“What you gave up for me,” I tell him. “Everything you’ve done while we’ve been here is amazing. If I make it back home, I’ll spend my life thanking you.”
Jeb’s mouth drops open. He shakes his head, forcing bubbles to churn all around him. His hair swirls like black moss floating on water.
“No, Alyssa!” Morpheus’s screams are strangely synchronized with Jeb’s silent ones. But it’s too late. I’ve squeezed the tear, and the liquid drizzles down my wrist, warm with the scent of brine and longing.
In my mind, I send up my heart’s deepest desire: that I had never answered the door on prom night when Jeb first came knocking, that I had stepped into that mirror alone.
Behind my closed eyes, a giant pocket watch spins, its hands turning counterclockwise. Everything happens in reverse: my wings sinking back into my skin; our ride on the clams shuffling us upward onto the crumpled chessboard, which levels to a smooth, sandy slant; surfing up instead of down and jumping backward onto March Hairless’s table, face-to-face with icy statues; the kisses in the mirrored hall, all of them taken back—slipped away into a pocket of time never to be remembered by anyone but me; I see the ocean refilling, us leaping into the rowboat, then the octobenus sliding back into the water while we fall asleep once more, only to awaken on the white sandy beaches; me riding atop Jeb’s shoulder as he walks backward, shrinking down to my size as we battle the flowers, then backtrack to the tiny door. Into the rabbit hole, then up, up, up to face the sunshine. Until at last, Jeb’s gone, and I’m falling down the rabbit hole—me and no one else.
My lungs wheeze as if I’ve been dragged underwater. I open my eyes.
All the memories remain, and everything’s the same: Morpheus pinned in place by knights’ swords; the queens, side by side; the guards looking on in anticipation; and Gossamer on my shoulder.
Worst of all … the jabberlock box. The roses are still red. Ivory holds the pewter cube in her hands. I’m about to scream, because the wish didn’t work, and I failed.
The tears in Queen Grenadine’s eyes stop me.
I step closer to the box. On the other side of the opened lid, King Red stares back through black water. Without Jeb here to make the sacrifice, the king used his love for Grenadine to trade places with Ivory, saving both kingdoms. Maybe in some small way, that redeems him for breaking my great-great-great-grandmother’s heart all those years ago.
I wonder if anyone remembers Jeb. The confusion in their eyes tells me they don’t. But I’d bet my life Morpheus does. He’s always been able to get into my mind.
“Foolhardy choice,” he says, confirming my suspicion. “By being the martyr, you’ll never see your family again. How do you think fragile little Mumsy will feel about that?”
“Oh, I’ll see them,” I answer. “It was never the netherling traits that were my family’s curse. You were the curse. Today, I’m breaking you. I’m queen now. The portals are open for me. So I’m going back home, and my family will finally be free.”
He glances down at his shoes, his jewels blinking black and blue, like bruises. “Such pretty delusions, little luv. Almost pretty enough for a fairy tale.” A hoarseness scrapes his voice, tingeing it with remorse.
Tired of his mind games, I start to lift off Grenadine’s crown.
My fingers lock up at the base of the rubies, unable to move. Underneath Queen Red’s hairpin, my scalp flames. White-hot tendrils reach down from my skull into my spine, nailing my entire body into place.
The sensation migrates to my arms, setting my veins on fire. They glow green again, like in the spirit garden, sprouting into ivy. The same sensation runs up my legs beneath the wide skirt. This time, the vines don’t recede into my skin. They grow larger, expand with my breath—a living, breathing plant growing out of me.
I scream as the vines strike like leafy snakes, snapping Gossamer from my shoulder and lashing out at everyone around me.
“What is happening?” Grenadine wails, the ribbons on her fingers all whispering at once.
“Your husband’s sacrifice was for naught!” Ivory screams. “Red’s spirit was in the hairpin … she’s united with the girl … they are one being!”
The knights and guards, fearing for their queens, turn their weapons on me.
Morpheus uses the distraction to whip his wings closed around his chest, knocking the remaining knights off him. With a turn of his heels, he maneuvers behind Ivory and catches her around the waist, vorpal sword at her throat. “Step away from Queen Alyssa, or I slice Ivory in twain and awaken the bandersnatch for a feeding.”
Everyone freezes. Even Gossamer hovers in midair. I want to make a run for the door, but I can’t move. Queen Red is fighting for control of my body, and it takes every last drop of concentration and strength to keep her contained.
“All of you”—Morpheus gestures toward the door—“get out. This is between the three of us now. Or the four of us, if you count the queen you stabbed in the back a lifetime ago.”
Gossamer’s the first to leave, her green shoulders drooping. Grenadine takes the jabberlock box from Ivory and walks backward toward the entrance along with her guards, nearly tripping over some of the dead soldiers on their way out. The elfin knights stand at the ready, waiting for a command from Ivory.
“Do not test me.” Morpheus spreads his wings high and presses the blade to her jugular until a puckered indentation appears.
“Go,” she rasps.
A wave of frustration ripples through the knights as they back away, swords lowered. But the emotion can only be felt, not seen; their faces remain impassive. The door slams shut behind them.
Dragging Ivory with him, Morpheus locks and bars the door, then turns to me, narrowing his eyes at the crown on my head. “My part is done, wretched witch. I am now free of you.”
“Well enough …” Red’s answer rings through my head and forces its way from my mouth on a gust of air. “But I have expanded my expectations. Being imprisoned for so long, I deserve retribution. Bring your captive closer. I want her crown-magic as well. Do it, and I’ll offer you a position at my side as king, ruling over all of Wonderland.”
Ivory struggles, but Morpheus holds the blade steady at her throat. Locking my gaze with his, he grimaces miserably. “Why didn’t you listen?” he asks, voice pinched. “The wish I gave you … if you had used it as I instructed … it would’ve saved you from this end. My challenge was for you to sit on the throne with Red possessing your body. I tried to offer you a way out.”
If the queen wasn’t holding me up, I’d faint dead away. My fate is to be a vessel—only one-half myself—tethered to Wonderland for all eternity? I want to tell him again that I hate him, to really mean it this time. I want to spit at him and scream that he’s a coward in the worst way, to sacrifice me for his own worthless soul.
I avert my eyes instead, using that ploy that worked so well earlier so I can bring him to his knees. Because he’s the only one with the power to free me now.
“Please, you must understand.” His voice takes on that pleading quality, and my heart—the one part of my body that I’ll never let Red have—picks up a beat, hopeful. “I’m not a coward.” He tries to convince me, as if I’d already called him the name. “It wasn’t the fear of death that drove me … it was captivity. Like you, I cannot be a spirit contained. I must be free. You understand, don’t you?”
I suppress any response, wincing from the effort of fighting Red.
“Would you hurry and get over here, you fool? I need the added power of Ivory’s crown to fight the girl. She’s very powerful, this one.” There’s a hint of pride in the statement, which only feeds my resolve to beat her. Forget family ties. I’m not hers to be proud of.
Morpheus steps forward a few feet with his hostage. Red throws out a vine like a striking snake. It topples the crown from Ivory’s head; she screams and faints.
Slowing her fall, Morpheus lays her out of the way, his toe on the diamond-encrusted crown. Red’s vine rope tries
to reach again but can’t get any closer without me stepping forward. I refuse to budge.
Red manipulates the connection between her ivy strands and my veins like puppet strings. I bite against the tearing pain, jaw almost cracked from grinding my teeth so hard. Still, I don’t relent.
“It was to be so perfect!” Morpheus all but cries the words, concentrating solely on me. “Your mortal suitor has already forgotten this journey. But you and I, we share memories of a childhood that I will never forget. You are the lady of my heart. My match in every way. I would’ve stayed at your side once we banished Queen Red, never left you to rule alone. We could’ve danced every night in the stars above your kingdom. For you, I would’ve given up my solitary life … been your loyal footman and cherished you eternally.”
Red forces my face in his direction, but I keep my gaze on the floor.
“I should make you my footstool with that admission of heresy. But I’m giving you one last chance. Bring the crown if you wish to have any part of her. I’m sharing one-half of her mind. I can offer you her body, force her to surrender to your desires. Use her as you will. Wed her, bed her. Be her mate. Just let me have Ivory’s crown.”
The sole of his shoe scrapes the jeweled circlet along the floor toward her. Rethinking, he moves it back even farther out of her reach.
An ember of hope stirs inside me, until I look up. He’s deep in thought, actually considering her proposition.
She can’t do that, can she? Force my body to her will? As if in answer, my hair escapes several of its pins and thrashes around me, the strands no longer platinum blond but flame red. They reach toward Morpheus, taunting him like beckoning arms.
“Do you want her for your own?”
“So very much—” His voice breaks.
“Then do my bidding. She’ll be yours physically, and there the heart and soul will follow in time. You can romance your way into her good graces. You shall have forever to win her.”
The expression on Morpheus’s face is torn between longing and a struggle for honor. The gems bejeweling his eyes flash from pink to purple. “Forever to win her.” He’s almost in a trance. He crouches to lift the crown but stops.
“Oh, for Fennine’s sake! If you’re too weak to hand it over, simply leave. The girl’s only remaining strong because you’re giving her hope. Begone, and I’ll overpower her. I shall get the crown for myself.”
Morpheus stands, takes one last lingering look at me, then starts for the door.
A cry erupts from my throat as I reclaim my voice. “That’s it? You got what you want, and now you’re going to turn your back on me like you did Alice? You’ll leave me to my cage of ivy? Why not? It can’t be any worse than living in a straitjacket, and you’ve forced enough girls into those.”
He pauses, midstep.
“Don’t listen to her! She will be yours to hold and cherish within the hour. You can kiss her tears away, make all her pain a distant memory.”
As if in slow motion, he resumes walking, broad shoulders tense and wings low.
“You made a vow!” I screech, wrestling for control of my mind. “Not to leave me heartbroken and hurt again! You’ll lose everything!”
Morpheus stalls at the threshold, his back turned and head hanging down. “I would give up all my powers to have you in my arms. Your love is the only magic I need.”
Red forces me forward a step … then two.
“I’ll be a corpse in your bed!” I try to get through to him, one last time. “You’re killing everything that makes me who I am. The girl you taught, your playmate … the one you claim to love will be gone, with a puppet in her place.”
The leafy veins in my legs jerk on another unwanted step as if in demonstration.
Just as Morpheus reaches his hand to unbar the door, Red snaps out her vines and reaches the crown.
“Good-bye, Alyssa,” my one last hope says, his wings drooping in resignation. “I’m afraid neither of us is strong enough to defeat her.”
“We’ll see about that, Morpheus,” I hiss back, then turn my attention to the vines possessing me.
I’m done letting everyone else dictate what happens to my life. I’d rather be dead than an eternal pawn.
Exerting the last of my will, I force my hands to grip the vines that are dragging the crown toward me. Slamming to my knees, I tug against the ivy, holding it taut where it joins my skin. Queen Red’s scream rattles my brain. She drops the crown to concentrate on me. Her ivy winds around my palms and fingers until they’re covered with leafy mittens. She forces my arms together and binds them and follows with my legs and torso, incapacitating me just like the flowers did on the beginning of my journey, except the pain can’t compare. Any struggle against her shackles makes each bone in my body feel like it’s going to crack.
The only way to stop hurting is to go limp … give up. She’s won. I’m finished … I close my eyes and whimper.
I think of Jeb, Jenara, my mom and dad—all having to pick up their lives without me. It pierces my heart with a pain more acute than anything I’ve ever felt. And I’m glad for it. The intensity of the emotion proves I’m still alive … that I’m an individual. That I’m me.
Red has my body, but she doesn’t control my heart or mind yet. That’s where my magic lies.
Three of the elfin knight corpses lie only feet away. One’s arm is severed, one’s neck is buckled, and the other has a twisted leg, all from their encounter with the bandersnatch. They might be broken, but I can still use them.
Concentrating on their bodies, I picture them alive: Their brains become computers, hardwired to my thoughts; their hearts made of putty, pumping in time with my own; their legs and arms are pliant like pipe cleaners, moving on my command.
Shaky and awkward, they stand. Limping and swaying, they drag themselves toward me. Their fingers clamp around the vines and heave against Queen Red.
My ivy cocoon unwinds, spinning me on the ground. The vines grow taut at my ankles, wrists, and hands, where they’re joined with my body. The knights continue to heave with all their weight and the vines rip my skin on the way out, like electric cords being jerked from a plasterboard wall. A knife-sharp pain guts me—a rotary blade hacking through my organs.
I gurgle a scream and strangle on the taste of blood, losing control of my macabre marionettes. They droop, almost releasing their hold on the vines. Driven by the desire to be free, I command the knights to yank harder.
Crimson streams spurt from my wounds and puddle on the floor. I grit my teeth, using my body’s anguish to drive me, to give my creations the strength to fight until they’ve ripped Red out, until she’s connected only to my fingertips by a tangle of weeds.
I collapse, and my trio of knights crumple into a pile, inanimate and dead again.
I’m so weak, I barely realize Morpheus is at my side. Vorpal sword in hand, he severs the leafy stems from my fingers, then slashes the vines away. Another piercing screech jars my skull as Morpheus works off the crown and hairpin to disconnect me completely from my puppeteer.
Without a body to inhabit, Red’s spirit writhes in the ivy on the ground, dying like a mass of eels out of water.
Morpheus tucks the vorpal sword away in his jacket. I slump in a fetal position, drained of blood and energy. My wrists and ankles gape open, a thousand times worse than the wounds that slashed across my palms as a child. I wonder if I’m dying …
A black haze dims my surroundings.
“Brave, stubborn girl,” Morpheus whispers into my ear as he tenderly cradles me in his arms, lifting my body. “You were the only one who could free yourself of her possession and win the crown. I knew you would be victorious. All you needed was a push to anger. And who better to drive you to the edge of fury than me?”
“Liar,” I mumble, swimming in nausea and coughing up blood. My arms and legs feel weighted, and sticky streams ooze out of the gouges in my skin. “You left me.”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Morpheus guides me dow
n beside Ivory and exposes her birthmark, touching it to mine. Heat flashes along my body. “I’ve always believed in your power. For the queen I saw in you even as a child … for the woman you could never see in yourself. My faith is as unchanging as my age.”
“I don’t believe you,” I murmur, half-conscious. My veins refill, healing my skin. The agonizing lacerations both inside and outside my body ease to numbness.
He strokes my head. “Of course you don’t. I’ve given you no reason to.”
I snap open my eyes as a roar breaks from the bandersnatch’s pen. The gate hangs off its hinges, the padlock crushed and useless as the monster rises over Morpheus’s shoulder with Queen Red’s ivy illuminating its veins. She found another body to inhabit …
“Morpheus!”
He leaps toward the monster to defend me. Two tongues and a lasso of vines cinch around his neck, jerking him high into the air. He loses his hat.
Still weak, I struggle to stand. “Fight back!”
But it’s over even before I say it.
Morpheus clutches his throat. “Better to take my medicine, luv,” he chokes out. “If you try to outsmart magic”—a strained cough breaks his words—“there’s always a price to pay.”
The creature swallows him whole. His wings slide down last—a flash of glistening black grace.
The creature is about to charge me but instead falls to the ground and rolls around, wrestling itself. Morpheus is still defending me from the inside.
When the bandersnatch rises to its feet again, it runs into the closest wall. Slamming its massive body against the rock until it crumbles and breaks open, the monster bursts out of its chain and leaps through the hole, escaping into the wilds of Wonderland.
I sit and stare at the giant gap in the castle wall—my hooped gown encircling my waist like a velvet globe—for what seems an eternity. As I breathe in the night air, I know it really can’t have been more than a few seconds.
The pixies arrive to gather the dead. They first appear in the distance, mining lights bobbing in the darkness before they clamber in over the rocky ruins and set to work.