Ensnared (Splintered, #3)(60)

I refocus and find it’s not one single moth. It’s a hundred or more, clasped together to mimic a larger one. These are the moths that escorted Morpheus here under Jeb’s direction. And the mushroom isn’t typical, either. Its top is hollowed out, with a small door in its side and a harness connected to the moth.

“That was going to be your ride?” I ask on a whisper.

“Our ride.” Morpheus claps his hands. Giant wings beat gusts all around us as the moth tugs the mushroom free from the ground. Together they rise, like a hot air balloon and its basket—graceful and majestic. The tree branches open to let the contraption escape far, far up into the sky.

I gawk at its ascent.

“And,” Morpheus says, “we have tea service planned for the trip. The spritelings have gone to fetch us some victuals.”

“But . . . how? The mushroom can’t exist outside of Jeb’s setting here. Right?”

Morpheus pulls slick blue gloves onto his hands. “It can now that I’ve reassigned it.”

“What?”

“Jebediah’s creations are one-half magic, the other half artistic vision. So although I cannot change his masterpieces to another form, they are convincible, if one but imagines them a new purpose. Granted, it works better on the paintings that have no specific command from him. The mushrooms here have no assignments other than to look pretty. And his instruction for the moths to keep me busy was too open-ended. They accepted whatever scenario I imagined, so long as I was in fact keeping busy.”

I shake my head. The master of word manipulation strikes again.

The moth carrier bounces atop the air currents, carrying my curiosity to new heights. “But you’re a full-blood netherling. You don’t know how to use your imagination.”

“On the contrary. I do. Thanks to you. I followed your example in our childhood. I absorbed it without even realizing. Then, when I was stuck here deprived of my magic, I had to find something to while away those weeks and hours. Perhaps that was the silver lining to this entire debacle. The lack of magic is what leads humans to fantasize in the first place. And Alyssa, what a wonderfully powerful force an imagination can be.”

His expression is awestruck, exactly the way he used to look at me during our childhood escapades. How inconceivable, that I was his teacher, too. He once told me I was, but I never grasped what he meant until now.

Ivory’s words about Wonderland from weeks ago rise and bounce on the wind, much like Morpheus’s flying apparatus: For so long, innocence and imagination have had no place there . . . Morpheus experienced those things via you . . . Through your child . . . our offspring will become true children once more; they will learn to dream again. And all will be right with our world.

Morpheus has always had dream manipulation; he’s different from any other netherling in that respect. Now that he’s learned to harness imagination, too, it makes him the only full-blood netherling who could father a dream-child.

The diary warms against my chest. Such a child would fall right into Red’s plan. Discomfort itches my throat as it hits me: She’s had so many pawns lined up on her chessboard. Her husband, her sister. Rabid White, Carroll, Alice, Mom, me. And Morpheus. Most of all, Morpheus.

“Do you want her for your own?” Queen Red’s words resurface in my memory from that agonizing moment over a year ago, when Red inhabited my body and tried to make Morpheus help her break my will.

“So very much—” he had said.

“Then do my bidding. She’ll be yours physically, and there the heart and soul will follow in time. You can romance your way into her good graces. You shall have forever to win her.”

Red was using Morpheus even then. She was holding all the cards. He didn’t know about the child at that point. Not until he saw Ivory’s vision just a few months ago. Ivory specified that, and out of all the netherlings, I believe in her honesty the most.

But how can a child that Morpheus and I share give Red power?

“Alyssa?”

I must be gaping again, because he taps my chin, nudging my mouth closed.

“Where did your mind wander just now?” he asks.

I need to tell him that I’ve seen the vision of our son. I need his input on how this could tie into Red’s revenge. But I have to analyze the wording of my vow to Ivory. There must some way around it . . . some way to tell Morpheus without telling him.

The tinkling sprites return and drop a silky cloth on top of my head. Morpheus drags it off and holds up what appears to be a garment bag. He scowls at the sprites. They clap and twirl in midair, as if they’ve discovered buried treasure.

“Naughty little spritelings,” Morpheus admonishes. “That’s not what I told you to fetch. I sent for a picnic basket, yes?”

They flitter around my head, pointing at me, their cheeks growing fat and red as they throw aerial temper tantrums.

“Well, I suppose this is the time to give it to her,” he concedes. “But I should be the one to open it.”

The sprites unite in a wave and shove the bag toward me.

“Fine.” With a sigh, Morpheus hands it over.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Just be careful,” he instructs.

I loosen the drawstring and thousands of thin, shimmery monarch wings billow out from the opening. It’s a hoard of scorpion flies!