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LEEDS, alone in the library, silently applauded the twins for stealing Alice away.
“You can tell how much they love being that size.”
They’d been desperately courting Alice ever since their bodies grew. They treated Alice like Dark did, protected her like Jack, and doted on her like Leeds, all to awaken feelings of love within her.
But their methods were infantile. Maybe it would work if they were all ten years old. If it were Leeds, he would bind Alice with chains of love and keep her tied up so that she could never touch another man again.
There were plenty of ways to make a girl obsessed with you. If none of them worked, you could always trap her on a physical level. Cutting off her legs was a last resort.
“But I sure would hate that if it was me.”
Laughing at his own cruelty, Leeds returned to the bookshelf at the back of the room. He put the school history book back on the shelf and looked up at the ceiling.
It displayed a painting of a lion and an eagle battling a serpent-shaped demon with wings—the Jabberwock. The image had been passed down throughout Ark School for years.
A girl was cowering at the feet of the Jabberwock.
The girl, her hair red like Alice’s, had been charmed by a demon and became the one to call forth the Jabberwock to earth. She was known as the “Summoner Maiden.”
“If a demon has to take her, then shouldn’t it be me?” With that declaration to no one in particular, Leeds exited the library, the smirk still on his lips.
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IF you wanted to befriend someone, you talked to them in the afternoon. If you wanted to actually get to know them, you talked at night.
Night was a quieter time—easier to hear things as the temperature cooled.
Mary, the maid, didn’t know the specifics of how sounds traveled differently, but she did have this to say about the night’s effectiveness.
“The silence of night makes whoever you’re speaking to let their guard down, my lady. It’s hard to lie when you’re worried someone might be able to hear your heart racing.”
Leeds had been in Alice’s room, guarding her while the twins went to eat dinner.
“I’m going to eat next. She’s out cold in there, so let her sleep until she wakes up naturally,” he said.
“Okay!”
“Okay!”
They sat back to back in chairs, with Dum facing the door and Dee facing the window. They wanted to get into bed with her like they did as children, but they couldn’t risk waking her up.
“I want to see Alice sleeping, Dee.”
“So do I, Dum. But we can’t.”
They were feeling selfish, though they didn’t dare do anything that would upset Alice.
Dum and Dee thought growing bigger would come with more freedom.
They’d expected to be able to leave food they didn’t like on their plates without being scolded or stay up as late as they wanted without any complaints. But the demon had made them older, and while it did come with a bit more freedom, there were also new restrictions that they never experienced as children.
“Endurance” was the greatest of them all.
The boys had always found it strange to see Jack or Dark reach out for Alice instinctively, only to let their hands fall before they could touch her.
They were bigger than Alice, so why didn’t they use that power to touch her?
But now they understood—they didn’t want to hurt someone they cared about.
Using force was no way to obtain the person you loved.
If you didn’t treat someone delicately and kindly, like a flower plucked from the stem, they would spread their wings and fly to someone else.
“What do we do to get Alice to acknowledge us?”
They’d been treating Alice like a princess for a while now, but Alice still treated them like nothing more than large children.
Dum had truly believed that Alice would see him as a man once he was taller and his voice was deeper. He was heartbroken that it hadn’t turned out that way.
“How do we make Alice see that we don’t want to go back to normal?”
Dee was in just as much pain.
He couldn’t count how many times the fact that his youth alone meant he would never be Alice’s lover had crushed him. If they went back to normal, it would be another five or ten years before he could hold Alice in his arms again.
He could spend those years chasing after her, but by the time he was grown again, she would belong to someone else—she would be his bride.
“I don’t want to sit back and watch anymore.”
Dum stood up and walked over to the sleeping Alice.
She was hidden under the blanket, but her long, curled eyelashes, adorable nose, apple-red lips, and smooth, pale skin all made Alice devastatingly beautiful.
Alice was pure of heart, had an important place in society, and was someone the twins would never come close to if they lived a normal life. They would never get to be together if she hadn’t taken them into her family—that was how sacred she was.
But the love Dum felt for Alice wasn’t familial. He wanted more than goodnight kisses from her. He wanted her heart to skip a beat when he embraced her.
Dum placed his hands on the bed, but Dee scolded him from the bedside.
“Don’t. You don’t want Alice to hate you.”
“I don’t care if she does. It’s better than doing nothing…”
Dum grabbed the blanket and yanked it off her.
When he did, he was staring at a pair of bright red eyes.
“…Alice?”