“Is she alive? Is Lissa alive?” Not even realizing what he was doing, Aeric was suddenly in Rumpelstiltskin’s face and grabbing hold of his collar, shaking him hard.
Laughing, the imp swatted his hands away before brushing down his shirt and shrugging.
“Where is she at? Tell me?” He licked his lips.
“Where it all began. Of course.”
“I owe you nothing for that answer, do you understand me, demon?” Aeric turned on his heels and called forth his sands, knowing he’d travel ten times faster in that form than in his current one.
The echoing murmur of “we’ll see” was the last thing he heard.
*
The moment Aeric stepped through into Wonderland nothing felt the same. The woods, while always tempered with that fine edge of sanity and madness, now seemed dull. Lackluster.
The trees looked like trees. The grass like grass. The vines weren’t coiling out to grab him. The disruption Chrysalis had caused had now righted itself. Returning Wonderland to what it once was.
And he was oddly saddened by it.
Walking toward the stump where he’d first met Lissa, he dropped his palm onto it and stared ahead at the tree line.
Why had he listened to Rumpel? Why had he allowed himself for a moment to hope? The flowers swayed with eyes closed, sleeping the sleep of the dead, as if exhausted from the terrors they’d witnessed and were now, for the first time in years, able to relax.
Bugs chirped and sang, the rustle of moving grass from tiny rodents sounded all around. And there was no blue furred cat in sight.
When he’d killed Chrysalis, he’d not properly grieved her. He’d known that. He’d not given himself the time to think on it, to really let his actions penetrate through his brain. He’d not said goodbye. Because he’d known if he’d done any one of those things it would have been too much. So he’d locked it all away.
But now he could say goodbye. And maybe that’s what this was about. Maybe Rumpel, in some twisted perverted sense of kindness, had sent him here to release her.
“Goodbye, Lissa,” he whispered to the breeze, “We may not have known one another long, but those days were the best of my life. You’ve changed me in so many ways and I can only ever be grateful to you for that. I just wish…” he sighed, knuckled the betraying hint of wetness from the corner of his left eye and sniffed, straightening his shoulders. “Yeah, so, goodbye, kitten.”
“Goodbye? Goodbye why, man?”
He turned on his heel so fast, his brain screaming at him the whole time that Wonderland liked to play tricks. Liked to show one thing, when the truth was vastly different. But his heart was pounding through his chest, trying to tear itself from its cage, because in front of him. Not ten yards away stood Lissa.
She wasn’t nude this time, she wore a blue dress and blue shoes. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and there was a large black bow tied on top. She looked so heart-wrenchingly familiar that his throat squeezed shut, because it was too full of words he couldn’t bring himself to say.
Her scent of wildness and spring rain undulated through the breeze, all around him, tickled his nose. Made his heart flutter harder.
He curled his hands. “Are you real?”
She took a step toward him and shrugged. “Maybe. But sometimes I don’t think I am.”
Aeric laughed and she looked startled.
“What’s so funny?”
“If you’d said yes, I’d have known you were a mirage. But only you,” he swallowed thickly.
A slow smile spread across her face. “Could speak such nonsense?”
His lips twitched. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
A thin black brow arched. “Maybe not, but you were thinking it, admit it.”
Her eyes were no longer purely black, nor was she different parts of see through and substantial. It was Lissa. She was gorgeous. But she was different. More solid. Real like she’d been the last day he’d been with her.
Aeric took another tentative step toward her. As if sensing what he needed, she closed the gap between them and when her palms skimmed the sides of his whiskered cheeks he couldn’t help the grunt of both pain and confusion that dropped from his lips.
“So often when I’m with you I feel as though I repeat myself constantly,” he gave her a half smile, “but how did this happen?”
Her eyes searched his and hidden within them was a wealth of meaning. Emotions he was almost too scared to believe.
“You fixed me, Aeric. Just like I knew you would.”
Shaking his head, he grabbed her wrists, because the thought of her letting go, of not touching him, was a thought too horrible to bear. Three months he’d been without Lissa, three months that he’d replayed the moment of her death over and over in his head. Hating himself for severing that last tie that bound her to Siria, but that also ultimately killed her.
“I killed you, Lissa. I didn’t want to… I didn’t—”
She shook her head and shushed him, prying her wrist out of his grip so that she could place a finger against his lips. “No, you saved me. If that evil had remained inside me, I never could have healed. Reflection was too strong for us.”