Unhinged: 2 (32 page)

A scream tears from my throat.

Adrenaline surges through me, and I pry the cold fingers from my wrist. Morpheus flies to my side. We exchange a glance, then examine the cocooned webbing along the wall. Together, we break through and release the form from its shell.

A woman slumps into Morpheus’s arms. She smells fruity and delicate—like pears. Her skin sparkles with the sheen of moonlight over a frosted lake, and giant feathery white wings drape behind her shoulders.

She’s an ice swan and a queen entwined. I’d know her anywhere.

“Ivory,” I whisper. I can’t imagine why she’s here, trapped like this.

Morpheus pales. He lifts her and carries her to the mattress, kicking aside the lamp on the way. He lays her down gently. Off-white lace peeks out from the web clinging to her dress. Waist-length silvery hair wraps around her long, elegant neck.

Seated on the edge of the bed, Morpheus peels a sticky gossamer coating from her nose and mouth. She gasps for breath. Her white lashes and eyebrows twitch, glistening like crystals.

I drop to my knees in front of Morpheus’s feet, holding her hand as she coughs herself awake.

“Don’t try to talk, Your Majesty,” Morpheus insists, though I sense tension along with the concern in his voice. “Alyssa, could you get her something to drink? Surely you have water or some such in your car.”

“No.” She furrows her brow at Morpheus, then focuses on me. The black markings on her temples glitter in the sunlight, veined like a dragonfly’s wings. “Queen Alyssa, forgive me.” Her faded blue irises are almost colorless.

I squeeze her fingers to comfort her. “For what?”

“For endangering your mortal knight. I never anticipated things getting so out of hand. We will find him … we’ll get him back.”

She’s obviously confused. There’s no telling how long she’s been encased in that web. I cast a glance through the rails. Jeb’s lying on the floor. Chessie buzzes around him, keeping watch. “He’s not lost. He’s downstairs, sleeping.”

“Sister Two didn’t take him?” she asks.

“Sister Two?”
Morpheus appears as shocked as I feel. Then he groans. “The door knocker. The mystery woman in Alyssa’s mosaics. The one hiding in the shadows …”

“Of course,” I whisper, seeing the vision again in my mind. The
eight living vines connected to her lower torso. They weren’t tentacles. They were spider legs. The door knocker wasn’t about the scars on my palms. It was a tribute to her mutated hand.

“But why would Sister Two be involved?” I reason aloud. “Why would she be at the same cottage where Red was holed up? She despises Red for escaping her keep in the cemetery last year.”

“Red was never here,” Ivory answers.

Morpheus clears his throat, and their gazes meet in some silent understanding.

“So
Sister Two
was holding Jeb prisoner?” I ask. “
She
gave him the Tumtum juice, forced him to paint all night? Why would she do that?”

Ivory tries to answer but coughs again.

Morpheus nudges my shoulder. “The water, Alyssa.”

Ivory swallows hard and tightens her fingers through mine as I start to get up. “That won’t be necessary. Her questions deserve answers.”

Morpheus frowns. “I don’t think this is the time.”

“When else, Morpheus?” Ivory scolds. “She is in deeper than any of us now. Sister Two left that door knocker as a warning to both of you. She knows of her twin’s betrayal from all those years ago.” Ivory’s eyes settle on me. “And Alison’s betrayal.”

I struggle to make sense of her cryptic words. “You mean how my mom tried to become queen? Why would Sister Two care about that?”

“Blast it!” Morpheus scoots off the bed and crouches next to me on the floor. He props his elbows on the mattress and cradles his temples in his hands, massaging with his fingertips. “So the twins are squabbling … that leaves the cemetery only partly guarded. If
Red breaks into it, she’ll have her spirit army. Then she’ll come here. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Ivory’s lips and cheeks deepen from white to pale pink. “You should’ve stayed in Wonderland … faced Red, like she wanted.”

“You know why I couldn’t.” A tremor shakes his chin almost imperceptibly. “So who told Sister Two the secret? There were only three of us who knew.”

Ivory frowns. “No, there were four. Red knew. Sister One has a foolish habit of confessing secrets to her dead spirits when she tends them, and that was well out of the boundaries of our vows not to tell a living soul.”

“Perfect,” Morpheus snarls.

“Red tried to invade the cemetery this morning,” Ivory continues. “The sisters captured her and were preparing to exorcise her spirit from the flower fae so they could seal her in a toy for eternity. But Red told Sister Two the secret about Alison to distract her. Sister Two turned on her twin in a rage, and Red escaped. Sister Two came here to find a replacement for what Alyssa’s family has stolen from her, one way or another. Those were her final words as she wound me in the web.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand. Is she still mad about Chessie’s smile or how I accidentally helped Red escape last year? But what’s that have to do with my mom?”

“What Sister Two seeks compensation for wasn’t an accident,” Ivory answers. “And the payment will be steep. She intends to take your mortal knight for reparation.”

I still don’t understand what exactly is going on, but the fear clutching at my heart overpowers any curiosity. “Jeb was outside
when I got here,” I say, trying to talk over my terror. “That must’ve saved him. She thought he was gone.”

“Yes,” Morpheus says. “The boy escaped by chasing a white rabbit. There’s poetic irony in that, aye?”

We turn our combined glares on him.

“Simply trying to lighten the mood.” His expression sours.

“There is nothing lighthearted about Sister Two’s threats,” Ivory scolds. “Alyssa’s mortal knight is in true danger now.”

“Now?”
I huff. “We’ve been in danger from Red for a week. She’s been stalking us. At school, at the hospital. And she’s been masquerading as an art collector—that’s how she got Jeb out here.”

Neither one responds.

I look back and forth between them. There’s something they’re not telling me, and I’m tired of ambiguous revelations. “This is
my
world you’ve invaded, my life being screwed up, and my loved ones in the middle of it all. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

“She does,” Ivory insists.

“She knows all she needs to know,” Morpheus says.

“Curse you, Morpheus.” Ivory says exactly what I’m thinking. “These human lives we trifle with. There is a heavy price to be paid.” She rolls to her side in a rustle of lace and satin so we can’t see her expression. “Will I never learn? Time and again … you offer me glimpses of love and companionship, and I am too weak to turn you away.”

Morpheus reaches around me and tips her chin in his direction. “That’s not entirely true. You were the one offering glimpses of love this time.” He dries her ice-encrusted tears with a knuckle.

Another private moment passes between them, a look I can’t
quite decipher, as if he’s relaying a message to her mind. I’m so used to being the recipient of his silent messages, it’s unsettling to sit on the outside.

“What’s going on between you two?” Suspicion wavers in my vocal cords.

“You’re supposed to be working on that lack of trust,” he reminds me.

I stare at him until my eyes itch from not blinking.

Ivory pats my hand. “You misunderstand. I gave Morpheus a glimpse into his future. Something I saw in a vision.”

“That’s enough, Ivory,” he says, a threatening edge to his voice that makes the hair on my neck bristle.

She blinks twice. “In gratitude for my help, Morpheus offered me the gift of companionship, but not his own. A young man from your world, who needs my love as much as I need his.”

“Finley.” I’d almost forgotten the pawn Morpheus stole from the real world. “Is he okay?”

She nods. “He’s safe in my palace, as a ward of my knights. Though he came with a stipulation. I owed Morpheus a favor, so that’s why I am here. Nothing is ever free with him. Nothing.”

“Exactly why we have this trust issue,” I answer her but shoot a glare at Morpheus.

He traces a split in the mattress, ignoring me.

Ivory gives him her hand, and he helps her sit up. She takes my elbows, coaxing me to join her on the edge of the bed.

As Ivory strokes the ends of my hair, her voice becomes gentle. “There is
one
thing you can trust about Morpheus. He is loyal to you. It is his desire to be with you that drives him to these desperate schemes.”

Morpheus stands in a rush of wings and rustling clothes. His shoulders droop as he turns his back to us. “There is nothing desperate about enlisting Alyssa’s help. It is her
place
. She is the bearer of the ruby crown. Wonderland is as much her home as ours, no matter how she denies it. I had to make her see.”

I push off the mattress. “By lying?”

Morpheus responds with silence, not even glancing over his shoulder to acknowledge me.

Blood rushes to my cheeks. I’m more furious with myself for believing in him than anything else. I move to the loft’s railing and look pointedly at Ivory, an ugly theory taking form. “The real Ivy Raven. She’s never even seen Jeb’s artwork, has she?”

Ivory shakes her head.

“You didn’t need her imprint for a glamour. You just needed a legitimate name in case we checked up on her. It was you who showed up to meet Jeb at the art gallery.” I grit my teeth. Neither of them deny it. “He was so blown away by your amazing ‘costume.’ And you weren’t even wearing one. You kept him here last night. Why?”

Ivory looks at the lace and webs sweeping the floor at her feet, long lashes veiling her eyes in a white curtain. “Only those with royal blood can see through Chessie’s filter and decipher visions. Morpheus needed me to read your mosaics. And since your mother hid the others, he had to arrange for replicas. We were running out of time.”

My stomach drops. “Why the big hurry? You’ve already said Red isn’t here.”

Morpheus’s muscles tense at the statement, but he stays maddeningly silent.

Ivory answers, “Morpheus needed to know if Wonderland could be saved if he ignored Red’s threats. She had given him an ultimatum: Surrender to her and meet his death, or watch his beloved nether-realm fall to rot at his feet.”

I think of Queen Grenadine’s ribbon that spoke to me in my bedroom:
Queen Red lives and seeks to destroy that which betrayed her.
“It was Morpheus she was after, not me. He’s the one she thinks betrayed her.”

Stoic, Morpheus kicks the carafe that once held the Tumtum juice. It rolls along the floor and stops beside my stolen mosaics. “I escaped her Deathspeak without her getting the throne. In her mind, I recanted our deal and owe her my life.”

Glancing at Jeb’s prone, dreaming form downstairs, I curl my hands into fists. “You vowed to tell me the truth about my mosaics. You lied.”

Morpheus grunts. “You never specified
what
truth. So I told you the truth about their origins … their power. And I never once said Red had them. You were the one who supplied her name.”

My legs feel shaky. I slide to the floor, my spine raking along the railing. “So Red called you out—a bully on a playground—and you ran. You brought your fight to my world.”

“Your world,”
Morpheus huffs. He faces me, his exquisite features hardened to a defiant scowl. “I showed you the truth in your dreams, the havoc she was wreaking. But because it didn’t cast a ripple in this stagnant little human pond you call home, you ignored me. You put it out of your mind. Talked yourself out of believing it. I knew you would care nothing about my well-being. But I hoped … I hoped you would fight for Wonderland.”

I want to say that I would’ve fought for him because I owe him.
Because I remember what he did for me. Because a part of me cares about my childhood friend, even about the selfish, charismatic, and frustrating man he’s become. But I wouldn’t have been in Wonderland for him to rescue in the first place if he hadn’t lured me down on false pretenses last year. And I wonder, would I really have faced the one creature that terrifies me most, to save someone who was once so careless with my own life?

“Don’t you dare turn this on me,” I say, maybe as much to myself as Morpheus. “This is about you, what
you
did.”

“I did the only thing I could to bid a reaction from you. The stolen mosaics, the vials of blood, the spellbound nurse, and the haunted clown—”

“Aha!” I point at him. “You can’t deny that lie. You said you never sent a toy.”

“Herman Hattington isn’t a toy. He’s a thespian of the highest order, due to his ever-changing face. And I didn’t send him. He went to you of his own volition, as a favor to me.”

I bury my head in my hands. That explains the clown’s weird, heavy hat; it was the metal conformateur that’s a part of the hatmaker’s skull. “I suppose Rabid was helping you, too.” That possibility hurts worse than any other.

“No,” Morpheus answers. “His loyalty to you is sincere. His part in this was purely accidental.”