The cat floated into the air, the lower half of its body beginning to slowly fade from sight. “Are we not all a little mad?”
“Hatter was a little mad. What this… creature has become, it’s more than a little mad. There is no reason, no soul, it’s slipped into darkness. I know what Jericho has said, to believe and hope that she can be saved, but each year I’ve lost my tenuous grip on it until now there is nothing but a wisp of it left. So you tell me, cat, you say there can be another way, Jericho says the same, show me then. Prove me wrong.” She closed her eyes as her words trembled thanks to the lump building in her throat. Clearing it quickly, she pinned him with a hard stare. “I saw her, gazed into soulless eyes, how can you save something like that? Tell me.”
Cheshire simply stared as his features began to grow fuzzy and distorted, looking like a figure within a fun house mirror. “Not to beat a dead horse, godmother, but aren’t we all a little mad? Deal with it as you deal with me, become mad yourself.”
The cat vanished in a puff of white fog.
Become mad yourself. That was his best advice? No wonder she never asked the cat for anything. To the right of a her a bush suddenly shook, heavy breathing echoed through the sudden stillness.
Yanking her wand from the pocket of her vest, Danika tore open a rift in time and flew quickly into it, leaving whatever that was behind. She needed to talk to Alice and Hatter, needed to tell them the truth, and she needed to find the Huntsman.
But how could you tell someone you loved that in order to save Wonderland they’d have to kill the one thing in the world they loved most?
Howling.
Madness.
Loud sounds and terrible, terrible smells.
Burning. Burning. Burning.
Trembling, limbs torn and scratched, Chrysalis crawled toward the silver pool on hands and knees. A wild face stared back.
A woman with hair like a crow’s feather glimmering in moonlight framing a heart shaped face covered in blood and gore.
Eyes of cerulean sky and beneath one, what appeared to be an inkblot stain, but was actually a bleeding heart tattoo. A mark she’d been born with. It’d started out on her forehead at birth, when the moon had first kissed her flesh, but it’d moved down through the years until it rested where it was now.
Skin the color of dusted confectioner’s sugar reached up to graze the mark, her fingertips tingled with the contact.
Blink. Blink.
The moonlight burned. Anywhere it touched it made her ache. Her skin was tight, stretched.
Leaning over the waters edge, she lifted a hand, poising a finger just above the reflection.
The reflection stared back. It did not lift its hand and now its hair wasn’t black, but a golden shimmering wave of blond so pure it rivaled the glory of the sun. That and the tattoo were the only differences between the two identical faces.
Blink. Blink. There was madness in reflection’s eyes.
“You belong to me,” the familiar yet unfamiliar face smirked.
Chrysalis shook her head, but words stuck in her throat.
Laughter. It echoed hollowly through the woods. It came out of the reflection’s twisted, cruel lips. “You can think to fight me, Chrysalis, but I am stronger than you, each day you grow weaker and I stronger. We both know how this story ends.”
Chrysalis shook her head, words rolled through her head like marbles crashing into each other, making her dizzy and panicked.
The reflection lifted a thin brow. Pretty face. Pretty, pretty face. But the devil was in its eyes.
“Madness is your heritage. Don’t you know who your father is?” Reflection laughed. “You can never escape it. Give into it, Chrysalis. C’mon, you know you want to.”
The serpent beguiled, whispered words she wanted to deny but knew in her heart she could not. The devil was growing stronger. Reflection knew it to be so, but still Chrysalis shook her head.
A low snicker wrapped like a fist around her heart, making it beat harder with a renewed spurt of adrenaline. “That’s fine. But you’ll see. They’ll turn on you. They already have. Soon the reckoning will come. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Time’s slipping away… Oh and, Chrysalis, don’t forget to eat. You must build up your strength.” The hollowness of her laughter gripped Chrysa’s heart like a vice and then an undulation of glittering blue smoke lifted from the surface of the pool, and when it touched Chrysa’s skin the abyss of hunger came with it.
Then reflection vanished and Chrysalis stared at an empty, inky well of moonlit water.
The breeze stirred. Heart hammering in her throat, Chrysalis lifted her head and sniffed.