Chapter 19
nineteen
. . .
We stepped through the portal and into a small alcove of a cave palace, right outside the doors of a ball.
The music was jarring, even through the stone.
I straightened my panniers and smoothed down my bodice while I tried to stay calm.
We were really here, in Demonland, where someone might off with my head at any second.
The portal of flames went out, leaving me alone with Dorian.
I looked up at him and then flinched back. He looked so much like the Mad Hatter or the White Rabbit, all pointed features, enormous eyes, wide smile, only his skin had stripes like a cat. Was he really my demon king?
He looked down at me, cold, amused, diabolical. “Get used to me like this before we join the other dancers. You should gaze at me as though you’re under my spell.” He was finally looking at me. He looked at me so coldly, so different from my beautiful cinnamon bear.
I leaned closer to whisper, “You’ve done this a lot. Is this how you broke Wilkie out of the dungeon?”
“No,” he whispered back to me, his pale lavender eyes so unnatural, but somehow still so beautiful. “I broke him out in the middle of the night. I keep my distractions and my liberating separate.”
I stepped back, wanting nothing more than to fall into him. Of course, I was supposed to be under his spell. “Where’s everybody? Are they coming through a different way?”
He gave me a wide smile that made me think of Cheshire cats.
“Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to dance with you?
You were always the most exquisite dancer I’ve ever had, but I couldn’t dance with you the way I wanted, not as Dorian.
But now…” His smile grew to creepier proportions. “Now we will dance.”
I placed my hand carefully over his. I was wearing sheer gloves with sparkly gems attached, so I looked like I’d glued gems all over my arms. “And if someone interrupts us, you’ll just turn into a cinnamon bear and eat them.”
His eyes twinkled as he covered my hand with his and swept me out of the room and into the throngs of madness.
The music was bad. Out of tune, out of time, with sudden starts and stops that had me bumping against Dorian and the other guests. It was a claustrophobic press with the heavy scent of talcum covering the underlying rotting flesh.
I kept my eyes on Dorian, but it was impossible not to notice the other bodies, zombies, with their wide smiles and mad eyes, hysterical laughter, and tense whispers. Were they really zombies? They had weird casts to their skin, but zombies shouldn’t be so alive.
“She summoned the Walrus to war,” was a whisper on my left. On my right it was, “I heard that the White Rabbit refuses his summons. Of course, he’s in the Grand Master’s care, but he should have escaped by now. Have you seen the hors de’ouvres?”
I saw them. Mini-chocolate cakes with blood sauce, eyeballs on a bed of seaweed…I mean, I’d eaten Regis, but none of this was appetizing in the slightest. And them. All of them were as revolting to me as Dorian was tempting. Not that he smelled good to me while he wore his creepy cat zombie face.
I beamed up at him as we twirled around and around. We ignored the music, which made the dancing much better. It was so good, in fact, that I had a hard time remembering that we were there as a distraction for Regis, wherever he was.
“Chesh!” someone cried, and then there was the Mad Hatter with his enormous hat, bearing down on us. He’d stolen my baby! I was going to kill him! That is, I was going to smile at Dorian like I was free of my own will.
“Madd,” Dorian said with a smirk. “I’d heard you were going to war.”
The Mad Hatter shrugged and grabbed an eyeball from a passing tray.
“I was. I am, if the Queen should ask, but how could I miss the ball? It’s been going on since April, you know.
Perhaps you didn’t know. You’ve been positively absent.
I’m jealous. The Queen wants her favorite warlord to take back the White Rabbit.
It’s so exciting.” He sounded the opposite of excited.
“The White Rabbit should take back himself. Such a bother,” Dorian said smoothly, dropping my arm and walking towards him like he’d forgotten about me. I grabbed a glass of something sparkling and pink and pretended to sip it.
“You think he’s choosing captivity over serving the Queen?” the Madd Hatter asked before popping another eyeball into his mouth. “That’s a serious accusation.”
Dorian waved his hand absently. “I would never be serious at a ball. That’s just bad manners.
Of course, I wouldn’t point out anyone’s inability to perform the most basic orders, particularly your strange inability to capture the demon queen no matter how many times you had the opportunity.
” He gestured to a wall that I hadn’t really noticed, but now I saw a figure stuck to the wall, wings stretched out, pinned like a bug, with shiny barbs stuck through his wings and his body.
Wilkie? I couldn’t breathe. Wilkie was stuck to the wall? Why would someone do that to someone? I get that these people were crazy, but were they really that evil? I had to get him down. If he was here instead of wherever Regis thought he was, how were we supposed to save him?
There was a blur on the wall, barely anything but enough to give me hope. Someone was up there, waiting for the right moment. The distraction.
The Madd Hatter gave a harsh laugh. “Your manners are nothing but bad. Just for that, I’m stealing your dance partner.”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me into a dance position, implacable grip on my wrist. I stared at him while he blinked at me, actually seeing me for the first time.
“You…”
I threw the contents of my glass in the Madd Hatter’s face. He jerked back, blinking and sputtering until the acid really registered. Then he was screaming.
He released me to claw at his face while I turned and ran.
Chaos spun around me, and the Madd Hatter was screeching making everyone turn to look at him, and then at me. The crowds gave me space, like they weren’t sure if I was poisonous to the touch.
I made it to the opposite side of the ballroom and dashed into the hall. A wall of fire roared up right in front of me before I could stop. I stumbled out of the flames on the other side, back in the first coatroom we’d come in, with Dorian leaning on the wall in his creepy Cheshire cat face.
He captured me in his arms and inhaled deeply. “We didn’t dance enough.”
“Agreed.” I kissed him, the feel of that wide mouth strange, but not entirely unpleasant. “I love you.”
He stared at me, his eyes going stranger than before. Too big. Too stunned. “What?”
I traced his face. “I love you. I always have. I missed you so much when you chased me away. And having Wilkie alone was so hard, but the most difficult thing was existing without you. You’re the warmth in my soul that keeps me alive.
The spark that burns forever. Wilkie’s pinned to the wall.
How can Regis rescue him? He was supposed to be in the dungeon. ”
He pressed a kiss to my forehead that burned hot until it consumed all of me. When he pulled away, I clung to him, but it wasn’t the Cheshire cat, but Drigo-Dorian, the demon king with wings and fire, and everything terrifying. Not the fire bear, though.
We weren’t in the underground palace anymore. Instead, we were in a dark tunnel, dimly lit by glowing veins in the surrounding earth. Regis was running down the tunnel, a limp figure over his shoulder.
He reached us and slipped behind Dorian, staring into the darkness he’d come from. “I couldn’t get the scepter. The Madd Hatter shattered it into pieces. He used those pieces to pin Mixl to the wall.”
“The scepter is there, in the wall?” Dorian asked while I touched Mixl. He wasn’t breathing.
“He’s dead?” I whispered while my whole body went cold. I’d failed him. I wanted to lie down and die there. How could I waste time dancing with Dorian when my baby was suffering? No. Dead.
“Without the scepter, you can’t be here,” Regis said, focused on the wrong thing.
“No.” I looked carefully touched the soft, relaxed face of my perfect baby. “The Queen wanted war. The Madd Hatter is her warlord. Not anymore.”
I looked up at Regis while my whole body turned to ice. “Demons are technology. Why would I need a scepter when I have demons?” I looked back down at Wilkie and stroked his hair, matted with blood. “I’ll hold him as long as we fight.”
“You’re going to transform him into a scepter?” Dorian asked, but there was something in the way he said it, like it wasn’t crazy.
I grabbed his arm, unable to feel my legs. “Yes. Or something even better.”
He stared at me while his eyes flickered with infinite flames. “Eat him. Remake him into the strength and heart of our people. I will carry you through the war.”
“You can’t…” Regis started, but then Dorian’s tail swept him out of the way. Dorian flickered and became heat, life, death, cinnamon bear. He flattened himself to the ground so I could climb on his back holding my baby.
I took a bite out of Wilkie, but he tasted like years of desperation while I’d searched for him, trapped in my Candyland with a fear demon.
I ate anyway, every bite with intention.
I was going to regenerate him into something more than a demon.
He had pieces of the scepter woven into his death.
I consumed that death, that life and used every bit of my life, anger, hopelessness and strength to bring him back.
Dorian-bear walked through another fire portal and we came out on a plateau where the demons waited. Their skins were dusky, blending with the desolate surrounding land.
Regis handed me a lacy parasol. “My Queen.”
I took it while Dorian paced in front of the troops and I kept eating my baby like a monster. I ate shards of the scepter as well. They landed in my stomach like lead balls. I didn’t care.