Ensnared (Splintered, #3)(115)
My answering snort is clipped with a sob. I cover my mouth with my fingertips, guiding Alice to dry her face with her pinafore. “I love you. I don’t want to hurt you,” I murmur behind my hand.
Morpheus’s jaw spasms, his magic tightening around the caterpillar until it twirls in place on the board like a top set to spin. “Your pity is misguided.” His childish voice lowers an octave. “As I’ve often told you, time has no constraints in Wonderland. Jebediah may have your days for now. But an eternity awaits me and you. He’s the one getting the short end of the stick.” The corners of Morpheus’s mouth twitch wickedly. “Which is fitting, considering he’s short in so many other aspects.”
“Shut up!” I say, laughing hysterically. Alice transforms back to an inanimate jade piece as I toss her. My aim is off and she plops into Morpheus’s tea, splattering him and the chessboard.
With a graceful sweep of his hand, he retracts his magic. Tea drizzles down his face as his inky eyes turn up to mine, alight with something both dangerous and daring, shifting moods faster than I can blink.
“Careful, plum.” It’s his deep cockney accent now. He wipes his face with a napkin. “Don’t start something you have no intention of finishing.”
“Oh, I’ll finish it,” I say—spurred by the dark confidence fluttering at the edge of my psyche. The side of me that knows I’m his match in every way. “And you know I’ll win.” I rise from my chair to scope out the room for weapons, vaguely aware of the prisms of glittery light reflected off my skin onto the surroundings.
“I know I’ll let you win,” Morpheus says, standing up. “I won’t even put up a fight.” His white-toothed smile spans to something forebodingly provocative, as though mimicking the spread of his wings. “Well, perhaps a small one, just for sport.”
I inch toward the middle of the room, wrestling the smile trying to blossom on my own face. My heart flutters in an effort to get closer to him, that same magnetic invigoration in my chest that I felt when Jeb hugged me. Yet Morpheus isn’t even touching me.
He studies me knowingly, as if he can see my heart’s reaction to him.
“On second thought, playtime can wait.” He snatches my wrist with his blue electrified strands before I can unleash my magic. “You’re too easily distracted, luv. That’s something we’ll work on.” He drags me over, picks me up, and carries me to the bed.
“Morpheus,” I warn, squirming in his arms. I know, with just a thought, I can bring the chandelier crashing down on him like a cage.
“Tut. Don’t do anything rash,” he scolds as if reading my mind. Swiping the waterfall aside, he lays me atop the fragrant, silky rose petals. “I’m only asking one thing of you tonight. And it will not compromise your human future. We’ll keep on our clothes. No hanky-panky.” He presses his palm over his heart in pledge fashion. “I vow on my life-magic never to come between you and Jebediah Holt again.”
I gasp. The profoundness of such a gesture, from a self-seeking fae, touches my soul. The only thing predictable about my future king is his unpredictability. “You once told me you wouldn’t be a gentleman. You lied.”
He leans over and caresses my cheek with his knuckles, so tender it hurts. “Oh, I stand by that statement, little blossom. For you see, there’s the chance you will break down and come between the two of you. Every night we’re together, I will tempt you to the edge of madness. I will tease you to torments. You will have to earn Jebediah’s happy life by being strong and unbending, as all good queens should be. Though this night, I’m giving you a lull.”
His words come back to me from our afternoon inside the mountain: Yes, we will quarrel incessantly and fight for dominance. And yes, there will be ravishes of passion, but there will also be gentle lulls. That is who we are together.
“When next I see you in your dreamscapes,” Morpheus continues, bringing me back to the present, “our trial by fire will begin. You wanted it, you shall have it. I intend to push you to your best, infuriate you to your worst. It is the only way for you to rule over a world of creatures both mad and cunning.”
I let the smile I was suppressing have free rein, because I’m up for any challenge he can throw in my path. The chance to prove it thrills me beyond all reason. “I understand now. What the sentence on the chessboard means. That you want to sleep with me . . .”
He crawls across my body and lies on the other side of the bed, leaving the liquidized curtain open behind me. “Do tell.”
Covering up with one of his wings, I surround myself with the scent of licorice and honey. “You want to hold me while I sleep. You want to watch my face as I dream like you never have—from the outside.”
He traces my eye markings with an elegant fingertip. “That will be my memory to cling to, until you’re mine forever at last, both in waking hours and sleep. The question is, do you trust me enough to give me that? To rest in my arms tonight?”
I hold his soft palm against my cheek. “Will you sing me my lullaby?”
He weaves his fingers through my hair and presses my forehead to his. “Forever and always,” he whispers.
As he hums the tune that has been inside my mind and heart all my life, I close the waterfall canopy, cocooning us within our own frozen pocket of time.