“She’s the one he’s waited for. Not you.”

Jeb held the iron bracelet over her one last time. “What does he really want from her?”

Before Gossamer could answer, the domed ceiling started to shake. Pieces of plaster tumbled down in thick white chunks. Jeb held a pillow over his head and a palm over Gossamer to protect them from falling debris. The ceiling ripped at the seams, swinging the bed and pulling the chains in opposite directions so the mattress lifted several feet.

After the tremors stopped, Jeb glanced up. Morpheus’s dark silhouette appeared in the jagged opening overhead.

Subtlety was low on this guy’s priority list. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a drama queen?” Jeb growled.

Morpheus leaned in low to glance at the messy room. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a deplorable houseguest?”

His captor’s grand entrance was partly responsible for the clutter, but Jeb bit his tongue, unwilling to risk his chance to see Al.

Morpheus eased back. “Alyssa awaits you in the mirrored hall. And, by all means, wash up and shave. You are to be introduced to our dinner guests as an elfin knight, so you need to look the part. Gossamer shall give you tips on proper behavior.” Morpheus dropped in some clothes and boots. They hit the floor with a clump. “Here is the uniform.” He paused and gestured to the chains. “Too bad you haven’t any wings or netherling magic. You will have to climb your way out. And I can assure you, it won’t be an easy trek.”

Jeb’s muscles tensed as Morpheus vanished from view; he knew the warning referred to so much more than his exit from this room.

MEMORY TWO: CARNAGE

Jeb wiped sweat from his brow. Morpheus had been right about the climb out of his gilded prison being difficult. But that was nothing to the trek through Wonderland he and Alyssa had taken since then. The entire day had been one crazy challenge after another, with danger and death around every turn. And now he’d lost Al. They’d become separated just before accomplishing the final test. She was facing the Twid sisters’ cemetery alone, and he was stuck here in the bottom of a chasm.

Night had fallen the instant he’d hit the ground—such a fast transition, it was as if someone had flipped a light switch.

The kinks in his muscles tightened. He hated the thought of Al being alone in this wacked-out world after dark. Then again, she’d proved herself strong enough to face almost anything. It had been she who’d ended up saving him, in more ways than one . . .

He thought of how she’d looked—hovering overhead, glistening and wild, fluttering with the grace of a dragonfly. Seeing her sprout wings had been both terrifying and miraculous at once. He couldn’t breathe while watching the transformation.

If he were honest, he still hadn’t recovered his breath from when she had lowered him into the abyss and he’d shouted, “You’re my lifeline!” before she shot up higher into the sky. He shouldn’t have put so much pressure on her to save him. He had to do what he could to get out of here himself—meet her halfway. Otherwise, she’d never forgive herself if something went wrong.

A Jubjub bird’s carcass had broken his fall. He wiped sticky goo from between his fingers onto his pants, turning up his nose at the rank remains of the army that had been chasing them and tumbled into the chasm. He pushed himself to stand in the pitch-dark gloom. His boots made sucking sounds as he walked. He’d never been squeamish; any aversion to blood and gore had been beaten out of him—a gradual desensitization reinforced each time he’d look in the mirror to find his cheeks and eyes swollen up, fat and bloody like raw steak.

But without a speck of light to go by, the carnage at his feet felt more alive than dead. His imagination pulled out files on everything from zombie movies to demons and hauntings. Nausea burned his stomach. He took solace that only the wind whistled through the chasm. He couldn’t hear any ghostly chains or undead moans.

Besides, time was the actual foe here, more dangerous than anything he could imagine. Al still had to complete the final task in the cemetery. And then they had to find each other again.

He forced himself blindly forward until his palm skimmed the chasm’s wall. Before he’d dropped all the way down, he’d caught a glimpse of Al’s backpack snagged on a rock outcropping about a yard north. If he could find it, he’d have a flashlight. Hands scraping the crusty surface of the stone, he lifted his feet over obstacles, patting his toes across corpses to assess how wide each step should stretch.

Rubbing the scrapes on his elbows, he studied the sky. A shy smattering of stars wrestled the clouds and broke through to dimly light his surroundings, enabling him to wend his way around the queen’s dead army. A damp breeze spun dust like tiny tornados. It was going to rain. And in this place, it was possible it would literally rain cats and dogs—the hissing and barking variety.

A chill that had nothing to do with the impending storm crept across his soul and shadowed any humor he might’ve found in the thought. What was with all of Morpheus’s “tests”? Each time Al successfully completed one, her netherling form became more prominent. Was the goal to alter her completely, so she couldn’t go back to the human realm?

Strands of hair blew into his face, and he shoved them aside.

Morpheus had said that all he ever wanted was to return Alyssa to her proper place. Her home. Jeb had hoped that meant back to their world, the human realm. But what if Al didn’t have a curse on her at all?

He remembered from his fairy research that there were creatures called changelings—the offspring of fairies secretly left in the place of stolen human babies. Had Al’s great-great-great-grandmother, Alice Liddell, been a changeling? Maybe that was how she’d found the rabbit hole as a child—by instinct. That would mean that this was Al’s home, in some warped way.

Jeb shook off the speculations. They only dredged up more questions.

He’d reached the backpack. Opening it, he fished out the flashlight and flipped it on.

As he zipped up the bag, he brushed the landscape with swaths of light. The tattered guards looked like crumpled playing cards. Discarded playthings. Even the busted-up Jubjub birds could pass as children’s toys with the stuffing pulled out.

Backpack in place, Jeb walked the circumference of the chasm without finding any openings. Displaced rocks filled any possible passages he might’ve tried. He might as well have fallen into a giant tube. There was no way out other than up.

He pointed his light at the grassy perch some twenty stories above—the clearing where Alyssa had landed. He was determined to find her before Morpheus did, even if he had to scale the jutting rocks in the dark without a safety rope.

He’d no sooner wedged the flashlight in his mouth and banked his foot on a crag to boost himself up than a familiar British voice rang out.

“Get to it, men. We need an accurate head count before the Twid sisters send their pixie brigade to gather up the dead.”

Morpheus.

Jeb stepped down and almost collided with the winged netherling who had appeared from out of nowhere—as if he’d unzipped the air and slipped through. Twenty to thirty elfin knights filed in behind him, carrying lanterns and wearing the same uniform as Jeb, though much less frayed and dirty. They strode by without giving Jeb a second glance, too intent on the body count.