Untamed

by A. G. Howard

  Before her, he’d lived his life in solitude, never needing anyone. He had no idea what spell she’d cast over him. She was beyond frustrating, always pledging her devotion to the wrong side. But her charm was undeniable. Especially when she defied him or glared at him with righteous indignation. It brought the most delicious snarl to her lips.

  Morpheus set aside the hookah, although the burning in his chest had nothing to do with smoke. Alyssa was the only one who could quench the fire there, for she was the one who had first stoked those flames.

  They’d spent five years together—childhood playmates—until her mum ripped her from him, bloody and wounded, and he had to stew in remorse and guilt from a distance because of a foolhardy vow he’d made to stay away.

  Being deprived of his friend gave him his first taste of loneliness. Even all the years he’d spent in a cocoon prior to ever meeting her, trapped and claustrophobic . . . even they hadn’t prepared him for the desolation of her absence.

  Then at last she’d come back to him, reviving all the old feelings he thought he’d mastered. That time, too, was short-lived. She’d left again, by her own choice. The resulting pain and loneliness were excruciating. Debilitating.

  She’d only been gone from Wonderland for six months, and he didn’t understand this sick emptiness inside that could only be filled by her touch, her scent, her voice. Solitary fae had no use for such nonsense. They required no companionship, abhorred emotional baggage. Their affection and loyalty belonged to the wilds of Wonderland and to no one or nothing else.

  So what had she done to him to change that?

  Each time he saw his reflection of late, he no longer recognized the moth in the mirror. He was incomplete, broken; and he despised it.

  Despised it even more because she made him work so bloody hard to woo her, while she gave her affections freely to a worthless mortal.

  Morpheus suppressed a snarl. He couldn’t make sense of Jebediah’s luck, how a human could wield such power over a netherling queen. How a mere boy could harness a royal half-blood heart so multifaceted, a spirit prone to pandemonium and madness. Jebediah was dragging Alyssa down, chaining her to the boredom and mundaneness of the human realm.

  She must be set free.

  Morpheus had considered killing his rival, but Alyssa would never forgive him. No. The time had come for creative measures.

  If Morpheus knew what Jebediah had been thinking during his trek through Wonderland—all those times when the boy had been at his most terrified, his most discouraged—he would know the mortal’s weaknesses and his strengths, intimately. He would see how to break Jebediah down, pit him against himself.

  Those weaknesses would defeat him better than Morpheus could. Then, when he’d destroyed Alyssa’s faith in her mortal knight, Morpheus would be there to comfort and win her.

  He would once again hear her laugh the way she had when they were children, once again be the recipient of her dazzling smile.

  Once again be complete.

  “This way, please.” The beetle motioned for Morpheus to follow.

  Morpheus removed his hat and raked a hand through his hair. When the insect opened the door to a windowless memory compartment, the scent of almonds wafted from a plate of fresh-baked moonbeam cookies on an end table. A cream-colored chaise lounge was wedged against a wall, and an ornate brass floor lamp lit the space with a soft glow.

  Morpheus’s attention locked on the small stage across the compartment. His heartbeat thudded with anticipation, a deep and steady rhythm. Red velvet curtains waited to part at any moment, to play Jebediah’s memories on a silver screen.

  “Since you’ll be riding in the boy’s head to visit his lost memories,” the beetle said, “I’m bound by policy to warn you . . . Human emotions can be a powerful thing. They can make you see things in an entirely different light.”

  “I’m counting on that.” Morpheus smirked. “Ever hear the saying about friends and enemies?”

  The beetle scratched his shaggy hide. “Um . . . keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

  Morpheus settled onto the cushioned lounge chair, smoothing his pin-striped pant legs as he crossed his ankles. “Even better to take a walk in your enemy’s shoes. ’Tis the best way to control their footsteps. Or erase them altogether, should the opportunity arise.”

  The beetle, trembling again, punched a button on the wall with one spindly arm. The stage curtains opened, revealing a movie screen. “Picture the boy’s face in your mind whilst staring at the empty screen, and you will experience his past as if it were today.”

  His spiel was rehearsed—mechanical, even—but Morpheus’s pulse raced. He waited for the beetle to shut off the lamp. As soon as the insect had left the room and closed the door, Morpheus’s body came apart at the seams—floating through the darkness as if he were made of dust motes. All the pieces reassembled themselves on the silver screen in vivid, cinematic colors, until he was inside Jebediah Holt’s head, wearing his body, feeling his emotions.

  In that moment, Morpheus gave himself over to the experience, seeing things as a human for the first time in his life.

  MEMORY ONE: KRYPTONITE

  Jeb woke up on a swinging bed.

  He was naked. Why was he naked?

  Before that fact could fully register, thirty or more moth-size sprites dropped out of the air, caressing and whispering over every part of him. He tried to move his arms and legs. The sprites’ wings—purring at the speed of hummingbirds’—released particles like dandelion fuzz that somehow immobilized him. The seeds gave off the scent of cinnamon and vanilla and flooded his consciousness until the room blurred.

  When the fog lifted, he was at home in bed. Night spilled through the window, and Taelor straddled him, half dressed. French-manicured fingers trailed down the hairs of his chest and abdomen toward the waist of his jeans.

  This couldn’t be right. He and Taelor had had a fight before prom, had broken up.

  He gently flipped her beneath him and propped himself up on his elbows, dragging the hair from her face. But Taelor’s eyes didn’t meet his. Alyssa’s icy blue ones did—staring in dreamy, innocent wonder. His fingers grew fat and clumsy at her temples.

  Al was in his bed?

  No. This couldn’t happen. Alyssa hadn’t even kissed a guy yet. And Jeb had never been any girl’s first anything.

  Al was untouchable to him. She’d experienced enough turbulence in her life. And he wasn’t exactly the poster child for stability.

  Jerking his hands free, he rose to his knees.

  “Jeb, don’t you want me?” Al asked, rubbing a palm over his chest.

  He couldn’t answer. His fingers itched and felt stretchy, as if they were growing. He held them up in the moonlight, watching in horror as they fell off one by one and morphed into caterpillars. The caterpillars then inched toward Alyssa, and he couldn’t do a thing to stop them. He fell to the bed on his back, hands held above his face, staring in disbelief at the raw and bloody stumps where his fingers once were.

  Screaming, Alyssa tried to scramble off the mattress, but the caterpillars caught her, creeping over her skin and spinning webs until only her wriggling form inside a cocoon remained.

  “Let her go!” Jeb shouted. A light flashed across his eyes, and then he wasn’t at home in his bed anymore. He was somewhere in Morpheus’s mansion, and the sprites were rushing over his skin, hypnotizing him . . . using some kind of hallucinogenic pheromones.

  They’re holding me hostage so Morpheus can be alone with Al. The instant that reality came crashing in, the spell broke.

  Jeb tumbled off the swinging mattress and out of his captors’ seductive mist. Snagging a pillow, he covered himself. “Give me something to wear!”

  The sprites floated in midair, their dragonfly eyes watching him.

  Several golden baskets sat on the floor at his feet. Jeb kicked one over. His tiny captors swooped around the room in mass hysterics.

  Gossamer, Morpheus’s prized
sprite, appointed five of them to pick up the spilled strawberries. They counted the fruits one by one and placed them back in the container.

  Jeb knocked over another basket, this one filled with beads of scented oil. Five more sprites dropped to the floor for cleanup, stopping to count each bead before putting it away.

  Soon he’d overturned every basket. Some were full of flower petals, some with lotion, others with grapes. By tumbling them over, he’d managed to preoccupy most of his captors. Only Gossamer and two others still fluttered around his head.

  “Give me something to wear,” he repeated, “or I’ll start ripping the feathers from the pillows. There aren’t enough of you in here to clean up that mess.”

  “He’s not responding to our allure,” one of the sprites muttered to Gossamer, her coppery bug-eyes turned in Jeb’s direction.

  “Or our magic,” the other one added with a pout. “I conjured some girl from his memories, but his subconscious broke through.”

  “Yes, this one is indeed a challenge,” Gossamer agreed in a voice that tinkled like chimes. After sending the other two sprites to pick up the contents of the latest basket, she offered Jeb a silk robe.

  He turned his back and shrugged the covering on, taking in his surroundings.

  Morpheus had put him in an opulent prison. The room was round with black marble floors that reflected orange candlelight. He was already intimately acquainted with the focal point: a swinging, circular mattress attached to the center of the domed ceiling with gold chains. Furs and pillows cushioned the bed, perfumed with rose petals.

  For all its comforts, this room was missing one very important aspect. An exit. There was no door, window, or any other opening in sight.

  Convex walls—painted dark lavender—had grapevines stretching around their circumference, winding in and out of the plaster and entwining lit candelabras. Fruit blossomed on the vines. At random intervals the grapes would spontaneously burst and drizzle their juice into stone basins set all along the walls to catch it. From there, rich purple liquid drained into fountains—a constant supply of sweet-smelling fairy wine.

  He vaguely remembered tasting the wine when he’d first arrived. Suspicious of it, he’d tried to resist, but he had been so thirsty. No telling what kind of magic was inside the liquid.

  He groaned and rubbed his face. How long had he been drunk and bewitched? He’d made himself useless to Alyssa, just like his old man would’ve done.

  “Where is she?” he asked, ignoring the self-playing harp behind him, which picked up volume, trying to muffle his voice. “Tell me what Morpheus is doing to her.”

  Minuscule, glittering, and confident, Gossamer settled on a satin pillow. She patted the mattress next to her and crossed her green ankles. “Perhaps you don’t realize what we sprites are capable of. We’ve had centuries of practice. We can show you rapture the likes of which you’ve only dreamed about.”

  Jeb regarded her, head to toe, then tightened the satin belt at his waist. “Sorry. I don’t dream in green.”

  He found Alyssa’s backpack under the bed and dragged it out. He’d noticed something in there earlier when he’d been digging through it: a wrought iron bangle bracelet she’d probably tucked inside at school and forgotten about. He’d done his share of research on fairies when he first started painting them, and he knew they didn’t like iron—if the lore was true.

  He slammed the backpack onto the mattress. The fur blankets billowed like a huge wave and knocked Gossamer from her pillow. Kick-starting her wings, she landed lightly on Jeb’s shoulder.

  “If it is Alyssa who inspires your passions, we can fulfill that fantasy.” Gossamer clapped her hands. The others left their cleaning posts and hovered in a circle around Jeb. A sick spasm knotted his gut as every sprite took on the likeness of Alyssa—miniature replicas complete with platinum hair and sexy skate-glam outfits. They released their pheromone seeds again, blinding him with Alyssa’s nectar-sweet scent.

  Swinging a pillow, he shattered the illusion and scattered the seeds. The sprites screeched and hid in the vines on the walls, their glowing bodies like strands of white twinkle lights.

  Gossamer fluttered overhead, scowling. “Enough! Report to our master that the mortal is loyal to the girl. We cannot seduce him to return to his world without her.”

  Jeb cursed as the sprites wriggled through pea-size holes in the wall where the grapevines wove in and out. If only he, too, could fit through those tiny exits. He gave a passing thought to using the shrinking drink in the backpack that he and Alyssa had found when they first arrived in Wonderland, but that would render him as small as his current captors, and he’d be powerless against Morpheus. Helplessness boiled in his gut, as deep as what he used to feel as a kid, hiding in a closet until his dad’s rampages passed.

  He clenched his teeth. There had to be a doorway hidden somewhere behind the vines. They’d brought him in here; there had to be a way out.

  He took a running leap toward the closest wall and ripped some vines free, slinging them everywhere. Gossamer’s tiny screech of surprise didn’t faze him.

  Grapes burst in his hands, releasing their sticky, potent scent. The ropy plants cut into his fingers like wires. He embraced the pain. This was something he could control—unlike the torment of his old man’s glowing cigarettes boring into his skin, or the fists pounding his face and gut. The scent of nicotine, the taste of blood. Imagined or not, they fed the savage in his soul.

  He plunged into a red tunnel of rage and trashed the room. When he at last came back to himself and leaned against the bed, he was shocked at the havoc he’d wrought.

  Out of breath and sweating, he nursed the bleeding cuts at the bends of his fingers and searched the debris for Gossamer. Had he hurt her? If so, maybe he really was his father’s son.

  Jeb clenched his hands, disgusted with himself. “Gossamer?” He flinched at the sound of his voice, gruff and raw with emotion.

  A flicker of wings stirred on one of the chains suspending the bed from the ceiling. He exhaled, relieved to see the sprite. Though it seemed stupid to care, since he was about to try using Alyssa’s iron bracelet against her.

  Gossamer settled on the floor next to the torn vines and the baskets he’d overturned yet again. Her shoulders were slumped in defeat. She probably didn’t know where to start counting all the spilled contents.

  Jeb began digging through the backpack. The harp had stopped playing, and the silence taunted him like a clock’s ticking hands. Every second he spent away from Alyssa left her more vulnerable to Morpheus.

  Cold metal finally met his fingers. He tossed the iron bracelet toward Gossamer but a few inches wide, hoping to weaken her without harming her.

  She screamed and skittered into the air. “Please . . . put that away.”

  “Not until I get some answers.” Jeb pinched one of her wings between his thumb and forefinger. He carried her to the bed and set her on a pillow, keeping the bracelet close enough to intimidate her. “Just cooperate, and I won’t hurt you.”

  “It already hurts.” She groaned, her greenish skin tinged turquoise. “Mustn’t use my magic . . .” She slapped her palms to her face. “Will make me . . . hideous. Abstain.” Her voice softened, as if she were speaking to herself. “Abstain until the threat of pain and contamination are gone.” She gritted her teeth.

  Jeb frowned. “So iron turns your power against you? The perfect weapon to use against your boss.”

  “A piece that size . . . will only work on the smallest of our kind.”

  Jeb bent over, holding the iron cuff closer to her. “Okay, then consider this a lie detector. Each time I sense you’re holding out, the iron gets closer. Where is Al, and what’s your creepy boss doing to her?”

  The sprite’s color changed to robin’s egg blue. She rolled on the pillow, wings struggling to flutter. She pulled them over her shoulders and across her chest, as if to restrain her magic. “Your Alyssa is comfortable and cared for. Morpheus is watching over
her as she sleeps . . .”

  Jeb snarled. Last night, he’d been the one watching her sleep, in the rowboat. He’d rolled her to face him so he could make her a promise, even if she was too drowsy to hear it. He’d promised to watch over her, to get her home safely. He wasn’t about to break his word now.

  He had to fight the urge to trash the room again. “How do I get out of here?”

  “Only Morpheus has the means to open the doorway.”

  Jeb leaned forward, his nose almost touching Gossamer’s face as he held the iron bracelet over her head like corrosive mistletoe. “You’re saying I’m stuck here until that winged cockroach decides to let me out? He’s going to make Al face Wonderland alone?”

  She whimpered, laying a palm on her brow. “No. Since you’ve proved yourself so loyal, he will allow you to accompany her on her journey. You will attend his feast and make plans.”

  “Feast?”

  “Alyssa’s introduction. Morpheus wishes to put her on display to the others.”

  “What others?”

  Gossamer slumped in a purple heap and scooted off her perch. She dragged something from inside the pillowcase—a sketch of Al that Jeb didn’t remember making. Slowly, Gossamer drew up her knees and studied the lines. “You did this while you were under our spell. You have power within your artist’s heart—a light that can pierce any darkness. You’ve captured Alyssa’s inner self perfectly.”

  “That sketch is pure fantasy,” Jeb grumbled. He laid the iron cuff on the paper next to Gossamer.

  She rolled to the middle of the drawing, trying to escape the metal. “There is more truth to this likeness of Alyssa than anything you can force me to say.”

  Jeb tugged at the picture, tumbling Gossamer and the iron bracelet onto the furs. He spread the sketch out on a pillow and traced the charcoal lines. This depiction was like all the other fairy drawings he’d made of Al over the years, but it couldn’t be any more different from the girl he knew.

  He’d drawn her with her hair pinned up. She never wore it that way. A black spaghetti-strapped gown flattered her curves. She wouldn’t be caught dead in such a conventional dress. The only thing that looked like her were the lacy black fingerless gloves covering the scars on her palms.