In a surge of drooling, vicious single-mindedness, the mutants pass over Morpheus’s unconscious form without touching him, their sights set on me, drawn by my royal heritage.
“You’ve lost everything,” Red prods from somewhere in my head. “ Your memories failed because you belong to me now. Surrender to my control, and I’ll save us both.”
But it wasn’t only my memories that Morpheus wanted me to use.
“Take her apart! Show us the heart!” the mutant mob chants as it closes in. Red’s tentacle-like vines multiply, holding them all at bay.
I let her defend us, let her distraction serve as my opportunity. I dig inside myself, in search of the crimson-stained moments the diary helped me suppress. I drag them to the surface: Red’s flushed young face as a child when she tried to hold on to her mother’s spirit, the ruby shimmer of her stepsister’s hair during a painful croquet lesson as she felt her father slip away, and the deep crimson hue of whispering ribbons heralding Red’s most devastating mistake, when she sent her husband into another woman’s arms through her own selfish insecurities.
Red shrieks, defenseless against the shock of her regrets. Her vengeful memories hone in and impale her. Her vines withdraw into me, my skin closing up around them as if they were never there. My feet meet the stage.
I conjure my imagination, picturing her as a spider pierced through the thorax with a pin, until she curls up in my chest, helpless as a bug nailed to a plaster backing. Pain spears through me, ripping me down the middle as she succumbs to her sorrow and my heart begins to split in two. I strangle on the taste of copper.
But I won’t die. Not until I’ve dealt out revenge.
Concentrating on Red’s listless tendrils inside me, I coax them to cinch the organ back together.
She no longer owns me. I own her.
The mutant mob overpowers me in a surge of fur, drool, and claws. They rip at my hair, snarl in my ears, and tie my arms back. Then they lift me, carrying me toward the edge of the stage where Jeb fell.
“Take her apart! Show us the heart!” The morbid chanting grows frenetic.
I’m passed overhead from creature to creature, crowd surfing toward the pool of fears. Rage rises in me, fiery hot and blistering. It strips the color from my hair and twists it into platinum dreadlocks, alive with fierce magic—feeding my own dark power.
The flaming sphere on the track catches my eye. I envision the skeletal platform as a centipede, the track becoming the exoskeleton and the support structure the legs. With little coaxing, it rearranges its position. The inclines click open and release the massive inferno of glass. It thunders along the twisted run, then leaps off, flying toward the pool. It lands in place and plugs up the opening, preventing the creatures from tossing me in.
The track continues to move, snakelike, tangling in the ropes and the awning attached to the pole at the center of the stage. The awning rips in half and the ropes draw tighter and tighter until the castle’s outside walls fall inward, crushing half the crowd. Ash puffs out as the stone hits the courtyard.
What’s left of the mob drops me in their midst, as if stunned by my magic. They grunt, growl, and mumble among themselves. Gathering my bearings, I stand, my arms still bound at my back.
“Cover her eyes!” an apish beast shouts. “Her magic is limited to her vision!” One of them drops the bag Jeb was wearing over my head, ties it in place, and shoves me to the ground, knocking the wind from my lungs.
“Now, burn her to ash!”
I inhale, hungry for air, swept under by the smells of paint and citrus soap. The scent of Jeb.
His death replays in my mind. He’ll never see his family, never hold me, never call me skater girl again. His beautiful art will live on in the human realm, yet he’ll never see how it touches people’s lives, or realize he was already the man he always tried so hard to be.
The creatures snarl and paw at my prone form—hot breath and ripping claws—as they scoot me toward the inferno in the ball.
I’m too deep in the mire of emotions to look for a way out, slammed with the idea of Jeb’s heart floating in the pool, somewhere beneath the flaming sphere.
Desolation gouges me, harsher than the punches and fists jarring my bones as I’m dragged toward a flaming death. I curl into a fetal position.
Tears singe my eyes and I scream until my lungs draw up inside me like dried rosebuds, small and useless.
Then, beneath the echo of my despair, the small and quiet jingle of butterfly wings makes me remember: Morpheus’s armor.
I have to live . . . I will live. For my loved ones and for Wonderland. And to avenge Jeb’s death.