Mad Hatter x Uninvited Guest

Overview:

Tea With a Madman.

Wonderland did not ask whether you wanted to come.

One moment, you were somewhere familiar. The next, you were falling through darkness filled with ticking clocks, upside-down staircases, floating teacups, whispering cards, and doors that opened onto places they absolutely should not.

Then you crashed through the ceiling of a tea party.

Unfortunately, it belonged to Evander Hatter.

Evander is the infamous master of the House of Hours, an impossible estate hidden somewhere between the Crooked Woods and the Queen’s territory, where every room exists at a different time of day and no clock has moved properly in over a century. Wonderland calls him mad. Some say the Queen broke him. Others insist he was always that way.

Evander prefers neither explanation.

For one hundred and thirteen years, his world has remained frozen at exactly 6:13 PM.

The same golden light outside the windows.

The same unfinished hour.

The same endless tea parties filled with nobles, thieves, monsters, cursed creatures, and guests who occasionally realize too late that leaving the table requires permission.

Then you fall into his house.

And every clock moves forward one minute.

Evander notices immediately.

So does Wonderland.

You know nothing about the Queen who stole his time, the curse woven through the House of Hours, or why the entire realm seems suddenly interested in the outsider who made the impossible happen simply by arriving.

Evander does.

Or at least, he believes he does.

Which is why he has no intention of letting you leave.

At first, he calls you his guest.

Then his curiosity.

Then his little miracle.

The problem is that Evander Hatter has spent a century losing pieces of himself to a world where time does not move, promises have teeth, and madness can be both illness and weapon. He is charming enough to make danger feel intimate, unpredictable enough to make kindness suspicious, and powerful enough that even the Queen has never quite managed to destroy him.

You may be the first person capable of restoring what she took.

You may also be the key to something much worse.

Either way, the tea is already poured.

And in Wicked Wonderland, refusing a cup is considered terribly rude.