I glance at the wings covering me, at his body, immovable in front of me, then rise up on tiptoe and take his smooth face in both my hands. He tenses for an instant—suspicious—but relaxes slowly, each muscle surrendering bit by bit as I stroke his jaw.
“I’m just asking you to wait a little while,” I whisper. “Isn’t forever worth that?” Not giving him the chance to answer, I press my mouth to his cheek, a promise for someday. One pulse of my lips for my childhood friend, and one for the man I’m only starting to know.
Morpheus gentles beneath me, for once letting me take the lead. His free hand rests in the hair at the nape of my neck, the other grows hot where he holds my pendants.
It’s a peck on the cheek, innocent and heartfelt, until he turns his face without warning, catching my mouth under his. His lips are warm and silky, flavored with tobacco. He groans and sinks into me, sweeping me into the current of his passion.
Before I start to drown, I push him away, my lips throbbing and speechless. His jewels are like fireworks, a prismatic array of emotions. He studies me with astonishment, so like the boy from my dreams those rare times I defeated him in a game or a challenge. His wings are lax, no longer a wall around us.
A muffled curse comes from the doorway. I jerk my head to find Jeb there, blood drained from his face. His gaze is fierce yet dejected, a deep and gut-twisting wound I haven’t seen since his dad was alive and tormenting him.
My stomach falls. “Jeb.”
He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t even attack Morpheus. What he does is so much worse.
He leaves.
“Jeb, wait!” I feel as if my insides have been gored—a pain so powerful my legs give out.
Morpheus’s fist at my sternum holds me pinned to the wall, keeps me from going after him.
“There’s a pity.” Morpheus glides his free knuckles down my cheek. “I am sorry he had to be hurt, luv. But it’s better this way. It would’ve driven him mad to give you up to me for a day. Things would never have been the same between you after that. And he could’ve been killed tonight. You probably just saved his life.”
My cheeks flame. “No. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end. This time was supposed to belong to us!”
Morpheus releases me and steps back. “Time. You’ll have no such constraints in Wonderland. Let that be your silver lining. Now pull yourself together. We must prepare for Red.”
On the way out, he stops and strokes the pearls on my prom dress where it hangs on the chair. He smiles tenderly, and I know he’s thinking of Ivory’s vision—of a wedding and a child with hair like his and eyes like mine, who will bring dreams to Wonderland and make stealing human children obsolete.
With a final glance at me, Morpheus leaves.
I slide to the floor. Warmth radiates between my collarbones where my necklaces glow, bright blue and hot from Morpheus’s magical grip. The key, heart, and ring are melded together—a scrap heap of metal as useless as any explanation I could offer Jeb.
I never saw it coming. It was me all along. Me who would betray myself in the worst possible way.
It’s not so easy to pull myself together.
I make us late leaving the house, and by the time we stop off at my dad’s sporting goods store for some supplies Jeb wrote down—two sets of walkie-talkies, ten soccer-ball carrying nets, four pairs of night-vision hunting goggles, and two paintball guns, along with a couple of boxes of white and yellow paintballs—Mom and I pull up in Underland’s lot only thirty minutes before prom is scheduled to start. The student council and some chaperones have already arrived. There are at least a dozen cars here, and one of them is Taelor’s. This night just gets better and better.
The activity center is a huge underground cave with a rock ceiling stretching as high as forty-eight feet in places. There’s a ground-level entrance outside: a small structure that looks like a dome with the letters U-N-D-E-R-L-A-N-D blinking in neon orange, red, and purple above the gym-style double doors. Once through the doors, a ramp curves down to the main floor where the glow-in-the-dark activities are laid out: a skateboard bowl, a miniature-golf area, an arcade, and a raised café. There’s also a place for dancing, about the size of the school gym, with wall-to-wall mirrors. It’s an improvement on the gym at school, since in lieu of traditional lighting, it uses black lights illuminating fluorescent murals. The perfect setting for fairy tales and masquerades.
Underland’s rear doors open to a small locker room where employees store backpacks, jackets, and personal items while working. It also has a freight elevator used for carrying down weekly shipments of food and supplies.
That’s where Jeb is waiting to let us in. We’re going to take the elevator so we can enter behind the café and blend in easier.
Jeb’s still helping in spite of how I broke his heart. Not just because his sister could be in danger but because that’s what Jeb does. He protects the vulnerable.