Page 44 of Alec in Wonderland (Rainbow Tales #1)

Bax's bedroom looked as if something exploded inside it. The furniture was little more than debris—shards, chips, splinters. Glass was everywhere. Nowhere safe to step. Even the walls hadn't gone unscathed. They were gouged by the detonated bomb known as the Knave of Hearts—a bomb that could go off again. At any time.

The scene suited Baxenvir. He stood amid the wreckage—chest rising and falling rapidly, hands curled into claws and bloody—and stared at the damage he'd wrought. It was enough. He wanted Mal's—no, not Mal! His name was Alec. Mal was the man Bax loved. Alec was the bastard who betrayed him. It helped for Bax to separate them. Two different people. One to love and one to hate. And it was Alec's body Bax wanted to see, broken and bloody among the remains of his shattered life.

With a sob, Bax fell to his knees, his hands covering his face and streaking it with blood. Broad shoulders bent and buckled under the strain of his breaking heart. No, not breaking. Broken. The damage was done. Bax refused to let it go any further. He stood up and narrowed his eyes at the place he had been happy for a short time. Had he really believed that mome rath crap—that someone could love him? He should have known better. Happiness and love weren't for warriors like him. He was better off bitter. Alone. It kept him sharp. Like a sword.

“Alec,” Bax whispered the name.

Then he heard his ex-lover's voice and saw him again in his mind. “Look at their eyes. Those are not dogs, Bax.”

“Not dogs,” Bax murmured. “Their eyes.” A jolt ran through him as he saw those eyes in his memory. They belonged to a man, not an animal. Was Alec right? The bandersnatches had gone with him peacefully. They had stood there, even as Bax argued with Alec. No sign of distress, no animal behavior at all. They had acted like people. People who knew him. They had recognized him. “No.” Bax swayed on his feet. “No, she wouldn't. How would she even do that?” But even as he spoke the denial, he saw those person-eyes again, and his mind spun back even further, to the day he had met Alec. “The gardeners. Oh, fuck. No. No, she couldn't. The King was still alive then. He wouldn't have allowed it. I heard him pardon them.”

Bax stared blankly ahead as thoughts spun in his mind. Thoughts of his queen and how easily she had summoned the dark magic on that battlefield. How quickly it came to her call. Bax had assumed it was pain and desperation that had brought the darkness to her like a pet. But maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe it came so eagerly because it had been summoned before. Because it knew her.

“But the King,” Bax murmured. “King Harver never would have allowed it.” He paused, mind spinning out. Further and further out. Testing new thoughts. “Unless the King didn't know.” Bax crumpled onto the shards of wood and glass, uncaring for the safety of his skin, and let out a shuddering breath. “He didn't know. All those people he pardoned. Had any of them truly been pardoned?”

Bax tried to remember them—all the people the Queen of Hearts had sentenced to die. On a whim. In a rage. The same people who her husband would secretly pardon. Bax had grown up around the Hearts court. He'd seen it all. It had made him laugh. Because he thought it was harmless. The Queen had a tantrum, but she was all talk. Her husband had the true power, and he wielded it gently. Quietly. But looking back, Bax couldn't remember seeing any of those pardoned people after the King had pardoned them.

“They disappeared.” Bax looked down at his hands. Hands that had killed for his kingdom and queen. No, it was all for her. He loved her. He would have done anything for her. “Would have?” he asked himself aloud. “Has something changed?”

With the perfect timing of a tortured mind, the memory of Alec begging him to stay popped up.

“—I love you. Leaving you was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But you came after me with just your soldiers. That tells me you're still mine. And I'm telling you I'm still yours. Forever. Stay with me. Please, Bax. Come to Marmoreal with me. The Queen of Hearts doesn't really love you, but I do.”

“It's too late,” Bax said to both Alec and Mal. “It's too late, my love.”