Authors: Marie Hall
Sensing her sadness, he was moved to trace her cheek. She paused, stilled at his touch and it made his stomach twist, because to her this intimacy with him was all new. He’d held her before, talked with her, but never truly knowing it was her.
Vivid blue eyes full of keen intellect peered deeply at him before her lashes fluttered in acceptance of his touch.
“I’m not sure how to do this.” Her voice broke and he tugged her in for a hug.
At first she was stiff and unyielding, but he just continued to rock her, to stroke her back and whisper she’d be okay and Aeric was shocked that this didn’t feel in the slightest bit weird to him.
“Lissa knows how to live. I’ve looked through her eyes, seen her take joy from a moment, she knows how to laugh, how to love. Me, I’ve been so hidden, so wrapped up in my head that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to learn how.”
Her words pierced his heart because he wasn’t sure what to tell her. Everything she said was true, to deny it would be a lie. And that’s not how he wanted things to go between them. Not ever again. Tipping her chin up, he held her gaze as he asked, “Why me, Chrysalis? I understand why Lissa would want this, but why you?”
Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. “Because I can’t imagine anyone else ever being able to truly accept me as I am. To understand my struggle. But you witnessed it, you saw and you know and it gives me hope that maybe…” she swallowed and he heard the tears.
Brushing his fingers on her cheek he smiled. “You want to know how to live? How to embrace the magic of a moment as Lissa does?”
“With everything in me.”
“Then tell me, if you had one thing in the whole of Kingdom that you wished to do or see, what would it be?”
Blinking she turned her face to the side and he could see she was giving it much consideration. Her tiny brows furrowed into the cutest little line and he grinned when her body softened, yielded to him. When she took an infinitesimal step deeper into his arms, his space. When her scent of roses laced the very fabric of the wind.
Finally she looked at him. “I wish to see a star be born.”
He’d asked Lissa almost the exact same question and her answer had been the very opposite. Grinning, he shook his head.
“What?” She asked with a twitch of her lips, he couldn’t seem to help but trace the laugh lines around her mouth. Lines she’d probably had no hand in creating, but that he meant to see become her habit one day.
“You just remind me of someone.”
“Lissa?” her voice sounded slightly defeated, a little sad.
Moving his hands so that he framed the softness of her face he nodded. “Yes, sometimes. But I see you too, Chrysalis. I have not forgotten the sacrifices you made for her, for myself. You are a woman worth knowing.”
Blue eyes swam with tears.
“You want to know how to live,” he repeated himself, “then kiss me.”
Leaning up on tiptoe, he felt the electric charge of her strawberry laced lips slide against his own. Her kiss was soft and so very tentative, but it moved him all the same. Chrysalis was not Lissa, what she was was a good and decent woman who’d fought the battle of her life and won.
Wrapping his arms around her waist, he kissed her back.
And so began their courtship, it blossomed from beside the bank that’d been created to destroy her.
A month later he was smoothing down his jacket. The sleeves were a little short, but otherwise very comfortable. Chrysalis was taking sewing lessons from her father and insisted on creating his clothes as she found the skins he wore offensive.
He chuckled as he gazed in the mirror of the cabin that they shared. The cabin wasn’t large, only a one bedroom with a built in hearth and small kitchen. Baths were taken in the moon pool out back. Aeric had built the home when he’d determined that coming and going over fifty miles every week was asinine, getting to know her meant they needed to stay in much closer proximity than that.
She’d decorated it simply. A small multicolored yarn rug she’d woven herself, a small vase full of apple blossom twigs, as cutting chattering flowers, she said, would be much too noisy.
There were curtains, but they were so isolated they usually left them open. Chrysalis was no longer bound to the moon as she’d once been, the mark under her eye was now gone. The moment Siria’s hold had left, so had it.
And slowly but surely she was coming out of her shell. Chrysalis was much more subdued and prone to long bouts of silence, but they weren’t uncomfortable and he found he rather enjoyed it. She’d sit on his lap and knit and they’d be content to simply be together.
Walking up behind him, she smiled. It wasn’t a long one, but it sparkled nonetheless. Laying her hands on his shoulders she nodded. “Do you like it then?”
He nodded as she brushed at a stray bit of lint on his lapel. “I do.” The pants she’d made him fit perfectly. “So what do you think?” He turned, holding out his arms for her inspection. “Think your parents will approve of me?”
Chrysalis looked positively delicious today. Dressed in a gown of purest black, it spilled down around her ankles like slithering shadow. The heart shaped corset fitted to her waist, making her appear both slimmer and curvaceous at the same time. She’d gathered her hair into a fancy knot behind her head, causing her eyes that were already a deep blue, to seem like it glowed against the alabaster smoothness of her flesh.
“I think that they should.”
“Do you?” He narrowed his eyes when she nodded and carefully wrapped her arms about his waist.
His heart ratcheted up a notch whenever she initiated touch. It was something he knew she was still learning to be comfortable with, but she seemed more and more desirous of it as their days together grew.
Slipping his palm up her back, until it rested against her naked shoulder blade, he inhaled her unique fragrance. “And why is that, little butterfly?”
It was a moniker he’d now taken to calling her. It fit the duality of her nature, the seeming fragility of her beauty.
Her eyes seemed to hint at a secret, but she shook her head. “I hear that Leonard has made us his famous lemon curd.”
More nervous than he cared to admit, Aeric ran a hand through his hair. “Last time I met your father it didn’t go so well.”
Taking his hand, she whispered, “I do not think that will at all be the case this time, hunter.”
Dinner had been a spectacular success. Alice and Leonard both had outdone themselves. Now the women were in the living room, reconnecting and talking, leaving the men to clean up.
Drying the final plate, Aeric willed his nerves away and taking a deep breath, turned toward the Hatter.
Peaked brows were lifted. “I’ve been expecting you to get to the point already,” Hatter’s deep voice rumbled. “Do you love her?”
His face was serious and Aeric tried not to take offense at him, if it was his daughter he doubted he’d be any different.
“I love Lissa with all my soul,” he finally admitted.
He nodded. “And what about my Chrysa? To you, she may be two different women. To me, she is simply my daughter. And if you cannot love both, you cannot have either.”
Nodding, Aeric spread his arms. “I couldn’t agree more. I feel great affection for Chrysalis. And each day that affection grows. I do want you to know that I only want what’s best for the both of them.”
“That’s good.” Hatter reached for a cupcake, taking a bite of one and slowly chewing before saying, “Then we’re on the same page here.”
“Yes. And in fact,” Aeric cleared his throat, “there is something else I’ve wanted to ask you.”
Never taking his eyes off the Hatter, Aeric waited for the man to finish eating his cupcake. He’d already had four of those, clearly he was obsessed with his wife’s cooking, which, no surprise, Alice made the best cakes in all of Kingdom.
“And what might that be?”
“I want to take Chrysa through a door.”
Dusting off his hands, scraping his fingers through his disheveled black locks, he grunted. “I can arrange that.”
“Thank you.”
And while he knew that Hatter would always be watching, Aeric sensed they too might be finally turning a corner.
That night Aeric led Chrysalis to the door Hatter had fashioned beside the moon pool. It was an ordinary door that hid an extraordinary secret.
Guiding her to it, he chuckled.
“What is this, hunter?”
Feathering his knuckles down her cheek he shook his head. “Not telling. Open the door, Chrysa.”
Brows twitching, she gave him a last questioning look before wrapping her fingers around the knob and slowly opening it.
She gasped as she gazed upon a world full of stars. Covering her mouth with her hands she murmured, “You remembered.”
Tucking a strip of hair that’d fallen out of her bun behind her ear, he nodded. “Sit down, there’s something you won’t want to miss.”
Dropping to her knees, she tucked her gown around her legs. He sat beside her. After a second, she moved so that she was on his lap. Folding his arms around her, he sighed as she exhaled a heavy breath and leaned all her weight on him.
All around them the night sang with the chirping of birds and croaking of frogs. Golden bugs danced through the sky and a gentle breeze stirred. But inside that door a star was ready to be born.
She bit her lower lip, eyes peeled inside the door. And just then right at the center of a million stars, another came into being. The navy and teal sky glimmered as if from a heat wave and then there was a brilliant shimmer and then a burst of silver.
Chrysalis laughed and the sound of it was so indescribably lovely because of its rarity that he squeezed her tighter.
“Oh, Aeric,” she twisted in his arms and this time she didn’t try to hide her tears. Tossing her arms around his neck, she planted a quick, soft kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”
And the region of his heart that was already so full became just a little bigger, a little wider. “You’re welcome,” he said with a voice grown husky.
Another month passed and things had definitely begun to change for Aeric. Chrysalis was coming to mean as much to him as Lissa did. Her quiet thoughtful manner was so contrary to Lissa’s wild exuberance, but it worked and ever since the night of the stars he’d noticed a definite change in her too.
“Aeric?” She glanced at him shyly as they walked toward the same clearing he’d once held Lissa in after her abduction.
“Hmm?” He handed her licorice stick he’d just plucked from a bush. She loved licorice, funny, because Lissa had hated it.
Nibbling on its tip, she gave him a grateful smile and his heart thumped in his chest. Her shy glances and sweet smiles were coming to mean so much to him.
“You once asked me if you were even in Wonderland.”
Nodding, he thinned his eyes. “I remember.”
Taking another bite of the candy, she swallowed before asking, “Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess the way you shifted the land on me that night, left me stranded inside of a field of sinkholes.” He poked her in the side.
Making a sound between a snort and a laugh she swatted at his hand. “That was wrong of me. I never did tell you I was sorry.”
“No.” He shook his head, tugging her in for a hug. “I know why you did it, it’s not even an issue for me.”
Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “You’ve given me a gift, and now I want to give you one too.”
Stepping out of his arms she wiggled her fingers as he’d seen her do before. And for a second he recalled that each time she’d done it something bad had happened. But not this time. This time the sun was shining down upon them, the clouds were cotton tail white and the sky a robin egg blue. Suddenly there was music. A tinkling merry sound that brought an instant smile to his face and before them an image—like an oasis mirage—shimmered into focus.
Revealing a large, golden carousal full of whimsically carved creatures sliding up and down beneath its red and white striped dome. There were white rabbits dressed in livery, a mouse wearing a vest, a caterpillar with a dress for a body, a large orange stripped tabby sat beside a blue one with a jeweled collar. Every creature he’d seen and known while here.
Holding her hands together she looked at him and he knew, understood deep in his soul that she was nervous of his reaction. Of what it might be.
Grabbing her hands, he kissed each knuckle. “It’s beautiful.”
Lips twisting, she pointed. “Do you want to ride with me?”
“I would love to.”
Up and down they rode, he on the caterpillar, she on the white rabbit.
Her face was joyful, exuberant and it was all Aeric could do not to stare at her in wonder. It’d taken months, but Chrysalis had finally come out of her shell. She was still painfully awkward and shy, but none of it bothered him.
Grabbing her hand, he brought it to his lips as the world swirled around them in a dazzling array of color and sound.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered and her head whipped toward his.
Suddenly the ride stopped as her breathing hitched. “Me?” Her fingers touched her chest.
Dropping from his seat, he moved into her, still hanging onto her hand. “You.”
Then she was standing beside him and the carousel was gone, the clearing was as it’d once been and yet everything was different. The air was charged and prickled upon his flesh.
Her hand shook when she placed it against his rapidly beating heart.
He grabbed it.
“Don’t you mean, Lissa?”
“No.”
The world seemed pregnant with wonder and possibility as he gazed at the same heart shaped face he’d fallen in love with all over again.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “But I’m weird and so socially inept, doesn’t it bother you?”
He laughed and flicked at her nose. “None of you bothers me.”
“Really? You’re not embarrassed to be around me? Or—”
“Chrysa, never.” And when he kissed her she threw all of herself into it.
She wasn’t practiced, her touches were exploratory and tentative, nor was she wild like his Lissa. Chrysalis approached this as she approached everything in her life. With caution and thought and he let her do whatever she wanted to him.