“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.