# The Grin Deepens The darkness tastes like tea gone cold. Alice blinks, and the Cheshire Cat's teeth catch what little light exists in this corner of Wonderland—a phosphorescent gleam that shouldn't be possible in absolute black. She's learned not to question such things. The learning itself is the trap. "You're still here," the Cat observes, his voice arriving before his face fully materializes. First the grin, then the eyes—amber and knowing and utterly indifferent to her racing heartbeat. The rest of him remains negotiable, fading in and out like a thought half-remembered. Alice grips the hem of her blue dress. It's grown tight again. She felt the shift this morning—her bones stretching, her skin prickling with the wrongness of it. Three times now her size has betrayed her. Three times she's had to crouch through doorways, squeeze through gaps that should be too small, become something other than what she was. "I'm looking for the way out," she says, and hears the tremor in her voice. She hates it. She hates that Wonderland hears it too. The Cat's grin widens impossibly. "The way out is always where you aren't looking." A leaf falls past his face—impossible, since they're inside the dark wood, underground, nowhere that wind should reach. Alice watches it spiral down into shadow. The leaf moves with terrible purpose, as though drawn toward something. Toward *her*. "You're thinking too much," the Cat continues, and now she can see his eyes clearly: two moons of judgment. "Thinking is for the sane. You stopped being sane the moment you followed the Rabbit. Didn't you notice? The moment you fell, the rules changed. *You* changed." Alice's fingers feel longer than she remembers. She holds them up in the gloom and barely recognizes them as her own. "Stop it," she whispers. "I'm not doing anything," the Cat says with genuine amusement. "You are. You've been doing it all along." The leaf lands at her feet—except it's not a leaf anymore. It's a playing card. The Queen of Hearts, her painted mouth curved in something between a smile and a threat. Off with her head. Off with her head. Off with her— "Where are you going?" the Cat calls as Alice runs. She doesn't answer. She's learned that answers are just more rules, more traps. Behind her, she hears the grin—not a sound exactly, but the feeling of it, spreading through the dark like poison through water. The Queen's trial begins at dawn. Alice can feel it coming.