see. But there was a time when it wasn’t just me looking back, when any reflective surface would conjure the doorway to a mad and chaotic Wonderland that I once craved to rule. I saved the boy in the web from that world, then did my best to turn my back on it by breaking every mirror in sight.
It was wrong to abandon it all without an explanation. I can see that now.
I reneged on my responsibility, on a deal with the devil himself. So Morpheus found another way to make me pay by crashing into my daughter’s dreams—using me as an unwitting conduit. He spent time with her every night for the first five years of her life, making himself young—to the point he became a child in both form and mind—so he could be her playmate and win her trust and affection. When I found out, I tried to counter his mental attack with a physical parry, to protect her by doing the only thing I could: leave.
I blink, and for an instant, my lacy dress in the mirror transforms into the straitjacket that became my weapon of choice.
How could I have thought there wouldn’t be consequences for hiding away in the asylum? I had hoped he’d find another sparring partner . . . another Liddell to exploit, one who would save his spirit from his curse of spending eternity trapped in Sister Two’s lair. To escape his fate, he had to fulfill Red’s Deathspeak by crowning a queen of her lineage with the ruby tiara while Red possessed her body. I mistakenly assumed, when I failed him, he would move on and find another victim in a distant relative, out of respect for my choice.
But there was a chink in my armor, and my adversary broke through. I should’ve seen it coming. For as long as I’ve known Morpheus, he has never moved on. Not when his goal is in sight. He’s the most brilliant and patient strategist I’ve ever encountered.
The steam from Thomas’s shower blurs my reflection, and behind the fog I see myself as I was when I first discovered Morpheus’s plans for Alyssa: that naive young mother, terrified for her toddler’s future. Guilt-stricken for putting her child in danger in the first place. My little girl was never meant to be my substitute, but through my betrayal, that’s exactly what she became.
I chose not to tell Alyssa about my choices, about the repercussions, because I thought I had managed to spare her. But all that time in the asylum away from my husband and child didn’t matter. Neither did the vow Morpheus made not to contact Alyssa again. Because he’d already planted memories of their moments together in her mind, counting on her inherited Liddell curiosity to lure her into seeking him out. At the age of sixteen, she found the rabbit hole on her own, just as he planned.
My hand jerks involuntarily at the memory, and I pull a strand of hair too tight. It pinches my scalp, causing me to wince. Repositioning the curl, I pin it in place.
Morpheus tricked my daughter into winning the crown I once craved and had come to despise. He saved himself in the process. It was a responsibility Alyssa hadn’t asked for, although she came to accept and even embrace it. But still . . . he’d lured her into becoming queen without offering her all the facts.
The one thing that gives me satisfaction is that he didn’t go unscathed. He paid a price. One he never anticipated.
While “growing up” with Alyssa in her childhood dreams, while watching her meet every challenge he laid at her feet as a young woman in Wonderland, Morpheus—the solitary and selfish fae once incapable of love—fell head over heels for her. I wouldn’t have believed it, had I not seen it myself. He proved the depth of his devotion when he gave up his chance to have her at his side in the nether-realm. When he opted instead to wait, so the human half of her heart could heal until she’d be strong enough to reign over the Red kingdom eternally.
Because of this sacrifice, I’m starting to suspect that maybe he’s not the devil after all. That maybe, after all these years, I’m seeing a side to him bordering on vulnerable and caring. A side he kept locked away from me, other than a glimpse or two I might’ve forgotten over the years.
Still, I’m not ready to forgive him for