Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
ALICE
Hook’s chest presses against my back as we hide in the shadows, his breath warm against my neck. The cell suddenly feels impossibly small, and the fact that I can't shove him away without making noise makes it so much worse. “Tell me what you want,” I whisper once the guards pass.
He stiffens behind me, not bristling, just stilling and listening. He raises a brow. “What I want?”
I nod at him. He isn’t fooling me for a second. “Men like you always want something,” I say, which earns me a look—his dark eyes gleaming, not quite black, but sharp, almost magical. He cocks a brow.
“Men like me?”
I square myself, refusing to be intimidated by how close he’s standing, arms crossed, and stare him down.
“Yes, men like you—ruthless, self-centred, cheat-at-everything types. Shall I go on? I know your type. You wouldn’t have stopped the Queen from taking my head unless it suited you. So I’ll ask again. What do you want?”
He regards me with a smirk, the corners of that annoyingly perfect mouth lifting just enough to reveal faint dimples. “Such wounding words.” He places a hand over his heart in mock offence. “Can’t a man simply want to rescue a damsel in distress?”
“I am no damsel.”
He eyes me coolly for a moment. “No,” he says so readily that I want to shove him again. But he studies me with unsettling intent. “You are definitely not that.”
The way he looks at me sends involuntary shivers through my body, and I fold my arms tight, trying to fight it. “So what is it that you want?”
Tension works along his jaw as if he’s deciding whether to lie. In the end, he sighs, his voice briefly losing its playful edge. “Neverland… it’s dying,” he admits, making my own heart stutter. “I saw Wonderland for a brief moment before the Queen’s guards took me. It’s dying.”
“What do you mean?”
He glances out of the tiny gap in the door and raises a hand to silence me. We both go quiet again as the guards pass by, waiting until they’re out of earshot. Only then does he continue.
“The Queen stole something from our world, something that gives Neverland its power—and it’s gone. The children are ageing. Hollowlanders aren’t dreaming, and I’m going grey.” He runs a hand through his hair, pointing at a few faint specks.
I shake my head at him, rolling my eyes. “They make you look distinguished. Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be old. That’s what the stories say you are—that Captain Hook, aren’t you?”
He scowls, his turn to fold his arms. “That was a vicious lie created to make me look bad.”
“Okay, so the Queen stole something. What does that have to do with me?”
I can see him visibly close up, though not all the way. “The mirror told me you were the key.”
Now it’s my turn to stare, unsure which part to question. “The mirror said I was a key? A mirror talked to you? You do realise that’s your reflection, right?”
He waves a hand dismissively. “Alice, Alice, Alice… so, what—you don’t want anything?”
He scoffs, a cynical edge to his voice. “No one wants nothing. Everyone’s after something, even the saints. Even if it’s just to feel better about themselves, people always want something.”
But what do I want? Do I even know? “To go home,” I say.
“Back to the Hollowlands?” he asks.
“No.” I shrug. “Back to—I’m not even sure what to call it. Earth? England? The place up there.”
He smirks, wild and lazy and irritatingly smug. “That is Earth too, love. Where do you think you are?”
He’s infuriating. He doesn’t even say much; it’s his tone, his smug expression. I could easily wring his neck if I got the chance.
“Wonderland,” I say, making my tone just as condescending as his.
“Right. And Wonderland is part of Earth, just not… maybe the Earth you’re used to.”
I scowl at him. “Don’t be a jerk.”
He goes serious, his gaze sharpening. And then, he bites his lip—bites his goddamn lip. I sigh inside.
“How about we strike a deal?” he says. “You help me find what I need, and I’ll help you get out of here. We could help each other.”
“Tempting,” I say, “but if this is Wonderland, and I’m not going insane or dreaming, then I know enough not to trust a word anyone says.”
“Why would you be dreaming?”
“Because this place is all madness.”
“Just because you don’t understand it, it’s madness?”
“It is not a dream,” says the voice from the cell beside mine, startling me. I’d almost forgotten the the hare was there. “You must help him... help us.”
The Queen didn’t bring him to the ballroom, nor did she hurt him. Maybe because the Hare is frail? It doesn’t matter, I suppose. Trying to work the Queen out is like trying to solve one of those impossible puzzles my grandmother used to love. Puzzles that were just... unsolvable.
Everything in me screams to leave, to stay clear of whatever schemes they’re pulling me into. I know, deep in my heart, that once I get tangled in this, I’ll end up lost and confused—more so than I am now. Nothing will make sense. By the end, I’d be lucky to even remember my own name.
Hook leans into the door, peering out. “I think the coast is clear. We should go.”
He opens it a fraction, but I hesitate. “I’m not leaving without the others.”
He glances over his shoulder, staring at me in disbelief. “You want us to parade all the prisoners out? Are you sure you’re not the one who’s mad?”
“I’m beginning to think so. But I won’t leave them to whatever the Queen has planned. She’ll kill them. It’s not madness; it’s called thinking of others—something I’m sure you’re not familiar with.”
“You can’t take us,” the hare says. “I’m too frail to walk. You must go.”
“I can’t just leave you. I...”
“You can,” Hare says. “You can and you will. Saving Wonderland will save us.”
I move closer to the heart-shaped gap in his cell door and look at him. He’s so worn down, so tired. He’s nothing like the Hare I remember. Back then, he was vibrant, singing and full of life... and this broken creature hardly resembles him at all.
“You must go, Alice. You are Wonderland’s only hope.”
“You defeated the Queen once,” Hare says. “You can do it again.”
I swallow hard. “I don’t even know how. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. This... how do I save Wonderland?”
“Seek the door that was never there, in a hall where memories snare.
Through paths that twist and turn like time, seek what was lost, now shrouded in grime.
The Queen keeps close what she fears the most, hidden in echoes of forgotten ghosts.
Not all is what it seems to be—watch for a mirror that lies to thee.
The key you seek is buried deep, in the place where memories sleep.”
I glance around, trying to find the source of the voice. “Who said that?”
The Hare steps back, lifting his small light to shine it through the heart-shaped hole on the other side of his cell. A purple, once-bright but now faded eye stares back at me.
“Hatter.”
“Save us, Alice,” he says. “The clock’s hands are snipping at my sleeves, dear girl. Quick—find the left-behind key that wasn’t lost.”
“What?”
“He’s telling us to go,” Hook says, and before I can protest, he takes my hand, pulling me out of my cell and into the darkness.