A.G. Howard

We have regiments as innumerable as the sands...And arsenals as uncountable as the stars.

What went on between you and my mom? Did you seduce all the Liddell women? Did you tell them the same pretty words you told me?_ I curl my legs beneath my dress, feeling small and vulnerable for even a

We talk and tease and bargain with the main dish. Maniacal laughter echoes in the marble halls, sweet to my ears.There__ movement at the banquet hall__ entrance. A child with my eyes tumbles in__ll wings and blue hair and giggling innocence. Holding his hand is Morpheus, wearing a ruby crown.The Red King. My king.The bubble bursts and takes the vision with it, leaving nothing but the sound of my gasp and wisps of gray smoke behind.__ou see,_ Ivory says, __nce Morpheus knew that one day you would belong to him and he to you, that you would share a child, he was no longer willing to die to save Wonderland. But he__ insecure about your feelings for him. He feared you would refuse to help. So he made a new plan, however flawed it was.

You have that boy on such a high pedestal. It__ far too slippery up there for one so unprincipled as a solitary fae. It__ not as if I haven__ tried to drag him down. I looked inside his soul. Hoped to find his weaknesses. Only to discover that even those could be considered strengths under the right circumstances.

An old childhood playmate once told me __econd guessing every step prevents any forward momentum. Trust yourself. Forgive yourself. And move on.

The Phantom is not famous for forgiveness.

Behind every wall and every mirror and every vent, I hear sounds: breathing, rustling, footsteps, and murmurs. I try to tell myself it__ just mice making their nests behind the barriers, but since when do rodents whisper?

Another thread snaps loose from my heart, the pain precise and acute. I embrace it, because it reminds me I'm still here. I'm alive. I'm empowered.

Tearing down the rest of the world won't make you happy. Look inside yourself. Because finding who you were meant to be? What you were put into this world to do? That's what fills the emptiness. It's the only things that can.

Shh." I squeeze his hand. His palm feels clammy. "We have to keep it down, okay? We don't want my dad coming in."He grits his teeth against more shivers. "Always knew I'd end up in your bed . . . and hear you say those words one day." He manages a smirk.Jeb snarls. "Unbelievable. Even when he's at death's door he's a tool." He arranges a pillow beneath Morpheus's neck. "Why don't you keep your mouth shut while we help you."Morpheus laughs weakly, his skin flashing with blue light. "What say Alyssa"--his breath rattles--"give my mouth something else to do?

He stretches languorously under me, and the silvery scar on his abdomen catches the light, that telltale mark from Sister Two when he fought her inside Butterfly Threads just weeks ago. When he almost died to help me and Jeb escape. But I didn__ let him die, because I couldn__ imagine a world without him.I can__ imagine a future without him, either. Not anymore.

Oh, I stand by that statement, little blossom. For you see, there__ the chance you will break down and come between the two of you. Every night we__e together, I will tempt you to the edge of madness. I will tease you to torments. You will have to earn Jebediah__ happy life by being strong and unbending, as all good queens should be. Though this night, I__ giving you a lull.

He had you in his room?" A dark cloud crosses Jeb__ face. __o you swear he didn__ try anything?___cout__ honor.__e squeezes my waist, tickling me. __oo bad you were never a Scout.__ squirm and smile. __othing happened.__hat__ a lie. Morpheus got to me in a big way, showing me a side of myself I can hardly believe exists__ne I__ not sure Jeb will be able to accept.

It's great to have him watching my back without standing in my way.

You care about her," I say with unexpected twang of envy. In my long-lost memories of us as children, it was always just the two of us. We 'got' each other on every level. Morpheus made me feel adored, special, important. I never considered him doing the same for someone else as a man. "Morpheus, what is she to you?"He doesn't answer. Not aloud, anyway. His expression is hazy and troubled, and the jewels around his eyes twinkle from silver to black, like stars peering down on a storm-swept night. Alice's confession from the trial comes back to me: "Ivory was, in fact, very fond of Mr. Caterpillar." Judging by how Morpheus looked at the queen just now, by how she looked at him, he returned to her castle after his metamorphosis.I imagine his elegant fingers tracing her skin, his soft lips on hers. That stab of envy evolves to something much uglier__ covetous twist of emotion I can't even put a name to. What's wrong with me? Why should i care about Morpheus's love life, when I finally kissed Jeb after all these years?

Hello, luv," he says through a thick curtain of blue hair. "Hope I'm...interrupting.

He appears close to my age. The left half of his face stands out beneath the hood: one side of plump lips, one squared angle of a chin. Two coppery-colored eyes look back at me _ bright and metallic. The sight makes me do a double take. As far as he is from the car, I shouldn__ be able to make out the color, yet they glimmer in the shadow of his cape, like pennies catching a flashlight__ glare in a deep well.

He__ walked as a ghost in the gloomy bowels of this opera house for so long, darkness had become his brother, which was fitting, since his father was the night, and sunlight their forgotten friend.