Chapter 51
Chapter Fifty-One
ALICE
Hook looks ridiculous with the map wrapped around his head like that. But I don’t get the chance to tease him, because before I know it, there’s a thunderous sound that makes the ground vibrate. Sophia’s arm shoots out, shoving me back. I stumble, startled by the force.
“What in the—”
“Get down,” she hisses.
Hook doesn’t need telling—he ducks, pressing his back against the gnarled bark beside me.
Sophia puts her hand up, I think to silence us—or me. “Stay quiet.”
We hunker down, the heavy, damp air clinging to our skin.
My breathing slows as I try to steady myself, but it’s hard.
My chest tightens with every second. I glance at Hook, and of course, he’s looking at me.
He catches my eye and gives me a look—a quiet warning, or maybe a reminder to stay calm.
His lips are pressed into a firm line, and somehow, the way he stares makes me want to shove him.
He doesn’t have to say anything; he can be infuriatingly smug with just a glance.
My heart thunders so loudly in my chest that it echoes in my ears.
Sophia shifts beside us, her eyes scanning the fog, her focus absolute. Then I hear them—heavy boots crushing leaves underfoot, the rhythmic clink of armour, and muffled voices.
The fog thickens around us, as though it knows what’s coming and is trying to shield us.
Even the shadows seem to grow darker. And then, like something out of a bad dream, the Queen’s guards emerge from the mist—a long, unbroken line of them.
Faceless under their helmets, their weapons gleam in the dim light.
They move with purpose, and I press myself down even more, willing the world to swallow me whole, to hide me—us.
The vibrations of their marching make the ground bounce beneath us.
The steady rhythm of their steps is so close I barely dare to breathe.
I watch their feet moving past, my body tense and trembling.
I clamp my hand over my mouth, certain it’s the only way to stop myself from making a sound and giving us away.
The guards turn their heads at the exact same moment, as if they’re all connected. They move in perfect unison, their helmets tilting to look in our direction.
I lower my head, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment, and whisper, “Please don’t see us.” The words are so quiet, barely escaping my lips, but the weight of them is crushing my chest.
When I lift my head again, Sophia is staring at me, one brow raised. Hook is too. I have no idea what their problem is. I look past them, back at the guards.
Why the hell aren’t they seeing us?
It feels like they’re staring right at us. We’re hardly hidden. The fog is thin, the trees sparse. We’re exposed, out in the open. Are they blind?
I swear, one of them meets my gaze, and it takes everything I have not to close my eyes like some child playing hide-and-seek.
Then I notice it.
There’s something in front of us, something invisible but tangible. It’s as if I could reach out and touch it—time itself, maybe the very air around us. I open my mouth, not to speak but to breathe it in, to feel it. The air is thick with something unseen, something alive, and it pulls at me.
My hand moves on its own, stretching forward to grasp it, the overwhelming need to connect driving me. It’s like the air is a blanket draped over us, shielding us, and I want to touch it, to make sure it’s real.
Hook grabs my hand and pulls it down sharply.
He doesn’t let go. Instead, he laces his fingers through mine and pulls me closer, pressing me firmly to his side. The heat of him seeps into me, raw and all-consuming. My chest tightens, something blooming inside me—thick and unrelenting.
I glance up at him, and I really wish I hadn’t.
The moment I do, the gasp I’ve been holding in escapes me, louder than I intend.
“Hook,” I whisper, barely audible, but he shimmers, his form flickering like the people we saw at the inn.
Sophia grabs my other hand before I can react, lacing her fingers through mine. She reaches for Hook’s other hand, and now the three of us are linked, forming a circle.
What are they doing?
They both shimmer now, fading like ghosts. I can see the trees and ground behind them, as if someone’s taken their picture and turned the transparency up. The air around us thickens further, pulling tight like an invisible cocoon.
“What’s happening?” I whisper, my voice shaking, but no one answers.
I clutch their hands tighter, unsure if I’m grounding them—or myself.
I look down at myself—down at my legs, my thighs, my feet. My breath catches in my throat, and Hook’s hand tightens around mine.
“It’s alright,” he says, leaning in so close his mouth is at my ear, his breath brushing the side of my face.
I want to let go of him, of Sophia. I want…
“I don’t understand.”
“Magic,” Sophia whispers. “Keep still, and they won’t see us.”
I freeze, trying not to move as the heavy, rhythmic stomps of the guards thunder past us—their boots crunching leaves, their armour clinking like a relentless beat in the stillness. The air feels suffocating, thick with tension.
Sophia casts a glance over her shoulder, her focus shifting to the marching guards. The colour drains from her face, leaving her paler than I thought possible. Against the red of her hair, she looks almost ghostly.
She slips her fingers from mine and from Hook’s, quickly putting our hands together instead, so we don’t break apart.
“What are you doing?” I ask, a hint of panic creeping into my voice.
She places her hand over ours, firm but trembling. “I have to go. I can’t stay here. You two have to do this.”
“What? Why?”
She looks past us, to the path and shakes her head. Her breathing is harsher. She bites on her bottom lip. “I just have to. You know what to do.”
“Where are we supposed to go?” The words come out strained, bitter, and I hate how I sound—helpless and unsure.
It’s not just Sophia. It’s the way she looks at me, the way her tone feels laced with disapproval.
Around her, I feel raw, small, like I’ve gone back in time to standing in my mother’s shadow.
And yet, I don’t want her to leave. Maybe I’d feel the same if it were my mother standing here now.
They bring out the same thing in me—a weakness I’d rather not see.
Hook gives my hand another squeeze and damn him if he doesn’t know exactly what I’m thinking.
I can do this. I’ve done this before. I survived Wonderland as a child. But I was na?ve then, unaware of what this place truly was.
“Sophia?” is all I manage to say.
“Pretty soon, the Queen will notice I’m missing. I’m not supposed to be here. Do you not get that? Don’t you understand?” Her words tumble out in a rush, a rising panic threading through them. But I don’t think she’s talking about me understanding why she can’t stay.
“We risked everything to get you into Wonderland. You know that, right? Marcellus, Peregrine, all of us. Even Thorin and me—we risked everything to have you here, to get you out of that hole, to have you here now, and I…” Her voice trails off, and something sharp flickers across her face—anger, frustration, guilt.
It prickles against my skin, raw and electric, and I feel it settle between us like a barrier.
She catches herself, taking a shaky breath, but the emotion is still there. “You’re all Wonderland has,” she says, her voice quieter now. “You must do what’s needed before this place falls like all the others. The Queen will drain it dry, and everything in it… we’ll all die.”
Her gaze flicks back to the guards. Their line has thinned now, the spaces between them growing longer, the rhythm of their march less steady.
“When the last of the guards are gone, count to one hundred and come out,” she says. She looks at Hook, meeting his eyes with a steady, deliberate gaze. “You know where to go.”
“Sophia. I …” I say, but she shakes her head, her focus flicking between the two of us before landing back on Hook.
There’s something in that look—something unspoken, something meant only for him.
“What is that look?” I ask, my voice sharper than I intended. “What are you two saying that you’re not telling me?”
Sophia turns to me, and for the first time, I see sadness in her eyes—a sadness that twists my stomach into knots. She reaches out, resting her hand gently on my arm.
“He believes in you, you know that? We all do. But until you start believing in yourself, she is always going to win.”
I don’t even know what she means, and I don’t get the chance to ask. She lets go and steps back, her figure fading into the mist like it’s swallowing her whole.
I can’t move. Not with the guards still so close, even if their line is almost gone. Not with Hook holding my hands, grounding me, keeping me right where I am.
Hook watches Sophia leave, his eyes narrowed, his expression unreadable.
It’s only when the last guard passes that he lets go of my hand.
Without a word, he pulls the map out of his jacket, his jaw set as he looks down at the glowing lines.
They shimmer now, bright and alive, and I swear it’s not even the same map we had before.
Things have shifted, moved. The maze has fallen off the edge of the parchment entirely.
“Hook…” I start.
He shakes his head. “Not now.”
His eyes remain fixed on the map, tracing the lines with his fingers like he’s searching for something only he can see. He stands, leaving me crouched in the dirt, watching him. Whatever shimmer had surrounded him before is gone now—he’s solid again.
A strange heat rises in me, prickling under my skin, and my fists clench at my sides. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I hate it. I take a slow breath, but Sophia’s words spin in my head, poking and prodding at me, pushing me to lash out.
“We need to go the same direction as the guards,” Hook says, not even glancing up.
“Follow the road, then head towards what looks like a field.” He steps onto the path, leaving me among the trees as he pulls the map over his face again.
He tilts his head like he’s looking right at me, but the map blocks his actual face.
“Can you even see anything with that?” I climb out from the cover of the trees, glancing around.
The last guard is nowhere in sight, and if it wasn’t for the way they’ve churned up the path, it’d be like they were never here at all.
The air is still, silent, and the sun has started to rise, casting the world in a soft, pale glow.
I take a breath and try not to think so hard about everything.
“What is it showing you? Does it show you the way?”
Hook doesn’t answer. He just turns, faces the path ahead, and then turns to face me again.
“Do you know where we’re going?”
Still nothing.
“Are you even listening to me?”
He starts walking ahead, not a glance, not a word. Nothing remotely gentlemanly. Part of me wants to stop right where I am or turn and walk the other way. But I don’t know which way that is. If I did, I probably would.
I think some part of me is wired that way—rebellious. Like when I moved to Edinburgh, as far from my mother as possible, determined to be my own person. Maybe that’s why I liked Wonderland the first time. I made my own decisions, decided where to go and what to do.
Hook adjusts the map over his face again, angling it just so, and I have to bite back the urge to snatch it from him.
“Are you just going to ignore me and walk off?”
He stops abruptly, turns, and lowers the map. “What are you bellyaching about?”
“I’m not bellyaching,” I snap. “I was trying to ask you something, and you walked off.”
He waves the map at me, his expression unimpressed. “And I’m trying to get us where we need to go before the Queen’s guards circle back and catch us. Unless you’d prefer that.”
“No, but you could at least tell me where we’re going.”
“I could,” he says, lifting the map back to his face.
“Gahhh…” I storm over to him, yanking the map down. He snatches it back like I might rip it in half.
“Careful, princess. You might tear it.”
“I’ll do more than tear it. Let me look. Where are we going?”
I make another grab for the map, but he holds it out of reach and, oh no, starts walking again. My feet betray me, falling into step behind him, even as I fight with myself. This is ridiculous.
“Can you actually see anything with that over your face?” I snap, throwing up my hands. “And why do you keep looking at me with it? Aren’t you supposed to be watching where we’re going?”
He lowers the map just enough to smirk at me, and it’s infuriating. “When I lift it like this, I can see everything,” he says, the grin curling his lips. “Through things.”
My brow furrows. “Through things?”
“Like clothes,” he adds, and his smirk deepens.
I stop dead, staring at him. “You’re a pig. Do you know that?”
He shrugs, entirely too pleased with himself. Heat rushes to my face, and my chest tightens with something I don’t want to name.
“Give me the goddamn map,” I say through clenched teeth. This time, when I grab for it, he lets me take it, his grin still annoyingly intact.
I hold the map up to my face, glaring at him through it. But when I do, my heart leaps into my throat.
“Oh, God.”