AN: hi! i'm not dead, this chapter was just an absolute pain in the ass to write. it's a lotta talking, lotta exposition, lays a lot of important groundwork for the rest of the story, and it kept trying to be boring. it's still not perfect but i'm sick of writing it, so. here. hope you like it.

in the interest of making absolutely sure nobody's confused: the queen involved here isn't splintered's queen red. she's a musical-verse OC of mine retooled a bit to suit the basic beats of our crossover plot. think less wrathful vengeance, more well intentioned extremism.

sorry for the long wait. as ever, thanks for reading, and comments are greatly appreciated.

ELEVEN. ALL THE THINGS YOU USED TO KNOW.

Morpheus lays her out on a faded davenport and tells her not to move until he returns. Alyssa melts into the cushions and, just for a moment, closes her eyes.

She's never felt so wrung-out in her life. Every part of her aches around the fiery beacons of her burns and her knee and exhaustion irradiates her whole body, but she feels compelled to stay awake, if only for a little longer.

Her eyelids droop. The cushions feel wonderfully comfortable...

For some time she drifts through a soft, liminal haze between sleep and waking. She has the vague sense of floating in darkness—of murmuring voices overhead—of time stretching and distorting weirdly in the instant before she opens her eyes again.

She blinks, and finds Morpheus kneeling at her side, his fingertips cool against her temple. "Welcome back, luv," he murmurs. Then he nods, directing Alyssa's attention to the woman standing beside him.

She's slender and fine-boned, a study in contrasts: skin like black calla lilies, white hair wound in intricate braids around her head, twin slashes of brilliant orange paint outlining her eyes and the long bridge of her nose. When she smiles, Alyssa feels the vestige of some long-forgotten memory stirring in the back of her mind.

Morpheus says, "This is my associate, Ivory Oloris. Or, should you wish to be formal, Her Grace of Clubs."

The Duchess…

Gingerly, Ivory settles onto the edge of the davenport, reaching to peel the cravat covering Alyssa's knee away with an expression of faint disapproval. "We're well beyond formality by now," she says. "Hello, Alyssa."

Alyssa rubs at her face, trying to scrub away the lingering fog of exhaustion. Something here doesn't add up. "I… thought the duchesses were all loyal to the Queen of Hearts?"

"Were, yes, when you last encountered Wonderland," Ivory replies, her lips thinning. She draws a small silver jar from a satchel at her hip and begins to daub the contents onto Alyssa's knee; the pain eases at once, and Alyssa sighs, relieved. "But the decks, as it were, have since been… rather vigorously shuffled."

"A delicate way of putting it," Morpheus mutters with a snort.

"What happened?"

"The Hatter happened," Ivory mutters as she replaces the cap on the jar and begins to rummage around in her satchel. "She took over the Tea Party eleven years ago and transformed it into a powerhouse, and now…"

"Little happens in Wonderland without the Hatter's approval," Morpheus says.

"Indeed." From her satchel, Ivory produces a spiraling bit of metal—like something cut from a wrought iron fence—and then a vial of clear liquid, which she uncorks and pours unceremoniously over Alyssa's knee. "Under her command, the Tea Party grew from a ramshackle little table to an institution to rival the Royal Court and the Great Houses, and a hub of innovation and trade. All with Her Majesty's support and approval."

Morpheus nods. "She's the Royal Minister of Trade, the Duchess of Hearts, the Steward of the Land Beyond the Looking Glass, and the Queen's most trusted advisor... She has Northwood Warren in her pocket, and myriad supporters among the Great Houses of Eastmarsh and Sudheath. Access to the laboratories in her citadel beyond the Looking Glass is a coveted prize among lower-ranking Diamonds despite the personal enmity between their Duchess and the Hatter, and a considerable number of Hearts quietly look to her, rather than the Queen, as their true leader."

Ivory spins the piece of iron three times between her hands, then sets it atop Alyssa's knee. It tingles; she pulls a roll of gauze out of her satchel and begins to bandage the whole thing up. "By any measure," she says, "the Hatter is one of the most powerful figures in Wonderland—second only to the Queen herself."

Alyssa chews her lip as she digests all this. "The White Rabbit warned me to stay away from her," she says at last. "And… if she's the Duchess of Hearts, that means she's the one who tried to have Taelor and me arrested."

"Good. You've been paying attention." Approval glitters in Morpheus's eyes. "Yes, there's little lost between myself and the Hatter, and she would very much like to be rid of you. Setting Wonderland to rights would restore the balance of power between the Royal Court and the Great Houses, and by extension, topple the Hatter. Alas…"

He hesitates, then, looking away from her to frown across the parlor, and Alyssa says, "What? What is it?"

Morpheus shakes his head and waves the question away. "Later, luv. These things must be told in the proper order—and presently, I think it's high time we refreshed your memory. I did promise to explain everything once you arrived in Wonderland, did I not?" As Alyssa nods, he fishes a glossy deck of cards from the pocket of his waistcoat and fans them out with a flourish. "How's the leg, my dear?"

Ivory clicks her tongue and murmurs, "She'll be walking by morning, so long as you take care not to jostle it."

"But of course. Many thanks." Morpheus dips his head in a shallow suggestion of a bow as Ivory rises from the davenport and murmurs a goodbye. Once she's gone, he catches Alyssa's eye again and says, "Pick a card, luv."

Puzzled, Alyssa draws one and flips it over.

Then she blinks. "It's—"

"The Joker," Morpheus says with a wink.

"It's you," Alyssa says as she tilts the card to the light. The illustration, done in shadowy watercolors, is unmistakably Morpheus: Dressed in tattered black leggings and a tight-fitting red jerkin, his blue-black hair concealed beneath a scarlet fool's cap with four long, slender tails; a flurry of cards soars over his head in a perfect arc, thrown from one pale hand to the other.

Morpheus smiles, collapsing the fan with a flick of his wrist, then teases out and flips over a second card with his thumb. "And the Queen," he says. "The chief players in our little tale."

Her portrait is exquisite in detail. The artist picked out the faint blonde lashes fringing her eyes, the soft dusting of freckles across her cheeks, the delicate thorny vines embossed on her leather cuirass and the paisley pattern embroidered in subtle shades of red on the sleeves of her crimson tunic. She lounges on a throne cut from some black stone, grasping in one hand the hilt of a longsword whose heart-shaped pommel marks her suit; the jagged black crown perched amid her riotously curly, strawberry blonde hair has a glassy sheen more like obsidian than any metal, and she looks…

Melancholy, Alyssa decides after a moment.

"Queen Amaranth," Morpheus breathes, almost reverent. "Our second Queen of Hearts, and the greatest among them all. It was she who ruled when Alice Liddell came to Wonderland, and she whose vanishing precipitated our long decline." He pauses. "I was but a humble jester then, on the cusp of my chrysalis."

"…Wait. You knew her?"

"I've aged rather well," Morpheus says dryly. "We're coming to that, luv—and in the meantime, you'd do well not to interrupt."

"…Sorry."

He plucks the Joker out of her hand and twirls it between his fingertips, smiling. "As I said, I was a caterpillar of minimal importance on the day Alice Liddell came to Wonderland, but I was there when she arrived in the Queen's gardens…"

Alyssa catches her breath.

As the Joker revolves one last time around his thumb and topples onto the deck in his other hand, the illustration peels away and comes to life—a shimmering ghost no taller than Alyssa's index finger who makes his own deck of cards tumble and whirl with a strange, fluid grace. For a moment, Alyssa just watches the minuscule performance, fascinated.

Then the real Morpheus slings the Queen of Hearts into the air, and she, too, clambers gracefully out of her card at the apex of its arc. She raises one gloved hand, and more misty figures begin to appear. Heart soldiers, courtiers, gardeners, rosebushes, topiaries, hedgehogs…

Last of all comes Alice: a pale, solemn-looking child with messy brown hair in a wrinkled and grass-stained dress.

Morpheus fans his cards again, and the little figures leap into place like players upon a stage, acting out the parts of the story Alyssa already knows: The frantic painting of roses and the mad game of croquet that follows. "Carroll's account of all this is accurate in the essentials," Morpheus tells her, as the hazy foliage of the croquet grounds melt into a courtroom and a pair of guards drag a man forward in chains. "The Knave of Hearts had just been implicated in a string of thefts, and all was chaos as Queen Amaranth sought to sort the matter out. A common occurrence, then; those were fractious times.

"However, when little Alice came forward to give her testimony…"

He collapses the fan with a little snap, and the pantomime freezes. Alice stands hunched in the witness stand, while the Queen looms above, having risen and slammed her hand against the judge's bench to quell the excited chatter that had broken out when the White Rabbit called Alice as a witness.

"No one could agree, afterwards, just what had happened, for no two people in that courtroom saw the same thing." Morpheus sighs, very softly. "The only certainty was that both Alice and Queen Amaranth had vanished. King Finvarra mounted a search that lasted for months and turned the whole of Wonderland inside-out, but no trace was ever found and, in the end, he gave it up and declared Queen Amaranth dead.

"It being unlawful for men to rule in Wonderland, he was then obliged to find a new Queen. He chose Amaranth's step-sister, Grenadine, a woman of boundless good intentions but a fatal absence of common sense. Little more than a puppet, in truth. She ruled for almost sixty years while the Duchesses and the elders of the Great Houses squabbled over her strings, and when she died—well, her corpse scarcely had time to cool before the conflict broke into open war."

A brittle smile, quite empty of humor, crosses Morpheus's face. "Around that time, quite by accident, I found a letter hidden away in a forgotten corner of the royal archives—a letter penned by none other than Queen Amaranth herself, on the eve of her disappearance. And so I learnt the truth.

"Alice Liddell never left Wonderland, you see. She hit her head at the bottom of the Rabbit Hole and died within seconds of her arrival."

Alyssa blinks. "But—what? I thought—"

Morpheus flicks a card out of the deck. It spins away from him, slicing through the tableau of the courtroom and shredding everything but the ghostly figures of the Queen and Alice, then curves around like a boomerang and returns to his waiting palm.

As it settles, the Queen begins to move again, striding over to Alice and kneeling before her. She clasps the girl's arms in a startlingly maternal gesture, and Morpheus murmurs, "Children do not die in Wonderland, Alyssa. That's an ancient decree, passed by a queen long since dead and upheld by every queen since. You could fling a Wonderlander child from the cliffs of Argine and they would bounce up at the bottom, dust themselves off, and run along, no worse for wear—until they reach adulthood, they are impervious to harm."

"But Alice…?"

"Alice, alas, was not a Wonderlander child. She fell down the Rabbit Hole as fragile as any Abovegrounder child and—the White Rabbit not being there ease her fall, as he did for you and your friend—she shattered at the bottom. And yet, as a child in Wonderland, she wasn't allowed to die—can you see where this leads, luv?"

"…So… as long as Alice… stayed in Wonderland, she'd live?" Alyssa guesses. "But then… if she went back home…"

"Aye. Wonderland healed her and swept away the memories of her pain, but it could last only as long as she stayed here. Death still awaited her in England. Had she ever returned…" He shakes his head. "Queen Amaranth recognized the problem and spirited Alice through the Looking Glass, to live out her life in our sister land—where neither King Finvarra nor any of his search parties could ever find her."

As he speaks, the Queen takes Alice by the hand and leads her to a sprawling building which must, from the number of other children running around, be either an orphanage or a school. Alice weeps, then rages, then at last falls asleep cradled in the Queen's arms; the Queen spends some time stroking her hair before handing her over to another woman.

Then the orphanage and its flock of children dissipate into nothing, so that only the Queen remains.

"…But… Alice Liddell didn't die," Alyssa says after a moment. "She must've grown up and had kids of her own, because Alis—Mom and I are descended from her."

"For this part," Morpheus replies, "I'd like to show you a memory."

He leans closer, reaching out to brush his fingertips against her temple; a sharp shock races down Alyssa's spine as their eyes meet. It's like gazing into the shadowy and unknowable darkness of a well—deep, deep black, deep enough to drown in…

"Will you let me in, Alyssa?" he murmurs.

This is— this is— Alyssa isn't quite sure what this is, but she likes the way it makes her heart beat faster, and she can feel an old, forgotten sense of a connection lost and mourned stirring in the back of her mind. The burned bridges Morpheus spoke of, maybe.

She nods, hesitant, and Morpheus smiles.

And the parlor flakes away, piece by piece…

Morpheus presses his back to the wall and screws up his eyes against the rain. This downpour isn't a patch on a Wonderland thunderstorm, but even so—his sprint across the lawn soaked him to the bone.

Fennine's light, he isn't meant for this sort of thing.

He slinks cautiously along the side of the house. It's all dark inside, which strikes him as a hopeful sign—though the phenomenal roar of the rain on the roof makes him uneasy, for if someone in the house begins to stir, he's unlikely to hear it.

And here's the front door, sturdy wood slick with rain! Morpheus crouches on the low stoop, slipping a tension wrench and pick from his pocket. After a moment's fiddling, the lock opens with a tiny snick, and he lets himself into the shadowy, carpeted foyer.

Shaking rainwater out of his eyes, he pulls the folded scrap of oilcloth from inside his waistcoat and shakes it open. The Queen of Hearts, kept safe and dry inside the oilcloth, falls face up into his palm. Morpheus can feel it quivering faintly.

She's here.

"Find her," he breathes.

The card floats into the air and then, bobbing like a leaf on the breeze, drifts deeper into the house. Morpheus creeps after it.

It leads him down the hall, past a carpeted staircase, and then whisks under a closed door at the northernmost corner of the house. The doorknob squeaks when Morpheus tries it, but it turns easily enough and the door swings open with a whisper of oiled hinges.

As he steps inside, the sticky-sweet smell of sickness assaults his nose, making his eyes water and his stomach curl. The darkness seems somehow thicker now—a deep, formless gloom he cannot make sense of.

He hears a faint, wheezing breath, and then the quiet click of a lamp. Yellow light blazes into his eyes, blinding him as he yelps, and for a moment he stands helpless, blinking the spots out of his vision.

"Now, there's a face I never thought to see again."

The voice is creaking and faded, punctuated at the end by another labored breath, and as his eyes clear, Morpheus finds its owner gazing back at him with watery amusement.

She is different than he expects. Older. Age and a peaceful life Aboveground have softened her, slumped her shoulders, thinned her hair—even so, she sits in her wheelchair with the same regal air he remembers from his youth. His card dangles between her fingers, all the life gone out of it now that it's found its likeness.

"Your Majesty—" he begins.

"Mrs. Hargreaves, please." Amaranth gives him a rather piercing look, and then adds, "I presume you've broken into my home for a good reason, lad."

Morpheus offers her a little bow. "Mrs. Hargreaves, then. My name is Morpheus, and I've come to ask you to return to Wonderland, and rule us once more."

There is a very long pause, during which Amaranth frowns pensively at him, tapping the card against the arm of her wheelchair. At length she says, "No."

"N—pardon?"

Her eyebrows rise. "I've lived a long, full, contented life here," she says, "and now I'm old and dying. I should like to do so at home, among family."

"Wonderland could heal—"

"I do not want to be healed," she says sharply, shaking her head. "No. I've little desire to return to Wonderland, and less to take up a crown that was never mine by right. What possible reason could you have for asking?"

Sighing, Morpheus slips a hand into his waistcoat and pulls out the letter—old, wrinkled, bearing the marks of age and fire, but still as legible as the day it was written. "This," he whispers, holding it out to her. She accepts it, and he pretends not to notice the tremor in her hands. "It's the letter you wrote to King Finvarra, to tell him of where you had gone and to whom the crown ought to pass. I suspect that he tried to burn it, and when that failed he hid it away and let it lie forgotten. I found it by accident only a week ago."

The color drains from Amaranth's face as she unfolds it slowly, touching her fingertips to the singes left by her husband's long-ago betrayal. "What became of Eleonora, then?"

"She's dead, Your—Mrs. Hargreaves," Morpheus tells her. "Slain by marauders in the Frangible Forest, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn King Finvarra had a hand in it." He pauses. "He placed your stepsister on the throne instead."

"Grenadine? That fool couldn't—" Amaranth breaks herself off with a jerky shake of her head, crumpling the letter in her fist. "And now?"

"Both he and Grenadine are dead, and their child faces a bitter war of succession. The Duchess of Spades was the first to challenge her claim, but the others were swift to follow. And in the meanwhile the common folk suffer."

That's the way to win her, he thinks. Not by appealing to a lust for power dwindled away to nothing over the last sixty years, nor by stoking the fires of a once notoriously quick temper, but…

"We are without a genuine Queen at a time when we desperately need one," he says, moving to kneel before her chair. "Please, Mrs. Hargreaves."

She turns her head away, her eyes closed, and for a moment sits so motionless that only the ragged sound of her breathing confirms she still lives. Morpheus waits, his heart thumping in his chest. If she says no...

But at last she sighs, her head bowing, and says, "Very well."

Morpheus rises at once, not wanting to allow her time to change her mind. Amaranth clutches at his neck when he lifts her out of the wheelchair, muffling her pained coughs in the crook of his shoulder; he flicks the card into the emptied wheelchair, and at a word from him, it transforms into a perfect facsimile—accurate down to the last hair, though its eyes are closed and the rise and fall of its chest almost imperceptible.

It will linger for a few days, seemingly insensible, before slipping away into death.

Then he turns off the lamp, adjusts his hold on her to ease her ragged breathing, and slips quietly out of the bedroom—down the hall, past the staircase, and out again into the cold rain. Amaranth gives a little grunt of discomfort as they emerge, her fingers digging into the side of his neck, but otherwise stays quiet.

The tidy lawn outside feels dangerously slick underfoot as Morpheus hastens away from the house. Fifteen feet, twenty, sliding and stumbling through the darkness—and then the deeper shadows of the trees bordering the lawn swallows him, and he sees the pale smear of the Rabbit crouching just ahead.

"You took your sweet time," the Rabbit hisses at him. "I thought—"

"You think too much," Morpheus snaps. Amaranth is shivering in his arms now, her breathing heavy and broken by a wet, shuddering cough that worries him. "Open the Rabbit Hole, quickly. We may not have much time."

To his credit, the Rabbit doesn't argue, nor take offense at his brusque tone. He pounds a fist against the trunk of the largest tree, which clanks in a mechanical sort of way and splits open at the roots. A hot draft pours out of the opening; the dense, earthy smell of it makes Morpheus's nose twitch.

"Follow me!"

"Mind your head, Your Majesty," Morpheus murmurs as he complies. He thinks he hears a whispered Mrs. Hargreaves in return, but it's lost in another cough.

Then it's a swift plunge through dusty darkness, for the Rabbit takes them down at near terminal speeds and dumps them—with little warning, and a tremendous THUMP—into the royal bedchamber. Morpheus staggers at the impact but keeps his feet, muttering curses under his breath.

He'd planned for trouble from young Queen Milgranda at this juncture, braced himself to subdue her or, in the worst case, kill; but their sudden, noisy entrance seems not to have woken her—she lies quite still on her bed, curled catlike beneath the covers.

Small mercies.

Milgranda doesn't stir as he settles Amaranth on the padded stool in front of her vanity, then tiptoes to the stand where the royal crown rests.

…Where the royal crown should rest.

He has but an instant to register its absence and begin to panic before he hears an odd, whistling thud, a choked gasp—

No—

All the air around him seems to congeal as he turns—just as shrouded figure wrenches their dagger out of Amaranth's back but far, far too late to save her. Amaranth slides off the stool, already choking on her own blood, and the figure reaches up with a low chuckle and throws back her hood.

No, no—

The Duchess of Spades peers down at him with disdain. "My, my. Tonight is a good night for regicide, isn't it?" Amaranth coughs, her hands stirring feebly as she struggles to push herself up. The Duchess saunters past her, smiling to match the curved blade of her dagger. Morpheus stumbles backward, glancing at Milgranda's bed with newfound horror.

Not asleep. Not asleep at all…

"Lucky me," the Duchess croons, "arriving here seconds too late to save the Queen from a murderous little jester and his shriveled Abovegrounder puppet. Poor Milgranda. So sad I couldn't save her, isn't it? But at least I could stop you stealing the throne of Wonderland."

Through gritted teeth, sounding far braver than he feels, Morpheus snarls, "That 'Abovegrounder puppet' is the rightful Queen, you fool!"

"Really? Amaranth—that old thing?" She turns, head cocked. "Tch. Doesn't look it. Well, no matter—"

Morpheus seizes her moment of distraction, lunging forward to grab for the dagger, but she roars in fury and throws her full weight against him, bearing him to the ground before he can wrest it from her grip—he wheezes as his lungs collapse—

Then he's pinned, her knee on his chest and her hand locked around his throat. She raises the dagger—

"Morpheus."

It's a death rattle, horrible and wet and crackling, but Amaranth's voice rings with authority nonetheless. Morpheus can feel it singing through the air, and both he and the Duchess freeze. "Morpheus—as—your queen, I—" she chokes, and in the corner of his eyes Morpheus can see her spitting blood "—I… charge you to—fix—what has—been… broken."

And all the power roiling in the air slams into him—a bolt of lightning to the heart, a slap of cold wind, a beam of sunlight piercing the clouds—flooding him with strength enough to shove the Duchess away.

She shrieks, and he feels Amaranth die like the shock of darkness after a candle gutters out in its own wax. From outside comes the pounding of armored feet—Heart guards or Spade soldiers, and Morpheus isn't eager to face either.

He rolls to his feet and makes a dive for the oval mirror above the vanity in the same instant as the bedchamber door bursts open.

Shouting, screaming, incomprehensible—Amaranth's dark eyes, staring and glazed in death, her blood on the carpet—the whistle of the Duchess's dagger whizzing past his ear—his own reflection, reaching out—

The mirror swallows him, and he's free.

Gasping, Alyssa falls back into herself and into the crushing grip of vertigo so intense that for an instant, she feels as if she's trapped in a cubist painting—stretched, distorted, taken apart and haphazardly reassembled. As the davenport tilts and spins beneath her, Alyssa is distantly aware of Morpheus sweeping her hair out of the way as she flops to the edge to be sick.

"It takes people like that sometimes," Morpheus says, apologetic. "Give a cough, luv. Best to get it all out at once."

Alyssa retches again, splattering the moth-eaten carpet with a nasty mixture of mucous and bile as the vertigo fades. Tears spill out of her eyes and drip off her chin, adding insult to injury.

"Th—" she gags, and a viscous gob of spittle leaks past her lips and plops wetly onto the floor. Gross—gross! God, throwing up is disgusting—Alyssa shudders, and tries again. "That was—urgh."

"I'll fetch some tea, shall I?" Morpheus says, as he guides her into a more comfortable position on the davenport. "Lie still. Don't move a muscle until I return."

Fat chance of that. Her whole body feels like one big ache—she never wants to move ever again. She groans.

As Morpheus slips away, she closes her eyes and focuses on taking slow, even breaths to settle her stomach. Her nausea recedes little by little, and the memory Morpheus implanted in her mind rises to the fore instead. Alyssa prods at it, curious. It feels the same as any other memory, as real and vivid as if she lived it herself.

And already, the implications are creeping up on her. Queen Amaranth took Alice Liddell's place in England, and that means—

Alice isn't her ancestor after all. She's the great-great-great granddaughter of the Queen of Hearts…

That… changes things. Somehow. Or at least it fills her with the itchy, anxious feeling of having forgotten something important—Alyssa sighs, frustrated, and presses a hand over her eyes, tries to think.

She really hopes Morpheus isn't angling for some sort of put-the-long-lost-heir-on-the-throne solution. Galavanting around having adventures in Wonderland sounds nice on paper, but in practice it's mostly been a pain. Literally.

Nothing in Alison's notes had suggested—then again, Alyssa doesn't think Alison mentioned Queen Amaranth's impersonation of Alice at all, so…

Maybe—

Morpheus saunters back into the parlor, then, with a silver tea tray balanced on one arm and a damp rag draped over the other, putting an end to her speculation. "Feeling better, luv?"

"Much," Alyssa says, "and also much more curious. Your answers have a way of asking more questions."

"All the best answers do," Morpheus says with a wink. He sets the tray on the little end table next to the davenport, pours her a cup, and then kneels to mop up the spilled contents of her stomach. "Drink up and ask away."

Though she's never been all that fond of tea, she takes a few careful sips of his; it's warm and sweet in a muted, apple-y sort of way. Not bad, actually. "So," she says, "Amaranth is my ancestor, not Alice."

"Correct."

"Did… Mom know?"

He shakes his head. "Being descended from Alice meant a great deal to her," he replies. "She lost her mother very young, and then bounced from one foster home to the next—Alice in Wonderland gave her a lineage to cling to, a permanent identity, a feeling of home… Learning the truth might have shattered that security, and I thought it kinder not to tell."

Thinking of the battered copy of "Alison's" Adventures in Wonderland, she nods slowly. "Okay. Makes sense. So. In her notes, she said the reason you needed us to save Wonderland was our connection to Alice, because the taint started with her. That can't be right, so what's the truth?"

Morpheus takes his time answering, first setting the dirtied rag aside and pouring himself a cup of tea, then perching beside her on the davenport to drink it, eyeing her over its rim. She shifts, feeling nervous, feeling studied.

"You're going to help me bring Queen Amaranth back to life," he says at last.

Alyssa chokes on her tea. "I—what?"

"Aye." Humor colors his voice. "No need to look so shocked, luv. Death is as fickle as anything else in Wonderland, and can be persuaded to relinquish its charges from time to time. The real challenge is in collecting the ingredients, most of which are quite rare, and finding a direct descendent with the proper temperament."

"Proper—?"

"One with a harmonious spirit," Morpheus says. "That's you, luv."

Frowning, Alyssa says, "Not sure how I feel about having a 'harmonious spirit' with the Queen of Hearts."

He chuckles. "Oh, she wasn't as bad as all that, luv. Remember your lessons? Ferocious, and wild—"

"—wrathful and loving in equal measure," Alyssa recites, closing her eyes. Morpheus must have drilled this into her head over and over; the words form themselves so clearly in her mind that she can almost see them. She shakes her head, and they dissipate. "Sure, but I'm not about to go around chopping off heads—"

"Nevertheless," Morpheus says, rather snippily, "you're like enough for our purposes. Harmonious does not mean identical."

"Fine," she mutters, crossing her arms. "So I'm the alto to her soprano, whatever. How's this ritual work, anyway?"

"The idea is to fashion an effigy for the dead spirit to inhabit; then the descendent—you—becomes the gateway through which the ancestor can pass."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Not the ritual itself. You would lose a few drops of blood, and the actual moment of crossing is said to be a little uncomfortable… Nothing more. However, two of the ingredients will be exceptionally dangerous to acquire. One is the jarful of Nothing, which must be collected in the Dark Country." He lifts an eyebrow. "You recall, I'm sure."

Alyssa can't suppress a shudder. "That… nothing… we passed through to get here?"

"The very same," Morpheus says. "You'll have to find your own way there to collect a sample."

"Couldn't you get it for me? I mean—" She flushes. It feels such like a lazy, cowardly thing to ask. "—since you already…"

"It must be you," Morpheus replies gently. "To enter the Dark Country, one must first learn the character of their own soul and—unfold it. Each has their own way; you will find yours, and only once you've done so will you be prepared to carry Amaranth's spirit out of death and into new life without losing yourself in the process. It's rather like learning to walk through a mirror without risking a chiral."

"Oh." That sounds complicated, and a bit mystical, and for the moment all Alyssa can do is shake her head. She'll have to figure it out later. "And the other dangerous ingredient?"

"The needle threaded with starlight. Any needle will do, but the thread is woven from fur belonging to Inkaskre—the Hare in the Night Sky. Only one skein of it exists in all Wonderland, and the Hatter owns it."

Alyssa's heart sinks. Of course she does. "So we have to steal it."

He smiles ruefully. "Easier said than done, luv, but aye. She keeps it in her citadel beyond the Looking Glass, and the only way to get there is by invitation. Which is why you're headed to the Tea Party tomorrow."

She blinks. After everything he's told her about the Hatter—he can't be serious. "Isn't that kind of, I don't know, suicidal? She sent an army after Taelor and me today!"

"Suicidal would be attempting to infiltrate her citadel," Morpheus says, shaking his head. "I've sent dozens of Wonderland's best thieves after the skein, Alyssa. Not one has ever returned, and only one even made it to her citadel's outer wall."

"And you think marching right up to her on her home turf is gonna go any better?"

"Mad as it sounds," he says dryly, "yes. The Hatter likes to toy with her prey. Approach her on her terms, play her games, and she might agree to show you around her citadel. The better to trap and torment you, you understand."

Well that's just peachy.

Scowling, Alyssa says, "I'll think about it."

"That's all I ask," Morpheus says.

No longer in the mood for questions with horrible answers, Alyssa lapses into a silence Morpheus seems content to leave intact and sips broodingly at her tea.

At least the water from the Pool of Tears was straightforward, she thinks. A dying ember pulled from the heart of a flame—well, that should be simple, too. As for the last four… A thunderstorm captured in a stone, a feather that has touched the edge of the sky, a shard of cold-iron soaked in blood, a twist of Time preserved in silver…

Those are just riddles, right?

Alyssa can do riddles.

She takes a deep breath. Get the hardest part done first, and the rest will follow. That's how she tackles her art—wrestling her concepts onto scrap paper with pencil and well-worn eraser until she's satisfied with the composition, then starting the fun mosaic part—and it's always worked out fine.

Then again, she doesn't have to worry about her sketches beheading her if she screws up.

No pressure.

Trying very hard to ignore the mental image of her bloody severed head rolling across the floor, she raises her teacup to her lips and drinks, trying to extract some courage from the warm, sweet liquid. "What I don't get," she says, "is how resurrecting Amaranth will heal Wonderland."

"She was the last true Queen of Wonderland," Morpheus says wistfully. "Anyone can put on a crown and call themself a queen, you see, but it doesn't make them the Queen. Wonderland—" He closes his eyes, lips parting around a rapturous sigh. "This land is alive, luv, though it lives on a scale so great as to be unfathomable to we mortals. The marker of a true Queen is that she can fathom it, for Wonderland shows her the way. In a sense, she becomes Wonderland, and forever after she speaks with the voice and will of Wonderland itself. Her word, in a very literal sense, becomes law."

"Like children not being allowed to die here."

"Precisely."

Alyssa considers this. "And that's why you're still alive? Amaranth ordered you to fix everything—"

"—so Wonderland intervened to ensure that I could, aye. Haven't aged a day since."

"Lucky you," Alyssa mutters. "So, a true Queen—Amaranth—could just… order Wonderland to get better? And it would? Just like that?"

"Just like that," Morpheus agrees. "Marvelous, isn't it? Alas, because King Finvarra obscured his wife's will and placed a pretender on the throne instead of her chosen heir, we've not had a true Queen in over a century. Wonderland has rejected each and every claimant since Amaranth's death."

She drains the last of her tea and sets the teacup back on the tray. "Okay. So. Let's say I agree to your insane plan and go to the Tea Party tomorrow so we can get to the thread…"

"Yes?"

"What's the other stuff?"

"Well, you've the stone and the water already," Morpheus says.

"No?"

"…No?"

Alyssa frowns at him. "Just the water. I don't even know what the thunderstorm in a stone is supposed to be."

His face darkens at once. With a low growl, he leaps to his feet and paces the length of the parlor, then whirls on her. "There was a fulgurite inside the Rabbit Hole. Forgive me for assuming you would have the brains to take it."

She shrinks from the venom in his tone. "A—a what?"

"Fulg—" He makes a cutting gesture with one hand, his rage vanishing as swiftly as it appeared. "The rock that forms when lightning strikes sand. No matter, no matter. I'll send the Gryphon to collect it and there'll be no harm done."

The smile he offers her looks a little forced. Alyssa swallows. "Sorry."

"…You were in rather a lot of pain at the time," Morpheus mutters, rifling a hand through his hair. "I suppose allowances must be made." He sighs. "Well, you've the water, I've the feather, and we'll shortly have the stone. The dying ember is no riddle at all, only a matter of timing; we needn't worry about it until the end. You can search for the cold-iron when you return from the Tea Party—look for iron in the shallows of the Claret River. It flows from Argine, and it's run red with blood often enough in the last two centuries to count."

"And the… twist of Time?"

"That, I believe, refers to the White Rabbit's watch. Or one like it, if others exist." Morpheus resumes his seat on the davenport. "It commands Time, and he guards it zealously. All my efforts to persuade him to loan it to me have failed, so in the end it may come to wrestling it away from him. Unless you find him more amenable to your requests than mine."

Alyssa nods, and keeps nodding until she feels like a bobble-head and forces herself to stop. It's a lot. It's a lot. But…

If she can survive the Tea Party, the rest should be easy.

She sighs gustily. "Okay," she says. "Okay. I'm in."

And, as Morpheus's face glows with triumph, she feels a tiny, irrational, ridiculous thrill of excitement.