“Can I tell you a secret?” I didn’t know why I asked. Maybe because he was the closest thing to a friend I had in this mad world. Maybe because I needed someone—anyone—to know.
“If you wish, little witch.”
My throat tightened. “Today’s my birthday.”
The words hung in the air between us. Chester’s grin faltered—just for a heartbeat—before stretching back into place. But something shifted in those luminous eyes. Something almost... soft.
“A birthday,” he murmured, “spent washing linens in a demon’s keep.”
I shrugged, blinking hard against the heat building behind my eyes. “I’ve had worse.”
Chester tilted his head, studying me with an expression I couldn’t read. He didn’t argue. Didn’t offer hollow comfort. He simply watched, and somehow that was worse—the quiet acknowledgment that he believed me.
His fingers brushed my wrist—brief, deliberate. Then he stepped back and faded, his grin the last thing to vanish. But his voice lingered, drifting like smoke.
“Happy birthday, little witch.”
The kindness in it nearly undid me.
Chapter Seventeen
Darius
A hand on my shoulder. A voice curling through the dark. “Darius. Come back from wherever you’ve gone.”
I surfaced slowly, dragging myself up from the depths of dreamless sleep. The kind of sleep that offered no rest, only absence. My eyes found Chester’s grin first—it always arrived before the rest of him—floating in the shadows beside my bed.
“What is it?”
Chester’s body shimmered into view, his head cocked at a disconcerting slant. His eyes gleamed with something I couldn’t name. Mischief perhaps. Or something closer to purpose.
“A riddle for you, Mad King.” He spread his hands lazily. “What does a little witch lose track of when she’s busy washing your linens and counting moons?”
I pushed myself upright, ignoring the sharp pain in my side and the unease prickling along my spine. “Speak plainly, Chester.”
That grin stretched wider, but there was no mockery in it now. Only a strange, soft knowing.
“Do you know what day this is?”
“I’m tired, Chester. What day is it?”
“It’s not Alice’s unbirthday.”
“Not her unbirthday.” The words filtered through the haze of exhaustion until they finally clicked. “You mean it’s her birthday?”
“What would an unwanted, lonely little witch want?”
The question landed like a blade between my ribs. Unwanted. Lonely.
I thought of her locked away. Watched. Guarded. The way my men looked at her—suspicion hardening their faces every time she entered a room. The way I'd kissed her, touched her, wanted her—while still treating her like a threat instead of a woman trapped in a world she never asked to enter.
We hadn’t welcomed her. We’d caged her. Or at least I had.
And today she turned another year older. Alone. In a world that wasn’t hers. With no one to even know.
Except Chester.
“How did you…?”
