Ensnared

Always the voice of reason, even when madness drives his every action. Red holds all the cards, along with my heart. She admitted she’s tainted me, confirmed my suspicion that I need her not only to fix Wonderland but to fix my insides.

There’s a loud thud as the queen’s spi

I start to offer a nasty retort, but Morpheus tightens his hold around my waist—an unspoken plea.

Red’s attention shifts to me. “Today, you will welcome my spirit within your body. We will wed Morpheus, leave AnyElsewhere, and take our rightful place on the Red throne. Your betrothed has voiced a particular eagerness to begin your honeymoon.” She rustles to the door in a flowing cascade of netting, satin, and tentacle-like vines. “Prepare for the ceremony. I’ll return before the hour is out.”

She leaves Morpheus and me behind the closed door with nothing but the pounding of a hundred hearts—those that are disembodied and rocking the room, and the two wrestling within our own chests.

I leap off his lap and face him. “Eagerness to begin our honeymoon? Really?”

“Oh, don’t be so coy, my blossom,” he purrs, his flawless face the embodiment of temptation beneath the chandelier’s throbbing glow. “You know we can hardly keep our hands off one another.”

The netherling inside me fidgets, tantalized by his teasing. “What I know is that you always kiss and tell.”

Instead of the pompous grin or snide comeback I’m expecting, he shushes me with a finger to his lips and mimes: “The walls have ears.”

I don’t dare assume he’s being figurative. Standing slowly, he keeps a wary eye on our surroundings. He takes off his hat and gloves, then places them in the chair.

I bide my time as he lifts a cloth napkin from the table and runs his fingers across the burgundy wall tiles. He’s on the last quarter of the room when he scoops something into his hand and beckons me close. Five pea-size creatures scuttle over the lines of his palm. They resemble tiny human ears with crab legs and wings that seem too small to lift them.

Wrapping them in the napkin, Morpheus squashes them and shoves the wadded cloth under the door. “Ear mites. They would’ve recorded anything we said and reported it to the queen.” He leads me to the center of the room. “Now we can talk freely.”

I remind myself not to overreact . . . to give him a chance to explain. “So, this is a wedding dress?”

The smug smirk I expected earlier makes a belated appearance. “Perhaps not what I originally intended you to wear for our union, but it will do in a pinch. Aren’t you glad you had the foresight to put it on?”

I take down the bun at the back of my nape, giving my hands something to do other than punch him. “You made it clear I should wear it,” I say, weaving my red streak back into the rest of my platinum waves.

Morpheus watches my every move, momentarily distracted as I pin up my hair again, piece by piece.

“I thought the dress was meant to be a weapon.” I slip the last bobby pin into place.

“Oh, with the way it fits you, it very well is,” Morpheus says, his voice gruff. The spilled milk on the table has started an a

I sit on the edge of the center cushion, my wings strewn behind me. “Tell me what’s going on, and this had better be good.”

He shakes out a cloth napkin. “Still don’t trust me, aye?”

“I trust that you don’t want to face my wrath.”

He snorts. “I’m game for anything. Will you pelt me with falling hearts in a symbolic rain of our unrequited love? Or perhaps chain me to a wall in lace made of moonlight and have your way with me?” His jeweled markings blink through a rhapsody of colors: flirtatious, taunting, and malicious.

“Would you be serious? You have a lot of explaining to do.”

His jewels coalesce to emerald green. “As do you. Let us start with why you were rolling about with Jebediah half-naked on the sands of a beach whilst I was putting myself in danger for your father’s antidote.”

I resist my jaw’s temptation to drop. He doesn’t get to guilt me. There’s only one way he could know that, and it doesn’t bode well for his own nocturnal activities.

“You’re working with Manti . . .” My vocal cords grate against one another—as if made of sandpaper.

Morpheus sops up milk with the napkin to silence the dripping. “We’ll get to that. But first, you need to be apprised of what took place while you were playing peek-a-boo with our pseudo elf’s crowning attribute. Two of your father’s relatives were captured by the queen’s guards last night. When I was accompanying Nikki to the castle, I saw them being escorted through the gate. I didn’t know who they were, only that they were knights and that one shared your father’s eyes.”

I twine my hands nervously. “Uncle Bernard.”

“He’s all right.”

“I can’t believe we dragged him into this . . .”

Morpheus sits on the arm of the lounge, his wings cascading down behind him. The pulsing chandelier lights shimmer along his black lacy cuff as he picks off some lint. “You have Jebediah to thank for that, actually. Before his scenic transformations confused the wind tu

“But he did it to protect you,” I defend. “You told me yourself that he changed the landscapes to confuse the wildlife.”

Morpheus grips his thigh. “Why are you still so infatuated with that mortal? After how he’s hurt you?”

I glare up at him. “Something that you’ve never done.”

Glancing down at his whitening knuckles, Morpheus grinds his teeth. “I’ve never given up on you.”

The sincere rasp to his voice softens me. “I know.” I lace my fingers through his, and his muscles contract in response. “But Jeb didn’t give up on me, either. He gave up on himself. And you had a hand in that.”

Morpheus rolls his eyes. “We’re straying off track. You’re not embracing the seriousness of the situation. For centuries, Hart has been looking for a way to attack the Wonderland gate, to hijack a wind tu

It’s strange, but on some level, I’m relieved at his words. “I was right . . . I knew Wonderland had to be in danger.” The fact that I put my faith in him and he didn’t let me down lifts the weight from my shoulders. I didn’t endanger Jeb and Dad needlessly.

“More than Wonderland, actually,” Morpheus says, interrupting my thoughts. “The Queen of Hearts agreed to keep Red’s spirit alive only because Red convinced her you’d be coming here to rescue me, and Jebediah, had she not thought him dead. It’s why Red captured us and dragged us into AnyElsewhere in the first place. As collateral. The two queens pla

“Life-clocks?” I twine the words around on my tongue, tasting the syllables. When she first saw me, the queen said she wanted mine.

Morpheus gestures to the room’s decor. “Her pet name for stolen hearts. Life-clocks.”

Shivering, I dig my fist into my chest to ease the pain. Hart said she sensed mine was special. She must know it’s damaged. Maybe she can tell me what Red has done to it.

“Alyssa. Why are you so pale?” Morpheus slides down the chaise’s arm to settle next to me. He presses the back of his hand to my cheek, checking my temperature. “You’re positively glacial.”