by A. G. Howard
Tears blind my vision as I step through the glass.
If only I hadn’t stepped through the first portal; if only I hadn’t found the rabbit hole.
If only I’d never been born.
I land in the Red castle, a few feet behind the chair I saw in the portal. My heels sink silently into the spongy carpet and Morpheus doesn’t even stir, still puffing in front of the fire. The scent of his licorice tobacco lights a flame inside me … a burning need to trump him in this warped game.
I squeeze the teddy bear under my arm.
“It wasn’t little Alice who came back to the mortal realm, was it?” I ask, facing the chair’s back.
“No.” Morpheus’s answer comes from behind me and I spin, almost falling. His wings sweep over him like an eclipse as he bends to steady me.
I shove him away.
Arching an eyebrow, he smooths his silver and black pin-striped suit. Between the suit and the punkish hair, he looks like an emo gangster.
“You were waiting for me to come through the portal?” I accuse. “Then who’s—” No need to finish. Rabid White tumbles over the chair’s arm into view, pink eyes aglow. Of course. He’s in league with Morpheus, which means he’s only been pretending to be my enemy. They’ve both been playing me all along.
The cadaverous creature lays the hookah hose aside and bows to me. “At your service be I, fair queen.” His high-pitched voice drips sincerity.
I exhale to steady my wobbly insides. “I’m not the queen. And I don’t want your service.” I turn back to Morpheus.
“I believe you’re being dismissed, Sir Rabid.” Morpheus keeps his fathomless gaze on me. “No doubt she’ll call upon you soon enough, just as Grenadine once did. When she’s officially queen, she shall covet your talents as an experienced and devoted advisor.”
“Highness. Loyally and always, ever yours.” Rabid bows so low on his way out that his antlers set him off balance and he almost topples. He catches himself, then hops across the threshold, a rattling bag of bones in a waistcoat.
The door latches shut and I’m alone with Morpheus in a room of shadows and flashing firelight.
“Your spy,” I say.
“Yes,” Morpheus answers. “It never set well with him what Grenadine and the Red Court did to Red. He wants to see Red’s heir upon the throne almost as much as I do, to amend the injustice done to his true queen.”
The play of the firelight across Morpheus’s wild hair and otherworldly beautiful face spins me back into my memories. He was training me to be a queen. The Red Queen. And now I stand here, vulnerable, imprisoned by feelings he inspired in my youthful dreams: happiness and comfort, affection and admiration. But nostalgia is deceptive, and I shove it aside. Because everything has been a lie.
“What have you done to Jeb?” I ask, suppressing the urge to lunge at him and attack.
Morpheus’s lips twitch a half smile. “He is here in the palace, safe. I’ll allow you to see him soon. He wanted me to give you this.” Fishing his gloved fingers into his jacket pocket, he draws a small crystallized bead between us so it reflects the firelight.
My wish. I thrust my hand out for it. I won’t hesitate this time. I’ll wish I never came at all, just like Jeb suggested … then we’ll both finally be safe again.
Morpheus jerks back, holding it high. “It will stay in my keeping until the time is right.” He tosses the bead into the air, then catches it with a deft twist of the wrist before tucking it back into his breast pocket.
Fury surges through me. I bide my time. I have to play this smart or I’ll lose everything.
“Have a seat, Alyssa, princess mine.” Morpheus gestures to the bed.
“If I sit anywhere, it won’t be on the bed.” I hug the teddy bear—my one bargaining chip.
“Surely you don’t think I mean to seduce you? Wouldn’t I have already taken advantage of your innocence at my manor, whilst I was watching you sleep?”
The reminder of that intimate moment, when his birthmark touched mine, sparks uncomfortable heat in my abdomen. “This entire quest has been a seduction, Morpheus. It’s time to come clean.”
He lifts the end of his red necktie and scrutinizes it, then scrubs at an invisible smudge. “There’s nothing clean about betrayal, luv. And that’s where the story begins, as you well know. Queen Red’s court mutinied against her, her own husband joined the traitors in order to marry her stepsister, and it upended the balance of the realm. But you will restore the equilibrium.” He tucks the necktie back into place.
“Because I’m her heir,” I murmur, nearly choking on the words.
The proud smile on his face is luminous. “Figured it out, did you?”
I suppress the ache in my throat. “It was never about me fixing things. My family wasn’t cursed by Alice’s messes. We’re not cursed at all. We’re half-breeds.”
He splays out his wings and arms. “Isn’t it glorious?”
“You brought me here … set the scenes to fit the Alice story. Everything’s been a game. Everyone’s been playing a part. That’s why most of them were different from the characters in the book. Everyone helped you … they were your accomplices.”
“Yes. Characters playing the parts written for them in a book from the human realm. Some, anyway. Others played along unwittingly.”
“The octobenus.”
Morpheus nods. “Despicable. Murdered his best friend to appease a wave of gluttony. He deserved what he got. And the card guards? They are always expendable. Now, quench my curiosity, little plum.” He gestures to the chair behind me. “Make yourself comfortable, and enlighten me on how you came to be a netherling princess.”
I refuse to sit. A bitter taste burns my tongue. “A masquerade.”
He frowns. “Pardon?”
I twist one of the teddy bear’s ears. Filthy toes rooted into the carpet for support, I unleash the theory that came to me when I saw Sister One’s chessboard. “The website. It said some netherlings take on the appearance of existing mortals. After Queen Red was exiled, she snuck through the Red castle’s portal into the human realm.”
“Pray tell, how did she manage that?” His voice is teasing, meant to goad me.
“She shares my magic … she found a way to distract the card guards. She coaxed the ribbon off Grenadine’s hand by animating it—the ribbon that held a reminder of Alice’s whereabouts. Then Red stepped into the mortal realm as the child. She grew up as Alice, fell in love with a mortal man as Alice, married and had children as Alice. Half-magical, half-human children, and heirs to her lost throne. The netherling characteristics only pass to the females, because Wonderland is ruled by queens.” I’m hugging the bear now, so tightly I can feel Chessie’s essence clawing for escape … begging to be free. Or maybe it’s my own.
“Tell me more. You hold a captive audience.” Morpheus’s voice has changed, the teasing edge replaced by something ravenous and exposed.
I can’t bring myself to watch his enthralled features, so I look at the fire’s flames instead. “Red came back to Wonderland, a few months before the real Alice died. Somehow they traded places again. That’s why the older Alice in the picture had no birthmark, when the younger one did. That’s why she remembered nothing of her mortal life. It was stolen from her. She had no childhood, just like you said.” My chest constricts with sadness almost as potent as when I cried out my wish. “Poor Alice.”
“Yes. Poor, dear little Alice.”
I search his expression. His reverence seems sincere.
A pained, poignant tenderness warms his eyes. “I tried to return her home, in her old age. I thought I was doing right by her, letting her die among her own. I stole into the Liddell house late one night, hoping to convince Red it was the right thing to do … hoping that with her family asleep in other rooms, we could make the switch undetected. Red was compliant, said she was tired of being old and feeble.” A soft smile lifts one side of his mouth. “I tucked Alice into the bed where she would awaken among those who
should’ve been her family all along. They were strangers to her, so I tried to prepare her, but her mind was too far gone to grasp it all. I held her hand until she nodded off, then left with Red for Wonderland. Upon our arrival at the rabbit hole’s opening, the wretch changed her mind and turned on me, refusing to leave her family behind. She intended to murder Alice, then drag all the Liddells to Wonderland. To use her lineage to win back the throne she’d lost.”
Morpheus regards the flames, the corners of his mouth tugging down. “I wouldn’t let her go. We fought on the ground beside the sundial, then on wing in the trees. Red had me pinned to the uppermost branches of one, meaning to snap my neck. I cast her off, and she landed hard, impaled by the iron fence just below us. The metal went straight through her heart and poisoned her blood. I carried her down into the rabbit hole. I attempted an apology. But she would not forgive me. And she made sure I could never forgive myself as she took her last breath.”
“Deathspeak,” I whisper.
His gaze snaps to me, shock apparent on his face. Flickering light exposes the remorse in his eyes
I turn to the hearth again. “That’s why you dragged me here. It was never about saving your friend Chessie. It wasn’t even about Ivory being trapped. You’re the one who’s cursed. You need me to save your spirit from an eternity as a worm-eaten toy in Sister Two’s lair.”
“You judge too harshly. I do want to save my friends. It just happens that I can save myself in the process. I’ve been enslaved for too many years, racing against a ticking clock. Now, at last, I can make the hands stop. I can dethrone Grenadine and set the rightful heir in her place.”
“Even if the heir is unwilling.”
A heavy silence hangs between us.
Gently, Morpheus captures my chin, shifting my gaze to him. “What of the book I used as my storyboard, that one by the mortal bard Carroll. What are your thoughts on that?”
He’s relentless, leading me deeper into a place of both darkness and light. “Carroll came up with the story. But Wonderland, the place, the characters and names … I think that Red, as little Alice, inspired him with the half-truths she used to explain her short absence. Her family all assumed she’d wandered off to have a dream beneath a tree.” I frown. “Red became a child in every way, just like you once did. Her mind was innocent again. It’s a good thing her little-girl’s imagination took over. If she’d been completely honest about the dark, twisted creatures here, she would’ve been locked up in an asylum on her first day as a human.” My attempt at sarcasm is wasted because I’m one of those dark, twisted creatures. I always have been. Only now I look the part.
“Splendidly told,” Morpheus says. “And every bit of it, exactly as it was.” He taps my nose. “Do you wonder how the details come to you with such ease?”
My answers were more than lucky guesses. It’s as if the words were scripted on my tongue. Mentally, I thumb through each dream spent with Morpheus to see if he ever told me, but he didn’t.
Morpheus draws me closer to the fireplace, studying my hairpin in the light. He brushes his thumb across it. “Anything of particular interest happen in the cemetery, other than your retrieval of Chessie’s smile?”
I touch my hairpin, recalling my encounter with the rose. “Queen Red’s spirit … it flashed through my veins before escaping into the garden. She must’ve imprinted some of her memories on me! That was part of the Deathspeak, wasn’t it? You had to set her free, and you used me to do it.”
With a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh, Morpheus pulls me into his arms and strokes my hair. His scent enfolds me, his chest solid and warm. As a child, his touch used to make me feel secure when he’d hold me under my arms during flying lessons. But not now. I stiffen for an instant before realizing I’m face-to-face with his lapel. Nothing but a layer of silver and black pinstripes stands between me and my wish. Instead of pushing away, I snuggle closer—drawing my hands up between us.
A tremor travels the length of his body in response, fingers weaving through the braids at my nape. “Lovely Alyssa. What a grand pupil you were,” he mumbles, his mouth on the top of my head. “Yet you taught me more than I taught you. You are far more worthy to wear the crown than any other. Courage, compassion, and wisdom. The triad of majesties. You have something I could see even through the eyes of a child. You have the heart of a queen.” His voice cracks on the end of his statement, as if he’s saddened by it.
Gloved fingers—silken and confident—glide from my shoulders to my wrists. I curse him silently for moving my hands as he raises them to study the scars. He kisses them, his lips a fluid brush along sensitive flesh, then places my palms on his cheeks.
Mouth inches from mine, he whispers, “Forgive me for bringing you into this. There was no other way.” His skin is softer than clouds must feel, and the tears gathering around my fingertips are hot and tangible. But are they sincere?
Our breaths swirl between us, and his black eyes swallow me whole. My heart knocks against the bottom of his rib cage. I know what’s coming next. I fear it. But it’s the surest way to distract him and get the wish. And if it has to happen, I’m going to be the instigator.
Rising up on my toes, I press my mouth to his. He moans, frees my wrists, and sweeps me into his arms—sealing the teddy bear between us. My ankles swing at his shins, and my hand creeps toward his lapel. I’m in control.
But it’s a lie, because now I’ve tasted him. His lips are salty-sweet with yesterday’s laughter … digging in the black sands beneath Wonderland’s sunshine, playing leapfrog atop mushroom caps, and resting in the shade of black satin wings.
I try to shake off the spell, but he angles his face and deepens the kiss. “Embrace me … embrace your destiny.” He breaks the barrier of my lips, touching his tongue to mine, a sensation too wickedly delicious to deny. As our tongues entwine, his lullaby purrs through my blood and bones, carrying me to the stars.
Behind closed eyes, I’m floating against a velvet sky, lungs filled with night air. On some level, I know I’m still in the middle of a fire-warmed chamber, yet my wings pantomime flight on a cool breeze. I’m dancing with Morpheus in the heavens, no longer imprisoned by gravity.
Fluttering our wings in unison, we twist and whirl a weightless waltz among stars that coil and uncoil in feathery sparks high above Wonderland’s warped and wonderful landscapes. Each time we spin, then return to each other’s arms, I laugh, because at last I’m me.
I’m a me I’ve longed to be in my innermost fantasies—spontaneous, impetuous, and seductive.
Morpheus promises a lifetime of dancing, a world where everyone obeys my commands. He shows me every piece and parcel of Wonderland that is mine. Down below, past the stars and night sky, I can see myself seated on a throne at the head of a table, hosting a feast with mallet in hand, prepared to strike the main course dead. Maniacal laughter echoes in the marble halls, sweet to my ears.
The scene makes me drunk with power. I kiss him again. He holds me tighter.
Beneath my feet, the stars burst into a thousand glittering colors: silent fireworks, just like the ones Jeb and I saw in the boat on our first night here.
Jeb …
The image of his dimpled smile slams into me like a gasp of ice-cold air. Memories of my mortal life intensify the frost: the pride and satisfaction of finishing a mosaic, the maple-sweet flavor of Dad’s Saturday morning pancakes, Alison’s tinkling laughter that feels like home, Jenara joking with me at Butterfly Threads, and Jeb … his loyalty, and his kisses, so magical yet so real.
The spinning in my head slows, like a top falling to its side. I’m back at the castle, pressed against Morpheus in a passionate embrace.
I have to finish what I started, or risk becoming what he is.
I coax my palm into his lapel in search of my wish, returning his feverish kisses. “Checkmate, you son of a bug,” I say against his mouth two seconds before my fingers find an empty pocket.
“Sleight of hand, blossom,” he s
ays right back. “’Tis in fact in my pants pocket, if you’d like to search there.”
I shove him off and drop to the floor, wiping my mouth. “It’s mine!”
“And you’ll receive it when the time is right.” His lips, all I can look at, tilt into that smug smile that I’ve come to detest. He motions toward the chair. “Sit. You’ve just been soundly kissed. No doubt you’re short of breath.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” I huff in an effort to hide a gulp of air and hold the teddy bear against my chest. “That kiss meant nothing. It had underlying motivation.”
“Oh, to be sure. That kiss was nothing if not motivational.”
Maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part, but his pale complexion looks flushed as he turns the chair around so its back is to the fire. Considering that my stomach is a pendulum in full swing, I hope he’s at least a little rattled.
Cheeks hot, I sit on the warm cushions, my wings ornamenting the arms like lacy, jewel-studded doilies. I can’t pin down my emotions. I shouldn’t have kissed him. How could I do that to Jeb? But I did it for us, so he’ll understand, right? As long as I never mention how it affected me, how I almost drowned in Morpheus’s seduction, in my own darkest desires …
“Have I commented on your loveliness tonight?” Morpheus asks, compelling me to look at him. His eyes follow the lines of my gauzy appendages. “There’s something about a lady in wings. You wear them well. You’re exquisite, in fact. Just like a netherling princess should be.”
The drag of his gaze alerts all my nerves, forcing me to relive his lips on mine. A touch of his hand would’ve affected me less. I reach for his hat balanced on the chair’s arm and flick the red moths so they dance. “Cut the crap, Morpheus. My clothes are shot, and I look like a marshmallow exploded on my back.”
He chuckles, masculine and deep in his chest. “You’ve always been irresistible when you’re cranky.” He sits on the floor in front of me, pinstripe-clad legs crossed like a Boy Scout’s. Too bad Jeb’s not here to pound him to a pulp.
