by A. K. Koonce
And now I’m just a fucking spy. I’m a traitor just like Kais.
It’s worse though. Kais has the support and respect of the rebels. He’s my best friend. And not even he knows about my connection to the Elder in Wonderland.
I’m alone in all this.
I swallow hard, and despite the confidence Madison has in me, I want nothing more than to fuck everything up by getting black out drunk again on Rosen.
My gaze shifts to the clock on the far wall. Only twenty minutes have passed. I have a long time before we leave this place and I can really relax again.
Until then, I’ll try a bit harder to keep myself from gagging after every smile she gives him, I’ll keep my comments to myself, and I’ll do my best just to be the watchful spy that no one suspects.
For now.
Fourteen
Madison
The longer the morning carries on, the more I start to wonder just what the relationship is between Constantine and Konstance. I’ve seen close twins before. It’s a beautiful bond that I can’t even begin to understand. It’s something I craved sometimes: having a friend that knows you and loves you regardless of anything else.
But this is different.
They don’t look to one another in sexual ways. There are no coy glances or lingering touches. It’s just…it’s like Konstance…wants to be Constantine. I’m fairly certain that’s what it is. She wants that power. And maybe the King feels guilty for holding it when it’s what his sister so deeply wants.
King Constantine might be obsessed with Alice, but Konstance is obsessed with the crown.
I’m not saying she’s evil; that’s just crazy. But I grew up with books and movies in place of friends. Between those fictional pages, I’ve loved a thousand men, met a thousand friends, and I’ve also met my fair share of villains.
No one spots a villain faster than a book nerd.
And Konstance, she’s a villain in the making.
“I just hate the idea of you marrying all alone,” she pouts.
My eyes narrow on the strange sentiment. I arch an eyebrow at Kais, but his features are as blank as ever.
“Well, it’s a union of two people, so he won’t be alone,” I say slowly.
The entire arrangement of a wedding is the joining of two fucking people. What in the ever-sibling-loving fuck is turning in her mind right now?
“I meant without me,” Konstance snaps sharply.
Of course she did.
“Perhaps you should find a partner of your own, Sister.”
“Perhaps I will, Brother.” When she mimics his thoughts right back to him, I realize then that this beautiful woman in the deep red gown isn’t the Queen of Hearts, and the King isn’t the Wonderland King I thought he was.
They’re Tweedle-fucking-dee and Tweedle-fucking-dum.
I blink slowly at that realization.
What hole have I thrown myself into where I’m prepared to marry a Tweedle twin? This is going to be more work than I realized. I take a long drink of the cold water as they continue to speak as if the two of them are the only people in the room.
In the Kingdom.
In the world.
“We should arrange something. Today. Someone strong but who won’t get in your way. You’re not a fan of sharing the lime light.” That’s for fucking sure. Her brother carries on, “Someone who won’t require too much love, you’re not the sappy type. Maybe someone who’s just cold and a little too broken to really require much attention.” Both of them are nodding their blonde heads, and I almost want to scream at what they’re concocting together. They’re just spewing out ideas of how they can use someone to their benefit.
Is this the way they sat around and spoke of me? Or…Alice, should I say.
“I got it!” Constantine says with an excited snap of his fingers.
I take another slow sip of my water as I imagine myself strangling him with the shining golden crown on his head.
“The Rotter,” the two of them both say in perfect unison.
The Rotter? My nose scrunches at the serial killer sounding name alone.
“Who’s The Rotter?”
Konstance’s red lips curve into a wide smile. “My future husband, of course.”
Fifteen
The Rotter
A gargled choking of words catches in the throat of the man who’s pinned like a moth to my desk. It’s where I do my best work. It overlooks mossy green forest with the most inspiring view.
I give a lustful little sigh, but it’s hard to appreciate it all when he starts to scream again.
“Listen, Ben, I’m not saying you can’t rebel. You rebel your Rebel Heart out.” I run my finger from the tip of my blade down the thin slicing edge of it. “I’m just suggesting you rebel a bit quieter. At a smaller level. From a distance.” I look up at my guest, naked and gagged, tied down at each of the four corners of the steel plate desk. He doesn’t nod to me.
A little support, that’s all I’m asking for.
It’s hard to find compromising rebels any more. They all have too much pride.
Pride is what gets them killed.
The large bat-like wings on my back bristle, catching his attention, making his eyes widen for just a moment. A smile tilts my lips at the sight of his growing fear.
Ben is a wise man. He should be afraid.
“So what do you say, my friend? Do we have a deal?” I pull the dirty cloth from his mouth, and he purses his lips with an angry pinch to his face, preparing to spit at me as they all do.
My leather gloved hand clamps over his mouth, getting up close and personal so the low tone of my voice can really be understood. “Stop drawing the King’s attention to yourself. Do. You. Understand?”
I lift my hand, and he immediately screams in my face. “Fuck you, Rotter.”
And then my blade slashes across his neck, spewing thick blood over my suit and across my face. My lashes close, and I count to three, lingering there until I’m sure his heart has stopped beating.
They never listen to reason. Every one of them. Too filled with pride to take my offer to let them off with a warning.
I pull the white pocket square from my suit and wipe the blood from my face. The streaks of crimson along the crisp, clean fabric make my eyes widen. I fold it neatly into fours and slip it into the pocket of my trousers to store it away with the others I have. I like to keep them, remember the work I’ve done from time to time.
I know what that says about me. Keeping bloody towels seems a little…unusual, but we all have our hobbies. It’s the little things in life you have to cherish.
Otherwise, you have nothing.
“Mr. Stone, the King has called for you down at the castle.” Martha wipes her hands on a dish towel, standing at a distance in the doorway of my office.
“Please tell the King that I am with one of our guests, Martha.”
She shifts on her feet, not glancing down once at the dead man pinned to my desk. She’s a good housekeeper. She doesn’t judge me. Doesn’t make a fuss over the messes I occasionally make.
But I can tell when she’s nervous.
Not much makes her nervous.
I arch a blood covered eyebrow at her.
“It’s just that he said it was urgent. He said…he said that Alice was here.”
Alice…
I push out of my bloody jacket and inspect my white shirt. It’s clean, nearly bloodless. Acceptable for a formal meeting with the King and his long-awaited Alice.
The former Rebel Heart, Mr. Benjamin Cline, will have to wait to resume our business.
I have a date with an Alice.
A dirty little secret. That’s what I am. The King won’t tell his little sister how often he meets with me. He’d never dream of telling her about the outcast assassin he pays under the table to get rid of their rebel problems.
That’s why I’m so intrigued as I sit at the glossy table across from the pretty blonde woman and the Rebel Hearts’ leader himself, Kai
s St. Croix. I sit here like an equal. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why I try extra hard to make them all uncomfortable. I partially want to watch Konstance squirm from my nearness, but I’m also just so damn good at it. Understanding people, finding their weaknesses, and making people uncomfortable—it just comes naturally.
A smile carves at the corner of my lips, and the simple sight of it makes Konstance shiver. You’d think I was a hideous monster instead of the guy she tried to fuck the very first night we met all those years ago when I arrived here.
Before she knew.
With careful care, I remove the leather gloves from my fingers, revealing the black scar that lines my right hand. Konstance peers at the inky wound with big judgmental eyes. I choose to lay my gloves down between her and me, and just as I expected, she inches her chair just slightly away from them.
Another smile slices over my features. “Good morning, my King.”
“Rotter.” He nods swiftly at me, using the shitty pet name they’ve all given me.
My gaze shifts to his sister, and I extend my hand as if I’d have the absolute audacity to kiss her boney knuckles. She pulls back from me with a hard line slitting across her lips. “Konstance.” The wicked smile against my mouth widens when she flinches at the sound of her name on my tongue, like the words themselves might infect her with my disease.
“Rotter.” My name is a snap of syllables from her.
“What was your name before? Why Rotter? I don’t understand,” the innocent blonde says, her head tilting at me, studying my inky hair, enormous leathery wings, the scar running down the side of my face, and finally the black mark on my hand.
She’s beautiful in that delicate way. In that way that you know life will hurt her if given the opportunity. If this were the story of Adam and Eve, this woman wouldn’t be innocent Eve at all. She’d be the apple. Shining and untouched. Just waiting to be devoured, and left to rot.
“My name is Alixx Stone, but the name ‘The Rotter’ outshines me.” I keep my words proper, as formal as the upbringing that was drilled into me all those years ago on the surface world.
“Why the Rotter?” Big green eyes shift across my face.
“Because I’m rotting.” My hand lifts, splaying my fingers wide to her, and her eyebrows pull together when I motion to the inky black scar. “A terrible disease infected my country long before I came here. I brought that disease with me to Wanderlust.”
Her gaze briefly follows the jagged scar that runs down the side of my face and cuts across my throat. That, that is a different story that I’ve never told a living soul about.
And I know they’ll never ask.
“Don’t touch him,” Kais whispers to her, his head tilting closer to her, his fucking blonde hair mixing with hers like he’s better than me. The cocksucker.
I’m bitter. I am. I just refuse to show it.
It’s amazing the little things you note when you’re no longer able to have them. Just slightly, Kais’s arm brushes against the woman’s elbow, but neither of them notices. My body would be on fucking fire with nerves and adrenaline if her skin touched mine like that.
“Ever? No one touches you ever?”
I shake my head at her slowly, watching the curiosity glint in her eyes. It’s hard to look away from the intrigue she’s showing.
“And how many people have caught the…was there a name for it?” She locks her jaw against the hundreds of other questions it seems she wants to ask.
“It was just something that afflicted my country. And luckily I’ve contained it to only myself.”
“So it was something from your past life. Decades ago.”
“A century. Over a century ago,” I correct.
“Okay. It’s not something that happened in Wanderlust and not one person has caught this…deadly mysterious plague, but everyone continues to fear it.”
“Yes.”
They fear it. They fear me. I’ve made myself into an image to be feared too. I can’t change my scars, but the sinister wings that shadow my existence only adds to the terrifying image they paint me as.
In this place, you can appear to be anyone you want to be. I want to be exactly who I am inside and out. And I want them to be absolutely clear about that. Hence, the unnerving wings.
Her eyes narrow on me, and I love that dirty challenge in her gaze. Thank the Wanderlust stars I postponed the rest of my meeting today with Ben to be here.
“Let’s try to get back on topic, shall we?” Constantine tilts his head to me, and I just barely manage to pull my attention away from her.
But I can’t.
“I didn’t catch your name.” I turn back to her, my interest growing right along with the manic smile pulling across my lips.
“Madison Torrent.”
“Alice. Her name is Alice.” Konstance interrupts with that shrill voice of hers.
Alice.
I don’t know if I believe that, but I’m not a prophet either.
“I was hoping you’d court Konstance. Starting today.”
That. That rips my fucking attention right back to him. He should have led with that.
“I’m sorry. You…you want me to court your fucking sister?” The pleasant tone I ask that in seems to go unappreciated.
“Watch your language in front of the ladies, Rotter.” Constantine holds his stern look on me for several seconds, and I choose not to remind him that his lady of a sister tried to taste my cock once upon a time. Until I warned her about my scar, that is.
I was a gentleman and she was…completely fucking disgusted.
Doesn’t seem like the right time to mention that tidbit of our history though.
I’ll save it for another time.
“Konstance needs a man in her life, and we’re considering a fine gentleman such as yourself.”
It takes me less than two seconds to read between those lines.
They want someone who they can employ and who they can shove off whenever they like. I get it. Konstance and I would make an attractive, lovely, lovely, miserable fucking couple.
The thing is, whoever puts themselves in the middle of the twins’ extremely codependent, screwed up relationship is going to be miserable.
At least this way, I’ll have the innocent, corruptible Madison for company.
“I’ll do it.”
My arm slings up carelessly but with intent onto the table top, and Konstance all but falls out of her chair to keep the distance between her and me. To add a dramatic flair, I cough into my arm, letting the charade carry on for several seconds, and at that, she does get up. She gets up and starts circling the room like she just remembered she wanted to get in a morning’s powerwalk. Right this very second.
“You like messing with us.” The intriguing woman, Madison, leans forward, her hands brushing over the tabletop, so near mine that it makes me fucking insane.
With my heartbeat drumming and my attention held on the eleven inches separating her fingertips from my palm, I look up at her with the most aloof smile. “I don’t know what you mean, Alice.”
The name seems to frustrate her immensely, but she does a good job of not showing it, aside from that tiny twitch of her lips. I’ll keep that little detail tucked away. Add it to all the details I steal away for my lonely free time.
No one, let me repeat that so we’re all clear, no one associates with me. No one will risk catching a centuries old disease on the off chance that our arms accidentally brush. So I have plenty of spare time to obsess and drill down to what really makes these people tick.
Take Kais St. Croix for example:
“I hear a large dose of lylacsen has infected our water supply. The drug is harmless, especially in a diluted state, but it is known to cause delightful hallucinations.” I watch with big eyes as Kais stiffly lowers his glass from his lips…he pauses for consideration…and then he spews the gulp of water back into the cup with a gasp and cough that sounds through the room for several seconds.
Drugs. Kai
s St. Croix might run around here like a general, but really, he’s an addict. He used to be anyway. And you’d never see that unless you watched every little move he makes. Which is exactly what I do on Monday nights.
Friday nights though, Friday nights are now my Madison Torrent nights. The people here have stopped keeping tabs on time, but I haven’t. I will be reserving that special time for her and all the alluring little things that make the woman seated across from me tick.
“Like I said, you like messing with us.” Madison arches an—are her eyebrows just the faintest hint of red?
“I do not know what you mean, sweet Alice.”
Another fucking twitch of those full lips. Another burst of elation within my chest just from the fact that I know I’m crawling under her skin despite the fact that I haven’t touched her.
Nor will I.
“As I was saying, the courtship, as you can imagine, will be a bit unconventional. Please remember to always wear your gloves”—the King’s gray eyes look pointedly down at my black leather gloves—“and we will enjoy your company, but of course, be cordial.”
“I am nothing if not cordial, my King.” Fuck cordial. Cordial is for people who have to look at their peers day in and day out and typically give a shit about what thoughts they think of you.
The King smiles happily with the arrangement he’s made. It’s entirely screwed up that I know I’ll be courting a woman who, had she hired a better assassin than myself, would rather see me dead. It’s also a little odd that I know I’ll be courting her as well as her brother, because you don’t get one without the other.
Not that I care to have either one of them. But, it’s a moderately lonely life I live. I have the free time, why not use it wisely? A favor for the King is always good.
But wait, it gets better.
“You’ll be spending a fair amount of time with myself as well as my…betrothed, Madison.”
I can’t help the manic smile that pulls across my lips as I look up at my Friday night.
