Chapter 31 #2
“Dammit, Alice. You’re gonna be the death of me.”
An emotion flickers across her face too quickly for me to name, then her gaze slowly traces my features.
“You know what your problem is?”
I snort. “What, pray tell?”
“You need to be more unhinged antihero than white knight.” Her face wrinkles.
I poke my chest. “Me? A white knight?” I scoff, then go deadpan. “That’s a joke, right?”
She shrugs. “Eh, just calling it like I see it. Everyone loves the unhinged antihero.”
I suck my teeth. “Whelp, that’s what I get for not liking to read, I guess. Everyone hates me.”
“Wait.” Her jaw drops. “You don’t like to read?”
“Nope. Hate it.”
“But I thought you said you liked romance books?”
“I said I was a fan. I didn’t say I read them.”
Her brow furrows. “But that doesn’t make…Whatever, not important.” She shakes her head. “What’s important is you hate to read? Like do you hate to read with your eyeballs and your ear holes?”
I blink. “Um. Yes?”
Her lip pokes out. “How tragic.”
“Maybe.” I shrug a shoulder. “But reading’s a pain in the ass. Words like to rearrange themselves just enough to piss me off. And don’t get me started with silent letters. Those little bastards can go fuck themselves all the way to hell and back.”
“Hmm.” She taps her chin in thought. “Maybe you just need the right audiobook to start out? I personally think it feels way more immersive when I get to read out loud.”
Every dirty thought imaginable flashes through my head as I remember the last thing she unknowingly read to me.
I clear my throat. “What, uh, what got you started reading out loud? That’s… different, right?”
“Yeah, I’m a curious one.” She giggles, then something flashes over her before her smile comes back. “It’s something I started when I was a kid. I had a speech impediment and…” She lifts a shoulder. “It helped me work through it, along with speech therapy. Anyway, I can get you recs if you want.”
“Hm… depends on the book, I guess. I’m not really into self-help or anything like that.”
She snorts. “No, these would actually be fun. I mostly stick to romance.” Her smile turns dreamy. “Dark romance is my favorite. I love when the hero loses it and does absolutely anything just to keep her safe.”
Well, fuck me. If she ever truly learns who I am, I really hope she remembers that little trait of hers.
“Sounds like my type of guy,” I say while feeding her another bite of tart.
She eyes me, then talks around it. “Yeah, I can kinda see that vibe in you. Though, beating Frog up aside, the guys in my book are a little more on the murder-y than I suspect you are.”
Oh, bunny.
Sweet, sweet bunny.
You have absolutely no idea.
“You know what, Alice?” I chuckle lightly. “Why don’t you read to me someday, and then we can find out exactly what type of character I am, hm?”
I feed her another bite and expect her to banter back, but something flickers behind her eyes, and she waits to swallow before she responds.
“That’s not my real name, you know.”
“Oh, gee.” I snort. “The dancer called ‘Alice’ at the Alice in Wonderland themed strip club isn’t actually named Alice? Who woulda thunk?”
I scoop up another spoonful.
“It’s Lucy.”
Everything inside me stops except my heartbeat, racing so fast it hurts.
My first instinct is to play it off, but she’s watching me carefully, though, and I have no idea what she’s searching for—what she wants to see.
So I gently set the spoon down and wrap both arms around her waist to give her my undivided attention.
“Lucy,” I repeat. My voice cracks on the last syllable. “Nice to meet you, Lucy.”
Six months. Six months I’ve been dying for her to trust me like this, and now I’ve found her, she’s in my arms, and she’s given me her real name—
Wait.
Fuck.
Does she want my real name now too? Or do I give her the one on my fake ID? This is about to be some John-Jacob-Jingleheimer-Bullshit if I do.
No. I can’t. Not yet. Not until I convince her to leave.
Or kidnap her. Whichever comes first.
Thankfully, she saves me from having to flounder and panic out loud.
“You don’t have to tell me your name,” she says quickly, looking away. “Or anything. I just…” She exhales. “I wanted someone here to know before—”
My eyes narrow. “Before…?”
She worries her lip and looks back toward… toward what?
What’re you looking at Lucy? The Rabbit Hole? Your houseboat? The pier? The bakery—
“Would you do what he did?”
I blink, trying to keep up. “I’m gonna need more than that, bunny.”
A small smile tugs at her mouth, but the seriousness in her eyes doesn’t go away.
“Leave it all behind.” Her gaze returns to mine, and I can feel how intensely she wants to know my answer. “Leave everything you worked for. Everything you cared about. Would you leave it all behind to keep the people you love happy? To keep them safe?”
“Without question.”
She seems to start a little at how quick I answered. Then her shoulders sag, and her body melts a little against mine, like she’d been afraid of the answer.
“I think I believe you.”
I laugh. “Wow. Love the vote of confidence.” I tilt my head, then ask the question I’m almost positive I already know the answer to.
“What about you? Would you leave everything behind to keep the people you love safe?”
Those eyes that were glassy from Smoke earlier suddenly brim with tears. Then she smiles a beautiful smile that doesn’t quite reach them.
“It’s why I came here, actually.”
My heart thunders in my ears, and I have to breathe slow and steady to keep my pulse down so I can hear everything else she wants to confess to me next.
Her speech is still a little slurred, the words dripping off her tongue more than normal.
While we played the secret-for-a-secret game in the Sugar Room, I don’t know if the lingering Smoke is impacting how forthcoming she is now.
I should probably stop this. I don’t want to take advantage of her in any capacity.
The thing is, though, I’m too much of a selfish bastard to stop her, hungry for any piece of her she’ll give me.
“You came here to… keep people safe?” I prompt gently.
She nods and traces my temple, the sensitive skin where Frog shoved me into the mirror. I’d forgotten the cut was even there, and Lucy’s touch is so careful it only makes me shiver from pleasure, not pain.
“It’s the reason Castle wanted me in there with Frog, I think. It didn’t make sense to me at first. I mean, he already knows everything about Frog. Why would he want me to Mirror him, ya know?” Her brow furrows. “He did it to find something out about me.”
My jaw tics, but I soften my delivery, dreading the answer. “Do you remember what happened in there, Lucy?”
She thinks for a long moment before finally shaking her head.
“I assume it was bad… but I don’t remember really. It’s like the edges of a dream you’re not sure had.”
Relief floods through me, making me so lightheaded I almost miss the rest.
“All I remember is him asking me questions.” She smiles faintly. “So I gave him Princess Alice’s story.”
I tilt my head. “What’s Princess Alice’s story?”
She traces the rose petals along my hairline. “Maybe I’ll tell you some day.”
God, what I wouldn’t do to have her trust me enough to tell me everything someday.
I swallow and decide to test my luck.
“Lucy… what did you mean when you said no one’s ever saved you before?”
She winces.
“It’s… a long story.”
I shrug and try to keep my voice just on the playful side of neutral. “Baby, I’ve got time.”
She smiles, but something dark flashes across her face. At first I think I’ve fucked it all up, pushed too hard, but she blows out a cherry-scented breath and surprises the hell out of me.
“I was supposed to get married to someone I don’t know. But I ran because…” She swallows. “Because I’ve been a pawn before, and I didn’t want to be again.”
The despair in her voice hurts me, but the words themselves gut me to the core.
Me.
Fuck, she means me.
Not Hatter. Not the man holding her on a dock beneath the stars, pretending he can have her at the end of this.
Hatch Fury. The stranger she was promised to before either of us was even born. A marriage born from a drunken bet, a desperate husband, and three jaded men.
I always knew I was the one she ran from, but having her in my arms while she tells me the story like I’m not the villain in it might break me.
And the most tragic part is that the more I learn about Lucy, the more certain I become that if we’d met like this from the start—without family names or expectations, deals or obligations—she might’ve chosen me.
No, she would have chosen me. And I would’ve chosen her.
Instead, we got trapped in a plot neither of us agreed to play out, and by the time she learned my name, it already represented something she was desperate to escape.
I swallow hard and force any trace of recognition—anything that might hint I know exactly what she’s talking about—off my face.
“Is that what you think you are, Lucy? A pawn?”
She nods.
“That’s all queens are before they take power. Pawns.” She stares behind me, to the abandoned church and the dark woods beyond, but all my attention is on her.
“Back home, I’m… important, I guess.” Her nose scrunches at that. “Important enough that when I was a child, people tried to use me to get what they wanted.”
A sick thrill shoots through me, because this… this is what I’ve been dying to find out. I knew something happened when she was a kid, something Kian McKennon and the rest of the Troisgarde worked hard to bury.
And now Lucy herself is telling me.
I shouldn’t be proud of that when I already have plans to shatter this delicate trust she’s placing in me.
But I am.
“When I was younger. Seven. I didn’t run. I didn’t even think to.” Her fingers twist in the hem of my shirt. “And because I stayed, they used me against my family. Because of me… everything got worse.”