He couldn’t – wouldn’t – believe it. His heart was still in denial, battling with his senses that were telling him otherwise. The scent of blood in the air. The dead body lying in a crippling position on the floor of the royal ballroom. The warm, bleeding form in his arms, shaking from the effort to stay alive and the sobs that were wracking his being all over. The frustrated cries of the Twins, who were in vain trying to wake her up…

“I’m sorry”, his friend choked from the blood in his mouth and his own tears. His bloodied tunic was torn, revealing the signs of what the hurt knight had gone through. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get to her in time.”

“Hush, now”, the Cat gently scolded him, as he tried to pry the cloth away from the open wounds to avoid getting it stuck on them. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was mine”, the Rabbit admitted in a broken whisper, as his gloved hand gently closed his mistress’s eyes for good, marring the white fabric with her blood. “I brought her here.”

“No”, the knight tried to sit up, still intent on blaming himself. He fell back on the Hatter’s arms, his face a mask of pain and regret. “I’m the one who fell in love with her. The one who let her get close enough to strike.”

The werecat tending to his injuries shushed him once again, and for a while, the only thing that echoed in the grand room was his sobs, and the sniffles from the Twins, who were trying not to burden the group with their own sorrow over the matter. But the man with the big hat didn’t cry. He didn’t accuse anyone either.

He simply held the mourning, wounded man close, hoping against all hope to ease his pain, and knowing that the Knave’s soul might be suffering almost as much as his. His eyes, though, never left the woman who once held his heart in her delicate, royal hands.

That night, he swore to her silently: he would never trust a human female again. Alice had betrayed them all. And he intended to find her, and make her pay for all the death she had brought with her on their sacred land…