Chapter 30
We decided against going outside tonight, even though all of us could use some air. Instead, we sat around that table still—most of us, while Mimi and Seth kept moving around from one wall to the other so fast I got dizzy if I looked at them for too long.
The Timekeepers had all gone into the Hollow, and Silas was just telling us that they were keeping Calren under on purpose because if he woke up too early the damage to his brain might be permanent.
Irreversible by any magic, and I was having such a hard time picturing him as a Timekeeper, too. Considering him as one of them.
It just…didn’t really matter.
Timekeepers were exactly like us. Exactly. I saw no difference—and who even cared about the color of their hair? Really, I tried to consider them as their own people, I did. But it never mattered, even when I tried hard.
I looked at Silas every now and again, while we talked and we tried to come to terms with the fact that we’d decided to actually do this without deciding.
The process had involved a conversation, that’s all.
A conversation and some feelings and then all of a sudden we’d all sworn to go do the impossible and try to expose queens that had been doing this and getting away with it for decades.
“Isn’t it funny that so many adults have tried for so many years, and they’ve all ended up dead, and now we’re the next best thing—the only thing they have left to throw to the wraiths?” Mimi flinched. “No offense, Silas.”
“None taken,” he said with a wave and a smile—he, out of all of us, looked the most calm since the decision had been made. “I don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s only natural. The old have gotten tired. Weak. We haven’t.”
“No—the old are just wiser, that’s all,” Levana said.
“I mean, we pretty much know we’re going to die,” said Russ.
“We don’t know that.” Silas.
“I kind of do. Just trying to figure out why I don’t care.” I squinted my eyes at the middle of the table as if I was really hoping to find some kind of answer on the old wood.
“Maybe because there are more important things than death?” Silas offered.
“Speak for yourself.” Levana. “There’s nothing more important than life.”
“Same, to be honest,” said Erith, a hand under her chin as she scratched the tabletop with the other. “It’s the memories—that’s why. It’s our memories on the line.”
“But not just that,” said March, and his voice sent shivers down the length of me, like always. “It’s not just our lives on the line here. Think about the future. The lives of our own children. Think about what they’ll have to deal with, generations after, if we don’t do something to stop this.”
I looked at his profile, at the shape of his lips, the way they came together and stretched apart to form each word.
Time’s Teeth, I wanted to get lost on his lips one last time, at least, before we went and got ourselves killed.
“I mean…maybe we should just let them handle this. Maybe it will be better if we do,” Seth muttered, moving all around the table like he was in a rush to get somewhere. “Maybe it will be easier for them. Maybe it—”
“Was it easier for us?” March cut him off.
“Look at us now. We’re going through this because nobody stopped them before.
They just took our memories—not a single second of accountability.
” We all stopped talking. Stopped thinking.
“If we do nothing now, what will happen to the next Hands, and the ones after?”
No answer.
Of course, he was right.
“We will try. We already said we would,” Levana muttered. “We’re just saying, it is going to kill us, most likely.”
“I, for one, would have liked to say goodbye to my sister,” said Mimi.
“And I’m glad I didn’t,” muttered Russ.
“I wonder what my parents are thinking.”
“I wonder what the queens will tell them when we die.”
“Will they take our bodies home?”
On and on they went. And I had those same questions myself, and I was thinking about my parents, too, but I was also tired of thinking. So tired of everything that went on in my head, and tired of the day, and tired of hoping when I knew it wouldn’t serve me.
It was almost eight o’clock, and I wanted to lie down for a bit before we had to go.
So, I stood up.
“I think I’m going to rest for a while, clear my head.” I reached out my hand for March, and he took it without hesitation. “Coming?”
“We all should get some sleep,” Silas said, and suddenly they were all standing, too, nodding.
“They won’t be getting any sleep, though,” Seth said with a grin, wiggling his eyebrows at us, and my cheeks flushed bright scarlet instantly.
We said nothing, but when he looked March’s way, he turned forward instantly and slipped into the darkness of the Hollow on the other side of the doorway. Impossible not to smile.
We said our goodnights, and we went to March’s room again—something about his cot, and something about the floor made out of glass. It smelled like him in there, too.
I pulled the rose he’d given me from the pocket before he took my coat off, smelled it until the sweet scent filled me from head to toe, then put it on the only small table in the room, next to the old lantern.
I was going to leave it there until all of this was over.
No way would I take it with and risk destroying it.
If I died, at least this flower will still be here.
It would still remember. Maybe I could get the Timekeepers to do a spell to keep it like this forever.
March kneeled to take off my shoes, too.
Wouldn’t hear it when I said I could do it on my own.
Not going to lie, it felt good to be taken care of like that.
The way he took my hands, pulled me toward the cot.
Sat me down, then lay with me. The way he wrapped his arms around me and practically pulled my body over half of his. The way he looked at me.
His eyes in the dim light were darker than usual—the browns deepened, the reds nearly invisible. He looked exhausted and beautiful and afraid, and he somehow pulled the look off.
Or maybe it was just me?
I raised my hand to his cheek, touched the smooth skin and the short stubble that had started to grow along his jaw.
“We might die tomorrow,” I said because there was no point in dressing it up. We both knew. Everyone down here knew.
“We might,” March agreed with a nod.
“And I’d say we now know each other much better than we did last time.”
The way his smile stretched while he closed his eyes. He knew exactly where I was trying to get to, and my cheeks were bright red, but he said, “Yeees?”
“And this doesn’t feel like a memory, does it?” I leaned my head up, slightly shaking, and pressed my lips to his gently.
Because that’s what he’d said last time, when he refused to take his clothes off. He’d said he wanted the next time to be ours, not just a replayed memory.
“No, it does not,” he muttered and kissed me a little harder.
“March…” I pressed myself onto him, and his moan fried every other thought in my head. The way he dug his fingertips into my waist should have been sinful. “I want all of you. I want to know, before…just in case.”
He didn’t let me say another word.
Before I knew it, my back was against the cot, and it squeaked a little bit when March shifted his weight onto his elbows, his body over mine. His tongue was in my mouth and his hips pressed down onto mine, lighting my very bones on fire.
But this kiss was different than the others—not passion, but…desperation. It tasted almost like grief at first, at least for me. I kissed him like I wanted to memorize this because I knew I was about to lose it—maybe this time for good.
And as we explored each other, touched each other, melted onto one another deeper, the kiss also tasted like defiance.
I would not die without knowing every inch of him, without becoming one with him.
No matter what the past had been like, no matter what we’d gone through, we were here now—and now was enough.
Eventually, his mouth moved to my jaw, to that spot below my ear that made my breath stutter.
I no longer wondered how he knew the place, the pressure, the speed as if he’d made me himself—I just took it.
Everything burned inside me in the best possible way, and I pushed my hips up with all my strength, my legs locked around him tightly as we moved.
“Don’t stop, March,” I thought I whispered as he continued down to my collarbone, and his response was to moan that sexy sound and bite my skin harder.
It was perfect already—and the anticipation of what was coming added fuel to the fire with each passing second.
His hands found the hem of my shirt, pulled it up slowly, his knuckles dragging against my sides, leaving a trail of heat that made my stomach clench.
I raised my arms like I wasn’t myself at all, and he pulled the shirt over my head and threw it away.
Then his hands were on my bare skin, and he moaned harder, lower, almost like he was in pain this time.
I pulled at his shirt frantically, desperate to feel all of him, too. He held up one arm, then the other, and then my hands were on his bare back, too.
Time’s Teeth, his naked chest pressing onto mine was everything. By then I no longer recognized myself, nor did I want to. This night, this night, we only have this night went the thoughts in my head, and I believed them.
Our hearts chased the same rhythm as we moved slowly, deeply, with our everything against each other, and our bodies fit so well I was tempted to think I was dreaming.
But dreams could never feel this good.
We lost ourselves, slowly at first, then all at once—when he gripped my hip with his hand, when he pressed his hard cock against my center with the clothes still in the way, when he took my lip between his teeth and bit until the pain merged perfectly with the pleasure.