Chapter 38 #2
Every single hallway and corridor we passed was quiet, but we still took our time to get to the kitchen. We still checked every corner, stopped and held our breaths and waited every few feet, but nobody came.
We went right through the kitchen doors to find it exactly as we’d left it.
The islands, the fridges, the cabinets lining the walls, the appliances—it was all identical, yet the feel of the room was different.
Darker. Like nobody had set foot in this place in ages, yet every surface was clean and shiny, possibly just polished in the last few hours.
“This way,” Russ repeated and went straight for a piece of empty wall between the appliances that didn’t look like anything at all—just a white wall. My mouth opened to tell him there was nothing there, as there wasn’t, but then he went and pressed his hand right on the side of it just once.
A click.
I could hardly believe my eyes when the wall moved back an inch.
Russ turned to us, grinning a boyish grin that transformed his face completely. A relieved grin—like maybe he’d doubted his own self until now.
“How did you even know?!” Erith asked, her voice pitched high, but we were no longer concerned of being caught at the moment.
Russ shrugged, a hint of pride in his eyes. “I like to stick my nose everywhere I can. It’s fun.” Then he pushed the door open all the way and went through. “Let’s go.”
The moment he stepped onto the black tiles that made both the floor and the walls, lights went on overhead. Dim, white lights that showed the corridor had a door at the other end and nothing else in it.
“Whoa,” Levana breathed when she went in after Russ, Seth, and then Erith. I turned back once more just to make sure nobody had come into the kitchen while we’d been distracted, then slipped in and pulled the wall-door closed almost all the way.
The air was colder in the corridor, and Russ went straight for the door on the other side without bothering to check his surroundings another time, like he knew for a fact that there would be nothing there.
“I think I knew this place from…before,” he whispered. “My legs knew the way. My hands knew exactly where to touch the wall.”
“I’m so tired of that feeling,” Erith muttered.
“Me, too,” Seth said. “It’s so annoying. I can’t wait to get my memories back.”
“Open it. Let’s get this over with,” Levana said when we were in front of the door, and Russ didn’t hesitate. He pushed the silver handle down and opened the door in the next beat—and we all stopped breathing for a second.
White.
I was falling again, floating, spiraling down a hole, looking at flashes of light, seeing a different time, but the exact same place.
Same racks, same walls, same tiles on the floor, same spotlessly clean dishes.
The white room where the White Queen had dragged the plaques was right in front of me for real.
My name was being called, and it took me a few blinks to respond. It took me a few tries to realize they were all freaked out because I’d frozen there on the threshold and I refused to acknowledge them, to breathe at all.
“I’m…I’m okay,” I whispered, but my mind was struggling to separate then from now. My stomach kept twisting like the gears inside me were malfunctioning, and I had to close my eyes and focus on breathing just to make sure I didn’t throw up again.
“Is it…is this it?” Erith asked in half a voice. “Is this the room you saw, Ora?”
I nodded and nodded, then closed my eyes again when the movement proved to be too much for my turning gut.
“Where?” Russ had stopped in the center of the wide room—impossibly big. “There’s nothing here, just these dishes. I checked.”
Somehow, I convinced myself to step inside together with Levana, to feel the shift in the air as if we’d stepped onto a different world altogether.
Levana paused two feet in. “Did you guys feel that?”
“The air?” I asked.
“I didn’t feel anything,” said Erith.
Seth shrugged. “Me, neither.”
“It was like…when we found Silas.” Levana looked at me. “Like in the pocket.”
This time I caught myself before I nodded too hard and threw up for real all over her. “Exactly like in the pocket.”
“Just focus, Ora,” Erith called, clapping her hands to get my attention, and it worked. “Where are the plaques?”
I pointed my finger toward the opposite wall, right where I’d seen the queen kneel. “There.”
Russ nodded. “I got this.”
They went to the wall and started to press on it. I held my breath, gave my insides a moment to settle as I watched, hopeful—but nothing happened.
“It’s gotta be here,” Seth said, pressing his hands onto every bit of surface he could reach.
“Maybe push harder,” said Levana. “C’mon, push as hard as you can.”
So, they did.
Eventually, I went closer, too, when I felt I could stomach it, and I was parallel with the door, exactly how I’d seen in that scene, exactly where the queen had been.
I closed my eyes, and in my mind I saw her, saw her face, that look of pure grief she’d thrown over her shoulder. So raw I felt it as if it were mine.
“It’s here. It should be here.” I turned as Seth moved a little to the side to give me space and pressed my hand against the cold wall, expecting it to react.
It didn’t.
“Maybe she used magic,” Russ said.
“She didn’t.” I’d have seen it—just like I did in the Distribution Room.
“Hold on, we can find it. Move back, everyone.” Erith pushed both me and Seth farther from the wall. “We just need to look carefully. Wait.”
She pressed both hands onto the wall and leaned her cheek against it as well. Analyzed every single inch while we waited and watched, touched every surface.
“There’s gotta be an opening here, or a curve, or something…” her voice trailed off as she turned the other way again, searching, hands flat against the smooth surface of the wall.
Meanwhile, I turned back to the middle of the room, closer to the door just to make sure I had the right spot.
The moments I’d seen of this room and the White Queen had been shown to me from outside the door, from that dark corridor.
I’d been looking in, and there was no other place the queen had gone, nothing else she’d touched or said or done.
“It’s not here,” said one or the other, and my heart fell all the way to my heels.
Because what if I’d made it up?
What if…none of it had even been real?
Holy Hour, it was the first time it occurred to me—but what if I’d really held onto the edge of that hole that had opened on the floor, and what if it had only been a couple seconds, and what if I’d imagined the fall? What if I hadn’t gone stillward—what if I’d only dreamed?!
My stomach turned and turned, this time for a completely different reason.
“Guys…” I turned to the others, eyes wide open, lips parted, and the words were there, on my tongue.
I was going to apologize to them—because in those moments I didn’t think to wonder why the room was identical to the one I’d seen while falling.
I didn’t think to wonder how that could be.
All I wanted to do was apologize for dragging them all the way here, for risking their lives, putting them in danger—
“Speak, Spade, damn it!” Erith shouted, and she kicked the wall.
She kicked the wall with the side of her boot, just a tiny bit.
And then came the click.
The apology froze on my tongue. The look of pure shock froze on Erith’s face just as she was about to shout at me again.
“What was that?” Levana breathed.
And we all looked down at the wall. Down, where the White Queen had kneeled.
She had kneeled, Ora—she had kneeled!
We moved all at once, rushed toward the wall, all of us on our knees now, watching Erith as she pushed back the same spot on the wall where the sole of her boot had left a gray stain.
Gasps all around as the wall moved together with her hand—a piece of it possibly twenty inches high sliding back just a bit, then to the side—smoothly, silently, disappearing behind the rest of the wall like it had never even been there to begin with.
Erith didn’t wait for Seth to turn on a hand-lantern I hadn’t even known he’d brought with him to illuminate the darkness.
She fell on all fours and crawled right into the square space.
It was wide enough to fit her—wide enough to fit Seth, too, who was the biggest among us. Definitely wide enough to fit me.