Page 30 of Dark & Darker Still (Vane and Roc: Origin)

A Lifetime Later

The boy is seven years old.

He is alone in one of the many rooms at the palace. His parents are in the next room discussing the planning of another ball meant to be hosted on the palace grounds. He can’t remember what they’re celebrating this time. Something about alliances between Darkland and Neverland.

He’s playing with his toys, a wooden rabbit and a tin fae with wings, gifted to him by his uncles.

Well, they aren’t his uncles by blood, but he’s spent enough time with them that the blood doesn’t matter to him one bit. They treat him like family and that’s all that matters. The constant presents don’t hurt either. All of his uncles love to shower him with gifts.

At this point in his imaginative battle, the rabbit is losing. The rabbit always loses.

In the other room, he can hear his father telling his other father that the ball should feature a signature drink, a combination of rum and bourbon. They’ll call it Seven Isle Iced Tea.

“Everyone will be drunk by sundown,” is the rebuttal.

“Yes, but imagine how smooth it’ll go down,” is the reply.

In front of the boy, in the corner of the room, stands a full-length mirror. The mirror itself is suspended on two arms attached to the base, so that a person can angle the mirror up or down.

For as long as the boy can remember, the mirror has stood there, though no one ever uses it.

It’s almost like it’s art or a relic. When he was very small, barely walking, he can remember toddling near the mirror only to be swept up by his father.

“Never touch it,” his father had told him. “Don’t go near it.”

“I don’t want the entire party inebriated,” his mother says. “Maybe we make them small glasses? Sipping drinks?”

His father sighs. “Fine, fine. Whatever our Darling wants, our Darling gets.”

The mirror lets out a squeak, the glass tilting.

The boy looks up.

The mirror pivots again, angling down.

The battle between rabbit and fae is forgotten and the boy gets up.

Another squeak.

The base jitters on the hardwood floor.

When the boy is close enough to see his reflection, the glass ripples, distorting his face.

And then a hand pokes through.

And the hand is followed by an arm, then a leg.

The boy steps back as a girl steps through.

The boy has seen a great many magical things in his life. Men with wings. Women who fly without wings. Men who glow. Women who make things appear and men who make things disappear.

But he’s never seen a girl step through a mirror.

She scans the room. It takes her a few seconds to realize he’s there as he’s half her size. She is tall, but slight, maybe close to his mother’s age, if he had to guess.

“Where am I?” she asks.

The woman is dark-haired and scarred like a soldier. Her bare arms are tattooed from fingertips to shoulders. Even her neck is tattooed with several black and grey roses twining around a gothic blade.

“The palace,” the boy answers.

“Darkland?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know the Devourer of Men?”

The boy has heard the nickname a hundred times before.

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

The boy turns away from the woman and crosses the room. “This way.”

The woman follows.

The boy shoves open the pocket doors and steps into the next room where his two dads are at the bar and his mom on the settee.

They’ve never made the distinction of which father is his, but everyone knows because he looks just like his blood father, black-haired, green-eyed, sharp like the devil.

And if his features did not make it obvious, his early craving for blood would have.

“Daddy,” he says.

His father, the King of Darkland, the Devourer of Men, looks over at him. “What is it, Lanon?”

“A lady came through the mirror. She asked for you.”

His father is suddenly rigid.

His other father, Captain Hook, is racing to his side to scoop him up.

“Get him out?—”

The woman steps into the room.

“Roc,” she says. “It’s me.”

In all the years of his life, the boy has considered his father a vision of control. He will laugh and he will joke and sometimes he will even anger. But he has never seen his father disarmed.

He has never seen his father cry.

“Lainey,” he says. It’s not a question. It trembles, instead, with years and years and decades of withering hope. “Is that really you?”

“Yes,” she answers and crosses the room in an instant and wraps her arms around the boy’s father.

And the man, known as the Crocodile, the Devourer of Men, wide-eyed and stunned, breathes her in and collapses against her and sobs.

I did not intend to write this epilogue in the beginning. I thought we’d end with Vane, Roc, and the Madd Hatter at the looking glass, Alice’s (and Lainey’s) future TBD.

But I saw this boy playing with his toys in front of the mirror and a woman walking through, and I couldn’t shake that image, because I knew what it meant.

So I wrote it. Truth be told, I thought Alice’s series (upcoming, someday, I don’t know when *don’t hate me*) would be about saving Lainey, but the more I thought about it, the less excited I became.

Because while there is redemption for Alice in bringing Lainey back, ultimately Alice’s journey is about her own power, her major character flaws, and how to live with both and I didn’t want to cage it within the framework of saving Lainey.

In a way, I worried the goal of saving her would distract from the journey Alice needed to go on.

And yes, yes, she will definitely go on that journey with the Madd Hatter! Cue the major enemies-to-lovers vibes.

This book isn’t like my other books — for one, there is no romance!

But writing it was a bummer and a joy because I could let Alice be as dark, and as flawed, as she needed to be, just like the men I write.

Women make mistakes too. Big, life-altering mistakes.

Sometimes, the worst kind. I hope you enjoy this one for what it is — a woman in her detriment, learning how to become something else despite the darkness she lives with.