Looking Glass by Christina Henry

Author:Christina Henry [Henry, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Alice was asleep, but Hatcher was awake.

The weak winter sun filtered through the window and made the yellow of her hair gleam like spun gold, or at least that was what Hatcher thought when he saw it. He reached out to touch it. Her hair was baby-fine and smooth and just long enough to brush against her cheekbones.

Her scarred cheek lay against the pillow. The skin of her face and neck was golden brown from these months out in the open, but below her shoulders she was pale as milk. His hand ran from her hair down to the slim, strong arms, brushed against her hip bone, stroked up over her stomach and then between her breasts until it reached the hollow of her throat. His hand rested there for a moment, feeling the pulse of her blood, feeling the life and warmth that was Alice.

She was a miracle to him, and he knew he didn’t tell her this often enough. He never thought he’d be anything but a blood-soaked blade after Hattie died, after he changed from Nicholas to Hatcher. But Alice made him human again. Alice loved him, even when he didn’t deserve it.

I should have been there for her in that terrible house, he thought. It was hard not to think this way, even though he knew his Alice was capable—hadn’t she destroyed the damned boy on her own? Hadn’t she burned down the structure and all the monsters within? But he still thought he should always be there, always be ready to stand in front of her and keep her from harm.

This, he knew, was because he hadn’t been able to keep his wife or his daughter from harm, so long ago. When he thought about that time, the things that happened and what he did afterward—everything inside him would start swirling and writhing and his brain would fill with blood and shadows and sometimes it was hard to see, hard to know anything except the way he felt when his axe was in his hand and he was hacking, hacking, hacking at the flesh and bone that gave way beneath his fury.

Alice was the only thing that ever cut through the contortions inside him. She was the only person who made him feel like he could still be good—not just the mad Hatcher, but Nicholas, somewhere deep down.

Not that he’d been such a good man when he was Nicholas.

No, and not even a man, either, he thought. Nothing but a boy, a boy who strutted like a rooster and thought he could never lose until he lost everything.

“But I’m not that boy anymore,” Hatcher said. “I know better now.”

“What do you know, Hatch?” Alice asked.

Her eyes were still closed, her voice a murmur.

Don’t think on those days now. There are better days ahead, days with Alice.

His hand moved from the pulse at her throat to the swell at the top of her breast, hesitating there. He leaned in close to her mouth so he could breathe her in.

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