Page 9 of Tweedles Reflection (The Crimes of Alice #4)

Mab’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “I see your trip to the Shadow Realm hasn’t dulled your sharp tongue. How was my son?”

I tossed my hair over my shoulder and shrugged. “The same as usual. Bossing everyone around. Though, I think he may have found his match in that Morgana.”

“Interesting.” Mab’s lips twitched. “And I suppose she gave you her blessing without protest?”

I stuck my hand in my pocket, fingers wrapping around the Seelie Queen’s blessing. “Yes, and I have the other. Only yours remains.”

“I would have liked to see the look on my cousin’s face when she realized you had stolen it from her,” Mab hummed before shifting in her seat.

I didn’t bother asking her how she knew. There were some things that Mab always just seemed to know. Some power of premonition. Some spy working in the shadows for her. No one knew, and I doubt anyone else would ever find out.

“Oh, my queen. Our Alice was quite the vicious one indeed,” Cheshire chimed with a grin and swipe of his tail. “You would have been proud of our girl.”

Mab’s head tilted to the side but didn’t answer.

“We don’t have to play games,” I began, wanting this to be over rather than loiter making small talk. “You know what I came for. Will you give it to me?”

For a long moment, Mab simply watched me. Her dark eyes bored me, and I knew somehow she was seeing more than what was just on the surface. The urge to hide the ring behind my back burned through me, but I forced myself not to flinch. She would either give it to me or make a demand.

Either way, Mab wasn’t one to out another’s secrets for nothing. No, she liked her games far too much for that.

“Hmmm,” Mab hummed, lifting her hand to tap a long-nailed finger against her lips.

“I’m curious to know, are you prepared? For what’s to come?

For what you may lose? There is far more at stake than a crown and a place.

I could give you the blessing, and yet, you may still fail because you weren’t ready to give your very soul to the Underground. ”

“That’s my business.” My teeth ground against one another. “If I fail, it shouldn’t matter to you. You’ll be in the same position now as you were before. And, if I don’t, well, then we will be meeting again under entirely different circumstances.”

Mab laughed darkly, leaning on her hand. “We certainly will, won’t we? But time will tell if we will meet at all. In any case, I assume you’d like to go home with your lovers while the night is still crowning.”

I inclined my head. “Then name your terms.”

Mab’s other hand dipped into a magical pocket, pulling a crimson colored gemstone on a string from the ether. “For my queen’s blessing, what are you willing to do?” Her eyes scanned from me and then over my mates, making me stiffen. “What are you willing to lose?”

When my foot stepped forward, the guards became alert. Mab waved them off, her eyes solely locked on me.

“I won’t give you any of them, so you may as well not bother asking.”

Mab licked her lips and then threw her head back and laughed. “I am not like my cousin, who covets those she does not have. I am well and truly happy with the one I have.”

We had suspected that Mab and the Reaper, Eugene, were still together and, since no one has ever seen her with anyone else, she’d all but confirmed it.

Her answer made me relax a small amount. Not having to worry about my males took some of my worry away. Not all of it. Mab could still ask for something I didn’t want to give.

“I would like a truth.”

My brow furrowed. A truth. What truth? What game was she playing?

Mab continued as if I’d spoken the questions out loud. “You may pick the truth, but it must be one that not everyone here knows. Maybe even you.”

Now I was confounded. A truth that not everyone knows. Not even me? How could I tell a truth that I didn’t know?

The ring on my finger tingled. The queen likes darkness, especially in those who claim otherwise. Show her some of your darkness.

Some of my darkness?

My mind whirled with the possibilities. Parts of me that had reached into the dark, either with my words or my actions.

There were many prospects I could offer up to her, and yet none of them stood out, not so much as one event.

One defining moment that I’d always considered, if only to myself, the reason behind every bad thing that happened to me afterward.

Karma, as Kat would say, for letting myself sink that far into the darkness.

While the moment was something that Hatter and Cheshire both knew, the Tweedles didn’t. Even so, none of them knew the extent of it. The extent of my descent into hell and the beginning of my ascent into a vicious fae creature.

“You have it.” Mab blinked at me. “I can see it there, hovering in your mind.”

I swallowed, my fingers curling and uncurling at my sides. Giving her this truth would get me the blessing and then I could start the trials.

However, admitting it...

I should have left the others back in the van as Hatter asked.

No. Mab wouldn’t have asked this of me if they weren’t here. This was her payment for the blessing. If I told her this one thing, she would give it to me without a fight.

The ring pinched between my fingers. There is another truth I could give her, one that would damn me even more than anything else.

It’s not time to tell our secret yet.

The Shadow Man’s words burned in my mind. He was right. If I told them about him now, then any help he could give during the trials would be gone. They’d take him from me.

No. The only option was to give them this truth. The blackest parts of my heart.