Morpheus must’ve treated the giant birdman to the same sleeping spell he’d cast on Jeb earlier, though Charlie was starting to come out of it.
Lorina settled on the perch in the center of the cage, swinging over Jeb’s head like an acrobat on a trapeze. Her face flamed as fiery as her feathers, which caused the red spade and heart stenciled on her cheeks to fade in comparison. “Since we’re to be exiled in this urine-stenched facility,” she bellowed, “you shall have plenty of time to hear the truth.”
Jeb rubbed his head to ease the splitting ache. “If you could take your voice down about two decibels, I’d appreciate it.”
“Take my voice down?”
“Augh.” Jeb cradled his face in his hands.
The miniature trapeze squeaked with each swing, adding to the noise pollution. “For your information, my queen adores the sound of my voice. Praises it, in fact.”
The dodo’s snoring paused, and he smacked his lips. “That would be because she stops her ears with beeswax, O Loveliest of Lunatics.”
“Fat liar,” Lorina snapped, rocking her swing so fast, Jeb thought he might get seasick.
“I’m wearing iron chains,” Charlie said on the tail end of a yawn. “I haven’t the strength to lie.” Then he dropped back off to sleep.
That seemed to shut Lorina up, at least temporarily.
Jeb took advantage of the silence to think. Morpheus must have told Al about her true lineage by now, about what was expected of her. She must be so shocked … so terrified. Jeb ached to hold her, to the point that his chest felt like an anvil sat on it.
That moth freak should’ve told her the truth from the beginning. She would never have chosen to stay. But Morpheus had known that, so he’d tricked her under the pretense that she could cure a curse on her bloodline. Jeb wanted to pluck off Morpheus’s black wings and stuff them down his throat for misleading her, because there was no cure for family, as he knew only too well.
“It was Red who put Alice in a cage.” The lory was off and running again. “Not Charlie.”
“But your husband chose to keep her caged,” Jeb inserted against his better judgment. He plugged his ears for the booming rebuttal, but Lorina only sighed.
“No. Charlie tried to do the right thing by the girl,” she said, considerably softer now. “He planned to send Alice back to the human realm behind Red’s back, but the queen found out and dragged them to a cave in the highest cliffs of Wonderland’s wilds, without any of us knowing. She left Charlie with her victim, so she could enact her master plan, knowing Alice would be tended by a captive who could never escape. Because, of course, dodos can’t fly. She stole my husband from me for years. He was a prisoner, just like the mortal was.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Birdie.”
A flurry of dust-scented wings, jacquard, and satin dropped down and attacked him. “You will show respect and listen!”
Jeb held up his hands in self-defense. “All right. Sheesh. I’ll listen.” It wasn’t like there was anything else he could do. Morpheus had told him that as soon as Alyssa was crowned queen, she could open the portal to the human realm. Whether Jeb believed that or not, he couldn’t do anything other than hope. He had no power here. That knowledge gnawed at his insides with each passing minute.
Settled in front of Jeb atop a mountain of lush fabric, the lory looked through the bars and grumbled to her sleeping husband, “Worthless old fezzerjub. Leave me to do all your defending. Don’t know why I ever married you.”
The dodo snorted and murmured sleepily, “Because marrying the court jester was the only way you could have a spot in the Red Court, O Darling of Dirges.” The snoring resumed.
“See how well that turned out,” she grumped, her rouged, heart-shaped lips pouting beneath the curl of her beak. “Bony little Rabid and his black heart of stone.” She preened the feathers on the back of her neck and tucked a sequined net around them.
Jeb reached over to retrieve the thimbleful of water their captor had left next to the pear slice. It was the size of a large coffee mug in his hands. He handed it off to his cellmate, who took it with her wings and gulped some down.
“Tell me something, Lori. If what you say is true …” Reading the defensiveness on her beaked face, he rephrased his question to save his ears. “Since you’ve chosen to share your side of the story, maybe you could tell me what role Morpheus played in Alice’s captivity.”
She patted water droplets from her lips. “He played no role at all. He was very fond of Alice and would’ve done anything to see her safely home. But the same hour he offered her advice as a caterpillar—warning her to avoid Queen Red’s castle at all costs—his metamorphosis came over him. When he emerged, fully transformed, and learned what had become of Alice, he was furious.”