Ensnared

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 i

“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 tu

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.