Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Alice
You’re my daughter.
Those three little words stopped my heart.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Twenty-one years of wondering. Twenty-one years of believing I had no one. That my father was dead, or worse—that he’d abandoned us. Abandoned me.
And he’d been here. All along, he’d been here.
My legs trembled beneath me. The cavern tilted—no, I was swaying. Black dots swam in front of my eyes, crowding at the edges of my vision, threatening to pull me under. If Darius hadn’t been holding me, I would have collapsed.
Daughter.
The word didn’t fit. Couldn’t fit. Grump was hard and cold and suspicious of everything. He’d looked at me like I was a threat from the moment I arrived. How could he be…?
Someone lifted me into their arms. Strong. Steady. I hoped it wasn’t Darius or we’d both fall.
The world blurred around me. Voices, distant and muffled, like I was underwater.
“Sit here.” A rough voice, cracked with something I’d never heard in it before. Grump. My father. “Bring her some water.”
I felt stone beneath me. Cool and solid. An anchor when everything else was spinning out of control.
You’re my daughter.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to demand answers: why didn’t you find me, why didn’t you come for me, why did I spend my whole life alone when you were right here?
But all I could do was sit there, shaking, as the world I thought I knew crumbled to dust around me.
Archer brought me some water, and I clasped it with my shaking hand. The water tasted cool rolling down my tight throat.
Darius put his hands on my shoulders. “Alice, how are you feeling?”
“Numb. Angry. Confused.” I glanced up at Grump. His eyes searched my face—desperate, hungry, like he was looking for someone else in my features. All the loneliness and sadness threatened to boil over. “The assassin said my father was dead.”
“When have the Cormacs ever told the truth?” Bitterness dropped from Grump’s every word.
“If that’s true, why did you abandon us?”
He lowered his head. “I didn’t. Your mother fell through a portal like you did.” He stared at the pocket watch. “She was beautiful. Perfect. I fell for her the first time I saw her.” He chuckled. “But she needed to be persuaded.”
I stared at him, not knowing what else to say. I knew nothing about my parents and didn’t even know if he was just spinning the tale. Or if it was even true.
Darius looked at me like he already knew what I was thinking. “You don’t believe him, do you?”
I shrugged but didn’t answer him. Did it matter? There was no way to prove he was telling the truth. He may or may not be my father. Nothing seemed right. My world was being shaken apart again. None of the pieces fit.
Darius locked his gaze with Grump. "How badly do you want to prove to your daughter that you're telling the truth?"
Grump frowned, but then his scowl melted away. "Bring it."
Darius tilted his head. "Chester, get the hat."
Grump's face went pale, but he didn't protest.
"The hat, the hat," Chester purred, his luminous eyes appearing first, followed by his grin, then the rest of him shimmering into view.
"Such a dangerous little thing. It plucks secrets like petals from a flower.
" He cast his gaze over Grump. "He loves her.
He loves her not. He loves her..." The grin stretched wider.
"Shall we find out which petal falls last? "
"Chester." Darius' voice held a warning.
"As you wish, Mad King." Chester dipped into an exaggerated bow, his body rippling like smoke. "One truth-telling hat for one truth-telling Grump."
Grump grabbed a chair and sat down, bracing his back against it, his hands gripping the armrests as if preparing for a blow.
I couldn't believe he was doing this. The hat was dangerous. Painful. Maddening. I knew what it felt like to have it rip through your mind.
"You're really going to wear the hat?"
He met my gaze. Steady. Unflinching. "It's the only way you'll truly believe me."
No one had ever done anything like this for me. No one had ever been willing to suffer just to prove something to me.
My throat tightened. "But is this truly necessary?"
"Yes.” Grump’s knuckles went white on the armrests. “I need to prove to you that I am your father. I owe your mother that."
The rest of the Uncrowned Seven surrounded us. None of them looked happy. Heat broke out across my skin. They were going to demand I be cast out. Only Darius, Caterpillar, and Chester had accepted me.
My heart pounded. The hat would lay everything bare. I didn't want to hurt Grump—not really. But I'd spent twenty-one years believing lies. I deserved the truth.
The hat floated over and lowered onto Grump's head. He stiffened and gritted his jaw—ready for pain.
Chester vanished, his grin lingering a heartbeat longer than the rest of him.
Darius snapped his fingers. “Tell me about Alice’s mother.”
“Her name was Corina Ravencrest—”
“Corina,” I whispered. The name wrapped around my heart and squeezed. I never knew her name. All those years, and I never knew. Not even Tinker Bell knew. Now I had something to call her—something more than the woman in my nightmares. More than the one who burned.
Corina. My mother was Corina.
Grump’s eyes landed on me, something raw passing through them before he continued. “She was a powerful witch. Beautiful. Perfect.” His voice softened. “And lost.”
Lost. Like me. She’d been lost too.
One of the Uncrowned Seven, Thorn—a tall fae with silver hair—shifted uncomfortably. “I remember her,” he murmured. “She was kind.”
Darius motioned with his hand. “Say more.”
Beads of sweat broke out across Grump’s forehead. His knuckles had gone white against the armrests. He was in pain. I could almost feel the hat working, tearing information out of his skull, dragging truth into the light whether he wanted it there or not.
Part of me wanted to rip it off his head. Part of me wanted to hear every word. But I needed to know the truth. For too long I had lived in darkness. Not having a past had haunted me my entire life.
“She fell through a portal.” A vein twitched on his temple. “And I found her. She was dazed and confused. But brave.”
That made sense. She had faced down the assassin to protect me.
“Yes, you said that,” Darius pressed. “What happened?”
Grump’s chest heaved. A muscle jumped in his cheek. “King Cormac hunted us.”
Caterpillar exhaled a slow stream of smoke. “Cormac... does not forget. Does not forgive.” His ancient eyes settled on me. “And does not... stop.”
A chill ran down my spine.
Darius demanded, “Why did he hunt you?”
“Because she was pregnant with my child.”
My breath caught. Pregnant. With me.
Chester’s grin had faded—actually faded—leaving something almost solemn in its place. “A king who hunts unborn children,” he said quietly. “How very... red of him.”
“I sent her back through the portal.” Grump’s voice had gone hoarse, each word dragged out of him like shattered glass. “Then I destroyed it. To keep her safe.” He swallowed hard. “To keep Cormac from invading her world and finding my unborn child.”
I stared at him. This hard, cold, suspicious man who’d scowled at me since the moment I arrived.
He’d destroyed his only way back to her. To protect her. To protect me.
Murmurs rippled through the Uncrowned Seven. I caught fragments: “he never told us” and “all these years and that’s why he’s been so angry.”
Darius leaned forward. “You never saw her again.”
Grump shook his head slowly. A single tear slid down his weathered cheek.
“I never saw her again.”
His eyes shifted to me. “Until I saw Alice. And it was like seeing a ghost from my past. She looks exactly like her mother.”
The cavern fell silent. No one moved. Even Caterpillar’s smoke seemed to hang frozen in the air.
Then Chester spoke, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “The Grump who never smiles... loved a witch who fell from the sky.” His luminous eyes blinked slowly. “And lost her to save her. How terribly, wonderfully mad.”
Tears fell down my cheeks. King Cormac and now his daughter had taken so much from me. Destroyed my family. Left us in ruins.
I ripped the hat off Grump’s head, and he sagged in the chair, gasping.
“Are you okay?”
He panted, dragging a hand across his sweat-soaked face. “I’ll live.” His eyes found mine, still glazed with pain but sharp with something else. Determination. “Who killed your mother?”
The question cut through me. I looked down at the hat in my hands.
“I don’t know. It was a dream, but I think it was more than a dream. It was… it was a memory.” My voice came out small. Hollow. “She locked me in a chest to hide me. I only heard voices.”
The memory surged up—darkness, the smell of cedar, my own muffled breathing. And beyond the wood, screaming. Flames. A man’s cold voice.
“But then I climbed out of the chest. I wanted to be near her.” I swallowed hard. “She uttered a spell, and a bubble formed around me. I floated away.”
Tears blurred my eyes. “But I could see her. Fire exploded around her and she screamed.”
A sound came from Grump—low, broken, barely human. I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear to see his face.
Strong arms wrapped around me. Darius. I could feel him protecting me, shielding me from my past.
But some things can’t be erased no matter how hard we try.