Moon's Flower (Kingdom, #6)

It was never easy trying to decipher Cheshire when he decided to be willfully obtuse.

“Where is she? It?” She shook her head, realizing her slip of the tongue.

Cheshire’s smile grew wider. “You should not do what you want to do. There can be another way.”

Her nostrils flared. “How can you say that to me?” She snapped, anger whipped through her veins, slipped off her tongue. “Do you not think I’ve thought of a million different ideas, a million different ways to change this outcome? All of them… all of them end like this. You’ve seen the carcasses, it will only get worse. I feared this outcome when it was first born, feared her birthday might trigger the monster.” She threw up her hands with a defeated hitch in her voice. “I can’t save it. It… she’s gone mad.”

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 madness 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?