Hovering in front of my nose, Gossamer tilts her teensy head. “Which bids the question . . . Before all this. Before the compromise for your heart. Had you reached a decision? Which man? Which future?”
I return her steady gaze, still not sure if Morpheus is willing to compromise anything. “I was going to choose Wonderland, and rule alone. I could never live an eternity knowing I’d broken one of their hearts for the other. Especially now that I know how excruciating a broken heart can be.” I let out a shaky sigh. “Maybe I still should choose that. It seems wrong, for them to endure so much to bridge my two sides. It feels like I’m being selfish.”
The sprite makes a tiny sound, something between a snort and a sneeze. Her astute dragonfly eyes reflect the rainbow-colored lights from the instruments.
“What?” I lean against the door’s icy frame, amazed by how the ice isn’t cold to the touch, yet it can freeze a damaged heartbeat or suspend a rotting landscape.
The sprite perches on my shoulder, her wings tickling my ear. “You’re thinking like a human again. Seeing things in black-and-white.”
It’s my turn to snort. “Right. I forgot. It’s all about the gray in Wonderland.”
“It is. I once told you that no one knows what he or she is capable of until things are at their darkest. When you were dying, both your men came face-to-face with that moment. They combined forces, looked within one another instead of themselves, and found the gray—the common ground.”
I frown. “Are you saying that it changed them?”
She sits down and, propped against the curve of my neck, lifts one leg at a time to adjust the pointed green shoes on her feet. “You’ve always brought out the softer side in my master. But he hasn’t changed. He’s as changeless as he is ageless. He’ll always be selfish, manipulative, untamable. He knows no other way to be, for he is all things Wonderland. The event simply gave him a new means to determine the direction of his actions when dealing with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“A mortal moral compass. Just as your Jebediah now understands Wonderland’s magic and feral desires, Morpheus understands the human world’s emotional needs and insecurities. He and your mortal knight have always been your perfect mate, split in twain. But now each of them has gained enough insight to provide what you need in either realm. It is not the men bridging your heart. It is your heart bridging them. They are wiser because of their love for you. I daresay even happier. Yes, they could subsist without you, but they are better men with you. They are the ones who need you to be complete, to be all they were meant to be. That does not make you selfish. It makes you indispensable.”
I smile. The idea is empowering, and as fascinating, twisted, and beautiful as Wonderland itself.
My attention wanders back to the dance floor and the guests representing the Red kingdom, the White, and even the solitary of our kind. I recognize a few more of the attendees: Mustela fae—ferret-like creatures with long, venomous fangs and vulnerable craniums, a hedgehog being with the face of a sparrow, a pink woman with a neck as long as a flamingo.
There are also some that are new to me, with batlike wings and fishy faces, or sensuous females as dark as mud, with amphibious plants sprouting out of their supple skin.
I may not know every netherling, but I know their gifts and powers. Morpheus taught me in my childhood.
The bridge troll’s dreadlocks are enchanted with a telepathy that brainwashes his victims into being so fearful of staying in place, they cross his bridge even when they know he’s waiting on the other side to turn them to stone. And the nameless muddy vixen uses an alluring song to draw lesser-minded beings into the water where she sucks the life from them.
Not all of them are deadly, but each one is deranged and strange enough to tease my darker side with the possibility of chaos. I’m eager to start visiting in my dreams so I can learn their weaknesses and how to manipulate them, because reasoning is never the law of the land in the Red Court. It’s all about who’s the trickiest, who’s the wiliest with words. And who’s the most determined to get their way.
Which is why Morpheus will be the perfect Red King one day.
Jeb mentioned earlier that he and Morpheus talked while I was recuperating from being frozen. He told Morpheus he was letting me out of my vow, in hopes Morpheus would play the gentleman, too. But I don’t expect him to fight fair. Just as I know he doesn’t expect me to be an easy mark.