Unhinged: 2 (5 page)

I watch as he clenches his teeth. Beneath his eyes, he bears the same patches I had when in Wonderland. The markings are lovely and dark, like long winding eyelashes, though his are tipped with sparkling jewels. They're blinking through cycles—silver, blue, maroon—a melancholy maelstrom of emotions dancing across his face. I’ve learned to decipher the colors, like reading a mood ring.

“Don’t you think it’s time you stop the destruction, Alyssa?”

I trace the two necklaces resting below my collarbone. Lifting
Jeb’s locket, I press it to my lips to taste the metal, remembering his vow of commitment in the tunnel. I left him in the water, and he doesn’t know where I am. I need to get back to him, to make sure he’s okay.

“If you’re worried about your boyfriend, he’s fine. I can guarantee that.” It’s not surprising that Morpheus reads me so clearly. He knows me as well as I know him. “You need to concentrate on the here and now.”

I glare at him. “Why are you so determined to drag me into this?”

“I am trying to contain the war. She’s coming to destroy you one way or another. She was a part of you. Even if it was only for a few hours, she left an impression. As you did on her. You’re the only one who’s ever defeated her.”

I narrow my eyes. “Other than you, you mean.”

One corner of his mouth lifts. “Ah, but that was with dumb luck and a vorpal sword. Your strike was personal and, in her mind, treasonous, because of the bond you shared.”

“You still haven’t proved she’s responsible for this. Last I heard, her spirit was in a pile of dying weeds.”

“It would appear she’s found a healthy netherling body to inhabit.”

My spine shudders at the possibility. “How do I know you’re not just making this threat up? You’ve done it before. Invented an elaborate scheme to get me to dive into the rabbit hole. I’m not going to be your pawn again. Where’s the proof that you’re not just trying to make me come back to stay?”

“Proof …” Scowling, he sweeps his wings high, exposing me to the wind again. “Stop acting like a suspicious, petty human. You are meant for so much more than that.”

I glare at him through my thrashing strands of hair. “You’re mistaken.
A human is
exactly
what I’m meant to be. I chose to live up there.” I point back toward the doorway. “To experience everything Alice didn’t.”

Morpheus turns his face to the sky. “I’m afraid you’re the one who’s mistaken, if you think I’m going to let Wonderland fall to rot so you can play ‘pin the male on the virgin’ with your mortal toy.”

My cheeks prickle with heat. “You were watching us? Wait. You
caused
the overflow in the drainage pipe. You wanted to screw up our date.”

Stepping into my personal space, Morpheus closes his wings around both of us. The maneuver effectively cuts off the wind, dims the light, and blinds me to everything but him.

“I’m not the one who put an end to that bumbling attempt at seduction. Jebediah managed that all on his own.” Morpheus snatches both of my necklaces from my fingers, holding the delicate links taut enough that I can’t struggle without breaking them. “Were he to pay more attention to
you
instead of his precious career”—he drapes the charms over a palm and, using his gloved forefinger and thumb, positions the tiny key in place atop the heart’s keyhole—“perhaps then he would be attuned to your needs and desires.” Holding my gaze, he makes a show of how the key’s teeth aren’t the right shape for the heart’s opening. “As it stands, he’s just not the right fit.”

A steady, deep thrum awakens in my mind, like wings thumping my skull. It’s the return of my netherling side. No one can bring it to the surface like Morpheus. “Let go,” I demand.

Morpheus tightens his grip, defiant. “Has he even taken time to acknowledge the changes in you? To ask why you no longer use bugs and flowers in your mosaics? Or why you’ve traded your fear of heights for an aversion to reflective surfaces?”

I clench my jaw. “He asked. I’m just not sure how to explain that I keep my mirror covered with a blanket because I’m worried I’ll be spied on by a freak with wings.”

Morpheus grins. “Says the girl whose wings are always itching to break free.”

I scowl, hating that he’s right.

“You need a man who knows and understands you, Alyssa. Both sides of you. A partner.” He pulls my necklaces—and me—closer. “One who’s your equal in every way.” The scent of licorice fills my nose; he must’ve been smoking his hookah before I arrived. My body betrays me, remembering what those tobacco-laced kisses taste like.

He releases the necklaces to cup my chin. His gloves are cold, but the allure of his dark, mystical eyes warms me from head to toe. I almost fall into them, almost forget myself and my choices. But I’m stronger than that now.

I jerk free and shove his chest, hard enough to rock him backward. Even though his duster’s hem tangles around his legs, he regains his balance without missing a beat.

Chuckling, he flourishes an arm in a grand gesture and bows. “Game, set, match. Ever, and always, my equal.” His smug smirk taunts me with promises and innuendos.

“This isn’t a game. You could’ve
killed
Jeb in that flood!” I lunge at him, but he folds a wing between us to fend me off. Slapping the satiny black barrier, I snarl. “You’ve crossed a line. Don’t bother me during the day again.” I start for the doorway. I’d rather face a flooded sewage tunnel than stay here another second.

“We’re not done,” he says from behind me.

“Oh, we’re
so
done.”

In some secluded, private corner of my soul, I care about Wonderland
more than I dare admit aloud. But if I let Morpheus see that … he’ll convince me to stay and fight. The last time I faced Queen Red, she left a fingerprint of terror on my heart. Judging by what’s happening to the land, her powers are even stronger now than they were then. I suppress another shudder. I’m totally unequipped for a battle of this proportion. I’m only half of the netherling she is, and no match for her.

I never will be.

I’m a few steps from the door when one clap of Morpheus’s leather-clad palms stops me in my tracks.

A sinister rustle grows around me, like leaves raking across graves. I turn, but not fast enough. Vines climb my legs, twisting tight. My calf muscles cramp under the pressure. Using my underdeveloped netherling magic, I try to influence the plants. The ivy pulses but refuses to release.

“A shame you’ve neglected your better side for so long,” Morpheus baits me as he steps closer. “If you practiced more often, it would be second nature for you to relax … easier for you to coax your powers into submission.”

I growl. My top half is still free, so I throw a punch at him, nailing his abs. He
oofs
, but his sneer doesn’t waver. With one nod from him, the daisy that I used for a prop earlier reaches out and clamps my elbows. Her hands, both humanoid and plantlike, lock me tight. When I struggle, she hisses a warning.

Biting back a frustrated yelp, I meet Morpheus’s fathomless black eyes. “I want to go home.”

He fusses with his shirt, smoothing where my fist wrinkled it. “Keep ignoring your responsibilities and you won’t have a home left.”

I shake my head. “How many times do I have to say it? My home
is in the human realm, not here.” A half lie. I can’t bear to look again at the destruction all around me. But he doesn’t have to see how torn I am … how torn I’ve been since last year.

“What makes you think I was referring to
here
?” He leans against a nasturtium stem. The pose shouldn’t be threatening, but his wings rise behind him, black and looming against the storm’s backdrop, and my skin bristles with apprehension. I try to free my elbows. The daisy is too strong. Even through my long sleeves, her frondlike fingers bite into my flesh.

“I demand to see Queens Grenadine and Ivory,” I say.

Morpheus barks a laugh. “You 'demand'? So you’re playing the royal card, aye?”

My chest tightens. “The queens are in charge of the portals to my home, not you.”

“Oh, but therein lies the problem. Parts of Wonderland have already fallen into Red’s clutches, and she intends to reclaim your throne and overthrow Ivory so she might be in charge of both portals. By your absence and apathy, you’re giving the witch free rein. You know what a powerless and forgetful fool your substitute, Grenadine, is.”

Lightning strikes again, coating everything in eerie light.

The mud beneath me starts to soften, and I sink an inch, then two. I’ve triggered one of his black moods. That’s never good. “You’re lying.”

“The truth is in the blood. Is your artwork lying?”

I want to lash out at him for spying on me at school, but it won’t change the fact that he’s right. Even though I can’t decipher the violent scenes in my blood mosaics, I can make out enough to know that something is wrong in this world. And that maybe Queen Red
is
behind it.

My body wavers in the mud. I’m sinking even deeper—literally and figuratively.

The daisy releases me from her scratchy grip, and the vines suck me down farther. Cold, gooey sludge squishes up around my shins. I rotate at the waist to plead with the giant flower. “You’re my friend. Last time I was here, we played cards, remember? Don’t let him do this …”

Still silent, the daisy turns her hundreds of eyes toward Morpheus, as if awaiting his instructions.

“Did you forget, Alyssa? The solitary of our kind are loyal to no one but themselves—or the highest bidder.” Morpheus steps closer so the toes of his boots are at the edge of the sinkhole. I’m face-to-face with his thighs but can’t quite reach him. “You’d do well to reacquaint yourself with their true nature. It might remind you of your own.” He claps his hands, twice this time.

As far as I can see in every direction, the flower forest rises, the plants ripping their gargantuan stems from the mud. Leafy arms and legs appear. In the center of each blossom, mouths widen, moaning, to reveal clear, jagged teeth. Their roots, moving like serpents, propel them forward. Soon I’m surrounded by row upon row of blinking eyes.

My heart trips in my chest. The mutants weren’t dormant and weak at all … they were lying in wait—a trap prepped to spring.

Their roots wind through the mud, and they slide in to share my grave, their stemlike bodies pressing tight—imprisoning me in layers of mossy leaves and petals. I writhe as my arms press against my torso, my biceps digging into my ribs. With the added weight of the flower army around me, I sink another six inches into the mud, now eye level with Morpheus’s shins. A flicker of claustrophobia
resurfaces. I stifle it, remembering who I am. How I escaped from here once before.

“Oh, come on.” My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “If Red couldn’t trap me as her puppet, do you really think you have a chance to hold me hostage in a cage of algae?”

One of the flowers hisses, offended by the insult.

Lightning blinks across the sky, and Morpheus cocks his head. “You are no one’s puppet, plum. You
are
, however, a hostage. Although you seem confused as to who holds your chains.” He crouches, his nose only inches from mine. “I’ve been very patient.” Gloved knuckles glide across my jaw and down my neck. The jewels under his eyes shimmer to an impassioned violet. “But we no longer have the luxury of time. Red has seen to that.”

I try to block out how my skin responds to his touch, actually drawing toward him, like hairs rising on an electric current. Pinned in place as I am, all I can do is jerk my head to break contact.

Leaning back on his haunches, Morpheus narrows his eyes. “Release the chains you’ve put on yourself. Reclaim your crown and free the netherling madness within you.”

“No. I chose to be human.” Bile burns my tongue as the mud pulls me deeper, as if I were a mouse being ingested by a snake. The sludge rises to my chest, then my throat—a suffocating sensation. I wonder how far he plans to take this bluff.

He drops to his stomach on the ground, wings glimmering like puddles of oil beside him—looking just like he used to as a mischievous child. Chin propped on the back of his fist, he studies me. “I shall not beg. Not even for you, my
precious
queen.”

A sharp gust of wind slices through us, knocking his hat off. He snatches the brim before it flies into the cracked sky.

His glowing blue hair whips across his face as he turns back to me. “If you won’t stay and save Wonderland, I shall bring my own brand of chaos to the human realm. Fight for us, or face the consequences.”

The flowers close in and push me toward him, rough, leafy hands scraping across my neck and cheeks, cinching my hair at the scalp so I can’t lean away. He smiles, so close that I feel the heat of his breath on my face.

“I won’t let you,” I insist. “I won’t let you into my world.”

“Too little, too late,” he murmurs against my humming skin. “By the time they find your body, I’ll already be there.”

Find my body?
I want to scream but can’t even manage a moan from beneath the leafy hand clamped across my mouth.

Morpheus stands, his duster’s hem swirling at his ankles. He settles his hat in place, gestures to the flowers, then transforms into the moth that haunts my memories: black wings, blue body—the size of a bird.