I’m too far away from the Hatter. He’s across the ballroom, and I’m too far away. It’s the first thought that goes through my head when he spins and sprints towards me. Everything moves in slow motion, the sounds going away until it feels like I’m in a tunnel, like my ears are stuffed with cotton. The Queen stands from her seat, horror written across her face as she stares at her son’s appearance, at the roses. I have a fleeting thought that I should have warned her. Tweedledum and Tweedledee hardly react. They certainly don’t stand from their seats. The only reason I assume they know something is happening is because I see them both smile at the same time, their focus on the Cards spilling into the room. It’s safe to say they know the Cards are not friends.

Cheshire disappears from his spot faster than I’ve ever seen him, only to reappear beside White on the other end of the table. Both are holding wicked looking swords, both glowing a different color. I can’t see any details, but I know they’re intricate. White and Cheshire scream a battle cry and charge into the ambush, cutting down Cards at lightning speeds.

Hatter is fast, but he isn’t fast enough. I watch in dismay as the Knave hurls a dagger through the air. It’s aimed right at the Hatter, and panic seizes my heart.

“Watch out!” I scream, but my voice doesn’t reach him in time. The dagger slams into the Hatter’s shoulder, embedding itself deep. He stumbles from the force, but he doesn’t stop. Blood rushes from the wound, dripping down his bare chest in tiny rivers.

He grabs my hand and drags me towards the portal gateway, ripping his hat from his head. Escape. We’re trying to escape.

“We must go. We must go,” he chants as he flings the hat at the ground.

Nothing happens.

Hatter makes a strangled noise and tries again, picking up the hat and throwing it down, putting all of his focus into the task. His face scrunches up as he tries to draw on his power. The sound of the Knave’s laughter reaches our ears.

“Did you think I wouldn’t plan for that this time?” The Knave asks, walking towards us, taking slow measured steps.

The Queen trails behind him. He hardly reacts to her, choosing to ignore his mother in favor of harming us.

“Alexander,” she tries. Nothing. “Please, you must stop this.”

The Knave takes his time walking towards us, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Behind him, the Cards are still spilling into the room, their numbers growing. White and Cheshire meet them, swinging their swords and snarling, bodies piling up around them at an alarming rate. It doesn’t seem to be affecting the sheer number of enemies. Tweedledum is raking his claws down the chest of one. I look away just as Tweedledee grabs one of the Cards and rips his head clean from his body. My stomach rolls. Now I know why I feel like prey around them.

“The knife.” The Hatter yanks the metal from his shoulder, its serrated edge ripping free. He screams in pain, blood spurting from the wound before he drops the blade to the floor. It clatters, sending droplets of bright red blood across the worn, golden floor. Some of it splatters my boots.

“It’s enchanted.” The knave smiles. “Made especially for the Hatter by the Red Queen. You should consider yourself special since she spent so much time on you.”

“Alice can go to Hell,” Hatter snarls.

I stand there while they spit words back and forth, unsure of what I should be doing. I have the Heart Breaker in my hand, hoping I don’t have to use it. My job is to stop this, to bring down the Knave. I don’t want to hurt him, but we’re at his mercy. I refuse to let more Wonderland inhabitants die. I need to step up now, before it’s too late. My eyes search for the Queen, finding her right behind Alexander. Her face is sad, but she’s strong. Her spine is stiff. I give her the barest nod, letting her know it’s her time to act, to save her son. She walks forward.

She’s beside the Knave when he swings a sword I never see him draw. It’s aimed right for her neck, but it passes right through the same way White had. When it doesn’t harm her, the Knave’s eyes widen slightly, and I see the first signs of recognition in their depths. The Queen, to her credit, doesn’t slow or show any reaction that she notices the sword pass through her. She’s continues walking until she stands beside us.

“Alexander.” She focuses her eyes on the man she birthed, taking in everything he has become. “My baby. How I’ve missed you.”

“I belong to no one but the Red Queen!” he snarls, taking a step towards us threateningly.

Hatter and I draw the swords we wear at the same time, the sounds they make as they slide from the sheaths drawing the Knave’s eyes. I had already slipped the Heart Breaker away, deciding we are too close for the bullets to safely hit only the Knave. There are too many on our team in the line of fire.

“You think to best me in battle?” he asks. The question is directed at me. I raise my chin.

“It’s my destiny,” I reply, holding the sword steady at my side.

He laughs, and I tense.

“That caterpillar has been filling your heads with nonsense, has he? You actually think any of that is true?”

I smile at him, and I know it’s not a friendly smile. I can feel the menace I have yet to let show, dripping from my lips. My rage overtakes me, but when I speak again, my voice is calm, steady. The Hatter stiffens beside me, my darkness licking against him.

“We don’t know if it’s true. But we hope it is. We have hope for Wonderland. And I’m going to brandish that Hope like a sword.”

“Your hope will die with you.” The Knave lifts his sword.

“Alexander. This isn’t you,” the Queen tries again. “This is not the boy I raised. My son would never raise his sword to friends.”

“I’m not a boy. I’m a man. In the highest station possible.”

“No, my son. You were a prince. Now, you’re nothing but a puppet.”

“Shut up!” the Knave snarls. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I know my son. And I love him. I know he’s somewhere inside you, fighting to get out. Let him out.” The Queen takes a step closer, her eyes glistening as she tries to reason with the Knave. I hope against all hope that Alexander is still in there, still able to find his way home. “This is not who you are.”

“You know nothing! You will all die for the lies spilling from your lips. I will remove your heads and take them to the Queen on a silver platter.” The Knave looks at the Hatter. “Can you survive a beheading, Hatter? Shall we test it?” Blinding rage fills my body, but I hold myself in check. I breathe in and out the same way I do in the courtroom. I need to keep a level head. Wars are not won with rash decisions. They’re won with strategy.

“I cannot die.” Hatter’s voice is rough, and I have no doubt that the memories that come flooding back are nothing less than gruesome.

“Well, then I suppose the Red Queen will keep your head in a glass box where you’ll be forced to watch everyone you love, your entire world, die at the hands of the One True Queen. She’ll bathe in their blood, and she won’t stop until every last corpse is cold at her feet. I’ll watch you scream out in your glass box until you shred your vocal cords to ribbons.”

Hatter jerks, the blow hitting him deep. I try to grab his hand, feeling the tension coil up, ready to explode. I’m too slow. I’m always too slow. He charges the Knave, his sword raised high. There’s a clash of metal as their blades meet, the clanging mixing with those of the fight around us.

White, Cheshire, and the Tweedles are fighting hard, but the Cards outnumber them ten to one. The more they kill, the more that pour in, like a hydra. Cut off one head, and two more take its place. I watch the Tweedles leave a trail of carnage behind them, but even then it doesn’t seem to be enough. Tweedledum is bleeding from a huge gash on his chest, the dragon-scale armor ripped open. Tweedledee has blood dripping down her horns. Bloody, they make a gruesome sight.

White is completely covered in the gore of battle. He’s dripping blood, the spray soaking his clothes. I can’t tell if any of it is his or if it’s all from the Cards he has fallen. His ears twitch, cataloging movements around him. He seems to know seconds before a Card charges him, able to dance out of the way. Cheshire is completely spotless everywhere besides the scary looking claws on his hands. They drip the blood of the Cards he mutilates, leaving puddles everywhere as he makes his way through the group. He rips them apart one by one, his body full feline. They’re both a sight to behold.

When I focus back on the Hatter and the Knave, I can tell they are equally matched. They dance back and forth, swinging their swords. Hatter seems stronger, but he’s injured, and I’m beginning to think his mind is playing tricks on him. Every now and then he adds an extra swing in a different direction, like he thinks someone is there rushing towards him. There’s never anyone there, and the Knave takes every opportunity to take advantage of his open ribs. Hatter is bleeding from cuts running up the side of his body. Every clang of metal makes my heart squeeze that much harder.

“We have to do something.” I state the obvious, looking at the Queen for inspiration.

“What can we do? He won’t listen to me.”

“We need something powerful,” I mumble, watching the fight closely. “Something that will work.”

“Like what?” the Queen’s voice shakes. She wrings her hands together.

“Is there anything you can say? Anything that will make him remember the time before he became the Knave? Something that will trigger a strong emotion? Anything at all.” It’s my final plea before I have to call the plan a failure and return to the idea that I have to kill a man more victim than a villain. If I can avoid that, I will, but the odds don’t look good.

“I, yes. There might be. There’s a lullaby.”

“What lullaby? He’ll recognize it?”

She smiles slightly, even though Chaos surrounds us. “When Alexander was a baby, I used to sing a lullaby for him every night. When he got too old for such things, I still hummed it around the castle. He never liked to admit it, but I caught him listening to the sound a lot, enraptured the same way he’d been as a young child. I wrote the song for him, when he was born.”

“We have to try it then. It’s our last chance.” I turn, meeting her eyes, making sure she hears me. “This is it. If we fail, we find another way to get rid of the Knave. We won’t have any other choice.”

She nods even though I just told her I might have to kill her son. There’s too much at stake, and the Knave is the Red Queen’s greatest weapon. If we fail, Wonderland dies. She understands even as her heart breaks. There won’t be any other way.

The Queen stands tall, folding her hands in front of her. Her eyes begin to water even before she opens her mouth, the tears spilling over her lashes and onto her cheeks. When she begins to sing, I feel the pain she’s infusing into the words, the agony of a lost child. Tears spring to my own eyes, and I dash them away as they fall.

When the Queen had first begun the song, the ballroom was filled with the sounds of battle, her voice drowned out by the clanging metal and the screams of anger. When she finishes, the ballroom is eerily silent, the last notes of the lullaby floating through the air.

Tears flow freely down my face as I watch. The Knave stills mid-swing, turning to stare at his mother. Hatter watches him warily, holding his arm where blood runs from a gash. None of us dare move.

“Mother,” the Knave rasps.

The eye I can see is black, the blue hidden by the intense power of the Queen, the darkness swallowing up the pupil and everything else inside. I watch in wonder as the black fades away, revealing a blue so clear, it looks like the water in travel brochures. I take a startled step back. The Knave’s eye moves to me, and comprehension crosses his face. There’s awe in there, surprise, hope. The hope makes my face scrunch in an attempt to hold back the water works.

“You’ve done it. You found the loophole.”

I watch in shock as the roses on his face and chest whither and die, and for a moment, I feel victory dancing at my heels. My chest feels a little bit lighter.

“I want to save you,” I choke out. “I don’t want to kill you.”

“I don’t need saving,” he snarls, blackness dancing at the edge of his eye.

“Sweetheart,” the Queen jumps in, drawing his attention back to her. The blackness disappears again. “This isn’t you.”

“I’m the Red Queen’s slave.” The words are pained, anger and sadness mixed together. “Alice betrayed me.”

“Alice betrayed us all. You are not the Red Queen’s slave. You do not belong to Alice.” The Queen raises her chin. “You are Prince Alexander, the rightful King of Wonderland. You will fight this hold she has on you. You will fight for us all.”

“That part of me is dead. I’m not that man anymore.”

“He’s in there somewhere, fighting to get out. You are stronger than this. You are a King.”

Tears leak from his eye, his body tensing.

“I’m not strong enough to keep her out. Even now, I can feel her power moving through me, seeking to take root again.”

I believe him. A bright red rose blooms on his forehead, only one. I feel the scale we’re standing on, this balancing act as we fight to see who can gather the most weight. For a moment, I believed we had tipped the scales in our favor. I had believed we could do this without bloodshed. When I see another red rose bloom, my eyes seek out the Hatter’s. He notices the roses, too. His face is anguished, and I realize this isn’t something he wants to do either. We had both placed all our hope on this plan. We had both fought hard to save a life that isn’t meant to be taken. It’s too soon. Alexander needs to live. We’re so close but not close enough. We’re losing the battle.

“You can fight this,” the Queen urges. “I love you, Alexander. Your father and I love you very much.”

“Stop it,” the Knave whispers.

“We love you, Alexander. You are stronger than she is. You will fight this!” There’s panic in the Queen’s voice now as another rose blooms, this time on his chest. “You will fight her!”

“Stop talking.”

“We wish we could have protected you all those years ago. We wish we could have spared you this agony. We’re always with you.”

“Stop it!” The Knave is screaming now, his hands coming up to grasp handfuls of his hair. He tugs brutally at the roots. The veins on his neck begin to bulge at the strain of fighting off the Red Queen’s influence. I cringe, clenching my fists tight. My chest hurts, my heart beating frantically inside.

There’s a blinding light in the room, one that causes my eyes to close. I can’t see past the stars in my vision, can’t breathe for fear something worse has come. When I peek past my lashes again, Danica stands beside me in all her glory, her tail curling around my ankles, her form of comfort. She’s wearing the same golden dress, the same serene smile. A strangled noise comes from somewhere in the room, like someone can’t breathe. I don’t look, but I know it’s Cheshire, know the noises are choked off sobs. I fight the surprise from my face, giving nothing away as I steel myself for whatever this means.

“Danica,” the Knave whispers. A rose shrivels on his face.

“Hello, Alexander.” Her voice is soft, threads of love woven through the words. I meet the Hatter’s shocked eyes, my own reflecting the same emotion. Danica. He loves Danica, too.

Agony is written across the Knave’s face, his hands gripping his forehead tight.

“I can’t hold her back,” he cries, his face red from the effort. “I can’t stop her.”

“Fight it,” Danica says. “You’re stronger than she is.”

“Not anymore.” The Knave falls to his knees, his sword clattering to the marble. “Not anymore.”

Danica moves closer, falling to her knees before him. Her hands reach up and brush his skin. There’s a bright light where they touch even though Danica isn’t corporeal. Another rose falls away, but it’s replaced by two more. He looks up at Danica, tears trailing down his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he wheezes. “I’m so sorry.”

“We will not discuss that. Not now. You will fight her. Fight her. For me. For Wonderland.”

“She’s coming back. I feel it taking hold again. I can’t win.” The Knave’s eye looks towards me, and clarity shines from within. “The prophecy,” he whispers. I shake my head. “Yes! You must! Kill me now! While you still have the chance. I can’t stop her. I can’t win.”

“You can’t help what you’ve done. You’re a victim. You deserve to live.”

Everything in my nature rebels against punishing an innocent man. My soul bleeds for what he’s asking me to do, and my fear of having to do it is shattering. I want to help people. I want to help them all. Do no harm. Do no harm. Do no harm.

“You have to kill me,” he roars, his face blooming with more roses. The wound on his face is almost completely covered again. He’s losing the battle. “I can’t hold her off much longer.”

The Queen cries in dismay, realizing that this is it. This is the moment we feared. She rushes forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders, the same bright light emanating from her as Danica. There’s a ringing in my ears as time slows down, and I clutch my heart in dismay. A phantom wind spins through the room, creating a vortex that lifts loose strands of my hair around my face. My eyes leak a trail of never-ending tears.

At some point, the Hatter moves, coming to stand beside me. He holds my hand in his, his face written with the same agony as mine. There’s a sword in his other hand, a sword he holds out to me.

“Stab me through the chest,” the Knave begs. He opens his arms wide, Danica and the Queen clinging to his shoulders.

“I can’t,” I choke. “I can’t do this.”

“You must! This is your duty! You must save Wonderland! You must save us all!” His voice chokes on the words, desperation taking hold.

The Hatter moves, wrapping his arms around me from behind. His palms fold mine over the pommel of the sword, holding them together as if he’s afraid I’ll let go. He doesn’t move them, and we end up holding the sword aloft together. I shake my head, no longer able to speak.

“You must!”

The Queen is crying, her arms wrapped around her son tightly. She’s nothing more than smoke, but her arms seem to steady the Knave, giving him strength. Danica has tears running down her cheeks as well, her hands now gripping either side of his face, keeping his eyes on hers. They stare at each other, memorizing. If we do this, we’ll be spearing the sword through her first. My arms begin to shake.

“It’s okay,” Alexander whispers to them. “It’s okay.”

Danica leans forward and places her lips against his. It’s the barest of touches, and where they touch, they glow a pretty green. The wind picks up, and I hear things begin to crash off the table, the gusts tearing through everything. When she pulls away, his eye finds me again.

“Please,” he sobs. “I don’t want to be this monster anymore.”

I can barely see, the tears spilling from my eyes, blurring my vision. But the Hatter helps me take a step forward, and then another, until we’re in front of Alexander, and Danica, and the Queen.

“Together,” Hatter whispers in my ear. “You are not alone, Clara.”

I don’t fight as we lift our arms. I understand what has to be done. Black dances at the edge of Alexander’s eye, seeking to take over. Roses are blooming rapidly across his chest. He’s losing the battle, and he’s willing to forfeit his life in order to save the world he should have ruled. His sacrifice will save us all.

“May you fly on the wings of Wonder, your Majesty.” The words come automatically to my lips. I have no knowledge of it being appropriate or tradition, but it seems to be the right thing to say. “May you embrace the freedom of death.”

His spine straightens as he looks me in the eyes. He nods, his jaw clenching hard against the pain he has to be in. Tendons throb in his neck, veins ready to burst in his forehead, as he strains against the Red Queen.

“Do it now!” he screams, every word agony. “Do it now!”

Together, Hatter and I tighten our grip. We step forward, thrusting the gleaming sword deep, right in the center of the blooming roses on his chest. The air stills, the room grows quiet. I watch as blood wells around the sword, running down his chest in small rivers before pooling on the floor beneath his knees. The black drains away. The roses wither once more and fall to the ground as ash. The Queen quietly sobs. Danica keeps her hands on Alexander’s face, holding onto him, letting him know he isn’t alone.

Another blinding light fills the room, so powerful, I can feel its warmth. I close my eyes, but when I open them again, spots dance across my vision. When I’m finally able to blink them away, Alexander kneels before us in golden glory, the sword still protruding from his chest. Here’s the man from my visions, the one who was meant to be King.

Danica clutches onto him, her hands holding his face still as blood drips from the corner of his mouth. She doesn’t move, doesn’t waver. The Queen clutches his hand to her as the Prince fixes two clear blue eyes on me. A bronze crown sits across his brow, golden hair spilling over his forehead. He smiles just the tiniest bit.

“Thank you.” The words are free of pain. They’re clear, but they’re soft. I have a moment where I think, this is it. We can still save him. He’s free from her clutches. But then, he collapses to the ground, into the pooled blood beneath him. He doesn’t move again.

I turn in the Hatter’s arms and bury my face in his chest, uncaring of the blood still there, letting my tears flow free. I cry for the brutality of the World the Red Queen has made. I cry for the mother and woman who lost a son and a lover, not once but twice. But mostly, I cry for the sacrifice one man made to save his Wonderland.

I cry until there are no more tears to give.