Jeb starts after her as she heads down the hall. He pauses at the door and gives Morpheus a meaningful glare. “Mind your manners, bug-eyes.”
“Always.” Morpheus tips a nonexistent hat.
Clenching his jaw, Jeb steps out.
The minute he’s gone, I back up to the wall, limping unevenly with one boot on and one off.
Morpheus watches me like a predator, smiling. “Trying to put some distance between you and your feelings, little plum?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mmm. You lie with such finesse. Becoming more of a netherling every day.” He strides toward me, as stealthy and menacing as a black panther. He props his forearm against the wall over my head and, wings curled around me, cuts off my surroundings. “I looked inside your heart after our melding. I saw how worried you were.”
I clamp my mouth shut, hoping that was all he saw.
His gaze dips down to my necklaces. His features harden as he loops his pinky through the ring. “This will never do. You obviously haven’t told our pseudo elf about the vow you made to me.”
Now more than ever, I can’t give Morpheus what he’s asking. My mind searches for a way to reach his sympathetic side. I know he has one. I’ve seen it. “I learned something about you today.”
That wins his full attention. He draws me into the fathomless depths of his eyes. “What would that be?”
“Every time you try to do the right thing, you get screwed.”
My observation is met with silence. He scoops up my other necklace, closing the key, heart, and ring within his fist.
I take a shallow breath, heartbeat stumbling as I try to read him. “So it’s a battle to make that choice, yeah?” I ask.
Morpheus offers a smug smile. “A battle would mean I have to care. I’ve ceased caring.”
“Your actions say otherwise. I know what you did at Butterfly Threads. Sister Two came into the storeroom while I was getting dressed in the bathroom. You lured her out to the main floor in moth form to keep Jeb safe.”
Morpheus fidgets. “I was just having a bit of fun with the wretch.”
“What about what you did for my mom? Even though she betrayed you, you never once told Sister Two that my dad was her stolen dream-boy.”
“I made a life-magic vow.”
“No. I asked my mom about that vow. The wording never specified protecting Dad’s identity.”
He looks down, as if searching for some rebuttal.
I lift his chin with my fingertip. “I’m trying to tell you that if you keep following the good impulses, no matter how insignificant they might seem, I won’t let you down like the others. I’ll come back to you.” I bite my tongue, careful not to show all of my hand. He can’t know I’ve witnessed our future, only that I’m keeping a tally of his past.
Morpheus laughs. “Come back to me?”
“Someday.”
“Perhaps I won’t want you then. Perhaps I’ll tire of waiting.”
I swallow my pride. “Then it will be my turn to win you. I’m up for the challenge.”
His sneer is sardonic if not impressed. “Of course you are.” He pulls me closer with my necklace charms, tightening his fist around them. “But I’m not surrendering our day together after we defeat Red just because of a few pretty words and empty promises.”
I bite my tongue, tempering my impulse to lash out. That would only feed his ego.
“Then you’re not doing the right thing,” I say evenly.
He pouts. “No? Because my good impulses are telling me that the right thing is to make you honor your vow. You’re just going to have to bite the bullet and tell your mortal toy about our accord.”
I slap his wings in an attempt to get out. They don’t budge. “You make me crazy!”
His eyes light up, glittering onyx against a backdrop of violet jewels. “And you inflame my soul.” He squeezes my necklaces, blue light pulsing from inside his fingers. “Ask yourself, Your Majesty. Are you truly angry at me, or at the fact that your little ruse to sweet-talk me backfired?”
I blink away the burning sensation under my lids. “It wasn’t a ruse. Everything I said is true.”
He huffs and attempts a glare. But underneath, I see the same doubt and vulnerability I heard in his voice when he sent me to the train without him. I also see something more: a damaged and enchanted fairy who pushed aside his selfishness and faced the bandersnatch for me, who looked a train dead-on, who put himself between Jeb and Sister Two, and who saved my dad from having his life sucked away.
I’m overwhelmed with compassion and gratitude and another emotion I don’t dare put a name to. I have to convince him that there’s a place for him in my heart, too.
Just not yet.