Chapter 18
Her face was pale, or perhaps the bloody red of her lips drained all other colors from the rest of her. But her eyes—I doubted they had a color of their own. They were black, like ink. They were wide and round, and both dull and full at the same time.
Her thin lips moved but I didn’t hear anything she said. Was she whispering? I didn’t think so, but she was speaking. I saw her teeth, slightly crooked, a crisp white. I saw her tongue, a pale pink, rolling out words I couldn’t understand.
But I felt them. That’s how I knew I was dreaming.
I felt them vibrating in the air when they left her mouth, felt the way they seemed to push back her red, curly hair, felt the way they settled on my skin, layered over it, taking the shape of me. Felt them sinking deep into my pores, mixing with my blood, etching themselves onto my very bones.
Inching closer and closer to my heart and mind…
“Obey, I say,” said the woman, and her voice this time was crystal clear. Her crown, gold and silver and full of precious stones on her head became visible when she pulled herself back away from me.
Then her fingertip pressed to my forehead lightning fast, and the pain began.
I screamed.
It was hot and it came all at once, and it was everywhere, in my chest and in my head. I screamed at the top of my lungs because there was nothing else to do, no other way to expel the words that had sunk inside my body, that were destroying me from within.
I screamed—but when my eyes opened, the only sound that left my lips was a gasp.
Sparetime save me, it was the queen.
The Red Queen.
It was her—with the hair and the lips and the words she’d attacked me with. It was her and she’d been right in front of me, and she’d touched my forehead with her fingertips.
“Calm down—it’s just me.”
That voice.
Breathe, Ora, breathe, my lungs begged.
Was I still dreaming?
“You didn’t show up for breakfast.”
I blinked hard and fast for a few seconds, and finally saw March sitting at the edge of the low table in front of me. I was still struggling to understand where I was.
“Here. I brought some food. Have some.”
Another blink, and two and three. There was a plate on the table near him with croissants and a bowl of jam, butter, and a blood-red apple.
“March,” I breathed because there was so much to say. Entirely too much, and not enough of the right words for it.
He paused, looked at me, waited.
I saw the suspicion in his eyes. I knew he didn’t believe anything I said—and why would he? I didn’t believe my own self. I was a stranger to me, too.
“You okay?” he asked after a moment or two, and he forced the words out of him.
I’m not. But to say that would mean to say more after, and how could I? “Yes.”
He looked down at the book on my lap, open still to a page on clockbeasts, the second biggest chronovores in the realm. There were drawings of them, too, on the page, and I knew what March was thinking. I knew what he was remembering—the backward trial.
“Are you sure?”
This time the best I could manage was a nod.
He nodded, too, then stood up from the table. “Don’t stay up too early.”
War inside my head again.
My lips opened to call for him, and my teeth clamped shut at the same time to stop the words before they came out.
Then I looked at the front of the room to see all the others were there, some with books on their laps, some hanging out around the low tables.
All the Hands were here, and some were looking at me, and some were looking at March, at what he’d left on the table for me. He’d brought me food. He’d noticed I wasn’t there for breakfast.
Did he know I hadn’t gone because of him?
I reached for the plate, brought it closer.
The croissants were cold, but somehow they made for the most delicious breakfast I’d ever had in my life.
I watched the others while they interacted, and March sat with them, too, in one of the recliners.
They’d gathered five in one place, had dragged them from all over the library, and they’d made themselves comfortable.
I only heard the echo of their laughter every now and then, and felt March’s eyes on me whenever he turned my way as if to make sure I was still there.
Once I was done with the food, I grabbed my sketchbook and my pen, and I drew.
In the middle of the night, we woke up to Seth and Levana screaming after they had a dream.
The dream—the one with the Red Queen, where she did something, and then it hurt.
I don’t know why I said nothing when Russ asked, while we were still in Seth’s room, having run there when he screamed, if anyone else saw the Red Queen in their sleep.
I only stayed by the door and watched—and wondered and wondered and wondered.
When I went back to my room, I did another sketch to ease my anxiety before I tried to sleep again—this one of a pale face and dark lips, dark eyes, cold fingertips.
It helped.
By the next night, every Hand in the eating hall was more paranoid, more afraid than before, more wary of every little movement around us.
The others were so preoccupied with what Levana and Seth had dreamed about—the face of the Red Queen whispering, doing something—that they forgot to even give me the side eye.
Elida was there to walk us to Master Talik’s workshop again, and with every ticking second of this day, everything became so terrifyingly real.
I wasn’t going to escape the Labyrinth like I’d been so sure I would do.
There had been no other options when we stepped out of that forest after the first trial—yet here I was now, sitting at a workshop, trying to fix the kind of gears I had never even seen before, and it was all real.
It was all screaming at me that I wasn’t going anywhere, that I wasn’t going to make it out no matter what I did.
That I would have no choice but to enter the second trial as well. Unwin that one, too.
And it was just so absurd.
To be here, to live this day and all the others, to wake up at night and to watch the sun climb up the wrong way in the sky—it was absolute madness.
But nothing I thought to do could possibly stop it.
Training helped in releasing some of the stress. We all did well, exceeded Asha’s expectations (and our own), then got sent to our rooms to wash the dirt and the blood off as well as we could.
That morning, Lida came to my room to help me, with a salve in a small tin for my cuts and bruises. The way she looked at me spoke loudly. I didn’t dare ask her why she seemed to feel so sorry for me, so I clung to the irritation I felt because of it instead. It was easier.
I didn’t go to breakfast that morning, either, but snuck into the library before anybody else had gone there.
I tried to find books that explained time moving backward, but if this place had ever had a book like that, it wasn’t here now.
The best I could read about was how magically enhanced clockwork could be installed into buildings, and how to recognize working and disrupted patterns.
Impossible, impossible, sang the voice of the Cheshire in my mind, yet here I was.
So fast, and so slow, sitting in that recliner in the middle of the library, while a few others sat closer to the front. March was not there.
I was so utterly alone—and felt it for the first time in a very long time.
My sketchbook was with me, but I didn’t feel like drawing. I looked at everything I’d drawn again instead—March, and March, and March, and the others; Silas, whose drawing was in my pocket still, and the face of the Red Queen with those mad eyes and those curls framing her heart-shaped face.
Eventually, the others left, and the sound of absolute silence got to me. I wasn’t really going to learn anything from that book, anyway, so I picked up my things and left, too.
In the hallway by my door, I found a small straw basket with two apples, a red velvet cupcake, and two croissants filled with chocolate.
My mouth watered. My stomach rumbled.
I picked up the basket and walked into my room.
I took off my clothes, put my nightgown on. The bruises and cuts that had been all over my arms from training were all but healed. My skin remained slightly red, but at this rate that, too, would probably be gone by the next night.
I was going to eat when I grabbed that basket again. That was the plan—eat, then go to bed and try to sleep. It’s why I’d taken my clothes off right away—to remind myself that I was going to lie down in the bed.
Yet I found myself putting my jacket back on over my nightgown and moving to the door.
Not entirely sure where I was going or why, just that the room would eat me first if I didn’t do something. I could have been a Club in those moments, couldn’t sit still for a single second—but then I opened the door and I froze again.