Chapter 32
The feast was being served backward, and after we finished dessert and the main course, the waiters came to collect the empty plates. The White Queen called for everyone to get up, see the world below us, mingle, and dance with one another.
I would rather stay seated, but the others were already on their feet, getting as close as they could to the very edge of the floor to look down, see the Labyrinth better.
March stayed seated, too, for which I was thankful.
I wasn’t going to ask him to stay again if he wanted to get up, but I would most likely panic if I were left to sit there on my own.
“I knew it!” Russ called. “I knew we’re being held up—come on, look!”
The guy was lying on the floor on his stomach, and he’d gone all the way to the edge to look down underneath us.
It was terrifying to watch from where I was sitting, and while others were brave enough to go close and do the same, I didn’t even consider leaving my seat. I didn’t need to see what was under there—I believed them just fine.
After the queen called for mingling, guests came to greet us one after the other.
They came with their drinks in hand and with their sneaky smiles, their gleaming eyes and their rehearsed words: it’s an honor—for you, to serve as Hands, and for us to be here with you tonight!
Like someone had told them to say these very words.
Like someone had written it down for them before this banquet.
It didn’t take long for the discomfort to find all of us again.
And the more time passed, and the more people we met, the stranger it became.
Some of the Hands danced, and a couple hung out at the edges to look out into Neverwhen, but most had come back to the table.
I don’t know why that made me feel safer when we were all stuck here together, but it did.
Each new guest who came by our table was drunker than the last. They would try to talk to all of us, but a Club woman was the first one to go directly for March.
She ignored the rest of us and went to touch her glass full of red wine to his, then allow herself to grab his arm, and test the strength of his biceps—all the while telling us how incredibly strong he looked on projections, too. How good he looked in his suit.
I was too shocked to feel anything other than utter disgust, especially since the woman was right there, standing over me, and I had to push my chair back just to see her better.
The sun fell on her face that had just started to wrinkle, and her eyes were brown and bloodshot, and her drunken smile revealed far too many of her crooked teeth.
“So kind of you to notice,” March said as he casually pulled his arm away from her reach and turned to face her with his whole body.
His eyes were slightly bloodshot, too. He was smiling, but it was forced.
“Now I’ll be able to enjoy my evening more knowing that.
” I doubted the woman picked up on his sarcasm.
“You do that, too. Cheers.” He turned his back to her fast enough that it left no doubt she was being dismissed.
The woman wanted to say more, but then someone slammed their shoulder against hers and pushed her against her partner’s side.
“Oh—so sorry about that, so sorry!” said Elida with both hands raised.
“The warden herself,” said the man with a deep nod, while the woman flinched. She actually flinched when she looked down at her shoulder, where Elida’s shoulder had touched her, then wiped her pale skin, too, not-so-casually.
“Yes, yes, the new warden,” she muttered and turned toward us again, no longer amused.
Elida stepped back with that forced smile. “Please, carry on, carry on,” she muttered, feeling more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen her before. Without a glance our way, she slipped into the crowd and disappeared.
“So sad, what happened to her brother,” said the man. “A shame—such a brilliant, bright mind to be reduced to…to…”
We all watched him intently, hoping he’d say more, but he couldn’t seem to find the words fast enough, before the woman waved.
“Yes, yes, they’re all brilliant and bright,” she said dryly. “Come now, darling. Let’s mingle.”
Before she turned to walk away, though, she winked at March.
The way my blood came to a boiling point so suddenly. The way I imagined throwing my drink at her face.
“Enjoy your evening!” her partner said, and the way the woman walked, she was more than a little drunk.
But the man still turned to her as they went, and said, “Fascinating how they’ve changed so much, yet not at all, isn’t it?!”
They laughed.
They walked away.
The rest of us remained staring at them for a good long moment.
Suddenly the music and the sound of chatter behind us disappeared. The words echoed in my mind that was otherwise empty, and I tried to cling to their meaning with all my strength, but it didn’t work.
A blink, and I looked around the table to find others were completely dumbfounded, too. Staring at their glasses, at their hands. At one another.
“Did he just…” Erith started, head twisted back as she tried to see the Clubs who’d just walked away, but the floor was packed, the people all standing, most dancing with their drinks in hand still.
“…remember?” Mimi finished for her.
Another second ticked by.
“Maybe he was just drunk,” Cook offered. “Maybe…maybe…”
His eyes were wide, and he looked panicked just now. As panicked as I’d been when we first flew up here.
“Maybe he was just teasing us, yes,” Erith muttered. “Maybe it’s just a test.”
I looked at March sitting sideways on the chair, a hand on the back of it and his eyes on the crowd, searching as he slowly sipped his wine. Must have been his third but he didn’t look drunk that I could tell.
“Keep your ears open, everyone,” Mimi said and stood up, raised her hand at Cook. “Let’s go dance.”
He looked like he would rather jump off the edge right now, but he took Mimi’s hand anyway, and they both moved away from the table.
March’s eyes locked on mine. I heard the words echoing in my head.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he told me.
Heat on my cheeks. “The answer’s still no. I’m not going to dance.”
“But I didn’t ask you.”
Bastard. “Well, then. There you go.” I turned my head the other way, trying not to let him get to me because he was about to ask me to dance. I knew it…didn’t I?
And now that I thought about dancing with March…
A hand on my thigh. My entire body locked down tightly.
“Dance with me.”
Aha!
I turned to him, finger pointed at his chest. “I thought you said you didn’t ask.”
He grinned so widely the sun paled in comparison, and my heart did strange things inside my chest as it squeezed. “I’m still not asking.”
My glass ended up on the table, and my hand ended up in his. I was too stunned by what he was saying to realize what he was doing, which was to pull me up to my feet and toward the middle of the floor, toward the crowd—the dancing crowd.
I felt lightheaded. I felt dizzy. The view swam in front of me, and I was going to scream my guts out at him to tell him to let me sit, and…
Then he grabbed my hands and put them over his shoulders, and closed his own around my waist gently, anchoring me in place. I was standing, Time knew how many miles from the ground, on tiles that were being held up by a steel pillar, according to Russ, and I hadn’t run out of breath yet.
March was still there.
“Focus on me,” he told me, and he was close, but not close enough.
“I-I…I can’t,” I said, my mind on where his fingers dug into my waist. He pulled me to the side slightly and continued to move us against the backs of the people already there.
“You’re doing it already,” he said, that grin stretching his lips again.
It was powerful, all right, and gears and cogs went nuts in my stomach, but we were up here, and the Great Clock was over our heads, and it was impossible to forget when I was standing.
“March, I want to sit down. Let’s just—”
“No.” He held onto me tightly, squeezed my waist until I felt him all the way to my bones, and then pulled me closer.
Just pulled a little bit, and I all but fell against his chest, my body at his command.
“You figured out how to bring clockbeasts back to life. How to unmake an hour properly. How to create an incorrect working clock.” Well, when he put it like that…
“You can dance with me on a dance floor in the sky. You’re doing it right now. ”
My mouth opened and closed, and he continued to move us with ease, and my feet followed his and my body was just…calm. My thoughts weren’t racing anymore, either. His words were stuck in my ears, and they somehow pushed everything else out, at least for a moment.
“Besides, I’m the handsomest guy up here. You should consider yourself lucky that I chose you.”
I knew he was kidding. It was evident in the way he was still grinning, but I still rolled my eyes and let go of his shoulders and turned to walk away.
March stopped me.
Grabbing both my hands before I could turn away, he pulled again, harder this time, and with the high heels, and with his strength, I had no chance of keeping myself away.
Well, I did. I just didn’t want to.
So, the next second found me with my chest against his again, and this time he wrapped his arm around my waist tightly, squeezed as if to show me that I wouldn’t be able to get away as easily a second time.
My toes curled, which was an odd reaction. My blood rushed and my heart hammered.
“I’m joking, Velvet,” March said under his breath, and I wanted to say something else to release this tension that had built up inside me so quickly, when he added, “I know I’m the lucky one.”
My mouth clamped shut and I had no comeback, only a failed attempt to stifle a smile before it took over my face completely.
“Relax. It’s not so bad. We’re safe,” March said after a moment. “They might not care about us as much as they want us to believe, but they do care about themselves. We’re safe.”
And, of course, he did have a point.
“We’re safe,” I repeated with a nod—and more than that. We were dancing.
I’d gone dancing at school and birthday parties before.
I had friends. I’d had Jinx most of my life—but I’d never once danced with a guy like this before.
Not so close. Not so seamlessly. I never really knew my body could move until he guided it and my limbs followed so effortlessly.
I never knew I could recognize a beat as well as I was doing now and keep up with it.
“See? You didn’t need to keep us glued to that chair all night,” March said.
“I didn’t keep you anywhere,” I said, but the way he was looking at me…
“Oh, so if I would have tried to stand up, you wouldn’t have ordered me to stay again?”
My jaw hit the floor. “That was one time!” And I’d been panicked. I wasn’t in control.
He grinned again, and the sun must have been in love with him because it enhanced every single color on his face. I was close enough to see the difference clearly.
“I’m serious,” I said because he refused to say anything else. “I don’t want to keep you—”
“You didn’t,” he cut me off and squeezed me once against his chest, emptying my lungs instantly. “I wanted to stay seated.”
Because of me.
Of course he did.
“Now, focus, Velvet.” His hand moved up my back, until half his finger touched my bare back over the fabric of my dress. “Focus on your ears. Listen.”
All at once I was reminded why Mimi suggested we should be dancing. All at once the memory of that Club couple came back to me, together with their words.
Time’s Teeth, they had really sounded like they remembered. What was it that the man had said again? Fascinating how they’ve changed so much, but not at all.
Like he knew what we were like before. Like he knew exactly how we’d changed.
Between trying to listen to conversations of the people around us and trying not to notice how March’s body felt against my own, and how easy and natural it was to dance with him (like we’d most definitely done this before), my fear of where I was disappeared completely.
It didn’t matter how high up we were or what went on in the world below us.
For those moments, I was as close as I had ever gotten to being free.