Chapter 19
March was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall between my door and the next. He had a knee up and his elbow against it, just like when we sat outside by the Labyrinth fence.
The world gradually disintegrated in the seconds it took him to raise his head and find my eyes with his.
There were words for this. I knew it as well as he did. There were questions to be asked—both for me and for him, yet I found I didn’t mind the silence just now. Instead, I stepped to the side and pushed the door open all the way, and I waited.
Half a smile curled a corner of his lip. March shook his head to himself, sighed. Stood up.
There was a chance he’d walk away, and he wanted to. I knew he did. But then he looked at the basket in my hand, and he must have known, too, what I was about to do. Which was to go knock on his door and…thank him?
Return the food he’d left me?
One or the other.
But March finally made up his mind, came into my room and pushed the door closed behind him.
I thought I might feel discomfort, or even a little bit strange, but I didn’t. I just went over to the coffee table, put the basket down, and sat in the armchair.
Meanwhile, March remained standing, his eyes scanning the room, searching.
While I pulled the food out of the basket and set it on the table, he touched the walls and the wardrobe, then went to my bedside table and touched the cover of my sketchbook.
He squatted down, eyes on the picture of Jinx.
He grabbed it, brought it closer, looked at it like it was the most curious thing he’d ever seen.
I sat back and waited, the mushroom made of white stone in my hand to give me comfort, until he finally put the frame down and came to me.
Then I hid the tiny thing in my pocket, together with the folded page from my sketchbook with Silas’s face on it.
I still couldn’t bring myself to part with it.
I’d carried it with me in my jacket all day.
The air charged with electricity. March sat beside me, his eyes never leaving my face, and for a while we didn’t move. He was fully clothed, and I was well aware that I was wearing my charcoal-black nightgown made of velvet and lace, but I still had my jacket over it.
Eventually, hunger forced me to reach for one of the croissants first, and I began to eat.
A moment later, he picked up an apple for himself, and leaned back on the armchair, watching me still.
Silence was comfortable with March. I suspected it was because of how calm my instincts were when he was around me.
Then he spoke.
“I saw her, too.”
Four words that weighed an entire world.
I was still chewing when I stood to go pick up my sketchbook.
My sketches were my own. I’d only ever shared them with Jinx, and that was a long time ago.
They were mine, they belonged to me, they were a part of me that the world didn’t get to claim.
They were my peace with the realm and my small act of rebellion against reality all in one, and so I never showed them to anyone ever.
Which was why I was so stunned by my own actions when I brought the sketchbook back, pulled open the last drawing I’d made, and left it there on the table.
The face of the Red Queen looked like nothing more than a fantasy. A very real fantasy.
March reached out his hand to touch the outline of her face, the curls of her hair.
“Identical,” he muttered. “It’s her.”
I nodded. “She did something.”
With the heel of his hand, March rubbed his forehead. “It hurt.”
I swallowed the food in my mouth. “Why?”
Our eyes locked. He shook his head. “Can I see more?”
He meant the sketches.
Every inch of my body was covered in goose bumps. I wanted to say yes. A part of me wanted him to see, just to know what he thought. Just to find out if he…remembered. Which was a silly thought to have, considering.
But March smiled. “Another time, then.” He grabbed the edge of the sketchbook, gave one last lingering look at the face of the Red Queen. “This is…incredible work.” And he closed it.
Not sure why it felt like I was reborn. Not because of what he said—just that I didn’t have to sit here and watch him see all that I’d thought of him at one point in our lives. All that I still thought of him, practically against my will. I wasn’t ready yet.
“We’re going to have to do the second trial,” I said, and my voice sounded strange. Calmer than usual. Softer.
Not my doing—just my body.
“There’s no way out,” he said with a nod.
“How is this not illegal?”
“The queens can make anything legal. They have all the power,” March said.
Unfortunately, he was right.
“What if we…what if one of us dies?” Because we’d all seen Reggie. He’d known since the beginning, since we first sat at that table. He’d known.
March looked at me like he might have a universe hidden in his eyes, and I caught but a glimpse of it. “You’re not going to die.”
He said it with such conviction that I believed it. Just like that, I believed him as if he was telling me that the sky was blue in daylight.
I wasn’t going to die.
“Neither are you.” I was convinced of this, too. Somehow.
With that out of the way, I grabbed the cupcake and bit into it. Tastier than I expected, which was why I ate half before I offered the rest to him.
March hesitated. Clear to see that he wanted to say no but couldn’t. He took the cupcake, and his eyes remained on my lips when he put it in his mouth.
He ate the whole piece in one bite.
Fuck.
I pulled my bottom lip in my mouth on instinct—maybe I had something on it that he was watching so intently?
When I did, he froze mid-bite for a split second and finally looked away.
“Why were you sitting outside my door?” I wondered a moment later when I found my voice, ignoring the heat that had climbed on my cheeks.
But he was sitting there entirely too close, and the way his jaws moved as he chewed—why am I sexualizing chewing?
! My mind was getting curiouser by the minute, but I still needed to know if he’d hoped I’d open the door.
“There was no other place I wanted to be,” he said, but I heard what he didn’t say out loud, too. I heard it when he thought: I don’t know why.
That was answer enough for me. I understood not knowing why just fine.
“It is possible that it was you?” I asked.
“Me, what?” March refused to look at me still.
I wanted to stop looking at him as well, so I stood up. Better to move, to give myself something else to see.
“The memories. You have mine, I have yours. Is it possible that you did it…before?”
March stood up, too. “No. It takes a lifetime of practice to even begin to reach for a memory. Transporting it from one mind to the other is notoriously difficult even for a seasoned Memorist. I couldn’t have done this if I’d tried.”
Exactly what I’d figured, too, but it was worth asking.
March wiped his lips with the back of his hand and stepped to the side of the table, closer to me. “Why are you always by yourself?”
“None of you like me. It’s easier.” For them, as well as for me.
He came closer still, just half a step. “There’s a lot I feel about you, Spade, but dislike isn’t one of them.”
My heart ticked faster. “Distrust, maybe?” My legs refused to move when I ordered them to. I couldn’t go closer nor pull away.
But March had no trouble walking right into my personal space—and he did it with envy-worthy confidence.
“Definitely,” he said, a hint of a smile at the corners of his lips. “Distraction. Disruption.” An arched brow. “Disappointment.”
There was a good chance I was smiling. “I disappoint you?”
“Very.” A hand under my chin. I didn’t move, didn’t push him away. He pulled my head up, analyzed my face. “You’ve healed nicely,” he muttered, but I didn’t much care about that.
“Why do I disappoint you, Heartling?”
He looked at my lips, brought his thumb to the corner of my mouth, wiped it. “Because.” Then he brought that same thumb to his own lips and licked a red velvet crumb off it.
My legs were shaking pretty badly.
“Because you took one truth from me, but you never gave me one in return.”
The memory. My memory in his mind.
“And because you’ve been avoiding me, I get to ask for a specific truth now, too.”
I arched a brow. “I haven’t been avoiding you.” But maybe I had. A little bit.
“I say you have, and I want my truth now.” He leaned closer until I felt the heat of his breath against my mouth.
I was no longer thinking about keeping my jacket wrapped around me to hide my nightgown. I didn’t think it necessary since he was holding me prisoner with his eyes, and he wasn’t looking away from my face at all.
“What truth?” The whisper left me in rush, and I found myself stretching my neck instinctively. Reaching for his lips with mine.
I didn’t try to make sense of it, not now. Not when I felt like Reggie felt when we sat at that table, like I was going to die soon and I was trapped and there was no way out.
But trapped didn’t feel all that bad when it was March luring me in. When he stared at my lips like he might be possessed.
“I want you to tell me,” he started, his whisper soft. My lips parted to taste it on my tongue… “How badly do you want me to kiss you right now.”
A moan escaped my lips faster than I was able to bite my tongue. Kiss, he said, and my knees shook and my panties were a mess.
My eyes squeezed shut and his hand closed around my cheek, his thumb tracing my freckles. I felt the breath that left his mouth when he chuckled. “That bad, huh.” It wasn’t a question.
“March,” I warned because I was unable to move back now—he’d trapped me all too well.
A growl, and he stepped closer all the way. His chest was flush against mine, and his other hand found its way under my jacket, closed around the side of my waist, fingers digging into my skin.
It was all I could do to stop myself from moaning again.
“Tell me, then. Tell me what you want me to do to you,” he whispered, then took my bottom lip between his teeth.
I was shaking.