I looked away. What I wanted to say wasyou matter to me. What came out was safer. “You’re one of us now. The hat accepted you. That means something.”
It was a deflection. Something a coward would say. But she didn’t push. Just nodded slowly and turned her attention to the blood on my chin.
She opened the linen chest and pulled out a clean cloth. “Let me clean this up.”
I let her. And tried not to think about why her hands on my face made my chest ache in ways that had nothing to do with my injuries.
“I’ll get some water to clean you up.”
“There’s a pitcher by the bed,” I said. No need for her to go anywhere.
I clasped her wrist and pulled her against my chest. “No.”
She lifted a slender brow. “You don’t want to be cleaned up?”
“It’s not because you’re one of us, Alice, that I fought for you. It’s not because the hat branded you.”
Confusion flared in her eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“Because you’re mine, Fate. And no one hurts what’s mine.”
The confession landed between us like a stone dropped into calm water. Alice went still. I went still.
What the hell did I just say?
I avoided her gaze. I hadn’t meant to say that. Hadn’t even known I felt it until the words were already out, hanging in the air where I couldn’t take them back.
Alice didn’t speak. Her fingers trembled against my jaw.
“Darius...”
“Don’t.” I swallowed hard. “Just... Don’t.”
She didn’t push. Just nodded slowly and turned her attention to the blood on my chin.
But something had shifted between us. Something I wasn’t ready to name.
Chapter Twenty-One
Alice
Mine.
I never thought I was worthy to be loved. To be protected. To have someone look at me as if I were the most precious thing in their world.
My throat tightened, an ache spreading through my chest.
Darius had thrown himself in front of me when Grump attacked—wounded, bleeding, barely able to stand—and still he’d fought. Still he’d put his body between me and danger as if there were no other option. As if protecting me was as natural as breathing.
And somehow that was my fault?
Tinker Bell had come close, had been the nearest thing to a mother I’d ever known, but somewhere along the way I’d become more liability than family. Something to manage. Something to worry about.
But Darius... he looked at me like I mattered. Like I was his.
The word echoed through me, foreign and terrifying and wonderful all at once.
Across the cavern, the Uncrowned Seven, Caterpillar, and Chester struggled to contain Grump, whose accusations still rang in my ears—screaming at me for not hunting my mother’s killer. A mother I never knew existed until I crossed into the Elder Dimension.
