seeing him do something other than frown was so disconcerting that all I could do was stare at him in silence.

He was beautiful.

My gods, he was breathtaking with the way the sun splayed behind him and the way his dark eyes danced with some secret mirth, and how his full lips twitched as though holding in a secret.

A devil in the guise of an angel... The words pierced my mind, bringing me up short. Because those words hadn’t been ones I’d just thought of—more like they’d always been there but’d once been trapped and now they’d broken free.

“I am thirsty, Alice.” He sniffed. “And this all looks wonderful. Tea?”

He lifted the pot, which was now just a pot. There were no ticker tape words, no driving rain or piercing lightning. Just a meadow scene with a trail of heated steam curling from the spout.

Frowning, I lifted my cup. He poured and began chatting animatedly after that.

“One cube of sugar, am I right?” he asked quickly. And before I could even answer that yes, he was correct, he dropped the cube in, stirred quickly, then proceeded to make his own tea.

He wouldn’t take sugar.

I wasn’t sure how I knew that. But I smiled when he took the first sip of his tea without it.

“Thank you for this,” he said a moment later, reaching for one of the card-shaped tea sandwiches.

“Believe it or not”—I grinned weakly—“I loved doing high tea back in Honolulu. There were teahouses everywhere there, though I tended to prefer the more British style of tea as opposed to the Japanese. I know, that’s heresy considering my ancestry. So let’s keep that a secret.”

He gave a low, rumbling chuckle that made my insides feel funny and tingly. I curled my toes in the soft blades of grass beneath my feet.

The snow had almost entirely melted now. When I’d found him this morning, his skin had been tinged blue, but now the sun was out and butterflies with magnificent wings of orange and black flitted around us.

Flowers and leaves bloomed upon the trees that just yesterday had been nothing more than twigs. The smell of spring was all around, and I was sitting with the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my entire life, drinking tea.

This was pretty much as perfect an afterlife as I could imagine.

“I promise to never tell,” he said with a short laugh.

The first bite of the tea sandwich made me moan. I’d always been a good cook, and magic or not, I’d definitely had a hand in the creation of all of this, including the chicken salad sandwiches with just a hint of tarragon and lemon zest. They were delicious. And judging by the appreciative glance in Hatter’s eyes, he’d agree.

“You’re an excellent cook, Alice,” he said after he’d stuffed a third one down his throat.

I beamed, feeling giddy by his compliment. “Well, I didn’t exactly slave away. But I know flavor profiles. I was a baker in life, like I said. Used to make cupcakes. All sorts of crazy creations, the names of which completely escape me right now, but I had customers lining up around my building to get to them. I used to make the most amazing things. Like tequila-lime frosting with a lavender-based white cake and a candied orange rind in the middle. I mean, it sounds like it shouldn’t work. And yet they always did. It was like magic really.” Realizing I was getting weird about food again, I gave a weak grin and nibbled on the last bit of my sandwich.

“I can imagine,” he said, looking at me with a polite smile, and I fidgeted on my seat.

“Is that weird? How much I like food? My mother always thought I was weird. She wanted me to be a—”

“Doctor?” he said, and I frowned.

“How’d you know that?”

Clearing his throat, he took a quick sip of his tea and shook his head. “Most parents do. I just guessed.”

“Hm.” I gave him a dubious look, because yes, he was right. But... “I guess you’re right. And yes, they wanted me to be a doctor. My sister is a renowned cardiologist, most of my family is white-collar, and there was me. Silly little Alice Hu. Head in the clouds and heart—”

He grabbed my hand, bearing down. And the words died on my tongue as his heat and mine converged and became one for just a moment. I liked his hands. Not too soft or rough. As Goldilocks would say, they were “just right.”

“What?” he asked.

And I shook, realizing I’d said that aloud. “What?” I yanked my hand out of his and scratched the back of my neck. “I didn’t say anything.”

The heat of blood blazed through my cheeks, branding me a liar, but he was nice enough to pretend not to notice.

“Alice, I was only going to say that you followed your heart. You should stop being so hard on yourself.”

“Huh?” I hadn’t expected him to say that. “I-I wasn’t.” I lied. Because my bakery business had always been a point of contention between my family and me. Didn’t matter how successful I’d become, there’d always been a bit of shame in my mother’s words whenever she’d be forced to introduce me to one of her friends.

“Yes, well, as someone who fully understands what it feels like to let down someone they love greatly, take it from me—don’t dwell on what you can’t change. The past has a terrible way of poisoning the future if you let it.”

I’d just been reaching for a scone when he said that. Pausing briefly, I studied him. “What did you do, Hatter? What brought you here?”

I doubted he would answer, but suddenly I was desperate to know.

I waited on him, not saying anything after that. I had just finished slicing through my scone and slathering it with lemon curd when he inhaled deeply.

“Is that your question for the day, Alice?”

For a second I’d forgotten about our game. But I was just desperate enough to know the answer, so I figured why the heck not. “Sure, it’s my question.”

I took a bite of the scone. Orange cranberry and very buttery, but the curd was a little on the sugary side. I wrinkled my nose but ate it anyway.

“Her,” he said softly.

So softly that I almost hadn’t heard. But when I did, I froze with that next bite of scone halfway to my mouth and a crumb dangling off the tip of my thumb. Ice suddenly flowed through my veins.

“She’s... she’s here?” I didn’t recognize the breathy, gravelly voice as belonging to me.

He nodded once. “Yes, I think now maybe she might really be.”

Feeling like my stomach was now full of sawdust, I gently eased my half-eaten scone back onto the plate and said, “I should go.”

He didn’t say anything for so long that I forced myself up to shaky feet. She was here. The moss woman, his life. She was here. And it was so stupid that it should hurt me, because I knew he’d come for her.

It was why we’d built the connection from the start, because something about me had reminded him of her. And it sucked that I suddenly and deeply wished that for just a second I was the type of girl who could inspire someone’s devotion as deeply as his was for her. But that wasn’t fair to either of them. And so I forced myself to smile through the aching heartache building up inside me.

“I haven’t asked you my question, Alice,” he said just as I was set to turn around.

I paused. “Then ask, Hatter.”

“What do you love most in all the world?” His question was instant, and I frowned.

“You asked me that yesterday.”

“Yes, and it will be the only question I ever ask. Because we can love many things, can’t we?”

I shook my head. Hatter was strange in the most wonderful sense of the word, but being around him right now, it hurt. And I wasn’t even sure why. But I felt so close to tears, and I didn’t want to feel close to tears. It was why I’d sought out Lethe as I had. Because I was tired of hurting.

He would leave me now. He would go and find her and forget all about me. But I owed him an answer, and so I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Dance. I love to dance.”

Suddenly he stood, but I rocked back on my heels, holding up my hands, not sure why or if he planned anything, but knowing I could never let this man touch me again.

There was a part of me that knew if I did, I could never walk away from him again. And so I shook my head. “Don’t. Don’t come any closer.”

He stood still as a statue and nodded only once. “If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.” My voice cracked and I cleared my throat.

His smile was sad, soft. “Good-bye, Alice girl.”

Stupid, stupid tears suddenly did fall from my eyes. I don’t know why. And I hated myself for them. Angrily, I swiped at them with my wrist and gave a hard nod.

“I never was any good at making lemon curd.”

Don’t know why I said that, but I turned on my heel and ran, ran like the hounds of hell gave chase. I ran for that cliff, knowing that the moment I reached it, I could win, I could outrun the monsters. And when I got there, I didn’t stop, but again I ran over the edge, spreading my arms and legs and closing my eyes as the wind whistled sharply through my ears.

And for just a second, I remembered what it felt like to be alive.

Just before smacking the ground, I shifted, becoming a great big thunderbird with wings of bronze and gold, and as I flew through the sky, sheets of rain and bolts of lightning followed in my wake.

~*~

Hatter

I stood beneath the downpour, watching my beautiful dark bird wing away from me, her voice crying out in despair and melancholy, and I trembled.

She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen or known in all my life.

And for the first time in a very long time, I felt hope.

That tea had come entirely from Alice’s trapped memories. She still knew nothing of our daughter. Or me, sitting out beneath the rain as my mind had fractured bit by bit more for want of her. That’d been one part of our tale I’d deliberately left out.

Alice was remembering. And I didn’t know if it was the magic of the Stones of Veritas or the whether it was a magic all her own, but she’d not lied to me when she’d said she was still in there and would always fight for us.

Rubbing at my aching chest, I was able for just a moment to ignore the pain ripping through my body with each day I was forced to linger here.

“I know you’re in there,” I whispered to the breeze. “I feel you, my Alice. And I will never stop fighting for us so long as there is breath left in my body. Come back to me. Please, come back.”

Chapter 14

Alice

The dead did not dream.

And yet I did.

I wasn’t sure when I’d landed. Or when I’d shifted back to human.

But I was high above the clouds, in a strange nest of twigs, curled in on myself with my cheek resting upon my wrist as I dreamed of a kaleidoscope of colors.

I whimpered.

There was a man.

A beautiful, devilish man. And though I could not make out his features, all I knew, and the only thing that really mattered, was that he adored me.

He was madness and chaos.

And I reveled in it.

I laughed. I twirled and danced upon a sea of floating gems. And he watched. He always watched me, his eyes raking my form with desire and rising lust. I stood nude and proud before him, undulating my hips, beckoning him forward with a crook of my finger. And he grinned. A sexy, side curl of a grin. His big, strong body unfurled from his seat as he made his way slowly over to me.

The night rang out with the song of angels high above.

The sky was blue. And full of dancing yellow lights. We lived in a landscape of fantasy. Glowing mushrooms lit the way from our cottage to the gardens behind. Door after door led to a million worlds of whimsy.

But his home, our home, was the place I loved most.

Then he touched me and I forgot things like words.

I was a creature of desire.

Of want.

Of need.

We kissed, and magic erupted between us. The land sighed happily. The strange and wonderful animals came out to watch us play. I did not mind, for he had his hands on me and I had my hands on him.

And then he was pushing inside me, and he was so strong, so warm. I rocked my hips, arching my back, telling him to give me all of himself.

And he did. He always did.

He never held anything back from me.

We danced upon the clouds, we kissed, we nipped, we moaned and sighed. Moved as one soul, one spirit. He was me, and I was him.

And then we were there, at the very pinnacle of joy. Both of us together, both of us smiling, and I couldn’t see his face, but my soul knew his. And I loved him. With everything that was inside me.

One final kiss and we spiraled together.

With a gasp, I woke up, looking around myself in a daze, wondering where the clouds of jewels were and why there were no mushrooms to light my way. I was alone.

He was not with me.

My arms ached.

My soul yearned.

I sniffed, only just realizing I cried.

Touching the tip of my fingers to my cheek, I pulled away and stared at the now-crystalline teardrop resting milky white upon my pinky.

I wasn’t sure what it was that I’d just dreamed, all I knew was every inch of me felt alive and hot. And my throat was tight with pain, with heartache I couldn’t put a name to.

It was Hatter’s story, I was sure. Hearing of his love for his moss woman, that’s what this was. I’d get over it. I always did.

Life had not been easy for me, why should death be?

Needing to do something, I scooted to the very edge of the massive bird nest and dangled my feet over the side of it, wondering for just a second what it would feel like if I fell and crashed into the sharp rocks below.

Would it hurt?

Could I die again?

A sound like that of a strangled animal slipped past my lips, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Shouldn’t death feel better?

That’s what all the stories said.

All I knew was I’d never hurt so much in all my life.

Tomorrow I would see if he was still there. It was selfish of me, I know. He had to find her; I couldn’t deny him that. All I wanted was two more days. He’d promised me days’ worth of questions, and I would hold him to it.

Then another stupid sob tore from my lips, and I curled back in on myself. But this time sleep eluded me completely.

~*~

Hatter

She did not come the next day, and now all I had left was this night. My life was slowly slipping away, and I could no more go to her than I could return to Wonderland.

I waited, sitting in the same spot I’d been in the past two days now. I hadn’t the energy to do much more than that. It seemed no matter how much I slept, it never felt like enough. My bones ached. My soul grew daily more weary. And even the colors around me seemed more dim, muted. The whites looked gray, the greens were washed out, and the blue sky above no longer resembled a deep blue so much as a tinted white.

If there was a silver lining in all this, I was somehow managing to retain my sanity. I had feared that at some point I might slip into the mania that’d affected me in the other time. That I would be unable to focus on anything other than the madness, unable to remain sane long enough to show her just how deeply I loved and needed her.

But if I focused on her, on her smile, her gentle doe eyes, I could retain some form of sanity. And so here I sat. Waiting. Hoping. Pondering what this might mean for my future and hers.

Alice was remembering.

The tea gave me hope, but I knew that remembering our love would only be half the battle. Because mired in all the joy of a possible reunion was the very real reality that in this life I’d not been good to her.

Because I was now so familiar with our story, I knew that in the other time, she’d called to me during a stint with brain cancer as a child. Age thirteen. And, ironically enough, in this life I, too, had gone to her when she was age thirteen. But the situations had been different too.

It’d been that visitation that’d bonded us through time and planes, bringing me back to the reality of who my true Alice had really been. Thing of it was, the other Alice had been gone from my world in the alternate time. I could see clearly now that with Other Alice remaining in this time as she had, it’d caused my focus to tunnel and I’d ignored all else save for my ridiculous need to force her story and mine into some sort of a twisted happily-ever-after. I’d been so damned determined to make the stories of Hatter and Alice true that I’d been blinded to the reality that Other Alice had never been right for me.

With a deep sigh, I stared morosely out at the world of the dead. Night was well under way now and my soul yearned to find Alice, but there was very little strength left to me anymore. When the sun rose, my time here would be at an end. I’d always known three days wouldn’t—couldn’t—be enough time, but faced with that reality now, it was a soul-deep ache that stripped me down to the raw inner nucleus of myself and obliterated what tiny shred of hope I’d told myself not to cling to but had anyway.

I’d half expected the world to become a dazzling landscape of pristine snow again after she’d fled, but this part of Elysium was budding now with the possibility of spring.

The feather-soft petals of a large red rose seemed to wave at me as a gentle zephyr stirred through the calm night, redolent with the lush perfume of a garden in bloom.

A wistful smile touched my face as I recalled another time and place when the flowers had meant so much to us. I’d gifted her a birthday present, and worlds upon worlds we’d traveled through to get to the gift itself. One world in particular had been nothing but flowers. Men and woman and children and animals, all flowers. There’d been such wonder in her eyes. My Alice had always loved the blooms. But that memory was a lifetime ago, and there wouldn’t be enough time to show it to her even if I wanted to. I had this night and nothing more.

And as I sat there, studying that rose and wondering why it was no longer winter, I felt a presence stir behind me.

It wasn’t her.

Even here, in a place of death, I was viscerally aware of Alice, of her scent of vanilla and honey. Always she’d smelled of the foods she loved most.

No, behind me wafted brimstone and fire.

I sniffed, flicking at a long-stemmed blade of grass. “Come to check up on me again, have you? My three days aren’t done yet.”

“She is remembering,” he said without preamble.

Sighing deeply, I hugged my arms to my knees and rested my head upon them for just a moment. Even the simple act of trying to remain alert was harder now. All I wanted was sleep, but I was terrified that if I gave in now, I might never wake again.

“Seems that way. But I only have a few hours left me—she did not return to me today. So I’m not sure that it matters.”

Hades snorted, sounding almost angry. “If you give up now, then you deserve the fate you get.”

Those words had sounded far more personal than they should have. Lifting a brow, I gave a slight shake of my head.

“I didn’t let you into my world, boy,” he snarled, “to have you piss away the privilege all because the task is too hard.”

Finally intrigued enough to force my weary bones to move, I rotated on my arse until I was able to make eye contact with him.

Today Hades was dressed in knight’s armor the shade of deepest shadow with wickedly long, curving horns on the helmet and a broadsword in his fist that flamed neon blue. The helmet was open around the eyes, nose, and mouth, allowing me to see the orange glow radiating through his gaze. His lips were set in a harsh, thin line.

We stared at one another for the longest time, and though he was a god of legend and I knew I should feel some sort of fear or dread of him—he was after all death incarnate—I was too exhausted to care.

Inhaling deeply, I finally said, “Are you certain you speak of me, Hades, and not yourself?”

“What?” he growled, causing the earth to rumble beneath me.

He could kill me. In fact, he looked like he wanted to with the way his free hand suddenly curled into a tight fist and the blue flames danced higher and brighter off the blade.

I shrugged. “You’ve taken a keen interest in mine and Alice’s affairs, and I cannot help but wonder why that is.”

Eyes thinning to dangerous slits, he growled. “I take a keen interest in anyone who moves through my kingdom. You, a living, it is unnatural. And I cannot help but wonder why I have allowed this farce to continue on. You tell your silly little story, trying to act as though her smiles and the sounds of her laughter don’t wound you. But I see inside you, Hatter. You will fail.”

His words pierced my heart like a blade, but deep down I was certain that his hatred was not for me alone. Death rested in his touch. If he’d truly wanted me gone, he could have done it already. No, Hades didn’t want me here, but not because I was a living.

“It isn’t my failure that’s bothering you. It’s yours. Somehow you see yourself in me, and you don’t like it.”

No sooner had the words left my lips than Death was upon me, body transforming into a black mist that undulated through the winds like a sail before reshaping into his familiar form, and yet not at all the same. His features—now gaunt and skeletal and radiating such power I had to clench down on my molars to keep from screaming at the sudden flash of agony I felt every time his breath washed against my flesh—were radically altered.

Just that slight touch felt like razor-sharp blades of fury and madness shredding me to ribbons. But I refused to be cowed. I was here for Alice and Alice alone. And though I’d lost hope of ever succeeding, I would not leave until the final grain of sand fell in the hourglass of my life. His upper lip curled, and then with a hiss, he pulled back.

Gone was the skeletal visage of death, again he was a man. But I knew who he really was. Blinking, I wet my lips and tried to still the heavy hammering of my heart in my chest, ignoring the beads of sweat that’d popped out along my forehead and brows and now ran down the sides of my neck.

“Your impertinence deserves death. No man has ever spoken to me thus. Who are you to dare?”

Giving my head a slight shake, I murmured, “I’m just a man, desperate to save a woman who no longer knows I exist.”

Whatever words I’d said stopped Hades cold. The flame died in his eyes, and his sword was now nothing but burnished silver.

“Save her, Hatter. Prove to me the impossible can be done.”

His voice sounded weary and full of gravel. And then he turned slowly, looking as heavy laden as I felt, his footsteps plodding as he moved through the constant wake of snow that floated down from the darkened skies above him.

Chapter 15

Danika

I watched it all with my heart in my throat, staring at the vision bubble and praying to all the gods above—that I did not even believe were capable of much more than fancy parlor tricks—for a true miracle. I felt much as Hades did.

Lost.

Alone.

And scared.

I understood the Lord of the Underworld in a way I’d never believed possible before. Any chance of reconciling Kingdom’s happily-ever-afters, let alone my own, was being played out before me through the eyes of another.

There were few romances I’d consider legend.

And though the stories had often shown Alice and Hatter to be crackpot and childlike, the truth was, their lives had always been inseparably bound. They were legend, and nothing without the other.

If those two could not succeed, then what chance did anyone else have?

Hades had been very clear that no one could interfere in his realm. He’d even banned Aphrodite. The poor dear wasn’t taking her exile well.

But I was no kind of fairy godmother if I didn’t allow myself to bend the rules now and then.

Hatter’s story was all well and good. But there was only truly one way to bring his Alice back. Magic had wrought this curse, and only magic could undo it.

The magic of love.

There were many different forms of love.

Eros.

Agape.

Pragma.

The last especially applied to me. Pragma was long-standing love. The kind that lasted an eternity. The kind that could only be built through long years together. Of all my Bad Boys, Hatter had always been a particular favorite.

It was wrong of me, I know. No mother ever wanted to admit to having a favorite, but I did.

How lost he’d been. How alone. And how mad.

I’d worried over him most of all.

And then when Alice had come, my love had simply encapsulated them both, cherishing her as I had him.

A tear slipped from the corner of my eye. For I knew what I was about to do would be irrevocable. I was a mother cleaved in two. Wanting to save her child. And wanting to selfishly save herself.

True love’s kiss was potent, so powerful that no dark magic could stand against it. Bringing my shaking fingers to my lips, I poured all that love into that kiss. And when I pulled my hand away, I stared at that glowing orb of love, feeling the pulse and sway of that most powerful magic dance around me.

Hatter’s cottage suddenly seemed to come alive. The plants that he had placed everywhere began to writhe and bloom. Bronzed miniatures he’d placed above his mantel—images of birds and monkeys and a horse—animated. The bird swooped into the air, its clockwork circuitry dinging with each flap of its gorgeous wings. The monkey chattered and hopped from vine to vine. And the beautiful mare rose up on her hind legs and neighed. A tiny field mouse that’d hidden itself in his living room popped his head out and looked at me—not with black beady, soulless eyes—but darling eyes that spoke of intelligence. And the name suddenly popped into my head.

Leonard.

As if he’d heard his name called, the mouse gave me one bobbing nod before scampering back down his hole. And then just like that, all the movement ceased. The plants were just plants again, the miniatures nothing but pretty works of art. And the mouse was looking for any crumbs of food.

I’d been shown a vision, and it only strengthened my resolve to do this. Though I knew the sacrifice I made, it was worth it if only to see Wonderland restored to the magical place I knew it could be again.

I could only use the magic of true love once.

My heart ached, knowing that as I did this, I gave up any chance to prove to Jericho who I really was. But a mother’s love was deep and unconditional, and it was all I had to give.

And whispering into that golden orb’s pulsing magical soul, I told it to go to him. The orb would have to battle through the darkness to get there. But it was a magic that not even Hades could deny. I only hoped that it arrived in time.

And when it bobbed away from me, beginning its journey toward the underworld, I turned my eyes briefly up to the moon and whispered a heartfelt “I’m sorry, my beloved. Forgive me for what I’ve done.”

~*~

Alice

Such unbearable sadness beat at me that it felt like a millstone tied to my neck, dragging and pulling me under. Staring into the deepest night from high above the clouds, I was embraced by velvety twilight and the silvery glow of millions of stars. And I couldn’t help but imagine that Hatter would probably like it here. He seemed like the type who lived for the strange and unusual. I smiled wistfully and looked down toward my left. To where I knew he would be sheltered within a thick grove of trees.

Even now I was aware of him.

And thanks to the dreams, I was beginning to suspect there was so much more to his story than what he was telling me.

Standing, I wiped at the back of my pants, dusting off broken bits of twig and moss.

Why did I have magic?

That question would answer everything, I knew it. I’d lived in a land of no magic. Mundane. Boring. Sameness. There’d been sleight of hand, movie magic, and maybe even the occasional miracle.

But the real stuff, like transforming myself into a bird or creating a flower from nothing, that simply didn’t happen. Not in my world.

I’d winged over much of Elysium today, studying the spirits below me. Looking for any trace, any sign, of that kind of magic.

And I’d not found it.

I found ladies dancing. Not upon clouds or streamers of gold, but upon grassy, verdant knolls. Some men fought with swords, laughing and jesting as they drank tankards of ale and sang bar songs that seemed universal no matter what part of the world you’d come from.

But I hadn’t seen anyone transform into something like me. I hadn’t seen any other parts of Elysium change and alter as they often did around me. There was no snowfall or the roll of wind and thunder, just perpetual sunshine and blue skies.

People seemed happy and perfectly, boringly normal.

Clutching at my breast, I stared at the copse of trees hiding him. And in that moment I did not think of him as Hatter, but as “mine.”

Click.

Click.

Click.

I gasped, rocking suddenly back on my heels as though pushed by a giant’s hand, because suddenly a great swell of magic had just steamrolled through me. And I remembered why I’d gone to the river.

To forget him.

Because he’d betrayed me.

Images bombarded me then. Lying in that hospital bed, crying out for him. Believing myself mad and sick in the head.

“He never came.”

I sucked in a sharp, trembling breath and could not fight the tears anymore. They came in torrents.

I didn’t know how it was that I could remember—Lethe was supposed to have stripped me of it all—and yet I did.

With an angry and sharp cry, I jumped out of that nest, transforming mid-fall into my powerful alter ego, and winged toward him, crying out as I went, letting all the world hear my rage and sorrow.

I landed several wing strokes later, dropping with a jarring thud to the ground, not at all trying to hide my arrival, and stared at him through angry, beady eyes.

He looked up, weariness etched on every line of his face, and he did not get up, but there was a knowing look in his gaze that told me he knew I’d come awake.

Shifting, I stared at him coldly.

And time stretched her infinite fingers between us. The silence grew foreboding and fraught with tension. And I didn’t know what to say to him anymore. He’d lied to me.

None of that story he’d shown me had been real. True.

How could it have been?

Unless it hadn’t involved me at all and he really had had a great love he’d come to the underworld to look for.

That thought snatched the breath right out of me and caused my knees to suddenly buckle beneath me. I landed in a heap, digging my fingers into the ground and shaking my head as his image turned into a wavering mirage of tears.

“Why?” I croaked, hating to see the look of anguish in his eyes even as I cursed him for not coming to me when I’d still been alive.

I knew my reaction was irrational, but I couldn’t understand or process how it was that a man I’d almost come to believe couldn’t be anything other than myth now sat before me.

“Alice, I—”

And I couldn’t help my response to the sound of my name falling off his lips. Lashes fluttering, I cocked my head as my heart squeezed like a vise inside me.

“Who is she? Who is this woman you came here for? Who is your mine?”

His brows gathered, and even in the gloom of the night, I could make out every detail of his beloved face.

My thirteen-year-old memories of his ghost had been so eerily acute that even I was shocked I could ever, even for a moment, have forgotten him. There was a small scar just above his upper lip that added to his devilish appeal. The thick dark brows. The dark, knowing eyes that glinted with stolen bits of starlight trapped within. The razor-sharp cheekbones and square jaw so chiseled and perfect it was impossible that he could be real.

“Alice, don’t you know? You’ve woken up now, haven’t you pieced the truth together yet?”

I shook my head. “You never came for me. I cried out to you in that bed, surrounded by machines and people who called me a liar. My heart cried out to you, and you never came!”

“No!” he barked. “It’s not like that.”

And it was as animated as I’d seen him get in days. His face was contorted with what looked to be raw agony, and his hands were fists at his sides, but still he sat on his ass, not coming to me.

Just as before.

My jaw trembled. And the agony I’d thought I’d buried with the forgetting now came pouring out of me in a deluge. “Why, Hatter? What was so important that you could not come to me?”

The question was stupid—anything was more important than me. He hadn’t known me. And I’d barely known him, but there’d always been a certainty deep within me that he’d been mine and I’d been his. And that should I call him, or he me, we would always somehow manage to find our way to each other.

“Was it her? Is she here? Who is she, Hatter? Who?”

“Alice Hu, it’s you,” he said simply.

And I shook my head, trying to drown out those words in denial. “No. No. Don’t say that. Because that story you painted for me, it’s not real. We never built a life of magic together as you claim. It’s all been one huge, beautiful lie.” I hiccupped.

And I watched as his face crumpled and he made to stand. His movements were plodding, agonized, and I couldn’t understand what it was I was seeing.

“What is wrong with you?” For days I’d noticed something off about him, but seeing him now, as each step he took broke him out in a wash of sweat and twisted his face into a tight grimace of obvious pain, broke me.

I ran to him, grabbing his elbow and taking his weight upon me. “What’s wrong with you?” I practically screamed as he leaned so heavily against me that the only thing I could do was gently lower us to our knees. He was such a big man and far too heavy for me to bear the brunt of his weight for much longer.

He was gasping, his face white as a sheet, and shaking his head. “I had to touch you, Alice. Just once, when you know who I really am.”

And when his hand framed my cheek, I sobbed even harder, feeling broken in two and completely shattered. His thumb was so tender as he swiped at my tears.

“Don’t cry, my dark angel. I cannot bear it,” he said, but there were tears in his own eyes.

“You’re dying, aren’t you?” I squeaked out, my words reed thin and unbearable to think.

But when he did not deny it, I knew I was right.

“You bloody bastard.” I cursed at him, banging my fist against his chest. “How dare you die! How dare you.”

And then he curved his hand behind my head and brought me into the cool shelter of his broad chest, and I trembled as I felt him place a kiss against my forehead.

“I was lost, Alice, lost and confused. So very confused. But we did live that life. And it was lovely. Everything we’d ever dreamed of.”

I wanted to embrace the lie, and so I did. I pretended with him. But in a sudden surge of strength, he gripped my forearms so hard that it made me gasp. I looked up into his eyes, which were bright with pain and alive with hope.

“Alice, it’s all true. Every part of it.”

“No.”

“Yes!” He shook me so hard that my head lolled. “And I am dying, Alice. You’re right. I came here to find you again. To try, somehow, someway, to break through the curse that drove us apart from the greatest and only love we’ve ever known.”

“No,” I said, the word only a mere whisper of sound.

But he heard, and a growl like that of a wounded animal spilled off his tongue. “Listen to me, my dark beauty. All I’m about to tell you is true. This life you knew, this life, was the lie. We were cursed. Much of Kingdom was cursed. Separated by some unseen hand. But you were once mine, all mine. And I was only ever yours. We lived a full life together, but I’m a selfish bastard and I want so much more. I want you back, Alice. I cannot exist without you. We are the story of legend, and I need you back. That is why I struck a bargain with the dark underlord himself to come find you. Alice, I am not dead. I am very much alive, but not for much longer. If you do not come with me, if you do not accept me as your own again, then I will simply cease to be. It is why I’ve so very little energy left to me. Please, Alice. Please, say you’ll come. Come home with me.”

Shocked by what he was saying, knowing that his mind was well and truly cracked—just as the stories always said they’d be—I stared at the beautiful man I’d thought I’d known, only to realize he was nothing more than a stranger to me now.

That life had never been. Though I wished it otherwise, I could never have forgotten a life that wonderful.

But I did not want him to die. He was the Hatter, after all, the object of my youthful infatuation and a man I’d come to care for deeply in the short time I’d gotten to know him.

“You must kiss me, Alice. True love’s kiss will set us both free.” There was a freneticism to him that scared me a little. He really did believe what he was saying. I could see that, and it made me sad.

What had happened to this man? Or had he always been this mad, and I’d simply never realized it before? Our only other interaction had been so very brief I’d not had a chance to study him. All I could vividly remember had been the beauty of his words and his dark, beguiling eyes.

And from that short meeting, I’d built an idea of a man who did not exist. Not really. Not the way I’d imagined him to be at all. He’d been fantasy. A fairy tale. A white knight. Not a broken man who could not tell fact from fiction.

But then I recalled his beautiful miniature people. The lovely woman built of moss and magic; she’d seemed so in love with her man of ice. So happy. Their life had been a good one. And I envied her, even now. I wanted so badly for that life to truly be real, be mine. Ours.

But it wasn’t. It never had been.

“Hatter?” I said his name slowly.

A pained expression crossed his face, and I think he knew, think he heard my truth. I did not know him, not really. And though a part of me ached because of it, I couldn’t pretend either.

His hold on me grew lax, and suddenly the weight of the world seemed to rest upon his shoulders. He visibly seemed to shrink in front of me. Not literally, but figuratively.

He was a man come to the end of all hope.

“I will kiss you, Hatter, and I will save you,” I said, not at all sure I really could, but I couldn’t bear to see him looking like this. “But first I want to ask my last question.”

He blinked, but there was no more hope left in his eyes. They were bleak and shadowed with pain. “Ask me anything.”

“Where were you when I was dying and called out to you? Did you even hear me at all?”

He sucked in a quick breath, shaking his head no, and though he said nothing, what he did say was enough to make me feel a sharp blade of pain pierce my chest.

I grabbed hold of my shirt, clutching so tight I pinched skin between my fingers. But the pain was grounding; it helped clear my mind just enough so that I could focus.

“You were with another, weren’t you? You never heard my cries.”

The answer was so obvious, and though I didn’t know him, that same dark pull deep within me that always came alive whenever I was with him shriveled up and died. I’d had no claim to him in this life, and yet I felt betrayed.

My lips wobbled, and I sniffed back the anguish. Outwardly, I was calm, but inside I was cold, dead.

Plastering on a brave smile, I wiped at my nose with the back of my hand and gave him a lopsided grin. “Now, about that kiss. Let’s save you.”

I was leaning in, but this time it was he who pulled back.

Shaking his head slowly, he said, “No. Not this way. I would rather die a thousand deaths than live another day knowing you did not love me as I love you. Yes, Alice, I was with another. And it pains me to admit that, because I did not know you. And I did not hear you until the very end. Let us always meet each other with a smile...”

I pulled in a halting, stuttering breath, fingers shaking as they covered my suddenly numb lips.

“...for a smile is the beginning of love.” The smile he gave me now was small and soft.

He had heard me. And while I was grateful he’d told me the truth, a part of me wished that had been one truth he’d kept to himself. I wasn’t sure I could hear another word right now. A fat tear dripped off my chin to the ground beneath. I needed to run and hide, needed to lick my wounds in private. And hope that maybe, someday, I could get over him. Move on with my life, or my afterlife as it were.

But I’d be damned if I let him die.

“Hatter, you say a kiss can save you. Then let me do that for you. I don’t know that we could ever be what you claim we once were. All I do know is that I’d be a terrible person if I let you die now.”

“Alice.” He gripped my hands tight in his. “What do you love most in this world?”

The questions. That stupid bloody game. Here I sat with my heart torn to bloody ribbons, not sure of anything other than the fact that the man I’d loved with all my heart and soul had heard me and not come.

I had no right to the jealousy I felt, but I was only human, and it was going to take me time to get over this horrible feeling of betrayal.

Answering with all the honesty in my heart, I said, “I don’t know anymore.”

“Alice, can you ever forgive me? Please tell me that you and I can move past this? Please tell me that. You promised me you’d fight, so fight. Fight, Alice!”

The passionate plea caused me to tremble, but I could no more remember those words than I could remember anything else he swore to me was real. What had happened to this man to make him lose himself this way? I cried for him. For us. For what we might have been.

“The problem is, Hatter, I cannot remember any life with you. You didn’t come to me, and you were with another woman. And I know I shouldn’t take that personally, because we have never been anything to each other—”

“Yes, we have! All I’ve said is true. All of it.”

“The problem is—” I sniffed and finally gave in to my need to touch his jaw. His skin was so cold, and he trembled beneath my touch, and I didn’t know anything about anything anymore. I felt lost and scared and so damned confused about it all.

“The problem is, I just don’t remember a life with you, and I never will. Maybe if you’d come, maybe we could have built something then, but you are a living, and I am nothing but a ghost with form.”

“But you can follow me out, Alice. Hades has promised. As long as you believe in me. In us.”

My smile was sad. “I’m not sure I do anymore.”

Dropping my hands and closing his eyes, he nodded only once and seemed to curl in on himself, as though my words had been a physical blow to him. And I hated to hurt him as I had, but I was simply being honest.

He sat so still for so long that I felt awkward and unsure.

I would return to him, and I would give him the kiss of true love. Because I knew that was what burned deep inside me, whether I wanted it to or not. I could only hope that someday I’d be able to forget him entirely and be happy again. And he me. I would return later and slip him that kiss, his death would not be on my conscience.

“Good-bye, Hatter,” I said slowly.

Rising to my knees, I looked down upon his head, wishing for just a moment that I could run my fingers through his hair. But instead I curled my hand into a ball and gave a hard nod at his continued silence. Then, turning on my heel, I called forth the power of my bird and flew as far and as fast away from him as I could.

Chapter 16

Danika

“Just let him try to keep me out!” I snarled, breaking every godmother code in existence as I forced my way through the underworld.

Slamming open the bony gates to be greeted by that mangy, slobbering beast, I was half tempted to place a killing curse on him.

“Oh, do shut up!” I snipped, then walloped Cerberus with a thick ball of magic so powerful it caused his massive body to instantly seize up and drop to the ground, all three heads fainting dead away.

And then the whole of the underworld shook and trembled. A giant rift tore open in the ground beneath me, and out spewed a magnificent chariot of ebony, led by horses whose hooves caused the earth to rumble with thunder from each strike of their legs to land. Red, glowing eyes of monsters looked down upon me as giant curls of steam rolled through their velvety snouts. But it wasn’t the steeds that caused me to square my shoulders and lift my wand in a threatening manner, rather it was the massive wall of underworld god staring down upon me with murder clear in his almost neon-blue eyes.

“Fairy,” he spat. “How dare you.”

“Before you smite me or do whatever it is you’re thinking of doing, I want to remind you of one thing, Hades. Your success hinges on their own.”

He smirked, staring at me so long that I suddenly felt the need to quiver. I never quivered. I clamped down on my teeth, showing no outward sign of my nerves.

“Your kind. It was all of you. All this, it’s because of you.”

Galeta was not here to defend herself, and I would no more throw her under the bus than I would anyone else, so I notched my chin and gave him my most hateful look.

I was no more pleased with this new life than he was, but he didn’t have to be such a giant, unmitigated ass about it either.

“Undo whatever curse your people have wrought,” he commanded, and I felt the power of his words shiver like quicksilver through my blood.

“Oh, believe me, if I could I would. But there is no magic cure for this. The only way to fix this, any of this, is to simply shut up and do it. I’ve sent a ball of true love here.”

He chuckled. “I found it.”

Swallowing the sudden greasy ball of fury that wanted to spew off my tongue, I reminded myself that I would get nowhere with this officious arsehole if I gave in to my anger.

“You must release it, release that magic, Hades. You can’t stop true love, you must know that.”

“And you know that there was to be no outside interference. If he is to succeed then he must—”

Forgetting my admonishments of just a moment ago, I stomped my foot and snapped, “Damn you, man! What the hell has happened to you? You are nothing like you once were.”

Fire flashed through his eyes, and for just a second, I was prepared to battle for my life, but then he went absolutely still, not even batting an eyelash as he asked, “You knew me? Then? How?”

“Because you weren’t such a rotten bastard then. Aye, I knew ye. Most of Kingdom did. Aphrodite didn’t lie to you, Hades. You did love Calypso, and she loved you with a passion that rivaled insanity. You have a granddaughter who still lives—”

“What!” he thundered, eyes flashing with sparks of lightning, and blue flame suddenly curled outward from the scabbard attached to his hip. “How is that even possible? I have no children.”

“I don’t know,” I said sadly, going from loathing him to feeling pity for a god. What had the world come to that I could feel pity for someone as powerful as death himself? “None of this makes sense to me either. But she lives. And her name is Fable. She is trapped inside a curse flung by the hand of your own wife.”

“No.”

I knew that should Galeta find out what I was doing here today, or for that matter what I was telling Hades, she’d probably be in a right fury. I shivered. I didn’t fear the dark lord half as much as I did the queen of the fae.

I remembered the Galeta of the other life, and she’d been a demon spawned of hell. But I was desperate.

“Yes, Hades. It is as I say. And if there is any part of you that even remotely cares right now, then you must release that orb to them. It is the only way to fully restore her memories. Hatter’s story could only do so much. Alice is scared and cannot suss fact from fiction. You must release my orb.”

I didn’t plead. But I was now. I was on my knees, gripping my fingers tight, begging with wetness glowing in my eyes, knowing I made myself weak before him. But my pride was the very least of my worries now.

I’d given up everything, any chance I had of recovering my Jericho, to save those two. Voice cracking, I said, “You have no idea how much I’ve sacrificed. Please, Hades, don’t let my gift be in vain.”

Looking confused, upset, and even lost, he flicked his fingers, and I felt a great rush go through me. The orb had her wings back, and she was headed like a falling nova toward Alice’s heart.

Hanging my head, all I could whisper was, “It is done.”

~*~

Alice

One second I was back in my nest, and the next I was snatched up violently by an unseen hand and shoved through a portal full of starlight and colors.

Magic fisted me tight in its powerful vise, and my body raged with a rush of fire. My clothing altered, turning from jeans and a shirt to a gown so rich and brocaded it seemed like something out of a fairy tale.

And on the breeze rushing through my ears rang the words, “Listen with your heart, Alice. All will be revealed, just open your heart and trust him...”

Chapter 17

Hatter

There were no words to describe the misery that pinched every nerve in my body, that stole the very life and breath from my lungs at her rejection.

I remembered two worlds in my mind.

One full of emptiness, a stretching of eternity into nothingness, a duty I’d thought I’d needed to fulfill. I’d become so jaded, immune to love. Just an actor playing a role, that of a dutiful lover when I’d felt nothing for Other Alice any longer.

But knowing all I did now.

Having Danika finally show me the truth of who I was and who my truest love was... I clung to my other memories. The only ones I considered true anymore.

I’d been living my life in a daze, in a canvas painted in a watercolor of grays. My real life had been with my Alice in another world, another time.

Twisted, fantastical, and absurdly wonderful memories of a woman who was not only my soul but my life, the beating epicenter of all that I was and all I’d ever be.

Our shared nights of passion.

Laughter.

The madness of our realm that she’d loved as much as I did.

Lost in those moments, I wasn’t at first aware of her presence until a hesitant touch upon my shoulder caused me to look up.

When her gaze met mine, I felt the weight and brevity of our time together. I’d been wrong to let her leave me before. I had only hours left. I would fight. To the very bitter end, I would fight.

She opened her mouth, and I held up my finger. “Don’t. Don’t say anything. Alice, I know I have no right to ask you for any favors.” I stared into the soulful eyes of my beloved, and with a shattered heart asked her only one thing. “But before you leave me for good, may I play for you?”

Gods, she was lovely.

I wasn’t sure when she’d changed from out of her clothes of before and into a dress my Alice would have surely worn. It was made of silk black taffeta and ruffles, and my heart squeezed violently to see her shapely body painted in it.

She had black fingerless lace gloves that ran up to her elbows, a dark scrollwork of art beneath her eyes and upon her cheeks, undulating upon her flesh with a life all its own. Upon her head sat a jaunty little black hat. My gothic rose, the only woman of my heart. There’d never be another for me.

“Alice?” I asked, looking her up and down in surprised shock.

She shrugged, wrinkling her cute little button nose. “I don’t know. I was caught up in a whirlwind a little bit ago, and when I stepped out, you were here and I was dressed like this.”

Looking down at herself, she gave an embarrassed shrug.

“Never be embarrassed, my love. You look beautiful.”

She didn’t look at me, but her lips twitched with pleasure. There was something different about her now. And I wasn’t sure what this whirlwind was that’d caught her up. All I knew was there was magic at work here.

I felt the taste and touch of it all around me.

I would perish without her, but not before I showed her how I truly felt.

The mood was electric, the tension between us taut as a bowstring.

“Hatter, I don’t know that I sho—”

“I’m not asking for forever anymore, Alice, only that you allow me to show you what I truly feel.”

“You’ve told me everything. I’ve heard it. I know... I know you loved me once. In another life. Another time, and maybe... maybe someday I might believe it.” Her voice cracked. “But the misery that comes from loving you, I’m not sure I’m strong enough to bear it again. Maybe the magic that you say separated us is for the good. Maybe we were only supposed to be a short-lived but intense bit of passion. But it’s gone now, Hatter. And I do thank you for helping me want to live again, for showing me I could be more than all this—” She gestured to the underworld surrounding us.

The snowy hills were long gone. Now the land lived, kissed by spring, and my heart ached at the thought that I might never again get to enjoy a life of endless wonder and magic with her again.

But no matter what happened to me here, I knew she would survive. Not only survive, but thrive. Alice would be okay.

Grabbing her hand, I clenched it tight, wrapped my long fingers around her delicate ones, clinging with all my might as I pressed our hands to my heart, looking so deep into her dark, exotic eyes that she had no choice but to stare back into mine. Our gazes locked, and our hearts beat as one.

How could she not remember me? After all this? After all the talks. After the magic we’d worked together? Why would those memories not surface? My soul ached, and a yawning chasm of desolation began to spread through my bones.

Because I’d forgotten her once too.

That damn magic had ripped us apart, and I’d never even batted a lash. I wet my lips, and she mimicked my movements.

Our love was trapped within her. And just as Danika had helped me to see mine, I knew with every fiber of my being that I could do the same for her. If she would only let me.

And then I knew. The taste of this magic. It wasn’t mine or Alice’s. It was another’s. And it was intensely powerful.

Danika had given the very last bit of herself to us, her final gift as my fairy godmother. My soul trembled at the thought of just how much she’d sacrificed to make this happen.

What this meant now was that I had a chance. A very real chance.

Alice’s caramel-colored skin beckoned my fingers to touch. My knuckles ached and tingled with the burning need to brush them down her velvety smooth cheek.

I swallowed hard.

“Say yes, my Alice. Say yes. Only once. And then...” I closed my eyes as the tears that’d burned inside them began to slide slowly down. “If you still say no, I will let you go. Forever. You would be free. Free of me and this strange land that has hurt you so deeply.”

Her touch was as tentative as the gossamer kiss of a butterfly’s wings against my chin. Dark eyes alive with pain and sorrow stared up at me.

She said nothing, only nodded once, the movement brief and short, a mere flutter really.

But my heart leaped in my chest. Bringing her palm to my lips, I couldn’t help but press a kiss against its very center.

I knew I’d hurt her deeply.

I didn’t expect Alice to forgive me for what I’d done with her great-grandmother. I didn’t even forgive myself. But I would be damned if I let her believe for a second that I did not truly love her with a love greater than any penned in literature before or after. Once upon a time, in a different reality, it’d been Alice who’d brought me back, who’d saved me.

I could no less for her.

Siphoning my magic through her, I created a beautifully ornate grand piano. The ebony beauty stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of a field full of wild and magical gardens, bursting with the sudden magic of Wonderland.

In a scene very reminiscent of the day she’d found me, I sat at the bench and plucked gently at the keys.

Galeta had told me once during her time in my cottage of how she’d recalled her own past. Her mention of her memories returning to her as visions in the sky formed my magic.

The music was haunting, lyrical, filling the air with the strains of a heartsick ballad. And as it did, images formed on the winds.

Alice looked at the visions. And I looked at Alice.

Her eyes were wide as she twirled slowly round and round, studying parts of our life that I’d never been able to show her with the miniatures. This time the images weren’t of a woman built of moss, but of Alice herself.

My beautiful, wonderful woman who’d suffered so greatly in this life.

Falling into Wonderland.

Me sitting at a tea table, floating teapot and all. But I didn’t show Alice the memories through her eyes but my own, letting her feel my emotions as they played on the breeze.

That first glimpse of her and feeling my body light up in flames, bursting with the sudden knowledge that my life had forever altered. The way my heart beat in my throat at the sight of her in those ridiculously sexy sleeping clothes.

How the wonder in her eyes had rekindled my own.

The laughter that’d bubbled like angel song through her lips.

My fear that she would see a broken madman and so I’d stayed away, obsessing, needing, wanting, and desperate to be by her side always, but so scared of my feelings.

Her tossing the bun at the back of my head.

She laughed.

And not just the vision Alice, but the one standing before me, lost in the memories of another life.

Her hands covered her shell-pink lips as that gloriously dulcet laugh that’d haunted my days since I reawakened spilled off her tongue. I jerked in my seat, desperate to reach her. To grab her up and kiss her senseless. To whisper my undying devotion to her, but she was lost to me now.

Please, gods above, let this work. I knew what I’d said, that I could die happily knowing she was okay. But I didn’t think I ever truly could let her go.

Alice was as much a part of me as I was of her. So I played harder, plucking at the heartstrings of my soul as I struck the keys, filling the night with more and more visions.

Golden spirals of light began to swirl through the air. And I did not know what it meant, all I knew was I would never stop until she was returned to me.

Me, pacing the length of my clock room, muttering nonsense to myself as my soul yearned to go and find her. To learn if she was truly the mate I’d waited all my life for.

That damned bloody frog. Falling. Falling. Falling. Her terror of the water, desperate not to drown, and my own panic at the thought the crazy female might actually kill herself by holding her breath. Grabbing her. Moving her body against my own. Feeling each and every sexy curve of hers pressed to my hard and aching body. Sweat gathered on my brow as I prayed to the gods and continued to play.

Alice began to sway, losing herself to the music. A smile tipped the corners of her mouth. And I dared to hope, to believe in a miracle.

Her arms undulated as she danced for me. I wasn’t even sure if she knew what she was doing. Alice had always loved my music, saying that through it she’d felt my soul.

Alice and I had always had a connection beyond the mundane. We were two halves of the same mad whole. She was my perfect companion in every way.

I played the music, and now her song began to wind through the air, mixing with the visions playing out before us.

Always I’d told her she had the voice of an angel. I could listen to my Alice sing forever. If there was only one thing I could ever have of her again, this would have been it.

Her truth.

Her soul.

And she gave it now without asking for anything in return. Tears dripped, large and fat, off my face, but I would not stop. Because so long as I played I had my lover, my heartbeat, back.

Suddenly the sky was full of rain. And there I sat on a throne in the middle of a field whipping with frenzy and madness, clenching the neck of a bird I’d meant to end simply because I could no longer contain my insanity. My Alice stepped into the vision, stunning in her dress, drenched in rain and staring at me with love beaming in her eyes.

Her haunting words echoed between us. Cancer. It almost killed her once before. But she’d called to me as a child and I’d come to her in that life just as I had in this one.

I was her miracle, she’d said. The reason she’d fought. The reason she’d hung on.

For me.

For us.

My gaze shifted between the vision and the Alice before me now. The golden, glittering threads of magic that’d simply sparkled before me now gathered tighter and tighter into a rope that drew closer and closer to her.

This was either where I’d get my Alice back or lose her forever. I knew it.

And if she left, if she left me, I would have nothing else to live for.

I was pounding at the keys now. Banging with all the passion that beat within me. Using my music to reach deep into the very marrow of her, trying my hardest to make her remember what we’d once meant to one another.

For a moment she stopped singing, clutching her hands to her lips as she trembled, crying at the vision of her walking away. Her whispered words of “I saw you, Hatter. I saw you” echoed like a roll of thunder in the underworld.

She twirled on her feet, her eyes locking with mine as I shifted the memories yet again. To me. To the knowledge and panic that I’d lost her forever, and not because Wonderland hadn’t accepted her, but because I’d been too damned terrified to.

The madness I’d sunk into.

The depression.

How the animals and gardens outside my home began to sicken and die, my own diseased, ravaged brain the cause of their destruction. Her loss, slicing through me anew as I remembered those days without her. The utter desolation I’d felt.

The desperate need to simply die because each breath was an agony, each minute without her by my side so empty and void I’d no longer wanted to exist.

Tears as thick and large as my own slid down her cheeks as she trembled. I didn’t dare stop playing, but I knew the time of reckoning had come.

Moving as though in slow motion, she took one step forward. And then another. And another. The ropes of glittering gold now banded tight around her.

That’s when I knew.

That rope, it was her. Me. Us. It was our magic together. Who we were. Apart, we weren’t as powerful as together. I could not be Hatter without her, and she could not be Alice without me.

Alice had to accept that fact herself, and only then could we be together again. Only then could this darkest of magic be broken. I slowed my playing down. But the winds picked up, sounding like the strings of a large choir all around us.

This was not Wonderland but the underworld. And yet even here, the land breathed, it waited. It yearned just as I did.

And then she smiled, and those bands of gold shot through her form like an arrow, piercing her heart, her soul, illuminating her from the inside out. Her long hair gathered like the coils of an ebony-skinned snake and danced around her trim shoulders.

Her gown fluttered in the breeze around her ankles, the diaphanous movements ghostly and hypnotic.

My Alice glowed like living flame.

Radiant.

Alive.

And then it was over. The light vanished. The wind calm. The visions gone.

I stopped playing.

And everything grew heavy with silence.

My hands shook.

Her eyes opened. And the way she looked at me. I knew she remembered. Remembered it all. Agony crushed my soul.

She smiled.

Instantly the clouds parted. The sun burst through them. And the world came alive with the sounds of life. Insect chatter and bird song.

“Henrick Silas Hall,” she murmured.

I gasped. Only one person in all of Kingdom knew my true name. And I’d only ever given it to her in the other timeline.

Voice scratchy and feeling my pulse beat wild on the back of my tongue, I said in a whimpered grunt of shock, “Alice?”

“Hatter!” she shrieked. Then, opening her arms, she rushed me, tackling me so hard that I fell off the stool. Weaving a quick bit of magic, I created a soft cushion for us to land on. “Oh my gods, Hatter. You came for me. You came for me. You didn’t forget me. But I forgot you. My Hatter. My beloved. You never gave up on me. You fought, just like you promised.”

Knuckling the tears from her eyes even as my own fell, I could no longer speak. I was crying too hard. I’d lost her. I’d lost our other life. But Alice had saved me, believing I could do the same for her.

And I hadn’t.

“Alice. I did forget you. I’m so sorry. How can you ever forgive me—I can hardly forgive myself. So many years without you, my love. You suffered. You died. You—”

“Hatter.” She shook her head, staring down at me with the type of burning love that rarely existed.

We had the type of love that was built solely for fairy tales. Something so raw, so pure, it could destroy us or save us.

“How can I blame you when I forgot you too? Oh, my darling. And I thought I loved you then. But there could never be another for me. Ever.”

She lowered her lips to mine, pressing down so gently, our tears mingling upon our tongues. But I needed her, and she needed me.

I wasn’t sure when it happened, but suddenly we were up again. And dancing. Our music playing through the breeze again. Together we swayed, bodies pressed tight as we kissed, as we reacquainted ourselves with the touch of each other’s flesh.

The sweet tang of hers. Vanilla and honey and cinnamon. She licked and suckled at the hollow of my throat, causing my skin to prickle and ache.

We continued to dance even as I vanished our clothes with a flick of my wrist. I ran my hands along her curves, sliding them slow and possessively down the soft swell of her arse, marveling in the prickles of her flesh beneath my hot touch.

My skin did the same as she scratched and clawed at my back. We never stopped moving, our magic binding us tighter than ever, drawing us closer. I slipped inside her welcoming warmth and she gasped, arching back and exposing the long line of her swan’s neck and the softly rounded curves of her lush breasts.

Dancing for me as I danced for her. We moved as one. Our music wound through our souls before dancing upon the air in bursts of kaleidoscopic colors.

And when we’d finished, I looked at her and gravely said, “Now, my lovely rose, can we please leave here before I perish?”

Breasts bouncing merrily, she peppered my cheeks and forehead with kisses before saying, “Yes. Please gods, get us out of here.”

Epilogue

Alice

Standing now in the only place I’d ever felt at home, I stared at a world both familiar and foreign.

As promised, Hades had given me back my life and given both Hatter and I stern instructions to never return to the underworld. There’d been great sorrow in his words, and I couldn’t help but worry about the god of death. Silly, I know. But I also knew we owed a very great deal to him.

I only hoped that someday he too might find his own happily-ever-after.

I wish I could say that with the return of my memories, all the sadness that’d blanketed me was gone. But there was a giant hole in my heart still.

For our daughter and our grandchildren. Soon we would journey to find the Huntsman. It was a terrible pain to know that he existed without the great love of his life. And having so recently been void of any and all hope in my own life, I knew he likely fared no better.

I didn’t know what was to come concerning our Chrysalis. But I would never stop hoping and believing that the magic that’d restored my lover to me would also give us back our daughter.

The spiraling tunnel of deepest shadow finally opened, and instantly I knew where we were.

The towering trees on all sides. The pretty blue cottage. The cherry-red door and the creeping vines of ivy and teacup roses crawling like fingers up the sides of the walls. But everything was topsy-turvy now and so very wrong. This was a pretty little English cottage that could be found anywhere on Earth.

Not Wonderland.

Clenching Hatter’s fingers tight, I shook my head. “What’s happened to our home, Hatter?”

There was no magic, no life, no wonder to this place. There were no flutterbys to greet me. No flowers to sing hello. No mangy and sly cat to tease us as he fluttered in and out of existence.

Hatter had kept a choke hold on my hand from the very moment I’d awakened. And he’d still not eased his grip. Using his free hand to loosen his black silk bow tie, he shook his head.

“When you left me, Alice, so too went the magic. I had only a very little left, not nearly enough for the land to thrive as it should have.”

Reaching up for his whisker-roughened cheek, I scratched at it delicately with my long, pointed nails now resembling claws. I was wild magic in this place again. Beneath my feet, I felt the tremors of this world, as though it stirred from a long slumber.

The magic of this place beat inside me. I simply wasn’t sure how to give it back.

“How did you give it to me in the first place, my love?” I asked him.

His gaze was unfocused and morose as he stared into the thick grove of trees that now looked more like stately, mundane maples than the fire maples they’d once been, with leaves gleaming like a burnished flame in the sun. These leaves were simply green and waving docilely in the gentle breeze.

“The land knew, Alice. And so it shared its soul with me to give to you. I no more know how to give it back than you do.”

Closing my eyes, I silently commanded the magic back into the land. But it was like my feet were made of iron from which no magic could pass through. I was brimming over with it, but it refused to leave my body.

Wonderland knew what I was doing. The wind whipped suddenly through the trees. The ground shook. And just as my body felt like a supercharged live wire of power, it all stopped. Frowning, I stared at my hands, which now glowed with the golden currents of Wonderland’s soul. With a growl of frustration, I whipped my fingers back and forth, trying to shake it off me like a dog shaking off bathwater, but it was no use. It clung like glue.

Again and again I tried. But always with the same results.

Nothing.

“I don’t know how to do this.” I looked up at him, feeling helpless and hopeless all over again.

Hatter framed my cheek with his palm, and though I knew he didn’t blame me for this, I read the keen faith in his eyes that I not only could, but would, do this. I didn’t want to let him down, ever, but I wasn’t sure I could do it at all.

“I think I might could help with that.”

An unfamiliar male voice thick with an Irish brogue interrupted our conversation, causing both Hatter and me to start and sit up quickly from our perch on the wishing well. We turned swiftly around to stare at a man I’d never seen before.

Dressed in rags, he was an odd-looking creature with longish hair that gleamed almost quicksilver and sharp and radiant steel-blue eyes that burned with intelligence. He was, I had to admit, a very fine-looking male, though a little more on the hairy side than I preferred with a thick but meticulously trimmed beard on his square jawline.

He wasn’t a youth, but he wasn’t old either—he looked to be in his midthirties. And the way he grinned at me—as if he knew a secret—there was an echo of familiarity to it. Like I’d seen it once before. Possibly even many times before. But that wasn’t likely; I could never have forgotten this face.

“Who are you?” Hatter asked, voice steady but deep. And I couldn’t help but lean tighter into his side, clutching the back of his pin-striped jacket with my hand. I’d lost him once before. Call me skittish, but I wasn’t sure I trusted this good-looking lumberjack not to try to rip us apart again.

The lumberjack bowed, the movement both regal and lithe, and I found myself murmuring, “I know you. How do I know you? ”

Again, he grinned, as though he’d heard me, but I knew I’d not said the words above a whisper.

“I am only a friend who wishes to see his world back in balance once more.”

“And you think you know how to do that?” Hatter asked.

Giving a one-shouldered shrug, the lumberjack glanced around. “I’d say I’d be a tad better at it than you are.”

I growled, feeling feral at the thought of anyone denigrating my mate. It was Hatter’s grip on my forearm that kept my feet planted firmly beside his.

A flash of humor blazed through the strange male’s eyes. “Temper, temper, Alice. And yet you always did have one, didn’t you?”

“This is not the same Alice,” my lover said, gently rubbing his thumb in circles upon my elbow.

We’d had a long chat about my dear great-grandmother during our travel home. A dear great-grandmother who we’d mistakenly believed had been kidnapped, or even murdered, so many years ago. To discover she’d actually been in Wonderland all that time, playing house with my mate... I remembered why I hadn’t much liked her in the other life either.

Seemed that no matter which timeline my great-grandmother moved in, she existed only to make others miserable. I was happy Hatter hadn’t killed her when Galeta had given him the chance—I would not want that harridan’s death on his conscience—but I was ecstatic that, for now at least, I would not have to actually see her face-to-face. It would take me at least a hundred years to get over the betrayal of what she’d done to her family and to my mate.

I was no saint by any means. A part of me greatly resented the fact that while I lay dying on Earth, she’d been playing patty-cake with my Hatter. But I found that I could move past it, knowing just how deeply he truly did love me and that all this was the result of a curse neither one of us could have circumvented.

“Never said she was, now did I, O mad one?”

Hatter’s brows furrowed, as did mine.

“What?” I asked. “You remember? But how is that poss—”

Lumberjack held up his hands, stalling my question. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just say I have my ways and leave it at that. Been waitin’ a long time for you to return, True Alice.”

And this time when he nodded at me, a beam of sunlight struck his eyes, causing them to flash liquid silver.

I gasped. “Cheshy?”

Lips curling up wickedly at the corners, he grinned with that familiar grin of his I’d known near all my life. There was now no doubt in my mind that this stranger was none other than the mad, sometimes vanishing feline who’d taunted and teased all of Wonderland so mercilessly for so long.

“Cheshire?” Hatter said quickly, coming to the same conclusion I had. “But—”

“Miss me?” He winked.

“Yes. You’re, you’re—”

“Hm, an unfortunate circumstance living in a world with very little magic. Return us back to what we once were, a place brimming over with madness, lunacy, and folly, won’t you, my dears?”

“How?” Hatter stepped forward. “Alice has already tried that—”

He snorted, rolling his eyes to the heavens and looking like we were too stupid to be in his presence much longer. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he murmured, “You daft fools, you pay Wonderland in the only currency it ever accepted from the two of you.”

Looking at us expectantly, he waited. But I wasn’t exactly sure what he was getting at, and neither was Hatter. We both stared at him as if he’d lost his marbles.

Tossing wide his arms, he growled at the two of us. “I canna believe you’re going to make me say it. In love, you blathering simpletons! In bloody love. By the gods, you’re both unmitigated pains in me arse. But then you’ve always been. How Wonderland chose you both, I’ll never ken.”

I laughed. Because this was so achingly familiar that for just a moment, I was able to forget the pain of all that was still lost to us.

“I missed you too, Cheshire.”

“Pft.” He snorted, but just before he turned on his heel and marched off, I caught a glimmer of moisture lingering in the corners of his eyes.

Whether that grumpy cat wanted to admit it or not, he’d missed us too.

Only once we were well and truly alone did we look back at each other. Blazing in Hatter’s eyes was raw truth, honesty, and love.

“Alice, I believe I still have one question left to ask.”

I giggled, remembering that game and shocked that in this moment that’s what he’d choose to dwell on. But I shrugged and said, “Yes, my love. You do.”

Clearing his throat, he asked, “What is it that you love most in all the world?”

And finally I understood that question as I hadn’t been able to before. Touching the tip of my finger to his peaked devil’s brow, I whispered, “Our life together, Hatter. Every wonderful and impossible part of it.”

Pleasure suffused his face, and for just a moment he looked youthful and happy, practically dancing on his toes. Wrapping me up in his big strong arms, he whisked me around, holding on so tight that I could scarcely breathe, but breathing hardly mattered at a time like this.

Tilting my head back, I laughed with joy. I still ached for the loss of our child and prayed to the gods for a miracle but relished this stolen moment of pure happiness I thought I’d never feel again.

His laughter mingled with mine, and only after we’d twirled so many times I’d grown impossibly dizzy with it, he finally set me down before gently tracing his thumb across the smooth expanse of my cheek, causing a slow burn of heat to ignite deep inside me.

“Then you heard what the cat had to say,” he began with a whiskey-thick drawl, and I nodded, shivering from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet.

“Mm-hmm. I heard.” And as I laced my fingers through his and leaned up on tiptoe I whispered against the curve of his luscious lips. “Do you really think it could be that simple, my love?”

He leaned forward until the tip of his nose pressed to mine, the wash of his minty breath feathering against my mouth as he whispered, “All we can do is try our best.”

I laughed, the sound spilling from me with effervescent joy. And as I did, I began to glow golden.

Hatter’s eyes widened and his voice grew thick and scratchy. “It’s our joy, Alice. It’s our joy that brings our world alive.”

“Yes,” I breathed, sealing our words, our hearts, our minds, and soul with a kiss.

Song began to play.

Gentle at first. In the breeze. Bells. Chimes. Winds.

His large, warm hand slid up my arm, and even through the gown my body broke out in a delicious wash of goose bumps.

“Too many clothes,” he whispered between nips.

I sighed, wiggling against his large, broad form, telling him without words to fix that immediately.

But Hatter was tasting me, reacquainting himself with my form. His touch was slow, meandering, hot, and possessive. When his hand covered my breast, I hissed, and the music grew louder. Percussions and strings were added to the mix.

Creeping vines began to slowly wind up my legs, but I remembered their touch, their warmth, and I welcomed them. Happiness bloomed inside my soul as Hatter finally found the zipper at the side of my waist and slowly, so incredibly slowly, unzipped me.

I took a deep, unhindered breath the moment the wind brushed against my heated flesh.

“Dammit, Alice, want to be slow,” he mumbled and I nodded, then cried out when his hot mouth latched onto the vein on the side of my throat and he gently bit down.

We’d already had wild sex back in the underworld. But, like I’d always known, Hatter and I were incapable of anything other than wild and raw.

I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of him, and that was okay with me.

Delirious with images of him pushing his way deep inside me, I shook my head and violently shoved the jacket off his shoulders. “Softer later,” I grunted. “Want you now.”

The sounds that spilled from us mingled with the song of a slowly awakening realm, long dormant but now coming alive.

Our movements were volatile as we ripped, yanked, and shucked all clothing off each other. By the time we’d finished, we were gasping and staring at each other’s naked bodies.

I’d seen his lean, strong form so many times, and yet it was like looking at him for the first time all over again.

Muscled, but not overly so. Slightly furred on his chest and legs. The perfect specimen of a man.

His gaze was hot and raking as he stared me up and down, possession gleaming in his eyes. I should feel shy at the look burning through him, but I knew that Hatter had always seen me as so much better than I was.

He didn’t see the short legs. Or the tiny bulge in my lower stomach. The not quite perfectly shaped breasts or the arms lacking the type of muscle tone I wished to have.

“My goddess,” he breathed. “Alice, you’re perfect.”

And this time when I cried, the tears were not of sorrow but of joy. The light of Wonderland’s magic glowed through my pores, and with each movement that brought me closer and closer to him still, the very soil beneath my feet began to stir with life.

The very moment that I fell into his arms, Hatter too began to glow. I touched his devilish brows, and a lock of his black hair, in awe of the mad creature I’d tamed so long ago.

“I love you,” I whispered. “I always have. And I always will.”

He nodded. “And I you, my dark rose.”

There were no more words after that. Hatter lifted me high into his arms, and before I knew it, the vines that’d lazily been creeping up my calves were now thick cords of ropes creating a canopy and bed for us.

Gently, reverently, he laid us down, covering my smaller body with his much larger one, framing me in his arms and looking at me as though he’d never seen me before.

Then with a groan of reverence and need, he covered my mouth with his. I tasted his mint and licked at the sherry tinge of his tongue. Flame poured down my throat and made my body sing.

That golden wash of magic began to pour out of us both, into the ivy, into the soul, the trees. The plants. The animals.

Our love was transforming our world.

Grabbing my breast, he covered my nipple with his hot, hot mouth, and I cried out, undulating my hips beneath him. Another powerful wave of magic sank into the realm.

Lost in a haze of delirium, I clawed at the back of his neck as he suckled at my breasts. First one, then the other, leaving a wet trail of kisses behind.

The music in the air converged with the perfume of flowers all around.

Hatter nuzzled my throat with his nose before lazily laving my flesh with kisses. Wherever he could touch me, he did, planting row upon row of love all over me.

He was thick and hard, and I was so, so ready. Bumping my hip into that perfect bit of male flesh, I nudged him toward the very heart of me.

Hissing, he stared down at me with lust-glazed eyes full of starlight. “You ready?” he said in a drawl only I would ever hear or had ever known.

Because this was the look of man in love. And I was his heart. I always had been.

“I’ve always been ready for you, my Hatter.”

With one powerful thrust, he entered me and I keened, feeling like I would come crawling out of my skin from the unbelievable pleasure of it all. I dug my nails into his back and scored his flesh, maybe even drawing blood. But I’d never been a gentle lover. Hatter and I existed in a different plane of reality when we came together in love.

We were lust, love, and pleasure in its very purest and raw form.

The darkness of oblivion encroached as he thrust deep, deep, deeper inside me. I wrapped my legs around his hips, urging him to slip in even farther, wanting everything I could get from him. Wanting to give him all of me.

My eyes were closed now, but I could see the radiance of our power glowing from behind my eyelids. We were a nova about to burst.

“I can’t”—he grunted—“can’t hang on much—”

“Come! Come, Hatter, come!” I cried out before I lost myself completely and tumbled over the cliff of sexual oblivion.

“Alice!” he roared.

And only then was I able to open my eyes. Even as my own pleasure still tore violently through me, I watched my mate sink into his own little death.

I’d always loved to watch him come. Loved to see the veins in his neck go rigid, to see his face flush with a rush of blood, to see his brows and forehead dot with sweat and how he’d bite down on his back teeth, sounding in pain, even as I knew he was in the ultimate thralls of pleasure.

And because I had my eyes open, I saw the rebirth of our world happen right before my very eyes. A powerful wave of golden power ripped out of us, shooting like a wave in all directions, slicing through the trees and turning them instantly into a chaos of colors. The leaves turned from green to fiery flames of bronze.

The birds winging through the sky above shifted, instantly becoming things of unnatural beauty and wonder. The flowers in the gardens beside us took deep, gasping breaths of joy and then began to sing, adding their voices to the music still playing all around.

“Alice and Hatter!” they cried. “You are back. You have returned!”

That power flowed like water through every crack and crevice of Wonderland, and though I could not physically see it all, I felt it move through my very soul.

Hatter looked at me and I at him. There was such joy in his eyes that it brought tears to my own. “We did it, Alice. Together,” he said, sounding elated and stunned.

And I could only laugh, because I was too overcome to do much else. I no longer brimmed over with so much magic, but I felt a seed of it stir through my soul, and above me I felt Hatter’s power bloom too.

Leaning over, he kissed me tenderly, so softly it was almost a whisper. But something potent and powerful filled my mouth. Blinking, I shoved back on his chest to get him to rise so that I could too.

“Alice?” he asked quickly, but I was shaking my head and spitting out whatever it was that was now in my mouth.

In my palm rested a perfectly brilliant, lambent-colored pearl.

“What is that?” he asked.

I shook my head, not knowing what in the world it could possibly be, but also strangely protective of whatever it was.

Only a second later, the wind at our backs stirred as the music finally began to die down. The air gave a squeeze, and I knew a fairy was around.

Covering my breasts with our blanket of ivy, I whirled, and there stood Galeta the Pink smiling down on us both with love and relief in her gaze.

It would take me some time to not cringe when I saw her. My only memories of this particular fairy weren’t very good ones, but I knew—thanks to the magic of reawakening—that Galeta too was completely transformed.

“And so you have restored your happily-ever-after. Praise be,” she said with a tinkling laugh that caused the flowers to respond in kind. “Wonderland looks good on you both.”

I blushed and Hatter coughed.

Galeta was such a beautiful creature I found myself lost in studying this blond-haired demigod instead of asking the obvious question, like why was she here?

Her strangely golden-colored eyes glanced down at the pearl I still held lax in my hand and she smiled, nodding at it.

“Do you know what that is? Do you understand what you two have done?”

I felt Hatter shake his head. “What is it, Galeta?”

“It is a wish born of wild magic and perfect love. Hand me the pearl, Alice.”

It never crossed my mind not to do as she commanded, though my soul yearned to have it back the moment the pearl slipped from me to her, and I trembled almost violently for want of it.

But the second that little pearl landed in the fairy queen’s palm, it began to glow an ethereal blue.

Rose-red lips tipped up. “Now then, make your wish. Though I’m fairly certain I know what it will be.”

I looked at Hatter and he looked at me, and in his gaze I read my own heart’s truth.

Without tearing his eyes from mine, he said, “We want our daughter back.”

I nodded once, framing his beloved face at the hope that now painted his features, easing the strain of lines that I’d feared would never leave him.

“And so it shall be,” she said.

And for the very first time since that curse ripped us apart, I knew we would be okay. No matter what came for us, Hatter and me, would always find a way back to each other.

~*~

Hatter

This was who we were.

Alice and Hatter.

Always one.

Always our love would be truer than anything else in all the worlds. So powerful, so magical, that not even a curse could keep us apart. For I was the Mad Hatter and she my Alice in Wonderland.

~*~

Love my stories? Want to know when the next Kingdom book will release? Make sure to sign up for my newsletter. Also, as a bonus I’ve included both Her Mad Hatter (the original Kingdom story that started it all) and “Hatter’s Treasure” (a companion short story to the continuing romance of Hatter and Alice), written by my alter ego, Marie Hall. Also, if you love to bake, Alice has included a couple of her custom cupcake recipes in the back for you to enjoy.

~JW

Other Books written as Jovee Winters

The Sea Queen

The Passionate Queen

The Ice Queen

The Magic Queen

The Dark Queen

The Fairy Queen

If you love Fairy Tale Romances, then make sure to check out my other fairy tale themed stories written as Marie Hall