He’d finally snapped. The Mad Hatter had truly lost his mind.
A lonely, desperate witch so starved for love she’d believe anything.
Madness. Utter madness. Those weren’t Darius’ words. They couldn’t be. The man who held me, kissed me, claimed me as his—that man would never say such things.
Unless he no longer remembered.
My chest cracked open. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
He’d forgotten… Everything—the kisses, the whispered promises, the way he’d held me like I was precious—all of it was gone. Erased. Swallowed by whatever darkness Alanna had unleashed in his mind.
Now I was nothing but a stranger to him. A forgotten memory discarded by a broken mind. I thought I’d finally found where I belonged. I thought someone had finally chosen me.
I was wrong.
I was always wrong.
Hatter had lost himself to madness. And in losing himself, he’d lost me too.
Ari dragged me down the hall. “You’re better off without him. There’s a reason he’s called the Mad Hatter.”
I refused to answer him. Or maybe I was in shock. My mind couldn’t process what had just happened.
Because Darius thought he was in love with an evil queen. He truly believed it. I’d seen it in his eyes—that desperate, hungry devotion.
But how? How had she turned him? Made him lose his memory completely? Even if she had wiped his mind, how could he love a woman who tortured children? Who beat his friends bloody? Who kept his allies chained in a dungeon?
It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.
I tripped over the hem of my dress, the fabric ripping. I didn’t care. What did a dress matter when everything else had been torn apart?
How could he forget me and remember her?
It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.
Unless Alanna had done something to him. Dark magic. A spell. Something that twisted his mind beyond recognition.
He'd cracked. The torture, the dungeon—it had finally broken him.
And Alanna was the one holding the strings.
Ari yanked me upright, his grip bruising.
“I know he humiliated you,” he said, his voice low enough only I could hear. “But you need to focus. We need to get the fuck out of here.”
His words meant nothing to me.
All Ari cared about was himself. His freedom. His escape.
He didn’t care that my heart had just been ripped from my chest. That the man I loved had lost his mind completely. Dismissed me as desperate trash without even recognizing who I was.
This was a hundred times worse than the rejection I’d felt in the coven. Back then, I’d lost people who had never truly accepted me.
But Darius? I’d given him everything. My trust. My heart. My body.
And madness had stolen him from me.
Ari led me back down the stairs—down to the dungeon.
