Chapter 77
Chapter Seventy-Seven
ALICE
The way he tells it makes my heart beat a little faster.
I can see it in my head—not Hook the man, but the little boy who should never have witnessed such horrors.
I don't go to him. His pain might be raw and fresh because that's what the door demanded, but this wasn't meant to be a heart-to-heart.
Even if it was, I doubt he'd welcome the comfort.
So I look away and give him privacy with his memories, just as he did with mine.
There's no escaping the things that hurt.
"A path focused," I say instead, trying to change the subject, or at least scratch out whatever it is I'm feeling about what he shared. "Any idea what that's meant to mean?"
Hook clears his throat. His story seems stuck there, as if it's become something physical. "I reckon it's where something was changed, perhaps?"
"But painful." Right, I can do painful. "Do you think we have to do it together with it being one heart? Or maybe it doesn't matter?" I glance at the door. "Maybe it just needs two hands. If someone were opening the door by themselves, they'd place two hands side by side."
Hook pulls his hand from the carved heart.
The doors have shifted—or perhaps I have.
Either way, something's different. He spreads his fingers across his side of the door, and I find myself watching the movement.
His hands are strong, precise, capable. My pulse quickens, and bloody hell, apparently, I'm actually fourteen years old again.
I hesitate before matching his position on my side. The movement brings me closer to him—too close. Close enough that awareness crackles between us, sharp and dangerous, and I have to take in yet another breath to gather myself.
He's staring at me too, which isn't helping. Because the way Hook looks, it isn't just looking, it's seeing. Like he's managing to see right inside me, and honestly, I'd lay myself out bare to him and that scares the shit out of me. "Maybe we need separate memories," I manage.
"The cards said three memories. I don't think the order matters."
Our hands spread across the door, thumbs nearly touching.
The space between them burns. "My grandmother," I start.
"The one whose funeral I'm supposed to be attending.
She changed. Maybe that's the memory I can give it.
" Because it hurts. It bloody hurts, even now.
"She started to forget things a few years ago.
Small things at first, funny things, and we'd all laugh, even her, but it was the start. "
I meet Hook's stare and swallow. "She had dementia.
It's the worst thing my gran could have got.
She... I think the hardest part was watching her lose herself.
She lost her love of reading first. She tried to read, but nothing went in.
" I smile, though it isn't funny. "I once found her reading, and she had her book upside down.
She liked to write letters, too, or cards.
Little notes with paintings and drawings on them.
She slowly lost little parts of herself. "
I shake my head, not meaning for this to hurt so badly, and it isn't like I've not talked about it before.
I have, to Chris. But Hook is quiet, he's listening to me when I say it and somehow, that makes me feel my memory even more.
"I've been waiting for her to die, I think.
I'm not sad to have missed her funeral."
Hook doesn’t say anything. But his other hand finds mine, his warm fingers sliding over my palm. The heat blooms, curling under my skin. Unwanted and wanted all at once.
"After my mother died, I went to live with my uncle—her brother.
I didn't really like him. He didn't like me.
We barely knew each other. He and my mother never really got on.
When he came around, it was always the same argument: how she should sign the house over to him, how she wasn't looking after two children properly.
If she signed everything to him, he'd look after her.
But she never did." Hook's voice turns hard.
"After she died, apart from me, he was her only living relative.
He got everything. Not that she had much, but the house was worth something and he sold it. I never saw a damn penny of it."
His grip on my hand tightens slightly. "I think Sam and my mother were the lucky ones.
My uncle made sure to make my life hell after.
Like he had to punish me because I existed.
His favourite tool was a leather strap used for sharpening his blade for shaving.
It had a good snap to it." Hook tilts his chin, revealing just a patch where his stubble doesn't grow, replaced by a silvery line.
"I have many like this across my body. He didn't just take a pound of gold from us; he liked to take a pound of flesh too. "
This memory isn't sad when he speaks it, but there's something wistful in his tone.
The part about his brother and mother being lucky carries a bitterness that's reflected in his eyes.
He means what he says. The door knows it too, because the heart under our hands flares, almost too hot to touch.
When I go to pull away, Hook says, "Don't.
" His voice is rough, commanding, but there's something else there too—something that makes my breath catch.
We feel it before we hear it—all the mechanisms inside the door clicking in and out of place. The whole door is alive, which explains why Hook couldn't pick the lock. "It's no wonder your knife snapped," I say.
"It was a brave little knife." We let go of the door and step back.
We release each other's hands too, and I feel the sudden absence like a physical thing.
Hook grabs the sword before I can reach it, and as the door starts to open, he raises it, ready if whatever waits on the other side decides to attack.
Nothing does. There's nothing there. Just like the rest of this place, it's grand and beautiful.
The kind of entry way my mother would marvel at.
Like the outside, it's bright and clean, all marble.
But it's cold too. I go in first, but Hook stays close beside me, his presence both reassuring and distracting.
When we step inside, our footsteps echo.
"Did the queen just abandon this place?" It feels that way.
Like there hasn't been anyone here in years. But it's clean. Deserted.
"I don't trust it," Hook says, scrutinising everything. The tension in his body radiates off him, and I find myself hyper-aware of how close he stands.
The walls seem to ripple as we walk by them.
We're side by side, moving through the hallway lined with arches and windows.
The ceiling soars above us, hung with chandeliers.
"These aren't windows," I say. They look like windows, but they're... screens?
I'm not even sure. Each one is different, like it has a different outside behind it.
I reach out to touch the first one. "Could these be. .. are these memories?"
That makes me pull away, because I don't want to pry into someone else's life.
I wouldn't want anyone looking into mine.
"The hall of memories." I frown. "Do you think this is where all the memories go?
" I didn't notice it before, but as I look and as we walk, each tile on the wall is like a drawer.
Or maybe they've changed? I don't even know anymore, but this is Wonderland. Anything's possible.
"I'd say, if the Queen can use them to fuel magic, then yeah, they probably are." He stops and looks back the way we came. We've turned corners, following the hallway around to the right. He huffs out a breath. "I think maybe this corridor goes all the way around."
"Here." I'm a little ahead of Hook. "This one is a door."
He nudges me aside as if something might burst out of there too and tries the handle. It opens. The room is dark. "Light it up."
I do what I did in the oubliette and summon the light to my hands. It amazes me how easily I can do that now, but then it shouldn't amaze me. I toss the small light ball into the room. "It's empty."
But that doesn't stop Hook from going in, his sword still at the ready, ever cautious.
"There's nothing in here," I say as I follow him, but it's like stepping into another world as soon as I do.
I turn and spin, and Hook is beside me, but the room isn't empty and we're not even in the room anymore and—hell.
I don't know. "Where the heck am I?" The light from my ball blooms and spreads as I spin.
"No. No, no, no." I'm in my mum's house.
"No. Hook? Shit." This can't be. I didn't— My pulse rises, beating frantically in my chest, and my stomach goes hollow.
No. This can't be. Did Wonderland kick me out again?
But I'm not beside the tree, I'm not in the garden.
I'm at the bottom of the stairs in my mum's house.
"I have to go back." I reach blindly behind me, hoping to feel Hook's solid presence, but there's nothing.
I go to rush through the kitchen, but what stops me is the three suitcases by the stairs.
They're pushed neatly together, with some boxes.
I recognise them, but they don't make sense.
Why are they here? They're my dad's. It's been more than a decade since he left.
Almost two, I'm sure. The voices on the next floor grab my attention.
Arguing. My mum and dad. What is my dad doing here? This makes no sense.