The Hidden Library Page 11

  “Once. We went as a family one holiday and it was terrible planning on our parents’ behalves.” His smile is bittersweet. “None of us have been back since.”

  “Do you oversee yours?”

  The smile slips off his face. He busies himself with adding sugar to his coffee—a sure sign something is amiss, as I’ve yet to see Finn enjoy the beverage as anything but black. “Brom oversees that one, too.”

  For a moment, he looks away, through the large pane of glass nearby, out at the white clouds lining the sky. Even still, I can see the emotions raging in his eyes and tensing all of his muscles. Finn, who has been so forthcoming over my tenure in the Society, so generous with his trust, is hiding something from me.

  Once more, my inclination is to leave him to his privacy. But then I remind myself that we are a team. The nice thing about partners, he once told me, is that two are always stronger than one.

  He is not alone. I am here for him, good or bad.

  I scoot across the blanket until I am pressed up against him. My fingers find his and lace tightly until they feel like one. I cannot imagine he is upset about my fielding the call from Wonderland. After all, he was the architect to allow me such a privilege in the first place.

  His generosity, I think, is a beautiful thing.

  “Talk to me, my star,” I murmur.

  Quiet seconds tick by; his fingers have tightened around mine. I lean in and press my mouth against the curve of his jaw, just below his ear.

  He says flatly, “I’m going to 1876/96TWA-TS in the morning.”

  The jolt of surprise is unpleasant. Another assignment? At this rate, Todd will never be found.

  “Someone I know is dying, and I need to go pay my respects.”

  Wait—he mentioned this before, hadn’t he? When we were in 1847BRO-WH. He’d said nearly the same thing: Someone I know is dying. And then he’d changed direction and spoke of his mother, and here we are, nearly a week later, and I have somehow let his painful confession go.

  1876/96TWA-TS is his original Timeline.

  I lay my head against his shoulder. “I am coming with you.”

  I am charting new waters here, for even though this is neither my first relationship nor my first love, things feel different with Finn. Maybe it is because we were friends first. Maybe it’s because he found his way into my trust and my heart in the kindest, gentlest way possible. Maybe it’s because when we touch, prophecies, consorts, Courts, or shuffling decks are not worries. I only feel sparks. Maybe it’s because he has seen my past, seen the ugliness and pain associated with it, and he is still here, holding my hand.

  For months after I’d left Wonderland, I had given up hope that a meaningful life was within my grasp. I foolishly yet voluntarily wallowed in the belief my destiny had been stripped away from me, my purpose torn asunder. I was wrong, though. My destiny, my purpose, evolved. I met this man, and rather than chastise me for being blind to all the possibilities life still has for me, his kindness and tenacity coaxed me out of the darkness. I attempted to foolishly push him away, yet he dug his heels in.

  He did not give up on me, even when I warned him he could die in Wonderland. He came with me anyway. I will not give up on him, either.

  Finn murmurs, “It won’t be pretty.”

  “I imagine you thought the same thing of Wonderland, especially when witnessing an orgy and a vicious attack, all within the span of a pair of hours. Not to mention you were attacked yourself, with SleepMist.” An event that still eats at me.

  A breath of amusement escapes him. Yet still, he has not rejected my statement. Several more minutes crawl by in the elegant silence of the ballroom. And then he says, “Okay.”

  I shift my head to run my nose the length of his jawline and then back up to place another kiss where the previous lay before. “I was afraid I was going to have to bully you into seeing the wisdom of my plan.”

  “You, bully? Never.”

  It’s my turn to release a ghost of a laugh.

  “Also, what plan?”

  “It’s not really my plan, per se. I believe it was yours. I’m just co-opting it.”

  “Listen to you, sounding all Twenty-First Century with your co-opting threats.”

  I reach up my free hand to pat his face. “Nonetheless, my point stands.”

  “What was my plan, then?”

  “You told me two are always stronger than one.”

  He’s quiet for another long moment. “Will you stop me from beating the shit out of someone?”

  “Would you want me to?”

  “I don’t know,” he admits.

  “Is this the person who is dying?”

  I feel rather than see the shake of his head. And then he pulls out his phone and checks the time. “I have yet another meeting to get to. Holmes messaged to say he wants to brief us on the latest updates on his code cracking. And you’ve got a status report to get ready for.”

  “How does one get ready for such a thing?” I muse. “Is there a special suit of armor one must wear?”

  “Unfortunately, no. You looked hot in armor, by the way.”

  “Sweet talker. I bet you say that to all the women you ride into battle with.”

  “Only you.” When he presses a kiss against my temple, I close my eyes and savor the way delicious tingles skip merrily up and down my skin and spine. Softly, so only I can hear, Finn whispers, “My past isn’t like yours, Alice. St. Petersburg isn’t like Wonderland.”

  I tell him I know this. That it does not matter one bit.

  As we tidy up, he tells me of the widow who took him in long ago. He words come slowly at first, and then steadily as the past urges its way out. He talks of the widow’s kindness and generosity, but of how he didn’t feel like he fit in there and feared she would smother him. And then he tells me of how society shunned and yet found him fascinating all at once, considering he was witness to a murder and helped prevent another. As a result, he earned himself more wealth than most children ever dreamed of. He was a free spirit then, abhorring fancy clothes, schools, and churches. He despised being forced to abide by society and regularity. Education was not a priority then, and he ran away often. He spent a great deal of time going up and down the Mississippi River with a former slave named Jim. It is obvious this man means much to him, just by the tone in his voice. Furthermore, he was, Finn admits to me emotionlessly, the worst kind of troublemaker a kid could be and that I would have run the opposite direction if I’d happened upon him then.

  The unfortunate truth is my parents would never have allowed me near him as a child in the first place.

  As he tells me these things, I try to wrap my mind around his past and his present. Finn Van Brunt is a leader—an intelligent, thoughtful, funny, trustworthy man whose hidden talents are continually a delight to discover. Huckleberry Finn, he insists, is someone he prefers to stay in the past.

  I think, had I met Huckleberry Finn as a child, though, I would have been just as taken with him then as I am now.

  As we step into the elevator, I press a kiss against the corner of his mouth. “None of that matters to me. The only thing that does is that this still means something to you.”

  He smiles at my further co-opting of words he’s uttered to me before, ones I cherish deeply. “I think it always will.”

  It is exactly what I hoped he’d say. I think it is my truth, too.

  “DESTINIES,” THE SAGE SAID, “are like roads.”

  My fingers curled inward as I rose from my seat. I was in no frame of mind for riddles, not when my doomsday date was nearly upon me. But the eyeless woman turned her head toward me and said calmly, “Sit down, Your Majesty.”

  And then she actually waited until I did before she droned on as if we had all the time in the world. “Relationships are much like destinies.”

  Anger within flared as hot and bright as the overbearing sun baking us from the skylight above.

  “Therefore,” the Sage continued, “relationships are like roads.�
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  I literally bit my tongue until it bled to keep my ballooning opinions within my mouth.

  “Some roads are circular. They start at one spot and end in the same. Some roads fork and force their travelers to choose which way to go. Some roads go great distances. And then there are those that end abruptly.”

  The rebuttals clamoring inside of me were filled with desperate rage.

  The rock in the Sage’s hands rolled across her palms, onto her knees, and then back into her fingers. “Who is to say that a short road is less meaningful than a long?”

  No, I thought. No. She cannot be telling me this. My—our—last resort cannot be saying such a thing.

  She placed the rock upon the ornate stand next to her ratty chair. Its dull thud echoed within the cave. And then she stood up, curtseyed, and wandered into the black depths lingering beyond.

  I fought against the impulse to throw her rock after her, but I could not restrain myself from yanking strands of my hair out, one at a time, until the sting of my scalp barely tempered my impotent wrath. Finally, when there was a much-too-large pile of hair upon my lap, the bell that allowed my departure sounded.

  Hours later, in our home within the tulgey woods, I found Jace pouring over documents alongside the Cheshire-Cat and the Caterpillar. He looked exhausted—they all did—but the moment I crossed the threshold leading into the library, shared fatigue morphed into burning curiosity and hope.

  I bit my lip. Willed myself not to rage. And that was when all their faces fell, too.

  “Your Sage,” I informed the Caterpillar, “is just as maddening as you are.”

  For once, he did not have a derisive comment to lobby at me. All I got in return was bleakness.

  Jace steered me out of the library and into the downstairs washroom. I sat down as he poured a bowl of water and rummaged around the cabinet for soft cloths. No questions were asked, no admonishments given. When he gently dabbed at my the tiny scabs decorating an all-too-large section of my scalp, I thought: How can this not be right? How can these feelings that consume us be wrong?

  “Destinies are like roads,” I told him bitterly, “and relationships are like destinies. And some roads end abruptly but are meaningful nonetheless.”

  “We found nothing pertinent.” His own bitterness matched mine. “We went over anything and everything that is even remotely related to our situation, but there was not even an inch of wiggle room to be found.”

  Three days were all that were left. Three days before I was to leave this man behind, leave behind my crown, my throne, my friends, my work, and my life in Wonderland.

  A choking noise filled the room and my ears, one that originated deep within my chest. Jace held me tightly, and I him in return. He felt right to me, this felt right. And yet Wonderland insisted this was not true, that everything he and I felt for one another was, in fact, not beautiful and right, but poisonous and wrong.

  How could that be?

  I was supposed to marry this man. Together, we were to combine our thrones and stretch our influence between both the White and Diamond courts. There were schools to build, universities to christen. Farm subsidies to enforce, trade pacts to craft. We were going to embark on these changes hand in hand, our wills unified as we ushered Wonderland into a golden age. We were going to have children, possibly many, and our beloved heirs would continue doing what was best for Wonderland even if they were not chosen by the land to rule in our stead.

  But our desires were nothing more than dreams. I was to go to England and be nothing more than Alice Liddell and live a life that did not feel like mine and eventually marry some man I could never possibly love. Jace was to stay in Wonderland and stay the course and eventually marry some woman who was not me and to think of it was excruciating.

  I stare down at the tablet below me, marveling at how sharp the pain of such memories still are.

  “Are you okay?”

  Wendy hovers nearby, a hint of concern reflecting from her eyes as her green hair drifts messily about her head. “Of course.” I click the tablet off and swivel in the chair to fully face her. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  The concern disappears. “Thought I’d just check in before my meeting to make sure you understood how the status reports go.”

  “As technologically inept as I may be at times,” I say, “I’m fairly certain there is little to botch up here, especially as both you and the A.D. have written out instructions for me.” My tap upon a pair of notes nearby is meaningful. As soon as Finn went into a teleconference with Brom, the Librarian, and Sherlock Holmes, I was conscripted into a status report training that left me irritable and once more loathing modern technology.

  Wendy flushes at my words yet does not leave for her daily department meeting she chairs. “All status reports are recorded.”

  “I am well aware of that.”

  The look she gives me is comically yet gently accusatory. I refuse to encourage or elaborate upon any of the gossip I’m certain she’s been privy to, though.

  My chair swivels back toward the large series of screens on the wall. There are two minutes left until the communiqué goes through. “I am sure you do not want to be late for your meeting.”

  She hovers for an additional silent minute before relenting and exiting the room. When the door clicks shut behind her, I open the app on my tablet that controls status reports. Already logged in are the following bits of information:

  Nickname: Alice in Wonderland

  Official title(s): Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

  Author: Lewis Carroll

  Timeline origin: 1865 and 1871 respectively

  Designation: 1865/71CAR-AWLG

  Current liaison(s): The White King of Wonderland

  Catalyst: The Queen of Diamonds’ crown

  Location: Room 1508 [notation: override by L-1 / AL-AWLG—0150R; monitoring switched to system XPU-11; encryption CLASSIFIED]

  Status: LIVE

  My heart nearly jumps into my throat when a chirping sound fills the office. Upon my tablet, a message flashes across the screen: Status update transmission from 1865/71CAR-AWLG. A green button declaring Accept and another, red in color and saying Decline, sit beneath the brightly colored words.

  It’s a shaky finger that taps upon Accept.

  The largest of the screens before me flares to life. There upon it, his face just as dear to me now as it always has been, is the White King of Wonderland.

  A button on my tablet blinks, indicating the session has begun recording.

  For a moment, neither of us says anything, but then, on cue, we both let out a shaky yet quiet chuckle. “This.” He motions to what is no doubt a matching tablet to mine. “Is possibly the most surreal invention ever made.”

  “Were there any difficulties using it?” I ask.

  “None at all. I was given detailed instructions I memorized before destroying. I must have read them a dozen times before doing so.”

  I can’t help but smile; he does the same. He is in his room in the white pavilion, in the middle of his army’s encampment. The sight is a most welcome one. He is alive, he looks well albeit exhausted as ever, and here we are, worlds apart, and yet still able to talk with one another.

  I have not lost him after all.

  “How terribly boring that must have been.”

  “It was a good distraction from the battlefield, to be honest.”

  My smile dims. How could I have forgotten, even for a moment, to ask about what is important? “Were you able to recover the Cheshire-Cat?”

  “I am happy to report,” he says, the ghost of relief haunting his words, “that he is now here at the White encampment.”

  A massive breath of relief escapes me. “Was he harmed?”

  Regret flashes across the all-too-familiar planes of his handsome face. “He is shorter in the tail and prone to nightmares he will vigorously deny, but you know the Cheshire. It
would take much to break his spirit. He is already ordering me about and overseeing all war meetings.”

  “Callou, callay.” If only I could claim the same about the Caterpillar. I would welcome his high-handedness even here in New York.

  Jace leans forward, his nearly colorless eyes serious. “There is more you must hear. I was unable to locate your Grand Advisor’s body, but his head graces the Hearts’ Castle no longer. None do. We struck down and burned all pikes and crosses decorating the roads leading in.”

  What makes my eyes sting even more is the assured knowledge that the Caterpillar would disapprove of the twining strands of both relief and grief urging me to cry.

  “It is not safe now to travel, not with the Red forces looming, but I will ensure he has a proper burial at your castle at the earliest chance I can get. The people will not forget his sacrifice.”

  “Thank you.” My voice wobbles as I fight to get myself under control. “I will be forever grateful to you and your brave soldiers for what you have done.”

  “He meant much to me as well.”

  We have veered dangerously toward paths too emotional and painful to tread across whilst communicating through screens. I right our conversation. “How is the war going?”

  “It is a hardship that is affecting too many Wonderlanders.” Jace rubs at his dark hair, leaving it askew. “Homes are being destroyed at alarming rates. Kidnappings, murders, crops being burned . . .” He shakes his head. “All of this in addition to plagues and droughts in parts of the country. Vast numbers of refugees are fleeing toward the fragile safety of our combined borders. Our soldiers are burning candles at both ends, and yet I must ask more of them every single day.” And then, more quietly, “I have often wondered just how much truly worse things would have been had you not left. It is a terrible time for Wonderland, my lady.”

  The turmoil my people must be going through is acid in my veins.