The Looking Glass Wars (31 page)
Read The Looking Glass Wars Online
Authors: Frank Beddor
Tags: #Characters in Literature, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #General, #Fantasy, #Fiction
Again, he nodded. ―I owe you a thanks.‖ He patted the AD52 strapped to his thigh.
―I‘m only glad you weren‘t too proud to use it.‖
―I should have used it more.‖
She understood. He had killed The Cat but, in essence, The Cat had escaped. Whether or not Dodge‘s confrontation with the beast had been enough to loosen the noose of Black Imagination around his throat, to pluck free the barb of hatred that had given his life purpose for so long, only the future would show. But Alyss hoped he could put his anger behind him. She longed for the boy she once knew to take up the body of the man.
We might get to know each other again, refresh the love we once had—a love that although we were young was by no means childish. The jabberwock tooth he‘d given her…I‘ll wear it around my neck to show that I‘ve not forgotten and I still care for him, a talisman against his darker urges.
She turned from Dodge Anders and glimpsed her reflection in a looking glass. She remembered her time in the maze when she stood in this very room and saw, in place of her own reflection, Redd‘s face staring back at her from that same glass. But now her image rippled and faded, and there stood Genevieve and Nolan with their arms around each other, smiling with pride. The progress of the queendom, the Alyssians‘ victorious coup, whatever successes and failures awaited them in the future—it all began with her, Genevieve and Nolan‘s presence seemed to say, the power and wisdom that resided within her, the most powerful queen ever to lead Wonderland.
―It‘s all in your head,‖ Genevieve said.
―I know,‖ said Alyss, and despite the traumas of the past, the uncertainty of the future, she wouldn‘t have given up this moment for anything. ―Isn‘t it wonderful?‖
Twenty-three.
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