They bind my hands with silver twine.
I don't struggle.
They drag me through the ashes of Tweedledown. Past the cracked queenstone. Past the blackened well where screams still echo. Past a broken doll lying face-down in the ash.
The villagers are gone.
Bill is gone.
They carry the Mirrorblade ahead of me like a torch. I watch them take it.
Say nothing.
My boots swing inches from the ground. Wind tugs hair across my face. A crow lands on the branch above me.
I close my eyes.
And smile.
* * *
"Alice," the voice purrs. "You've gone and died again."
I float in a dream of stitched shadows and sourceless light. Stars bare their teeth above me. Below, the ground breathes like a sleeping beast.
"Where am I?"
"In the crack between endings," says the Cheshire Cat. His form flickers. Grin. Smoke. Nothing. Grin again. "The place where stories chew their own tails and call it fate."
"I failed."
"Of course you did. That's what makes you interesting."
I try to move. Can't. Invisible ropes dig deeper with every strain.
"I can't fight like this."
"Then don't fight."
"I have to fight."
"Then fight."
The stars flicker out. One by one.
"I should be dead."
"Should is such a tedious word." He yawns. "You're not the first Alice, you know."
I go still.
"But you may be the last."
Pain stabs through my chest. Sharp. Real.
"Then tell me—what did the first Alice do wrong?"
The grin lingers. Faint. Curved like a blade.
"She let them mark her."
Darkness collapses.
A scream coils in my throat. I don't let it out.
My body spasms.
* * *
I wake coughing in the back of a rusted, iron-barred wagon.
Lungs burning. Throat tasting of soot and rot. Wrists raw.
A gaunt man in a burnt top hat taps the bars with a bone cane. His face is carved in perpetual delight, but the joy doesn't reach his eyes. His coat is stitched from different shades of skin.
"Careful now." He prods me. "Do you know what binds the soul tighter than chains? Guilt. Or maybe nostalgia. Hard to tell. Both make lovely nooses."
He taps harder.
"Still, silver's more fashionable." He grins. "It bites the bold and binds the meek, a ribbon made of silence and teeth. The more you writhe, the more it drinks—what rots the will, yet never reeks?"
I stare at him.
He taps his chest.
I try to pull my wrists apart. The silver digs deeper. Fresh blood.
He licks his teeth.
The Mad Hatter bursts into laughter, hops backward, and pirouettes toward the front of the cart.
To my left—a walrus. Actual walrus. Tusks chipped. Eyes sunken. Chain around his neck rubbed raw. He grunts when I shift.
Coughs. Wet. Heavy. Wipes his snout on his flipper. Blood and mucus.
"How are you alive?" I ask.
The man beside him—wiry, sharp-chinned, empty carpenter's belt hanging from skeletal hips—nods. "Didn't think you'd make it. Not after that."
"Who are you?"
"The Walrus," the pale creature says. "And this is the Carpenter."
"Why were you hanging from that tree?" the Carpenter asks.
"I killed a Mirrorknight."
"Impossible!" they say together.
"What did you really do?"
"I almost killed a Mirrorknight."
"Alas, the truth," the Carpenter says.
"What's your truth?"
"We once tricked oysters into a seaside walk," the Carpenter says. "Said we'd show them the moonlight."
The Walrus grins. "We showed them teeth instead."
"Now we're the ones in chains."
I laugh. Can't help it.
"That's not even the funny part," the Walrus says. "We were invited—"
"We were tricked," the Carpenter corrects.
"To a tea party."
"The tea was bitter."
"The biscuits stale."
"And the sugar," the Carpenter finishes, "it was salt."
"You were drugged."
The Mad Hatter claps from the front rail. "Oh, bravo! Steeped in dreamroot and drizzled with forget-me-knot. You all drank so willingly. Some asked for seconds."
The cart rattles. Chains jingle overhead. Meat-hooks line the ceiling. The roof is patched with leather that still twitches.
"How long have you been here?"
The Walrus shrugs. "Weeks? Months?"
"Long enough to lose count," the Carpenter sighs. "We had others. A hare. A dormouse. A girl. So many."
"Where are they now?"
Silence.
"Some the road took," the Carpenter says. "Hunger. Fever. Bloodrot. Others killed when the bandits came."
"Bandits?"
"Raiders in flesh cloaks," the Walrus says. "They took their skins. Left their bodies for the crows."
"We used to be twenty."
"The Mad Hatter smiled through the whole thing."
I lean back. Catalog. Plan. Search for weakness.
The Hatter turns. Eyes glowing beneath his soot-crusted hat.
"Cargo lost, profit lost. But a queen half-dead and strung like fruit? That's a rare vintage. Might bottle you if no one buys. Tragedy makes the finest notes."
Through the bars—a forest flayed to its nerves. Trees hung with bones. Sky black as bruises.
"Where is he taking us?"
"The Flesh Bazaar," the Walrus says.
* * *
Days pass. Or nights. Can't tell anymore.
I lie curled in the corner. Body slick with sweat and grime. Breath shallow. Stomach cramping. Clothes crusted stiff. The stink of decay rises from my own skin.
Can't move much. None of us can.
The Walrus wheezes in his sleep. Wet rattle. Lips gray. Tusks yellow. When he speaks, it's fragments of old stories.
The Carpenter scratches marks into the floor with a bent nail. Counting something.
Sometimes I hear laughter. High and giddy.
Sometimes I see the Cat's grin behind my eyelids.
Sometimes I dream I'm still hanging from that tree.
Then—the wagon stops.
Footsteps. Creaking.
A tray slides across the floor. Gray slush. Smells of glue and mold.
I can't sit up.
The Walrus reaches for his bowl. Flipper hits the bars. I push it closer with my foot. He doesn't take it. I push again.
The Carpenter drags the tray closer. Doesn't eat. Just stares.
The Mad Hatter crouches outside the cage. Watching.
"Eat up. Tomorrow's a special occasion."
He leans in. Breath sweet and rotten.
"Tell me—what wears a price, weeps like meat, and begs not to be chosen… yet hopes to be picked?"
No one answers.
"A slave. Or maybe supper."
The Carpenter drinks. Gags. Swallows again.
The Walrus wheezes. "Where's ours?"
The Hatter kicks bowls through the bars. One splashes against my side.
I lift the damp fabric to my mouth. Disgusting. Faintly sweet. Spoiled.
But it's food.
I suck at the cloth. Greedy. Humiliated. Scoop what remains from the floor with my fingers.
The Walrus wheezes again. Flipper doesn't lift. Bowl inches from his snout. He just stares. Pupils blown. Mouth slack.
The Hatter's grin sharpens.
"Ah, poor thing. What spreads from mouth to mouth, kisses skin with fever's tongue, and leaves its mark in blisters?"
He waits.
"Plague."
The cane plunges into the Walrus's chest.
He gurgles. Shudders. One final rattle.
Still.
I lunge. Instinct. Body screaming. Cramps seizing. Knees giving out.
I don't reach him.
The cane slams into my stomach.
Air leaves me. I collapse. Vomit. Half-digested slush splatters the floor beside the Walrus.
The Hatter watches. Delighted.
"Oops. Guess we're skipping seconds."
He hooks the cane under the Walrus's jaw and drags. Wet scrape. Blood trail. Tusks scraping metal.
The pale eye stares at me as he's pulled away.
I don't cry. Can't let him win. Can't look away or I'll never look up again.
The Hatter stops at the threshold.
"Fat's no good when it's spoiled. But the tongue?" He snaps his fingers. "Tender."
Gone.
The door slams. Cage rocks. Chains clatter.
I stare at the blood trail. Chest heaving. Wrists bleeding fresh.
The Carpenter counts scratches. One, two, three.
I curl into myself. Pain blooming. Bile and iron on my tongue.
Close my eyes.
The Cat's voice purrs in my mind.
See? You tried. Wasn't that worse?
The cage lurches forward.
* * *
The cart stops with a death rattle.
Bolts groan open.
They pull us out one by one. Hands everywhere. Knees scraping stone.
I step left when others step right. Testing. The silver hisses. Sparks. Bites deeper. Vision splits. Someone yanks me back.
Collar comes next. Iron around the neck. Chains linking us like dogs.
I don't resist. Not yet.
They bring us to a leather tent. Intestines hanging from hooks. Meat swaying.
Basins of water.
A man with no mouth gestures.
Another nods.
The stripping begins.
Clothes torn away. Nothing spared. Not boots. Not belts. Not shame.
I stand motionless. Dirt streaking my ribs. Back a map of old wounds. Someone whistles.
I file the sound away. Another debt to be paid.
Then the water.
Three buckets. Four. Five.
Cold. Brutal. Smells of rotten flowers. Perfume.
I sputter. It clings like oil.
They pour it like baptism. But there's no rebirth here.
The Carpenter cries. Others collapse.
The Mad Hatter appears. Twirling his cane.
"Can't have our pretties looking too lived in. Today's the big day. Best to sparkle."
He turns to me.
"A little washed. A little wild. Just the way they like them."
The man with no mouth slaps a number on my collarbone.
Chains bite my ankles.
The Hatter leans close.
"Remember to smile, darling. Misery sells, but madness fetches double."
He laughs.
The march begins.
* * *
He leads us like a carnival parade. Whistling a waltz. Coat of stitched skins fluttering. Each time he turns back, his grin grows wider.
The Flesh Bazaar looms ahead. But first—circles. Past perimeter tents. Vendors selling dolls stuffed with human hair. Meat-hooks strung with tongues.
Spectators gather. Laughing. Pointing.
Children in beetle masks throw stones. One hits my ribs. Another my thigh. High laughter behind the masks.
An old woman in feathers spits at me.
A little girl skips beside us, singing:
"Off with their clothes, off with their skin, Peel 'em down 'til the red begins."
The man ahead of me collapses. Doesn't rise. The chain jerks everyone behind. The Hatter tugs. The man drags. Face scraping stone. Splitting.
I step around him.
Whistles. Jeers. Catcalls.
A man in a ram mask bleats nonsense.
We pass a cage of headless dancers. Bodies swaying to silent music.
The Carpenter stares at the ground.
I keep my head up.
If I lower it, I'll never raise it again.
* * *
The gates groan open.
Air shifts. Iron. Perfume. Meat.
The Flesh Bazaar.
Not a market. Not a court. A theater of cruelty. Stage tiled like a chessboard. Rafters dripping with banners sewn from faces. Audience: nobles in leather and silk, bodies marking them as things that abandoned humanity long ago.
I watch a boy dragged to the stage. Small. Wide-eyed. Crying.
They press the brand to his back. It sizzles.
I suck air through my teeth.
The Mad Hatter throws his arms wide.
"Ladies and fiends, feathered or flayed! I bring you my finest catch! A dog in form, a queen in fury! She killed a knight, she chews through chains, she pisses silver and bleeds glass—Alice of Nowhere, last of the Mirrorborn!"
Interest ripples through the crowd.
One creature with a mouth of spinning bone raises a claw.
Another offers a birdcage full of teeth.
They don't bid in coin. They bid in flesh. Screams. Trinkets made from children's bones.
The Hatter parades me. Yanks my collar. Turns me in a circle.
"She walks like a curse. But bites like a blessing."
My mouth is dry. Feet raw. Wrists bound by silver that drinks my defiance.
A girl—no older than seven—tied to a stake nearby. Glass eyes. Hair braided with spiders.
The bidding ends.
From the crowd steps a woman swaddled in violet fur that writhes like it remembers being alive. Face powdered white. Eyes like wet stones. Teeth flat and perfect. Porcelain.
The Duchess.
"Her," she says. Pointing at me. "I'll take that one."
The Hatter bows low.
"As you wish, most fleshed and fragrant madam."
Chains jingle. Papers signed. I'm handed over like cargo.
The Duchess runs a nail beneath my chin. Lifts it.
"Leave her unmarked," she says. "My son prefers them unspoiled."
She smiles.
I don't.
But behind my stillness, something wakes.
Something old.
Something angry.
Something that remembers what the first Alice did wrong.
They've marked me as property.
But I am no one's possession.
And before this is over, they'll learn exactly what that means.