Unhinged (Splintered, #2)(11)
My body wavers in the mud. I’m sinking even deeper—literally and figuratively.
The daisy releases me from her scratchy grip, and the vines suck me down farther. Cold, gooey sludge squishes up around my shins. I rotate at the waist to plead with the giant flower. “You’re my friend. Last time I was here, we played cards, remember? Don’t let him do this …”
Still silent, the daisy turns her hundreds of eyes toward Morpheus, as if awaiting his instructions.
“Did you forget, Alyssa? The solitary of our kind are loyal to no one but themselves—or the highest bidder.” Morpheus steps closer so the toes of his boots are at the edge of the sinkhole. I’m face-to-face with his thighs but can’t quite reach him. “You’d do well to reacquaint yourself with their true nature. It might remind you of your own.” He claps his hands, twice this time.
As far as I can see in every direction, the flower forest rises, the plants ripping their gargantuan stems from the mud. Leafy arms and legs appear. In the center of each blossom, mouths widen, moaning, to reveal clear, jagged teeth. Their roots, moving like serpents, propel them forward. Soon I’m surrounded by row upon row of blinking eyes.
My heart trips in my chest. The mutants weren’t dormant and weak at all … they were lying in wait—a trap prepped to spring.
Their roots wind through the mud, and they slide in to share my grave, their stemlike bodies pressing tight—imprisoning me in layers of mossy leaves and petals. I writhe as my arms press against my torso, my biceps digging into my ribs. With the added weight of the flower army around me, I sink another six inches into the mud, now eye level with Morpheus’s shins. A flicker of claustrophobia resurfaces. I stifle it, remembering who I am. How I escaped from here once before.
“Oh, come on.” My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “If Red couldn’t trap me as her puppet, do you really think you have a chance to hold me hostage in a cage of algae?”
One of the flowers hisses, offended by the insult.
Lightning blinks across the sky, and Morpheus cocks his head. “You are no one’s puppet, plum. You are, however, a hostage. Although you seem confused as to who holds your chains.” He crouches, his nose only inches from mine. “I’ve been very patient.” Gloved knuckles glide across my jaw and down my neck. The jewels under his eyes shimmer to an impassioned violet. “But we no longer have the luxury of time. Red has seen to that.”
I try to block out how my skin responds to his touch, actually drawing toward him, like hairs rising on an electric current. Pinned in place as I am, all I can do is jerk my head to break contact.
Leaning back on his haunches, Morpheus narrows his eyes. “Release the chains you’ve put on yourself. Reclaim your crown and free the netherling madness within you.”
“No. I chose to be human.” Bile burns my tongue as the mud pulls me deeper, as if I were a mouse being ingested by a snake. The sludge rises to my chest, then my throat—a suffocating sensation. I wonder how far he plans to take this bluff.
He drops to his stomach on the ground, wings glimmering like puddles of oil beside him—looking just like he used to as a mischievous child. Chin propped on the back of his fist, he studies me. “I shall not beg. Not even for you, my precious queen.”
A sharp gust of wind slices through us, knocking his hat off. He snatches the brim before it flies into the cracked sky.
His glowing blue hair whips across his face as he turns back to me. “If you won’t stay and save Wonderland, I shall bring my own brand of chaos to the human realm. Fight for us, or face the consequences.”
The flowers close in and push me toward him, rough, leafy hands scraping across my neck and cheeks, cinching my hair at the scalp so I can’t lean away. He smiles, so close that I feel the heat of his breath on my face.
“I won’t let you,” I insist. “I won’t let you into my world.”
“Too little, too late,” he murmurs against my humming skin. “By the time they find your body, I’ll already be there.”
Find my body? I want to scream but can’t even manage a moan from beneath the leafy hand clamped across my mouth.
Morpheus stands, his duster’s hem swirling at his ankles. He settles his hat in place, gestures to the flowers, then transforms into the moth that haunts my memories: black wings, blue body—the size of a bird.
The vines drag me down, and the mud surrounds me like a syrupy, sticky fist. All outside sounds grow muffled. I’m left with only my heartbeat and my whimpers, nothing but vibrations contained by vocal cords and a cage of ribs.
It’s impossible to open my eyelids, my lashes plastered against my cheeks so tight they can’t even flutter. Each article of clothing constricts, as if a layer of glue adheres them to my skin. I’m paralyzed. Not only physically but mentally.
It’s too tight … too constricting. The claustrophobia I thought I’d defeated a year ago comes back in a crashing wave.
Pitch-blackness. Dead silence. Helplessness.
I struggle not to breathe, terrified the mud will enter my nose. It seeps inside anyway, filling my nostrils. I gag at the squeezing sensation in my lungs as the sludge fills my body.
I attempt to thrash, move my muscles, but barely manage more than a spasm. My efforts draw the mud tighter around me like quicksand.
My heart pounds and panic prickles my nerves.