The Mad King (The Dark Kings #1)(10)
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.”