Unhinged (Splintered, #2)(50)
As I step in, I clear my throat.
Morpheus looks up. His true likeness fades beneath Finley’s masquerade, although an echo of his jewels remain. They blink a hazy lilac-gray, the same hue of my boots. It’s the color of bewilderment, as if he’s sympathizing with my turmoil. As if he didn’t have a hand in it all.
“What did your mum tell you about the mosaics?” he asks.
“Why is he here?” I sidestep his question, pointing at Rabid. I’m not sure I can trust Morpheus with anything my mom said, or my mistrust in her motives.
Before Morpheus can respond, Rabid notices me. His pink eyes grow to the size of half-dollars.
“Majesty, ever and always yours!” The netherling sheds the towel and knocks the thimble off his antler. The scent of fishy water and dusty bones hits my nose.
Rabid scoots to the edge of the mattress, plops to the floor, and bows. The earbuds pop out and tangle in his antlers. Morpheus catches the tails of the creature’s wet waistcoat to stop him falling face-first into the glass-speckled carpet.
“Penitent be I.” Rabid laces his skeletal fingers together in a prayerful gesture. The white, foamy saliva that earned him his name dots his lips.
“Why are you penitent?” I ask, cautious.
His glowing gaze drags across the shards sparkling on the floor. “Broke your gateway I did not.”
I frown. “I know. My mom did that.”
The creature bows his head. “Betrayed my kingdom … so says Queen Grenadine.” He offers a red piece of ribbon tied in a bow.
Grenadine was born an incurable amnesiac. The bows she wears on her toes and fingers are enchanted with the ability to remind her of important things she wouldn’t otherwise remember.
A whisper greets me as I press the velvety ribbon to my ear. “Queen Red lives and seeks to destroy that which betrayed her.”
The fingerprint upon my heart, the one Red left as a warning last summer, flares—a sharp jolt that pushes the air from my lungs. I drop the ribbon and it flitters away. I meet Morpheus’s gaze. He lifts an eyebrow, making the scar on Finley’s temple curl.
“What does this have to do with you?” I ask Rabid, struggling to keep the quaver from my voice.
“Imprison me you will, Queen Grenadine said.” He lifts his hands toward me, bones grinding as he waits to be handcuffed. “Chains for you I’ll wear, Queen Alyssa. Contrite I’ll be.” He falls to his cadaverous knees.
I wince when he lands hard on the broken glass but check myself. Bones aren’t susceptible to superficial cuts.
Morpheus removes his hat and stands, towering over Rabid.
“What do you know about this?” I ask him.
A shadow of wings distorts the air behind him, like a wave of summer heat radiating off an asphalt road. “He helped Red find a body to inhabit. He’s the reason her spirit survived.”
I snap my attention back to my kneeling subject. “Why would you do that? You swore your allegiance to me.”
Rabid shudders, and his bones sound like tree branches clacking together. “Other obligations tainted good intentions …” Groaning, he keeps his head low. His antlers block his face.
“As you know, Red saved his life once,” Morpheus clarifies, dropping his hat onto his head. He runs a finger along the moths draping the brim. “Rabid had to repay his debt to her. Only she could set him free.”
“Free?” I ask.
“Free to be your faithful subject,” Morpheus explains. “He made a trade. Red’s life for his loyalty. In order to be true to you forever after, he had to betray you one last time.”
Logic wrapped within nonsense. Par for the course for Wonderland. “So is Red here?” I ask, fighting a clench of dread in my chest.
Rabid doesn’t answer. Everything that’s happened today—Taelor seeing me and Morpheus, the mosaics going missing, the near-death car ride, my mom’s betrayal—hangs over me, a noxious cloud of black emotion. The power inside me begs for free rein, promising to make him talk. To make him obey.
I surrender to it: envision the earbuds lifting and swaying like cobras. The song that’s playing grows loud and screeching. Rabid plugs his ears, howls, and backs up. The buds follow and strike. Though they have no fangs or venom, they’re vicious in their pursuit.
Wearing an amused expression, Morpheus steps back to allow Rabid to scramble onto the mattress. The black cords slither up the edge behind him.
“The insects, listen you should!” Rabid yelps as the cords strike and wrap around his antlers, yanking him to his stomach atop my quilt. “Please, Majesty!”
I hold up my hand, and the earbuds go limp.
“I said, Is Red here?” The power behind my voice surprises even me.
Rabid shakes his head no as Morpheus helps untangle his antlers. “A flower she chose to be. Lead the forest in a revolt. Amplifying pastries for all. Thorns the size of dragon talons. First, they wake the dead. Shake the foundations, free the consecrated.” Frothy white saliva drizzles from the corners of his lips. “Then divide and conquer the living. Enslave them all.”
Terror, as dark as a raven’s wing, casts a shadow across my thoughts. So that’s what the bugs were trying to tell me. They weren’t referring to the flowers here in the human realm but to the ones in Wonderland. Queen Red has gathered a giant flower army.