In that moment, Morpheus gave himself over to the experience, seeing things as a human for the first time in his life.

~ 2 ~

Memory One: Kryptonite

Jeb woke up on a swinging bed.

He was naked. Why was he naked?

Before that fact could fully register, thirty or more moth-sized sprites dropped out of the air, caressing and whispering over every part of him. He tried to move his arms and legs. The sprites’ wings—purring at the speed of hummingbirds’—released particles like dandelion fuzz that somehow immobilized him. The seeds gave off the scent of cinnamon and vanilla and flooded his consciousness until the room blurred.

When the fog lifted, he was at home in bed. Night spilled through the window, and Taelor straddled him, half dressed. French-manicured fingers trailed down the hairs of his chest and abdomen toward the waist of his jeans.

This couldn’t be right. He and Taelor had had a fight before prom, had broken up.

He gently flipped her beneath him and propped himself up on his elbows, dragging the hair from her face. But Taelor’s eyes didn’t meet his. Alyssa’s icy blue ones did—staring in dreamy, innocent wonder. His fingers grew fat and clumsy at her temples.

Al was in his bed?

No. This couldn’t happen. Alyssa hadn’t even kissed a guy yet. And Jeb had never been any girl’s first anything.

Al was untouchable to him. She’d experienced enough turbulence in her life. And he wasn’t exactly the poster child for stability.

Jerking his hands free, he rose to his knees.

“Jeb, don’t you want me?” Al asked, rubbing a palm over his chest.

He couldn’t answer. His fingers itched and felt stretchy, as if they were growing. He held them up in the moonlight, watching in horror as they fell off one by one and morphed into caterpillars. The caterpillars then inched toward Alyssa, and he couldn’t do a thing to stop them. He fell to the bed on his back, hands held above his face, staring in disbelief at the raw and bloody stumps where his fingers once were.

Screaming, Alyssa tried to scramble off the mattress, but the caterpillars caught her, creeping over her skin and spinning webs until only her wriggling form inside a cocoon remained.

“Let her go!” Jeb shouted. A light flashed across his eyes, and then he wasn’t at home in his bed anymore. He was somewhere in Morpheus’s mansion, and the sprites were rushing over his skin, hypnotizing him … using some kind of hallucinogenic pheromones.

They’re holding me hostage so Morpheus can be alone with Al. The instant that reality came crashing in, the spell broke.

Jeb tumbled off the swinging mattress and out of his captors’ seductive mist. Snagging a pillow, he covered himself. “Give me something to wear!”

The sprites floated in midair, their dragonfly eyes watching him.

Several golden baskets sat on the floor at his feet. Jeb kicked one over. His tiny captors swooped around the room in mass hysterics.

Gossamer, Morpheus’s prized sprite, appointed five of them to pick up the spilled strawberries. They counted the fruits one by one and placed them back in the container.

Jeb knocked over another basket, this one filled with beads of scented oil. Five more sprites dropped to the floor for cleanup, stopping to count each bead before putting it away.

Soon he’d overturned every basket. Some were full of flower petals, some with lotion, others with grapes. By tumbling them over, he’d managed to preoccupy most of his captors. Only Gossamer and two others still fluttered around his head.

“Give me something to wear,” he repeated, “or I’ll start ripping the feathers from the pillows. There aren’t enough of you in here to clean up that mess.”

“He’s not responding to our allure,” one of the sprites muttered to Gossamer, her coppery bug-eyes turned in Jeb’s direction.

“Or our magic,” the other one added with a pout. “I conjured some girl from his memories, but his subconscious broke through.”

“Yes, this one is indeed a challenge,” Gossamer agreed in a voice that tinkled like chimes. After sending the other two sprites to pick up the contents of the latest basket, she offered Jeb a silk robe.

He turned his back and shrugged the covering on, taking in his surroundings.

Morpheus had put him in an opulent prison. The room was round with black marble floors that reflected orange candlelight. He was already intimately acquainted with the focal point: a swinging, circular mattress attached to the center of the domed ceiling with gold chains. Furs and pillows cushioned the bed, perfumed with rose petals.

For all its comforts, this room was missing one very important aspect. An exit. There was no door, window, or any other opening in sight.

Convex walls—painted dark lavender—had grapevines stretching around their circumference, winding in and out of the plaster and entwining lit candelabras. Fruit blossomed on the vines. At random intervals the grapes would spontaneously burst and drizzle their juice into stone basins set all along the walls to catch it. From there, rich purple liquid drained into fountains—a constant supply of sweet-smelling fairy wine.

He vaguely remembered tasting the wine when he’d first arrived. Suspicious of it, he’d tried to resist, but he had been so thirsty. No telling what kind of magic was inside the liquid.

He groaned and rubbed his face. How long had he been drunk and bewitched? He’d made himself useless to Alyssa, just like his old man would’ve done.

“Where is she?” he asked, ignoring the self-playing harp behind him, which picked up volume, trying to muffle his voice. “Tell me what Morpheus is doing to her.”

Minuscule, glittering, and confident, Gossamer settled on a satin pillow. She patted the mattress next to her and crossed her green ankles. “Perhaps you don’t realize what we sprites are capable of. We’ve had centuries of practice. We can show you rapture the likes of which you’ve only dreamed about.”

Jeb regarded her, head to toe, then tightened the satin belt at his waist. “Sorry. I don’t dream in green.”

He found Alyssa’s backpack under the bed and dragged it out. He’d noticed something in there earlier when he’d been digging through it: a wrought iron bangle bracelet she’d probably tucked inside at school and forgotten about. He’d done his share of research on fairies when he first started painting them, and he knew they didn’t like iron—if the lore was true.