Untamed - A. G. Howard Page 0,73

a shy smile, but there’s something behind it that wasn’t there sixty-four years ago—something coy and expectant.

“Mmmm,” Morpheus murmurs. “Now there’s a smile with scads of potential. Let’s get this forever started, shall we?” He drops my hem back into place, guides me to my knees beside him, and from his pocket drags out a bottle labeled: Drink Me.

We toast to new beginnings and, between greedy kisses, take turns sipping until we’ve shrunk enough to step through the tiny door and into the outskirts of Wonderland.

PREPARATION

“I’m not supposed to feel this much, Alyssa. ’Tis impossible for my kind.” Wearing a tortured frown, Morpheus holds my hand to his smooth chest where his nightshirt hangs half-open, exposing the waist of his black satin sleeping pants. His heartbeat races and his voice grinds, no longer silken and sweet like the one he uses in my lullabies, but wretched and bewildered. It scrapes through my ears and plucks at my heart.

I want him to be happy, and I know he is, in the deepest part of himself. This anguished tone means something else entirely: surrender, and the easiest victory he’s granted me in the nine months since we’ve been king and queen, not to mention all the years he occupied my dreams before that.

To think, this is all it took to win without a fight. I almost smile, but can’t get my mouth or jaw to release their clenched muscles.

I squint through my lashes in the candlelight given off by floating, self-sustained wicks that never burn down, studying him where he sits on the edge of our bed—the bed that once belonged to him alone. He arranged to have it brought here from his manor, along with his moth and hat collection, the moment we were married and he moved into the Red castle.

I’m on my side, naked beneath the covers, knees pulled tight to my swollen abdomen in a futile attempt to ease the electric pulses radiating along the muscles there. The waterfall canopy holds its trickling stasis wide enough for me to see around the outline of my king’s body and his blue hair, still messy from sleep. Other than when he moves to trigger them, the curtains refuse to open any farther than a few inches from him, as if allowing us this sanctuary out of respect for the monumental event that’s under way.

On the other side of our canopy, the royal bedroom is a flurry of activity.

Morpheus’s harem of sprites buzzes about: some coaxing pieces of blue, fluffy, cotton candy clouds through the door to line the cradle, and others herding wasp-size flying elephants with antennae on their heads and pollen sacs on their legs toward a cluster of luminescent flowers.

The flowers were sent by Grenadine. She’s found she’s happiest tending the gardens. Something about the scent of the plants helps her remember how to care for each one; they’re the sensorial equivalent of the whispering bows she wears on her toes and fingers.

The blossoms she sent to our room are colored like rainbows and shaped like bells. They hang from vines secured upside down from the ceiling, just above the cradle. When the blooms are pollinated by the winged elephants, they jingle and release a honeyed fragrance while spinning, which paints the velvet-draped walls with prismatic light. An enchanted baby mobile, made especially for an enchanted prince.

Lorina, the dodo bird’s wife, carries a bucket handle with her wing tips and leaves the sloshing, thick liquid a few feet from the bed. Her humanoid face shimmers with excitement. “I brought the treacle sap Gossamer requested!” She ruffles her red feathers as her booming words reverberate. “I also woke the royal advisor so he might boil it.”

The jarring timbre of her voice shakes Morpheus’s moth-filled terrariums on their shelves and rattles my spine. Morpheus winces and I grind my teeth impatiently, hoping the bird-woman doesn’t stay. I can usually overlook her lack of manners for her kind heart, but I’m too high-strung tonight.

There’s a clatter in the corridor, and two seconds later, Rabid White hops over the threshold wearing a nightgown of wrapped fabric that resembles toilet paper. His matching nightcap drags the floor behind him, hanging askew off one antler. He blinks his pink eyes sleepily and rubs them with skeletal knuckles. “Late be I?” He yawns. “The Red Prince, at last arrived did he?”

“Not yet, sleepy bones.” Gossamer flitters in the door and pushes Rabid toward the bucket of treacle beside Morpheus’s feet. “Now, remember what I told