His features soften to an acute tenderness. “Of course. I’ll sing him lullabies every night. You . . . you can teach him to view the world through the lenses of innocence. We’ll love him. Dote on him. It would be impossible not to. I cannot stop seeing his beauty—the perfect blend of me and you.” Morpheus catches my smeared hands and laces our fingers. The trio of paint smudges his skin so it matches mine as he holds our fingers side by side. “All the shades of us, in one brilliant rainbow.”

The room grows hazy, or maybe it’s the weird lighting.

Morpheus urges me into his lap and snuggles my head under his chin, securing me within his tobacco-scented embrace. It’s the gentlest gesture we’ve ever shared. “Now you know where you belong, Alyssa. With me and our child.”

Red’s vicious imprint tugs behind my breastbone, gouges into my heart. I pull back to meet his dreamy gaze, cupping his face in my hands and leaving smudges of paint on his jaw.

“That’s what you’re not seeing,” I say, my voice airy. “He won’t be ours. Yes, you’ll be bringing a halfling child into the nether-realm. Maybe that’s all that matters. Even if it’s Red who’ll share that life, not me. As long as Wonderland thrives.”

“No.” He startles me by standing us both up. He swipes his crushed hat and gloves to the floor, sets me in the chair again, then kneels at my feet, taking my hands. “You are my only queen. We will cast her out the moment we repair Wonderland. Before a child is ever conceived. I swear this to you.”

I truly believe he wants that, but he doesn’t know I’ve lost my ace or how tired and depleted my body’s feeling. “The diary’s gone. My one chance to defeat her.” I almost tell him it’s his fault for sending Manti’s goons, but what would guilting him accomplish at this point?

Morpheus shakes his head. “That solution was temporary at best. Those memories are still within you, dormant. You can awaken them, weaken her. I believe in your strength. Will you never do the same?”

I tense up. “My heart . . . it’s not strong enough. When she was inside me. She did something to me. I’m sure of it.”

He glides my knuckles along his jaw, smearing the shades of red, blue, and black I left on his skin moments ago. It’s obvious he thinks I’m being hysterical. “You’re frightened. But now that you know how special our son will be, now that you adore him as I do, that gives you even more reason to be brave. And even more reason to accept our union.”

I jerk my hands away. He’s not hearing me. “I can’t marry you today.”

He grinds his teeth and stands, looking down on me. “So, your petty human insecurities are once again more important than an entire world’s well-being? Two worlds’? You’ll allow Hart’s special brand of ornamentation to be stamped upon every wall in the human realm? You’ll let Wonderland’s landscapes die?”

“I’m just saying we have to figure out another way to get that medallion, and another way to smuggle Red out of here.”

The pulsing lights shimmer off the paint smudged on his face . . . coloring him with an eerie and dangerous camouflage. “You and your damnable other ways. This isn’t at all about what we do or don’t have between us, is it? There’s something else preventing this marriage . . . something you’re afraid to tell me.”

I hesitate.

“Alyssa!” He clasps my shoulders and draws me to my feet, losing all patience.

My confession tumbles out. “I made a life-magic vow to marry Jeb first. If I marry you instead, I’ll lose all my powers . . . forever.”

With a caress more sinister than comforting, Morpheus drags his hands from my shoulders to my wrists, streaking my skin with paint.

Then, unspeaking, he takes out a handkerchief from his jacket and wipes the smudges clean. His delicate touch leaves chill bumps on my arms. After scrubbing his face and hands, he tucks away the handkerchief and lifts his crumpled hat from the floor.

In a sweep of black wings, he turns his back and paces, pounding the dents from the red and burgundy topper in time with his steps. His lean muscles move in fluid, powerful lines beneath his tailored suit, exaggerated by the pulsating lights.

He’s precise and controlled, but his mind is spinning. Underneath all that grace and restraint, a savage prepares to strike—a pupa, waiting to emerge as a scorpion fly and turn Jeb to stone.

I take stock of the room once more, sizing it up for nets. There are limitless possibilities, yet I’m not in any hurry to imprison him again. Not when he’s spent all these weeks trapped and humiliated without his own magic.

“How could you use a life-magic vow so flippantly?” His snarling voice breaks through my silent scheming. The question scores like a venomous barb, making my breastbone burn as if hot wax drizzles down the center.

I study the wet paint on my palms and fingertips, then turn them, moved by the colorful fingerprints he stamped on the backs of my hands when we discussed our child. “There was nothing flippant about it. It was the one way to ensure you’d let me share Jeb’s mortal life . . . to give him hope, so he would leave this world.”

Morpheus stops in his tracks. I have his full attention. “So, you manipulated us both with one vow.” His long black lashes tremble, and admiration shimmers behind his wounded gaze—the same look I’ve received throughout my life each time I please him. Although the dark, angry crimson of his blinking jewels belies any true pleasure. “Bitterest irony. It would appear I trained you too well—”

A small buzzing sound interrupts him, out of sync with the hearts’ rhythmic pounding in the room. We both see it: a minute disruption in front of my face where an ear mite stutters in midair.

Morpheus tries to trap it in his hat, but it zigzags between us, throwing my voice out in perfect mimicry: “I made a life-magic vow to marry Jeb first. If I marry you instead, I’ll lose all my powers.”

The bug parrots my confession once more before I take a swipe at it. It dips low and flies for the door. Morpheus leaps too late. The ear mite skitters under the space at the threshold, escaping.

Placing his hat on his head, Morpheus casts me a scathing glare. “I assume Jebediah is in this castle somewhere. He would ne’er let you come alone now that you belong to him again.”

I seek Morpheus’s gaze beneath the shadow of the hat’s brim. “Your intentions?”