Splintered (Splintered, #1)(41)

Once we reach the top, I wave to the clams as they disappear into their ocean bed far below.

Jeb opens the backpack to check on our things. “Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that nothing’s wet in here.” He opens the pencil box before I can stop him. His jaw twitches. “What’s this?”

“It’s my … savings.” Great. Not only did I throw myself at Taelor’s boyfriend, but now I’ve lied about the money I stole from her.

Jeb looks up from counting it. There’s something unreadable behind those thick lashes.

“You look different,” he says, stashing the money back in the box and shaking wet droplets from his hair.

“Do I?” I rub the skin around my eyes. Are all my secrets blinking across my face like neon signs? “My makeup must be running all over the place.”

“You’re sparkly—everywhere.”

“Oh. Probably just salt residue.” I slip off his tux jacket, wring out the water, and hand it over.

“Huh,” he says, still intent on me. “So … should we talk about it?” He shoves the jacket into the pack.

“About what?”

“What happened down there, between us.”

Heat prickles my cheeks. He regrets it. Or maybe he’s afraid I’ll tell Taelor. Either way, I end up looking like a jerk. “It was the adrenaline. That’s all. We were just happy to be alive. No worries. What happens in Wonderland stays in Wonderland, right?”

He doesn’t even crack a smile. Just holds my gaze, then shakes his head. Lips drawn into a tight line, he puts all his attention into zipping up the backpack.

I want to believe he felt what I did … these things that I shouldn’t be feeling at all. But how can that be true? I’m not the one he’s going to be living with in another country.

I try to concentrate on something else, like how the water in my boots squishes between my toes, or how I have gaping rips the size of silver dollars all over my leggings.

“Where to now?” he asks.

It’s possible he’s talking about more than our physical destination, but I’m too scared to take a chance I’m wrong. Instead, I focus on our whereabouts.

The shore stretches as far as I can see … an endless, inky desert of shimmery soot. It’s not at all what I expected the heart of Wonderland to look like, if that’s what this really is. There’s no flora or fauna anywhere except for a lone tree standing taller and wider than a redwood just a few feet ahead of us.

Familiarity lures me closer. Jeweled bark covers the entire tree, from the gnarled trunk to the branches that twist hundreds of feet into the air. It glimmers in the sun like a million white diamonds. At the end of each branch, rubies well up like liquid and dribble to the ground, as if the tree is bleeding jewels, the way elves do when their skin is pierced. With the black sands as a backdrop, the scene reminds me of my cricket mosaic back home—a beauty both mesmerizing and bizarre. I tamp down a surge of panic, remembering how the crickets seemed to be alive and kicking the last time I saw it on my wall.

“Winter’s Heartbeat,” Jeb says from beside me.

I nod. “You see the resemblance, too?”

His jaw spasms. “You’ve been here before.”

I shake off my unease and step up to the tree, kicking a path through the fallen rubies. A spot at the base of the trunk pulses behind the diamond-bark like a heartbeat. With each thrum, it lights up in red lines the same shape as the birthmark on my ankle. The image sparks a memory of me and the winged boy, fuzzy yet unmistakable.

Jeb moves closer and I turn to hold his shoulder for balance, lifting my left leg to unlace my boot.

“What are you doing?”

“Following instructions,” I answer, peeling off the boot and hiking up my leggings to expose my ankle. Jeb grips my elbow as I crouch down, pressing the maze on my ankle against the glowing lines of the tree.

A shock of static electricity leaps from me to the trunk; then a loud cracking breaks the hush. Jeb yanks me back as the trunk splits, the glittering bark rolling open like a scroll to expose a doorway. A soft red glow throbs and beckons from within.

“The pulsing heart of Wonderland,” I whisper, shoving my foot into my boot again.

The red light reflects off Jeb’s labret. “Okay, I’ll buy that you came here as a kid and are having some kind of repressed memory flashes. But how is it you have a mark on your body that unlocks anything in this place?”

I hesitate, then tell him what I read about netherlings talking to bugs, and what I suspect about my family curse: that we share some characteristics with the creatures here, including freaky magical marks on our bodies.

Jeb stares at me, and I wonder how much more of this he can take without going crackers.

“You okay?” I ask, biting my lip.

Swallowing, he slides his fingers through his hair. “It’s you I’m worried about. So how do we break this ‘curse’?”

My heart bounces when he says “we.” He’s in this with me to the end. Not just because he’s stuck here, but because he’s the Jeb I grew up with. My Jeb. “I have to find someone inside. The one from my past … the one who used to bring me here.”

Jeb frowns. “Okay. According to the flowers, this is also where the portals are. Right? The doors that will take us home?”