The Hidden Library (15 page)

“I imagine you thought the same thing of Wonderland, especially when witnessing an orgy and a vicious attack, all within the span of a pair of hours. Not to mention you were attacked yourself, with SleepMist.” An event that still eats at me.

A breath of amusement escapes him. Yet still, he has not rejected my statement. Several more minutes crawl by in the elegant silence of the ballroom. And then he says, “Okay.”

I shift my head to run my nose the length of his jawline and then back up to place another kiss where the previous lay before. “I was afraid I was going to have to bully you into seeing the wisdom of my plan.”

“You, bully?
Never.
”

It’s my turn to release a ghost of a laugh.

“Also, what plan?”

“It’s not really my plan, per se. I believe it was yours. I’m just co-opting it.”

“Listen to you, sounding all Twenty-First Century with your
co-opting
threats.”

I reach up my free hand to pat his face. “Nonetheless, my point stands.”

“What was
my
plan, then?”

“You told me two are always stronger than one.”

He’s quiet for another long moment. “Will you stop me from beating the shit out of someone?”

“Would you want me to?”

“I don’t know,” he admits.

“Is this the person who is dying?”

I feel rather than see the shake of his head. And then he pulls out his phone and checks the time. “I have yet another meeting to get to. Holmes messaged to say he wants to brief us on the latest updates on his code cracking. And you’ve got a status report to get ready for.”

“How does one get ready for such a thing?” I muse. “Is there a special suit of armor one must wear?”

“Unfortunately, no. You looked hot in armor, by the way.”

“Sweet talker. I bet you say that to all the women you ride into battle with.”

“Only you.” When he presses a kiss against my temple, I close my eyes and savor the way delicious tingles skip merrily up and down my skin and spine. Softly, so only I can hear, Finn whispers, “My past isn’t like yours, Alice. St. Petersburg isn’t like Wonderland.”

I tell him I know this. That it does not matter one bit.

As we tidy up, he tells me of the widow who took him in long ago. He words come slowly at first, and then steadily as the past urges its way out. He talks of the widow’s kindness and generosity, but of how he didn’t feel like he fit in there and feared she would smother him. And then he tells me of how society shunned and yet found him fascinating all at once, considering he was witness to a murder and helped prevent another. As a result, he earned himself more wealth than most children ever dreamed of. He was a free spirit then, abhorring fancy clothes, schools, and churches. He despised being forced to abide by society and regularity. Education was not a priority then, and he ran away often. He spent a great deal of time going up and down the Mississippi River with a former slave named Jim. It is obvious this man means much to him, just by the tone in his voice. Furthermore, he was, Finn admits to me emotionlessly, the worst kind of troublemaker a kid could be and that I would have run the opposite direction if I’d happened upon him then.

The unfortunate truth is my parents would never have allowed me near him as a child in the first place.

As he tells me these things, I try to wrap my mind around his past and his present. Finn Van Brunt is a leader—an intelligent, thoughtful, funny, trustworthy man whose hidden talents are continually a delight to discover. Huckleberry Finn, he insists, is someone he prefers to stay in the past.

I think, had I met Huckleberry Finn as a child, though, I would have been just as taken with him then as I am now.

As we step into the elevator, I press a kiss against the corner of his mouth. “None of that matters to me. The only thing that does is that
this
still means something to you.”

He smiles at my further co-opting of words he’s uttered to me before, ones I cherish deeply. “I think it always will.”

It is exactly what I hoped he’d say. I think it is my truth, too.

“D
ESTINIES,” THE SAGE SAID, “are like roads.”

My fingers curled inward as I rose from my seat. I was in no frame of mind for riddles, not when my doomsday date was nearly upon me. But the eyeless woman turned her head toward me and said calmly, “Sit down, Your Majesty.”

And then she actually waited until I did before she droned on as if we had all the time in the world. “Relationships are much like destinies.”

Anger within flared as hot and bright as the overbearing sun baking us from the skylight above.

“Therefore,” the Sage continued, “relationships are like roads.”

I literally bit my tongue until it bled to keep my ballooning opinions within my mouth.

“Some roads are circular. They start at one spot and end in the same. Some roads fork and force their travelers to choose which way to go. Some roads go great distances. And then there are those that end abruptly.”

The rebuttals clamoring inside of me were filled with desperate rage.

The rock in the Sage’s hands rolled across her palms, onto her knees, and then back into her fingers. “Who is to say that a short road is less meaningful than a long?”

No, I thought. No. She cannot be telling me this. My—
our
—last resort cannot be saying such a thing.

She placed the rock upon the ornate stand next to her ratty chair. Its dull thud echoed within the cave. And then she stood up, curtseyed, and wandered into the black depths lingering beyond.

I fought against the impulse to throw her rock after her, but I could not restrain myself from yanking strands of my hair out, one at a time, until the sting of my scalp barely tempered my impotent wrath. Finally, when there was a much-too-large pile of hair upon my lap, the bell that allowed my departure sounded.

Hours later, in our home within the tulgey woods, I found Jace pouring over documents alongside the Cheshire-Cat and the Caterpillar. He looked exhausted—they all did—but the moment I crossed the threshold leading into the library, shared fatigue morphed into burning curiosity and hope.

I bit my lip. Willed myself not to rage. And that was when all their faces fell, too.

“Your Sage,” I informed the Caterpillar, “is just as maddening as you are.”

For once, he did not have a derisive comment to lobby at me. All I got in return was bleakness.

Jace steered me out of the library and into the downstairs washroom. I sat down as he poured a bowl of water and rummaged around the cabinet for soft cloths. No questions were asked, no admonishments given. When he gently dabbed at my the tiny scabs decorating an all-too-large section of my scalp, I thought:
How can this not be right? How can these feelings that consume us be wrong
?

“Destinies are like roads,” I told him bitterly, “and relationships are like destinies. And some roads end abruptly but are meaningful nonetheless.”

“We found nothing pertinent.” His own bitterness matched mine. “We went over anything and everything that is even remotely related to our situation, but there was not even an inch of wiggle room to be found.”

Three days were all that were left. Three days before I was to leave this man behind, leave behind my crown, my throne, my friends, my work, and my life in Wonderland.

A choking noise filled the room and my ears, one that originated deep within my chest. Jace held me tightly, and I him in return. He felt right to me,
this
felt right. And yet Wonderland insisted this was not true, that everything he and I felt for one another was, in fact, not beautiful and right, but poisonous and wrong.

How could that be?

I was supposed to marry this man. Together, we were to combine our thrones and stretch our influence between both the White and Diamond courts. There were schools to build, universities to christen. Farm subsidies to enforce, trade pacts to craft. We were going to embark on these changes hand in hand, our wills unified as we ushered Wonderland into a golden age. We were going to have children, possibly many, and our beloved heirs would continue doing what was best for Wonderland even if they were not chosen by the land to rule in our stead.

But our desires were nothing more than dreams. I was to go to England and be nothing more than Alice Liddell and live a life that did not feel like mine and eventually marry some man I could never possibly love. Jace was to stay in Wonderland and stay the course and eventually marry some woman who was not me and to think of it was excruciating.

I stare down at the tablet below me, marveling at how sharp the pain of such memories still are.

“Are you okay?”

Wendy hovers nearby, a hint of concern reflecting from her eyes as her green hair drifts messily about her head. “Of course.” I click the tablet off and swivel in the chair to fully face her. “Is there something I can do for you?”

The concern disappears. “Thought I’d just check in before my meeting to make sure you understood how the status reports go.”

“As technologically inept as I may be at times,” I say, “I’m fairly certain there is little to botch up here, especially as both you and the A.D. have written out instructions for me.” My tap upon a pair of notes nearby is meaningful. As soon as Finn went into a teleconference with Brom, the Librarian, and Sherlock Holmes, I was conscripted into a status report training that left me irritable and once more loathing modern technology.

Wendy flushes at my words yet does not leave for her daily department meeting she chairs. “All status reports are recorded.”

“I am well aware of that.”

The look she gives me is comically yet gently accusatory. I refuse to encourage or elaborate upon any of the gossip I’m certain she’s been privy to, though.

My chair swivels back toward the large series of screens on the wall. There are two minutes left until the communiqué goes through. “I am sure you do not want to be late for your meeting.”

She hovers for an additional silent minute before relenting and exiting the room. When the door clicks shut behind her, I open the app on my tablet that controls status reports. Already logged in are the following bits of information:

Nickname: Alice in Wonderland

Official title(s): Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Author: Lewis Carroll

Timeline origin: 1865 and 1871 respectively

Designation: 1865/71CAR-AWLG

Current liaison(s): The White King of Wonderland

Catalyst: The Queen of Diamonds’ crown

Location: Room 1508 [notation: override by L-1 / AL-AWLG—0150R; monitoring switched to system XPU-11; encryption CLASSIFIED]

Status: LIVE

My heart nearly jumps into my throat when a chirping sound fills the office. Upon my tablet, a message flashes across the screen:
Status update transmission from 1865/71CAR-AWLG.
A green button declaring
Accept
and another, red in color and saying
Decline
,
sit beneath the brightly colored words.

It’s a shaky finger that taps upon
Accept
.

The largest of the screens before me flares to life. There upon it, his face just as dear to me now as it always has been, is the White King of Wonderland.

A button on my tablet blinks, indicating the session has begun recording.

For a moment, neither of us says anything, but then, on cue, we both let out a shaky yet quiet chuckle. “This.” He motions to what is no doubt a matching tablet to mine. “Is possibly the most surreal invention ever made.”

“Were there any difficulties using it?” I ask.

“None at all. I was given detailed instructions I memorized before destroying. I must have read them a dozen times before doing so.”

I can’t help but smile; he does the same. He is in his room in the white pavilion, in the middle of his army’s encampment. The sight is a most welcome one. He is alive, he looks well albeit exhausted as ever, and here we are, worlds apart, and yet still able to talk with one another.

I have not lost him after all.

“How terribly boring that must have been.”

“It was a good distraction from the battlefield, to be honest.”

My smile dims. How could I have forgotten, even for a moment, to ask about what is important? “Were you able to recover the Cheshire-Cat?”

“I am happy to report,” he says, the ghost of relief haunting his words, “that he is now here at the White encampment.”

A massive breath of relief escapes me. “Was he harmed?”

Regret flashes across the all-too-familiar planes of his handsome face. “He is shorter in the tail and prone to nightmares he will vigorously deny, but you know the Cheshire. It would take much to break his spirit. He is already ordering me about and overseeing all war meetings.”

“Callou, callay.” If only I could claim the same about the Caterpillar. I would welcome his high-handedness even here in New York.