by A. K. Koonce
“Lighton Farrow knows many things. Many priceless secrets.” Alixx pins his shining gaze on Elder Liddell, saying something without really saying it. Liddell lifts a dark eyebrow at the man sitting before him. “I’d like a word with him. Please.”
That might be the very first time in a century that Alixx asked something politely.
But it doesn’t stop the glare from gleaming in Liddell’s eyes.
“I said no.” Corben shuffles some papers in his hands, preparing to carry on.
“Give him a minute,” Liddell says flatly, motioning for Lighton to come forward.
Lighton freezes with steel in his spine, looking at Alixx with a furious gaze, while not moving a single inch.
It is not good to associate yourself with a prisoner. That is abundantly clear.
Hushed words pass through the crowd at the turn of events.
It becomes a buzz of sound that hums right into me.
“Order, order, my fellow Elders. Mr. Farrow. Come forward. Now.” The hard line tensing Liddell’s lips deepens with each passing second.
Finally, Lighton parts the crowd. He slips away from me, walking stiffly toward the one man I know he hates more than any other.
When he stands before Alixx, the two men stare at one another. One with amusement, one with rage.
Alixx arches his index finger and motions for Lighton to come closer, never once moving an inch in his seat that he’s using as a throne right now.
The muscles in Lighton’s jaw pulse harder before he bends at the waist and listens intently while Alixx whispers in rapid words that I can’t hear a single hint of.
Alixx inhales deeply before he speaks, explaining something in such serious detail his eyes become hooded by his brow.
Lighton pulls back. Stares down at the man. He never says a single word.
And then he walks away.
Everyone watches him as he passes by, coming straight to me and tangling his fingers through mine before pulling me along.
“What did he say?” I ask.
Still, Lighton doesn’t answer.
The two men guide me away from the watching eyes. Cat peers back at me as I stumble away, and she nods to me as if she’s assuring me she’ll stay while I can’t.
Everything feels out of my hands right now.
I’m not sure I’ll ever know what Alixx told the one person who hates him the most.
Even if I’m certain it was about me.
Fourteen
Lighton
If I wasn’t anxious before the damn trial, I definitely am now.
Fuck.
For the first time, I agree with Rotter.
Not that I said that to his smug fucking face.
I pass my gaze to Madison for the hundredth time, but she never looks at me. Chin tipped high, deep green eyes straight ahead.
She’s determined. Whatever happens today, she’s ready to win it. She’s clearly adamant to win a series of challenges that were named after her opponent.
Sounds a bit like failing before we even start, but whatever.
We round the corner of the brick estate, and at the back of the home, only a few feet of lush green grass separate us from the pool of rippling waves. Sunlight gleams across an endless sea of water. We stop at its edge, my boots sinking into the soft ground. Just three feet out is a white stone arch. Wind has worn it away with time, but it stays in perfect shape in the middle of the shimmering, drifting waves. That shine reflects off of the surface of the glittering veil waving across the center of the arch. It ruffles in the wind like the thing is made of thin material instead of magic.
That’s where she’s headed. According to Elder Liddell.
I turn to tell her the very basic details the Elder trusted me with. Her long blonde hair pulls back in the wind, streaming behind her like she’s a warrior princess instead of a girl thrown in the middle of a centuries old feud.
I pause too long while I look at her.
Because someone else cuts me off.
“Good morning, cousin.” The other Alice, Real Alice, smiles so wide at us it makes Madison grimace.
So much for faking it till she makes it, I guess.
“I’ve never had a cousin before,” Real Alice chirps.
I pass a glance at Authentic Alice, and I’m fairly certain I feel an unwanted hug coming on.
“How did you enter In Trance Island?” Kais turns to her with stiff posture and a frown that has just become a permanent part of his shit personality.
Seriously, his head was between Madison’s thighs this morning, and you’d think someone ran over his rabbit or something.
“I’m not sure really.” She touches a small finger to her chin, and I’d be surprised if this chick was ever sure about anything in her life. “I was swimming…and then I was here.”
Kais’s hard glare narrows on her like he might waterboard the information out of the poor girl.
“When did you get here?” I add, trying to ease the tension Kais is creating all by himself.
“Oh, I lived on the island for a while. Maybe a month. The flower women were very sweet to me.”
The flower women?
“A month?” Madison repeats, her own glare rivaling Kais’s for all its worth. “You’ve been here for a month? A month!”
Oh. Shit.
She’s been here longer than Madison.
Kais wraps his arms around Madison’s shaking body, and he hauls her away from the girl before she can shriek another word out.
I trail after the two, looking back to see a puzzled look on Honest Alice’s face. It’s her natural appearance really. Aloof. She’s the only person I’ve ever met that aloof completely describes.
“Relax,” Kais whispers, pulling Madison close until her forehead lands at the center of his chest.
She’s only a few inches shorter than him, but he manages to make her seem small and delicate.
“She’s nicer than me, she’s sweeter, she’s prettier. She’s Alice!” Her voice rings out with so much anger and annoyance.
“Your jealousy isn’t needed,” I soothe, and she only glares at me more. “She’s nicer sure, but she’s not pretty.” Another fuming glare that just makes me try harder. “I wouldn’t even touch her with a ten-foot dick.”
My kind words only pull her frown further down.
“Pole,” she says flatly, as if she’s correcting me for…no apparent reason.
“I mean, we can take a poll if you want, but I know Kais agrees with me.” I shrug, and she turns away from me with an endless shake of her head like she can’t have this irrational conversation right now.
Whatever.
“I shouldn’t even be here, Kais. I don’t—I don’t fucking belong here.” She tries to shove away, but he holds her closer.
“Yes, you do.” His voice is low, low enough to make her shiver against him. “And you’re about to prove it.” The way he grips her hips doesn’t look like an advisor’s touch. I cock a brow at him as he holds her at arm’s length, completely serious, completely focused. “While you’re distracting the Elders with the game, I’m going to look for weak points in the barrier. I’m guessing the games will take two to three days. By the time it ends, and you’re crowned victor,” he pauses on that, the faintest appearance of a smile touching his lips, “Wanderlust will be here. We’ll have won. You’ll have won,” he adds in an oddly rasping breath.
Is he fucking getting off on the idea of war?
Jesus, no one mention battle armor, fleets, or shields, because he’s going to cum in his jeans right here, right now.
Her thin fingers toy with the silver clasp of his belt, running back and forth along the metal until it’s all I can focus on. Except for the way his attention dips to her lips, the way he studies her shining eyes, the upturn of her nose, the fullness of her lips.
Shit.
He loves her.
That’s what’s wrong with him.
Love.
The breath shakes out of my lun
gs so loudly that they both look at me, telling me full and well that I interrupted something.
“Forgot I was here, huh?” I nod to them with an easy smile that makes them both frown at me simultaneously. “Just the third wheel in our threesome. Well, not threesome, threesome. Unless you count this morning. Which…I mean, I guess I wouldn’t count it, because Kais’s cock never joined the pantsless party. But there’s always next time, right?” My hopeful enthusiasm isn’t returned, and I’m forced to make an awkward clicking sound with my tongue before delivering a wink that even I’m embarrassed of.
Apparently, it’s a tough job being the third wheel. An unappreciated job at that.
“Right,” Kais says, drawing out that word until it’s clear he’s going to change the conversation to something much more boring. “What will you be doing?” The already disappointed look he’s giving me doesn’t feel very encouraging, and I can tell it’s only going to get worse when I actually answer him.
“I’ll be around,” I say vaguely, Rotter’s words circling my mind over and over again.
“Around? Doing what?”
Kais will not let it go.
He wants all the details for today down to which side my dick’s going to be hanging on.
Always the left, in case it’s of importance.
“Good morning, Alices.” Elder Liddell’s eyes are big and gleaming when he steps up to the far side of the bank, just near the veiled arch. He’s subtly terrifying during the daylight. He’s blatantly terrifying during the night. He’s just someone I never truly want to be around. And yet, I always am. “I’ve only got a few moments before returning to an enthralling trial this morning.” I hate the smile on his lips right now. “The others are watching from afar this morning.” He beams down at Madison and then True Alice. “This is known as the All Seeing Arch. A sort of looking glass that will project what occurs inside to the exit arch on the eastern shore. All you two have to do is enter this arch here on the west and find the exit in the east by nightfall.”
Madison’s pale brows pull together hard.
Because it sounds simple. It sounds like getting lost on aisle five and coming out at the bend of aisle six.
But we all know it’s not that easy.
Which is why I’m about to do what I’m about to do.
Even if I have no fucking idea if it’ll work or not.
Who would have thought I’d have this much blind faith in Rotter?
Madison is already stepping into the clear sparkling water, her leather pants wading down into the sand below as she steps closer and closer.
“Gwen, dear, do not be afraid.” Liddell motions for the younger girl to come forward.
Madison stands, sunlight shining down on her, bathing her in luminescence like she really is the chosen one.
While Gwennie Alice stands at the side lines, cowering from her shadow.
“You could always forfeit,” I say to Awkward Alice with a kind smile.
She ignores me and my enabling advice for her to cling to her fear.
“You’re going to fall behind, child.” Liddell lifts his hands impatiently to his favorite grandchild.
Madison takes the final step closer to the mysterious arch. The thin material wafts over her, sliding along her body like it’ll envelope her completely if she takes another step. Strange white light falls across her beautiful face, and all eyes are held on her squared shoulders.
No one looks away from her.
And that’s exactly what I’m counting on.
Her foot lifts, water ripples, her hand extends into the nothingness, and then, she inhales deeply.
The smoke that carries my body drifts over the water. It’s such a quick flash of movement it makes me sick to my stomach. But I keep focused. I sail faster and faster and faster.
Until I slip right into her lips.
Let her breathe me in.
Let her consume me whole.
Let her smuggle me into the All Seeing Arch like the fucking liar that I am.
Fifteen
Madison
Oh my God, I swallowed a bug. This is how it ends for the Queen of Lust.
“Fuckkkk.” The gagging cough I give is the most unladylike thing that’s ever come out of my mouth.
It’s dark, and I can’t see a thing, but I fall face first into it anyway. My palms sink into mud, and I convulse violently there, hacking and coughing. I can’t fucking breathe, and I really hope the Elders can’t see all this, because they’ll know immediately that I’m subpar Alice material.
I’m the backup Alice. The stunt double no one asked for.
“You didn’t have to deepthroat me, Cupcake.”
And that voice whispering through my mind is the only thing that could make this situation worse right now.
“Lighton…” I lift my head, my breathing wheezing in and out, in what appears to be a small tunnel. I fell…into a tunnel. A muddy, root tangled tunnel.
Am I underground?
And where in the Wonderfuck is Lighton?
“I’m inside you. Knew it’d happen eventually.”
He’s…inside me.
I breathe deeply, and the anxiety in the center of my chest presses harder.
Or…is that Lighton?
“You’re inside me?”
“Yep. Rotter told me how to slip inside you. Help you with your challenge today. How’s it feel, by the way? Filling? You feel really full, right? Stretched?” The sensual rasp of his voice makes me roll my eyes, and if he could see me right now, I’d flip him and his filthy mind off.
“I don’t know, are you sure you’re all the way in?” I pause there, sitting in the mud to take a moment to make a small dick reference to the one man who most definitely doesn’t deserve small dick jokes.
But I make them anyway.
“You think you’re really fucking funny, don’t you?”
I’m hilarious.
And he knows it. I can practically feel his smile. Which must be why I’m smiling, why I feel warm and…full.
Shit. I can’t tell him that, or I’ll never hear the end of his big dick energy.
“So where to, Fake Alice?”
“I guess east.”
“So…we’re just going to take a right at the first McDonald’s we see, or do we actually know north from south down here?” His voice hums through my mind with a shiver trailing after it.
My lip curls at his condescending tone.
“Are you sure Rotter sent you to help me?” I blow a big puff of warm air, my breath fanning my hair in front of my face. “I’m just going to follow this tunnel out; it has to end somewhere, and then, sun rises in the east and all that. I do know how to tell directions.”
Asshole.
“Wait, can you hear my thoughts?” I ask hesitantly.
“No. Even your voice sounds kind of muffled. Like there’s a divide between me and you.”
Like my body…
I nod. I’ve wasted enough time arguing with myself. I have no idea where Gwen is, and I need to use the head start I’ve given myself.
When I start to move, mud slides up my wrist, my palm planting somewhere in the slick mess that’s too shadowy to really make out.
“Please be mud, please be mud,” I chant to myself, and my knee slides too far, my chin grazing the “mud.”
“Relax it’s…probably mud. Eighty percent chance at least.”
“Anytime now you can start helping me,” I mutter under my breath.
“What do you think made this tunnel?” he muses like we’re making casual conversation now, my elbow scraping on a sharp stone hidden in the mixture of dirt and water that I’m pretending isn’t shit and urine.
“Animals? I don’t know, Light.” I’m making very little progress. My shoe keeps getting caught on roots, and thank the Wonderland insanity Kais told me to wear leather pants, because that’s one good thing going right for me at the moment.
“There are a lot of abused animals in this kingdom. All kinds. Creat
ures Liddell tried to use to steal away their magic. Something like that could have made it.” This creepy information only sets me further on edge, and he just keeps fucking going. “Elders could have made it. But if they did, I’d think it’d come with some kind of surprise.”
“Surprise?”
“Yeah, not like confetti and balloon surprise but like, trap doors, poison, and slicing weapons surprise. Something to really challenge you, you know?”
It goes without saying that confetti and balloons were not at all what I was expecting. But I guess trap doors weren’t either.
My pace becomes slower, more careful and testing, but the air here is harder to breathe, the mud thicker and impossible to maneuver. The new constant voice in my head rattles on and on, and I’m really starting to believe Rotter asked Lighton to help me just to put him back on my shit list.
Not that he ever left, I mean.
“And yeah, I found out the hard way, but that’s how I learned ducks have corkscrew cocks.”
Lighton’s fun fact number nineteen thousand isn’t heard though.
A growl rumbles through the tunnel. It’s a snarling sound that stops me dead in my tracks. The hair on the back of my neck lifts one by one just as I turn my head.
And come face to face with shining white eyes.
The breath in my lungs is forgotten, the scrapes along my elbows are meaningless, the complaints I’ve thought of over and over for the last hour are absolutely nothing compared to the fear crawling up my stomach right now.
“Madison, run!” Lighton’s urgent warning is the first thing that’s actually useful since he snuck in here with me.
The speed with which my hands and knees are now ripping through this shit hole is unimaginable. But the rapid pace of the thing behind me is just as fast. Sharp teeth sink through the leather and clutch my ankle in a matter of minutes. If only I could reach the pinprick of white light is ahead.
Pain and anger slice through me in waves as I kick and shove at the darkness. A mixture of yelps and growls reverberate right through my leg as the thing roars right into me.
A rock slices over my palm within the deep mud, and it’s the one thing that registers among the frenzy of fear. The stone fills my palm, and with all my might, I slam it down toward the thing. A cracking thump and an echo follow, but I don’t pause. The moment the teeth release me, I’m clawing my way toward that growing white light.
