Ensnared (44 page)

I swallow a moan. Every nerve in my body fizzes with rage.

“Envision where you wish to go,” I whisper, and picture Sister Two’s lair—the deepest part, where she stores her dreamer, the one who provides entertainment for those wretched, restless souls to keep them at peace.

The glass crackles and Jeb appears in the reflection. He’s not wrapped in web or hooked up to the tree roots yet, but the spidery grave keeper is standing over him, her eight legs pinning him in
place. The striped fabric of her skirt bubbles wide like a hoop around her spinnerets. Her upper torso, deceptively human, tenses beneath a matching bodice. Her left hand, a pair of gardening shears in place of fingers, prepares to strike, moments from rendering him a vegetable.

Riding an adrenaline rush, I lift my key to unlock the mirror’s glass.

Finley stops my hand. “I can’t let you do that, miss. Ivory asked they not be disturbed.”

I snatch my hand free. With one glance across the room, I conjure a pile of drop cloths in the corner to rise and hover over him like angry ghosts. Two of them stretch out with clawed fingers and clamp his arms. The others cast blue shadows across his face, awaiting my command. I’m surprised how effortlessly my feral side took over. Surprised and pleased.

“Ivory would make an exception for the Red Queen,” I snarl.

Even with my phantoms holding him, Finley doesn’t flinch. Realization crosses his face. He obviously had no idea. I can’t blame him. I don’t exactly look the part of royalty right now. “Forgive me, Majesty. I’ll be here to open the mirror from this side, when you’re done.”

I allow the cloths to fall to the floor while inserting the key into the hole formed by the cracked glass. The reflection ripples like liquid and I step in. A haze of sepia swirls around me, and a prickly sensation sweeps through my skin.

I shake off the disorientation and the scene opens to reality. A stale-smelling chill hangs on the air and snow blankets the ground. The cries and wails of restless toys pierce my eardrums.

Above it all, Jeb’s agonized scream slices through my soul.

Racing toward the sound, I stop a few steps behind Sister Two.
She holds up her scissored hand, slicked with blood. Her translucent skin and graphite-colored hair are both splattered with red.

Jeb clutches his right wrist. Shimmery red lines streak from his tattoo into the grooves between his fingers, then drizzle into the snow and along his paint-stained tunic, leaving fresh bright dots.

He collapses to his knees, wailing.

“Jeb!”

He winces up at me through his pain.

Before Sister Two can react, I summon the webbed casing she’s prepared for him. The sticky strands wind around her, trapping her within her own net.

She struggles, but everything, from her multiple legs to her arms, is wrapped in a cocoon. Her blades can’t even open to snip at the binds. “How dare ye set foot on this hallowed ground!”

The voice that once tapped on my spine like branches on a windowpane has no power over me now. Instead of evoking terror, she stokes my anger—reminding me of everything she’s done to my loved ones: planning to bleed my dad dry and leave him for dead, trapping my mother here, stinging Morpheus, and chasing Jeb with the intent to hold him here forever.

“I’m a half-blood,
witch
,” I seethe. “My powers aren’t affected by this place. So you’re going to have to roll out the welcome mat. Your days of answering to no one are over. And Jeb is
not
going to be your dream-boy.” I animate another strip of web so it slaps across her lavender-colored lips, effectively silencing any response. Her blue eyes harden.

Jeb still crouches, holding his wrist. “There’s no reversing what’s already been done.” His voice is husky and tight.

What I thought were droplets of red blood on the snow merge
together to form a pulse of light. It tunnels underneath the web surrounding the grave keeper. It doesn’t stop there. Snaky, glowing strands separate and spread into the roots beneath the ground that lead to every tree. The light seeps into the writhing toys, feeding them. One by one, they settle to a disturbingly serene hush.

Jeb stands. His tattoo that once glowed with power and magic—that was bleeding moments ago—is the color of his skin, healed and raised like a scar. Not even a blink of light shimmers behind it.

His eyes are different, too—a darker green, like moss in shadows. Some integral part of him has changed.

“Jeb.” I fist my hands at my sides. “I made a promise to you. For a life together.”

He shakes his head. “I release you of your vow, Al.”

At his words, I feel the difference . . . the bind I made breaking free. “No!” I lurch forward and clutch Sister Two’s neck. “What did you do to him?”

Jeb gently peels my hands off the spidery woman. “What I asked her to do. Didn’t Ivory tell you?”

“That you volunteered to be the dream-boy? Like my dad was? That’s why you’re letting me out of my promise. So I won’t be tied to a corpse.” My voice is high-pitched and desperate. Nothing like a queen’s should sound.

Jeb frowns. “You didn’t give Ivory the chance to explain, did you? You went flying all over the castle half-naked to find me without letting her finish.”

I clench my jaw.

He turns me to face him. His face flushes with color and he looks strong and healthy again. His frown turns into a smile, those dimples a vision too lovely for words. “Classic Al.”

“This isn’t funny. What you did . . . we have to undo it. There’s another way to give Wonderland dreams.”

He squints. “By you having a child with Morpheus? Are you ready for that today?”

My throat constricts. I finally know who I am without a doubt, but I’m still learning who Morpheus and I are together. I don’t want to bring our son into the picture before we’ve had time to grow, to work side by side and accept one another.

I want to do everything right this time, so I’ll never hurt Wonderland again.

Jeb takes both my hands in his. “You’ve made enough sacrifices. Your heart was ripping in half, trying to appease everyone and everything you love. You didn’t get to make the choice of where to live. It was made
for
you. So from this point on, anything that happens between me and you, or you and owl-bait, will be your choice. Not because of some magical promise you made me when you were desperate to save my ass from no-man’s-land. Not because of a dream-child you’re prophesied to bring into this world someday. Neither of those things should play any part right now. They’ve been taken care of. So you get to choose what role we’ll have in your lives, your terms. No time limit. No pressure.”

I squeeze his fingers. “
I
get to choose? How, when you’re staying here in the cemetery?”

“It’s not like that. Sister Two has the power to pull netherling spirits out of a possessed body. She used the same process to isolate my muse and coax it out of me, because it’s an entity now . . . made up of my dreams, nightmares, and imagination, brought to life by Red’s magic. That’s what will take the place of human children.” He’s trying to reassure me, but his words are far from comforting.
“It will keep Wonderland’s cemetery balanced, keep it supplied for as long as I live.”

I take a shaky breath. I’m relieved he’s not giving up his life. But just imagining him without his ability to paint makes my chin quiver. “Why should you have to fix my world? You already painted it alive again. That’s enough.”

“It’s my world, too, because it’s part of the girl I love. That’s why I did it, Al. Okay?”

“But we could’ve found another way.”

“There’s no other way for me to be human again. I’m ready to go back . . . to take care of my family. Be who I was born to be.”

My throat swells. “Twice, I’ve watched you give up your life for me. I can’t let you give up your gift.” My voice is stern, hiding the helplessness I feel.

“Giving up the magic is the only way for me to move forward.” He releases my hands and helps free Sister Two from her sticky cage. “It’s my decision. And it’s done.”

Sister Two glowers at me as she scrambles free in the snow, kicking up powder with her eight legs. “Ye are unwelcome in the garden of souls, halfling, lessen ye be bringing me a soul to keep. Queen or no queen, power or no power, there be rules and customs ye must abide if ye wish to live in our world.”

Fury flashes through me, scalding hot. My skin sparkles, casting tiny dots of light along the webs and trees. “Fair enough. But there’s a new rule for you, grave keeper. I understand you’re tired of searching out dreamers. Well, problem solved. Now that you have an ample supply, you have no business returning to the human realm. Your place is here, tending your charges. The portals out of Wonderland will be heavily guarded. If I ever find you sniffing around
them, I’ll strap you up in your web and let you hang for the rest of eternity.”

We stare each other down. She hisses but keeps her distance, wary of my magic. Jeb takes my hand and drags me toward the image of Finley waiting on the other side of the mirror to let us into the castle.

The moment we step through, the glass crackles and becomes solid again. All that’s left is a reflection of me in my see-through gown. Jeb grabs one of the drop cloths at Finley’s feet and covers me with it.

“Thanks for keeping watch,” he says, shaking Finley’s hand.

Finley offers a key to Jeb for the mirror, then bows to me. There’s serenity in his amber gaze as he says, “Hope to see you both at the banquet this evening.”

For a young man once so tortured and suicidal in the human world, he seems at peace and in control. All along I thought he was a hostage, but by loving him and appointing him a position in her army, Ivory has given him a purpose . . . a reason to live.

Red once had a constructive purpose, too. If she hadn’t lost sight of it, maybe she could’ve found peace. The knot at the base of my skull doesn’t budge this time. Her regret has consumed and incapacitated her.

What if the same thing happens to Jeb? For so long his identity was wrapped up in his art. What’s his purpose now?

Once Finley leaves the room, Jeb pulls me close in a wordless hug. I nestle against him, savoring the scent of paint. A scent that will be fading soon, forever. The only sounds between us are our pounding pulses and our clipped breaths. I’m so devastated, I can’t speak.

He holds me tighter, until his chest crushes to mine. My heart
draws toward his, almost magnetized. It’s a breathless, intense innervation—warm and wonderful—as if starbursts of energy pulse within the organ. The sensation must be caused by the magical bridge he and Morpheus constructed within me, and I wonder if it will always feel like this when one of them holds me now.

Jeb backs me to a transparent wall and whispers, “Look at your world, fairy queen.”

I turn my head to view the dizzying heights below, the genesis of Wonderland blooming everywhere. My wing buds tingle, craving flight.

Jeb gently holds the drop cloth around my collarbone. “It’s fitting. That my wanting to know who you were inspired my first paintings. And that my knowing through and through inspired my last.” He has the strangest look on his face—alert and renewed—as if he’s just woken from a nurturing sleep. He doesn’t look like someone who’s quitting. He looks like someone who’s just beginning.

“Is it so easy to say good-bye to that part of you? Are you walking away from me, too?”

The world outside explodes in a riotous transformation of color and light, reflecting in patterns across his olive skin.

He tilts his head, studying me thoughtfully. “Saying good-bye to my art is . . . it’s terrifying, Al. Ivory offered to give me a forgetting potion, so I wouldn’t have to live with the ache. But I refused. I don’t want to forget anything, because it’s those experiences, those losses, that helped me see there’s a lot more to me than a brush and watercolors. Other parts that haven’t been tapped yet.” Behind his dark, long lashes, his eyes glimmer with a potency that has nothing to do with magic. He pulls me to him, warm breath dancing along the fringe of my lips. “We can figure them out together.”

His thumb touches the dimple in my chin, then drags along my mouth, sending prickly sensations from my lips to my chest to my belly.

“And just so we’re clear, I will
never
walk away from you unless you ask me to. I almost did once, but only because I thought I’d hurt you.” He works a necklace from inside his shirt.

I hadn’t even noticed the chain glistening at the curve of his neck. I help him drag it out, revealing the engagement ring that he melted in the ocean, the one that Morpheus melded into a clump of metal. It’s been painted anew. Indestructible.

“Oh, Jeb . . .”

“I can’t give you all the things I once hoped to,” he says. “But I can give you a family and a home. I love you, Al. I just hope you can love a simple mechanic.”

I wind my fingers through the wavy hair at his neck. I admire this side of him most of all . . . his fragility, his flaws. His strength in spite of them. And now, he sees that strength with as much clarity and confidence as I always have.

“There will never be anything simple about you,” I whisper. “And I already love you.”

He lifts me until I match his height, my feet dangling, and presses me into the glass wall with his body. My heart reacts again—humming with life. His mouth and labret cross my forehead, soft yet persistent on their way down my face.

My mind blurs to a ripple of pleasure when his soft, full lips at last make contact with mine. He starts to deepen the kiss, but pauses, intent on the glass behind me. “You gotta be kidding.”

I glance over my shoulder. Outside, Morpheus hangs on the glass in moth form, level with my head, glaring at us with his bulbous
gaze. Even without a face, his smugness is apparent. His favorite pastime is interrupting Jeb’s romantic moments. I try not to laugh, but can’t help myself.

“Cocky son of a bug.” Jeb sets me on the floor and draws the dropcloth tighter around me.

A barn owl swoops from the sky and skims the glass. Morpheus launches off in a tizzy, trying to outrun the bird. Now Jeb’s the one laughing.