Page 37 of Cheshire's Smile
For someone who was mad at me, Coby had a lot of questions. Questions I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer. Theyhadn’t shown that they even cared about howIwas doing after all this time. Not that I expected them to now.
Even so, I couldn’t let them worry about Cheshire. Not knowing what happened to them had been one of the worst parts of being imprisoned. Before I lost all memory of them, that is. It was the worst kind of torture to not know if your loved ones were okay.
“Cheshire is fine,” I said with a neutral tone. “He is probably with Eugene now.”
“What?” The two of them shouted in unison.
Coby stumbled forward. “He’s back here? Already. What happened? I thought Hatter got him out.”
I tugged on my tea gloves. “It’s a long story.”
“Then we’re coming with you.” Carban stepped forward with his brother.
Lifting and dropping my shoulders, I glanced at Morgana. “That’s not up to me.”
Morgana gave me a questioning look as if to ask if I was really okay with this. When I nodded, she huffed.
“Fine. But don’t dally.” She turned on her heel, muttering under her breath about charging for her services from now on.
I was vividly aware of the twins walking behind me as we followed Morgana through the mist. To distract myself, I played with the color of my gloves, seeing how many shades of green I could remember before I realized I had settled on the exact shade of their eyes. I shook my hand, and it turned back to its usual pale blue.
“So that’s the ability you betrayed us for?” Carban grunted from behind.
My shoulders tensed. I drew in a breath and blew it out, forcing myself to remain unbothered. “You have to admit it is useful.”
There was a long stretch of tense silence. Then Coby spoke in a low voice.
“You kept our clothes.”
Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I nodded. “Yes. I did.”
Even when I didn’t know who they were, I knew the clothing was important. Of course, I didn’t know why. I had simply told myself it was because it was a flattering outfit, and there was no point in changing it, outside of dealing with the Human Realm.
“We should charge you for that,” Carban growled, his body heat so close that it burned against my back. “Do you know how expensive orcbones are? How delicate and fragile they are? Fae have killed for our work, and seeing you walk around in it is a damn near tragedy.”
The urge to snap back at him was large in my chest, but I swallowed down the words. “I’ll write you a check,” I primly responded with instead.
That silence came roaring back and, suddenly, I would rather have them yelling at me than this debilitating quiet.
Coby broke the silence this time. “So why are you back, Aly?”
Hearing him say my nickname almost threw me over the edge. My fingers tightened into fists at my side. I tried to ignore the concerned look Morgana kept sending my way.
“Like I said, it’s a long story.” My voice was thick with emotion, and I hoped they couldn’t pick up on it.
“Well, it’s a long walk,” Morgana interjected unhelpfully. “I too would like to know what could possibly have sent the Great Pretender to the Shadow Realm.”
I snorted at the name.
Great Pretender. It was such a silly name. I preferred Trip’s name for me—Bad Lady. At least it made sense. I’d done something bad and the name said it. ‘Great Pretender’ implied I was pretending to be something I’m not.
I might have had a human heart, but my body was fae through and through. I was more aware of this than anyone after sitting for a hundred years with no food or water and not dying. We prisoners survived off the barest amounts of human dreams while the rest of the fae thrived.
The fact that I could go without food or water for this long while searching for Hatter had actually worked in my benefit. If only I didn’t need sleep. And maybe a hug.
I missed Hatter and Cheshire’s arms around me. Especially with Carban and Coby taking shots at me at every turn.
Building that wall back up around my heart, I told them why I had come.
