Ensnared (28 page)

That truth scores through me. But I won’t let a wounded ego derail my resolve. “There’s something else to this Red thing. And if you don’t tell me, I’ll wear a simulacrum suit and go alone tonight to get Dad’s cure and put an end to her for good.”

His alabaster complexion pales. “Don’t be a fool. To get into that castle, it will take teamwork. And we must be armed with an escape plan. Most importantly, you need to sleep first. You can hardly stand.”

I step from between him and the table, inching toward the door. “Why would I need to stand? I can fly. And neither you nor Jeb can stop me.” With a snap of my shoulder blades, my wings release, rushing another surge of power through my veins.

Morpheus’s gaze tracks my wings. Filaments of moonlight stream down from above, illuminating his enthralled expression. “That is a breathtaking display, luv. But dare not mistake my veneration for surrender.”

He starts toward me, his expression fading to a scowl. I’ve triggered one of his dark, combative moods. It doesn’t matter, because my imagination is more refined than his, and he’s given me the secret to manipulating Jeb’s paintings.

Before he passes the Japanese screens, I mentally beckon the cranes. They cease pecking their beaks against their rice-paper prison and turn their attention to me. I assign them a new role: lace spinners, with the moonlight as their thread.

Bugle-like squawks burst from their throats as they step out of their screens and plop in front of Morpheus in full 3-D form. Wavering on scaly gray legs, the duo clacks and slides along the floor, learning to balance for the first time. Then, wings spread, they lift their elegant necks to full height, reaching Morpheus’s chin.

He backs up, his jewels flashing a yellow-green—cautious fascination.

The cranes capture moonlight in their beaks as if it were tangible threads. Pulling it taut from the ceiling, they weave it into a network of glistening lace with otherworldly speed. One blink, and the panel is already down to Morpheus’s chest.

He tries to duck underneath, but the birds adjust their trajectory, looping, twisting, and braiding the mesh so it reaches his shins. He hardly has time to retreat before the barrier hems him into the back corner of the room . . . a gauzy fence from ceiling to floor. As soon as they finish the first panel, they start on another, beaks clacking.

“Well played,” Morpheus says from the other side, curling his fingertips through the unbreakable threads. Admiration glistens in his dark eyes. “I am your prisoner. Although I always have been.”

We watch each other in silence. The one thing innate in both of us is our fear of being held captive. I remember his beautiful, agonized confession weeks ago:
Nothing can break the chains you have on my heart.
In the vision I had, when we danced upon the sun, we were free and equal in every way. That’s what I wish for him. For us both.

“I never wanted you to be my prisoner,” I insist.

He flourishes his arms in a grand gesture. “Yet here I am in a cage of your making.”

“If you could learn to be honest, the walls would come down.”

He clenches his jaw.

“You’re using Jeb to influence my choices. Again. I’m not falling for it this time. Why do you want to free Red? Is there something between the two of you?” I pause at the threshold, waiting.

“No! I hate the wretch.” His face, crisscrossed with lacework shadows, grows somber. “I hate her with the same changeless passion with which I love you.”

The confession is sweet in its simplicity, reminding me the emotions he feels are foreign to him; being a solitary creature, he doesn’t understand how deeply interwoven love is with trust. “You want me to believe in your love? Then no more secrets. If we’re going to be equals, we have to work together. You’re so used to being on your own, you don’t know how to trust anyone but yourself. That has to change. The human in me, she
needs
trust. Have faith that I’ll understand and won’t judge you. That I can find a way to help you. Maybe a better way.”

His stubborn silence mocks me, so I turn to leave.

“There is no better way!” The desperation in his voice causes me to spin and face him. “If there was, I would never ask this of you. Red put the spell upon Wonderland’s terrain. Only her magic can reverse the decay and return its original splendor. Without her, the nether-realm will fall to ruin, and nothing will redeem our world. Our home.
Your
kingdom. That’s why we have to smuggle her out . . . and the only way is inside you. You are her lineage, and the only one strong enough to harness her magic and use it for good once we cross the border.”

Icy tendrils of frost gather around my backbone. “You expect me to let her live inside me forever?”

He grips the lace again. “Of course not. Only until reparations are made. Then we rid ourselves of her blighted existence once and for all.”

Chessie and Nikki burst into the room, stirring tiny gusts across my hair as they head toward the lacy prison. They swoop at the cranes in an effort to distract them.

Jeb brushes past me at the door. His arm scrapes my wing, and a tingle radiates from its tip to my spine. He must’ve made it all the way to the diamond door then realized I wasn’t in tow. Before I can ask, he motions to the hall, where Dad is propped in a sitting position—sleeping soundly.

Jeb studies the spectacle of the hissing cranes, Chessie, and Nikki, all tangled in the lacework. He turns to me.

I give a halfhearted shrug.

He flicks his hand and the gauzy wall dissipates, returning to strands of moonlight and freeing all its prisoners. Jeb commands his birds back into place on their screens. They squawk, step inside, and flatten to embellishments once more.

Nikki flitters over and tunnels into Jeb’s hair, offering a jingling thank-you and twirling the silky waves around her like a dress.

Chessie perches on Morpheus’s shoulder as he starts toward me. “Alyssa, you must see how crucial this is.”

Jeb stops him, his palm on Morpheus’s chest. “Hold up there, moth-nugget. When I was coming back down the hall, I heard that you expect Al to let that monster possess her again. No way that’s happening.”

Morpheus growls. “This does not concern you. You would rather
break Alyssa’s heart than give up the power you crave and face the real world. So you have no say. It’s her choice to make. Her kingdom at risk.” He looks pointedly at me. “
More
than her kingdom.”

Jeb shoves him and their bickering escalates. Nikki buzzes around, trying to referee.

I look at my surroundings: the twisted magic everywhere, rooms filled with nightmares, my father propped against a wall, rendered comatose so he won’t turn to stone.

Jeb wants to stay here?

No. This place is poison. We have to get out. All of us; even if the only way to convince Jeb is to capitalize on his addiction to the power . . .

Chessie catches my gaze, floating over Morpheus and Jeb’s tirade like a ball of glittery orange and gray ashes. His wide, wise eyes speak to me, forcing me to face what will become of him, of the whimsical and strange netherlings stuck inside the memory train in the human realm, of those in Wonderland. Forcing me to reconcile what will happen to them all, once their beautifully bizarre home rots beneath them. How lost they’ll be.

A sliver of pain slides through the frost encasing my courage and cuts it with precision. There’s no question what has to be done.

“I’ll do it.” Though my voice sounds like little more than a squeak, it stamps out Morpheus and Jeb’s yelling match.

They both turn to me, deathly quiet.

I lift my shoulders so my wings spread tall. “I’ll do anything to save Wonderland”—
to save everyone I love
—“because I’m responsible. I was weak. I won’t be again.”

Joining hands to paws, Chessie and Nikki take to the air in celebratory spins.

“Alyssa . . .” Morpheus’s demeanor is pure reverence. “I always knew you had the heart of a queen.”

Jeb grips Morpheus’s T-shirt, gritting his teeth. “If you love her the way you claim, you’d let that witch possess
you
.”

Morpheus glares at him. “We’re not of the same bloodline. And even if I could, only Alyssa has ever managed to overpower Red. It is fated that she carries her out and defeats her once and for all.”

“Jeb, please. I’ve made my decision.” My throat hurts, even though I’m almost whispering. I’m so tired. “Dad needs some clothes, and a place to lie down.”

Jeb releases Morpheus and heads toward the hall. His expression is contained fury as he lifts Dad onto his shoulder. “I assume you’re coming this time,” he grumbles, then starts down the long corridor once more.

Trembling at the threshold, I cast a glance toward Morpheus. “She nearly tore my insides out once. Her mark is still there. I feel it.” I don’t tell him the rest: that it’s as if the strands of my heart are splitting, that I’m convinced it’s a magical effect from her possession, and each day it seems to rupture a little further. “I’m not sure I have the strength to rip her out again. Not without killing her and me both.”

His expression shifts to something so close to worry, it freezes my breath. He looks down at the diary. “You have a weapon now. Her memories give you an advantage she’ll never expect. That will weaken her.”

“We don’t even know that it will work,” I whisper.

“It will,” he says. “It must.” The concern echoing in the fathomless depths of his eyes belies the confidence of the words. For the first time ever, he shares my doubts.

We stay like that for countless seconds, staring at each other.

When he reaches out to comfort me, I step backward into the hall. Without another word, I fall into line behind Jeb, unable to shake the dread that has wrapped itself around my neck in the form of a diary: a child’s toy that will either save my life, or bring it crashing to an end.

Once we arrive at the lighthouse, Jeb carries Dad to the tower. He dresses him and calls me up. I cover Dad’s sleeping form with blankets then sit on the edge of the mattress beside him, taking off my boots.

I’ve only been in the looking-glass world a little over a day, yet it feels like weeks. I can’t keep up with the passage of time here. And tonight promises to be the worst stretch of all as we wait to see if we’ll get Dad’s cure, or have to face the Queen of Hearts’s deadly caucus race.

I stroke Dad’s head, expecting Jeb to try to discourage me from going along with Morpheus’s plan. Instead, he watches me silently
as the moonlight and the lighthouse’s beam take turns illuminating the walls.

“I checked his leg and the venom hasn’t spread,” Jeb finally says, his deep voice velvet-sweet like it was in the human realm, before Red’s magic infiltrated him. How ironic, that my heart isn’t the only one she’s tainted. It makes me hate her even more.

“He’s going to be okay,” Jeb continues. “He’s the strongest man I’ve ever known.”

The glimpse of the boy from my past is so vivid, I fall into old habits and spill my soul. “I had a vision about Mom, that she’s alive and safe. I think she’s sending messages through my dreams.”

Jeb leans against the wall, not even questioning me. He’s seen and worked enough magic at this point to believe in the unbelievable.

“What am I going to tell her if . . . ?” My voice trails off.

“No, Al. He’ll get through this because he’s the one dreaming now.”

I nod. “I hope he’s dreaming about being safe. About the things that make him happy.”

“He’s probably fishing,” Jeb adds from beside the porthole. “Just like he used to take us.” He forces a short laugh, more sorrowful than happy. “Remember that time you dumped out a whole box of bait?”

I almost smile. It was the summer before eighth grade. Dad bought crickets at the bait shop. “They were screaming for help.”

There’s a thumping sound, and I don’t have to look to know it’s Jeb’s knuckles against the stone wall. “That’s when I first started falling for you.”

I glance at him over my shoulder. With his tousled hair gilded in silvery starlight, he’s as lovely as any mystical sight I’ve ever seen. “You never told me that.”

He turns his back to look outside. “You were so worried about those bugs. The same girl who stuck pins in them every day for her art. Yet you couldn’t shove a hook through them to catch a fish.”

“Because they were already dead when I used them for mosaics. I didn’t have to hear their suffering.”

“I didn’t know that. All I knew was there was so much more to you under the surface. So I started sketching you—trying to make it come through, to read between the lines.”

He always drew me as a fairy, as if he really was deciphering my secrets. I’m heartsick that he’s lost the ability to paint me while he’s been here, that it almost broke him to try.

“And your dad,” Jeb continues. “He didn’t get mad that you turned the bugs loose. He just pulled out the aluminum lures, and that’s what we used from then on. I never knew a father could be like that. Forgiving. Kind. He’s the best guy I know. Pretty sure he saved my life a time or two.”

I sniffle and swipe my nose with the back of my hand, then tuck the blanket under Dad’s chin, studying his serene face. “He was supposed to be a knight.” My vocal cords constrict. “Instead, when Mom was committed, he had to be both parents. I used to think he was boring because of that. But that made him the biggest hero of all.” To keep from crying, I bury my face in Dad’s shoulder, taking comfort in the rush of his breath at my temple. His skin smells of the paint that earlier coated his body.