Chapter 13
“Tick-tock-tea-talk.”
A tray carrying a teapot, teacups, a bowl full of sugar, and a plate full of pastry slammed down on the bedside table hard enough to make the dishes rattle and to chase away my sleep.
“Wake up, you hairy hare.”
It never failed to bring a smile to my face. I was not hairy—my hair was not thick nor fine, just somewhere in between. But my sister had called me that since I could remember, and in the nights she had dreams, she woke me up with tea the morning after. Morning tea-talks were always about dreams.
Even though I knew this was a dream, too, that Jinx hadn’t been there to wake me up for almost two years now, I was still disappointed when the knock on the door pulled me into the waking world.
My eyes opened and every last bit of hope I’d had of staying in the dream for a moment longer just to see her face disappeared. I wasn’t in my room or back home in the Court of Spades, and Jinx was most definitely not sitting in the recliner she’d left near my bed specifically for our tea-talks.
Instead, I was in Neverwhen, in the Labyrinth, in a fancy palace, sleeping on fancy silk sheets, and Lida the maid was behind the door, screaming at me to let her in. Here, midnight came after dawn, not the other way around, because somehow time was currently moving backward.
What a mad, mad world.
Apparently, locking the door was not allowed, according to Lida, and she was furious that I’d made her spend four minutes knocking and screaming for me to wake up.
This, no part of me cared about, not accidentally, not instinctively—none.
When I finally dragged myself to the door and unlocked it, she gladly informed me, half screaming, that I’d overslept, and that I was supposed to be in the eating hall thirty minutes ago, and if I didn’t get there now, they were going to start the last lessons without me.
I would have gladly told her that I was on my way, then get back in bed the second she left—I was not ready to face any kind of world right now, not forward, not backward—but she didn’t.
No, Lida stayed and she pushed me toward the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, then forced me into a pair of clean clothes, mine, but they smelled like this place now. Not like home.
Which is when it occurred to me that I hadn’t thought about home all that much.
I hadn’t thought about my parents.
I hadn’t really…missed them as I ought.
It was the time—or lack thereof. And it was…well, everything that had happened since I woke up at that dining table, nothing more.
When I made it to the eating hall, it was just a little before nine m.b.
All the other Hands were done with dinner, and they were walking out the door.
March was there, too, and the way my soul slipped out then rushed back into me again was perfectly absurd, but I ignored it.
I only ran, grabbed a croissant and an apple from the table, and I stuffed as much food in my mouth as I could while walking behind them down the hallway.
Lida was gone, thankfully, but the Hands were being led by Elida the Royal Timekeeper, who wore a hat and a vest the color of mustard, and she was telling them something I was too far away to hear as we descended the main stairs I’d found so impossible to find the morning before.
Maybe it was the brighter moonlight streaming through the windows, which seemed to have multiplied as well.
Or maybe I just hadn’t been counting windows while trying to sneak out.
With every new step I took, and the more food I had in my system, the clearer my head became, and I actually remembered everything that had happened when I woke up after dawn.
The sneaking around. The magicking of the rope, the gloves, the chalk—which I’d left behind by the fence. Good thing I’d thought to grab my backpack, at least. My sketchbook and Jinx’s picture were still in it.
I also remembered the magic that had stopped me from escaping, had thrown me back to the ground.
The magic of the Labyrinth, perfectly invisible to my senses, yet I hadn’t been able to even throw a piece of rope through it.
Dread under my skin, and unfortunately for me, this time it had nothing to do with the Labyrinth, but with what came after my failed attempts at escaping.
March. His proximity. His mocking. His words—it hurt here.
And then the kiss.
The kiss.
My cheeks were as hot as the sun again, and all I was doing was remembering.
I didn’t dare even look at his back as he walked ahead near the front of the group, and I felt like he was standing right next to me, like my body was flush against his, like his tongue was devouring my mouth, like his bottom lip was between my teeth and I was biting, and oh—
Stop.
Funny enough, this new voice in my head that I kept hearing since I woke up here was starting to sound more and more like that of the Cheshire Cat. But it did stop me, just before Elida did.
We’d come down only a story, and then walked a narrow corridor, darker than most in the palace, toward a big wooden door that wasn’t as polished as the rest.
I stopped a couple feet behind everyone, hoping to eat the apple, but no. Because March then turned to look at me—just threw a look over his shoulder like he had plenty to give away—and I found I no longer had the appetite.
What I had was anger and arousal and very flushed cheeks.
Then Elida said, “Hear, hear. We will begin the end of this day with an advanced lesson on gears, and after here, we will be headed to the arena to get started in advanced combat training.”
“Advanced,” said Helen from the front of the group. “But we’re only just getting started.”
“Incorrect,” Elida said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She looked way more tired than last time, I noticed. “You’ve already finished lessons and trainings.”
“But we don’t remember any of it,” Russ reminded her.
And the Timekeeper pretended she hadn’t even heard him. “Which is why we’re going to be starting backward, to stay in line with the flow of time.”
Senseless, of course, but it also did make sense, considering.
“We must speak to the White Queen. Where is she? And why haven’t you told us anything about Reggie yet? You’re going to get him out of that forest, right?” Mimi said, and in my mind I saw her face, how lost she’d been in the morning, how she’d been walking around the grandfather clock, barefoot.
I don’t know why I’m here.
Something inside me was…missing. I only knew because I felt the empty space it had left behind.
It was somewhere in my chest—that’s all I could tell for sure, and I’d had it before.
Before the curse. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known that I was missing it, and I wouldn’t have felt like I wasn’t feeling something specific at the memory of Mimi’s face.
At the thought that she genuinely sounded hopeful that Reggie was still alive, even though we’d seen. He wasn’t.
Instead, the best I could do was feel irritated.
“The White Queen is away on business outside the Labyrinth,” Elida solemnly declared with a hand to her chest. Maybe it was my imagination, but she even moved differently from us.
Her movements were more…mechanical. They did say Timekeepers were always a couple of seconds ahead or behind, but you never really knew what was truth and what was made up in the Clockrealm.
“Then when will she be back?” Seth said. “Because we lost one of our own—”
“Two,” Elida cut him off, raising two fingers. “You lost two.” Seth stopped. “So far,” she added.
Shivers erupted down my back. We had lost two—the Spade boy who cast the curse was dead, too.
Who-how-why?! The questions popped in my head, one after the other, in repeat.
“He was not one of our own—he was yours,” Levana snapped, and I could just see the top of her head as she took a menacing step toward Elida.
The Timekeeper wasn’t threatened. “And yours,” she simply said.
“The queens will come when the queens will come. For now, you have your lesson with another Royal Timekeeper, who’s taught you before, and who has worked in the Labyrinth for the past two decades.
Pay attention, for he doesn’t repeat himself. And—”
“We demand answers!” Erith cut her off. “We almost died in that forest, too! We got old, and Levi must have become sixty in seconds, and we lost all that time from our Life Clocks and—”
“It is all part of the game.” Elida’s voice was sharp as a knife this time, louder than before. “You’ve read the terms—all of you remember those, don’t you? You sign them when you sign up for the selection. All of this is part of the game.”
“You have no right to keep us here,” said Russ, and he did his best not to sound panicked.
“We aren’t—the Labyrinth is,” Elida said. “Now, if you have no further comments—”
“Was his family informed?” March’s voice pressed Play on the memories in my head that had just now started to fade.
Elida blinked at him. “As far as I know, they have,” she finally said. “All your families get updates on a two-day basis.”
I didn’t know that, but I was glad. My parents would know that I was alive, at least. That way maybe they wouldn’t be too quick to move on, like they’d done after Jinx’s death.
“And now,” Elida said. “No more comments. No more questions. We’re late for your lesson. Pay attention in the classroom—and try not to cut your hands off.”
Before anybody else could say something, she turned and pushed the large door open, and we finally saw inside.
It did not look like a classroom at all, rather like a mechanic’s workshop that they’d tried to make respectable at the last minute.
Four rows of metal benches with narrow tables in the front faced a long table cluttered with gears, springs, rods, and half-dismantled devices, some of which moved and clicked and spun on their own.