Chapter 34
When Elida took us back to the palace, we waited until we were sure she was gone, then gathered at the end of the hallway, in front of my bedroom door and Mimi’s, to talk.
The others had just as much to say as I had thoughts in my head. We stood in a circle, and I had my shoes in one hand and my scarf in the other, exhausted already by the day, but restless, too.
“They know,” said Helen, hands on her head as she shook it.
“Maybe he was just drunk. Maybe he didn’t know what he was saying,” said Seth.
“What about the other guy then? I swear it—he remembered me,” said Anika. “The way he was looking at me—he remembered me.”
I believed her.
“Why, though?”
“What reason would they have to keep it from us?”
“Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone if they told us how to unwin the trials, so we could do a quicker job and be done with it?”
“Because the Great Clock is stuck…”
“And the magic of the trials is moving backward, and the sun is unsetting and unrising every day…”
“But it makes no sense!” Levana hissed.
She was right. It didn’t.
“It could still be that unwinning is actually winning—they’re just wording it differently to make this more interesting for the people. I’ve said this since the beginning,” Russ said, then flinched, like he already knew he was wrong.
“If this was just the normal trials, they wouldn’t have remembered how we were, how much we’ve changed, or what price we had to pay for whatever party we went to then,” Erith said.
“What do you think the price was, guys?” Mimi whispered.
For a moment there, nobody said a single thing. Nobody had any idea—and nobody wanted to think about it, either. It couldn’t possibly be anything good.
“And what about us?” said Helen. “What about…us? What did we do between trials?”
My heart beat faster and faster.
“What did we forget exactly?” March.
“Did we just hang out in our own rooms, or…?” Anika.
No, I wanted to say, the word on the tip of my tongue. No, we did not just hang out in our own rooms.
Of course, I kept my mouth shut. There was no way to know what the truth was.
“It’s her, isn’t it,” Cook said. “It’s the Red Queen.”
We all wrapped our arms around ourselves as if we were suddenly cold.
“She did something. She knows we know—did you see how she looked at us?” Helen asked, and I wanted to agree, too.
She’d known something, and I’d been this close to demanding she tell us what she did if it weren’t for whatever went on inside my body that stopped me.
Or whatever kind of magic had been in the air.
“We should tell the White Queen again,” one of them said.
“No—they’re sisters!”
“She’s not going to actually do anything about it.”
“But she got her off our table today, you saw it.”
“That doesn’t mean anything—they are still queens. Both are equals. We can’t risk it.”
“Helen’s right,” March said from my side. “We can’t mention the Red Queen to the White again.”
“So, what are we going to do—just pretend we don’t know anything?” Russ said through gritted teeth.
“Unwin the next trial,” Anika said reluctantly. “The Great Clock is still stuck. We’re still stuck here. We have to play; otherwise, it’s over for everyone. Our families, the entire realm…”
Faces flashed before my eyes—Jinx, Mother and Father, my uncle and aunts, my cousins. My friends.
I’d known people before. I’d had friends and I’d had memories—memories that were still there inside me right now, yet for some reason they felt like they belonged to someone else. It felt like they were separated from me by a thin veil, and I couldn’t access them—or if I could, they weren’t whole.
The only memories that were complete in my head right now were those of Jinx when she woke me up in the morning, and those of March that weren’t my memories at all.
“And after the trial, we try to find out more,” Helen said with a nod. “We try to figure out why they’re lying to us, who else remembers, who Silas really was, and what kind of a curse he put on us.”
The Hands took in deep breaths.
“We plan. We try—all together,” Seth said. “We’ll find something. Ora already found the heartlock—there will be more things in this place that can help us.”
He sounded hopeful.
He sounded terrified.
“And if we do find something?” Mimi asked.
“And if we don’t?” Erith.
Again, nobody had an answer.
“Let’s call it a day, get some rest. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Right now, there isn’t much we can do,” Russ said, and he started for his room.
Everyone else was eager to do the same, and so was I.
I felt March’s attention on me, but I didn’t dare turn to look at him for fear of what I’d say—or what he’d say with his eyes. I just rushed to my room and closed the door behind me, feeling empty and like I weighed a ton at the same time.
Sleep refused to come, even though I was exhausted and my mind was so overwhelmed and crowded with thoughts. Only sleep could put me to rest, yet I lay there, staring at the ceiling as the sun continued to travel east, trying to remember my life before.
Before the curse.
Before the Turning Trials ever began.
Before I came to Neverwhen and didn’t even remember it.
There were memories—of classes, of games, of secrets whispered in my ear.
Of my house and that of my uncle which were barely fifty feet apart, and the lake, the forests that seemed to stretch forever, that made me believe when I was little that the Clockrealm was endless.
It went on for as long as time did, and it never ran out.
I remembered climbing trees and chasing rabbits, hugging my parents, celebrating birthhours with them. Yes, I remembered, except all the memories seemed to be wrapped up in a flimsy coat that kept everything just out of reach for me. Just cold enough. Just there.
Then I heard movement outside my door.
My heart jumped, but I didn’t sit up. I froze there on the bed instead, unblinking, holding my breath, waiting and waiting and waiting.
A knock came seconds later. My eyes closed.
I knew who it was. I knew what he was doing. I knew he couldn’t sleep either. I knew he was as desperate as I was for a distraction.
It was still wrong. He doesn’t trust me.
I stayed put.
Soon came the second knock, this one a little harder.
All you have to do is not open the door, he’d said.
I sat up on the bed, looked at the door, tried to kick the memories of his mouth and his hands and his body against mine into the deepest, darkest corners of my mind, but those memories were clear. Vibrant. Real. They refused to obey my demands.
That was okay. I was still in control of myself. I would still not open the door.
Slowly, I stood from the bed and tiptoed my way to it, half thinking March had already left. It had been forty seconds—I was counting—and he hadn’t knocked a third time.
The polished wood was under the palms of my hands. I closed my eyes, strained my ears—he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone, my mind told me.
Sixty-seven seconds.
“Aren’t you going to open the door for me?”
I sucked in a deep breath and held it there, trying to see if I could convince myself that I’d only imagined it.
A chuckle.
“After I spent all that time sitting next to you. So ungrateful.”
Something pressed against the door from the other side and slid down all the way to the floor slowly. I was twelve-hours certain that March was sitting on the floor.
Pulling my lip inside my mouth, I bit hard until the urge to turn the lock and pull it open faded somewhat. Then I sat, too, with my back against the door, staring at the bed, sometimes at the sun outside the windows, minutes away from unrising now.
“That’s okay, I didn’t expect you’d open it, to be honest. Maybe I was even counting on it.”
My eyes closed and I rested my head against the door. It was getting harder and harder to hold onto my own reasons. To keep myself seated there. To not get up.
“I’d rather just hear your silence,” March said after a moment, his whisper loud enough for me to hear clearly. “It’s very loud. Quite possibly the loudest silence I’ve ever heard. Louder than most voices people scream with.”
I wasn’t sure whether he appreciated this, whether he was impressed, or whether this only made him even more suspicious of me than he already was.
“I know your body, Velvet,” he breathed after a while, and my heart jumped, almost all the way out of my mouth.
My skin crawled, my toes curled, and heat poured all over my insides, gathered between my legs.
“But maybe I just imagined it. Maybe it’s all in my head from the unholy amount of minutes I’ve spent analyzing you. ”
My eyes squeezed shut and all those drawings I’d made with my own hands flashed in my mind’s eye, details of him that I knew by memory but shouldn’t.
Had I spent an unholy amount of minutes analyzing him, too? It felt like I always was now—but before?
“Maybe.” March’s voice pulled my eyes open. “But I still need to see. I still need to confirm it.”
No, my mind told me.
It was okay. He was out there and I was in here and we were together, just…not close. And this was okay.
“I don’t trust you,” he said next, and that made those gears and cogs go wild in my stomach again, even though I knew this. I always knew this—he didn’t trust me.
“Which is funny because you’re keeping me grounded.” His voice faded away. “The only thing…”
But he never finished the sentence.
I waited, seconds and minutes, my whole being focused on what he was going to say next, but he never did. He just sat there on the other side of the door with me, and he listened to my silence, and I listened to his.
My eyes had closed by the time I heard him standing up. My heart jumped again, this time for sure demanding to be let out of my body altogether. I jumped to my feet, too, and I strained my ears, and I pressed one to the wood of the door to hear better.
A sigh, long and deep.
March must have been leaning against the door still because he pushed himself off, and the wood groaned just slightly.
Then came his footsteps as he walked away, one and three and six.
A door opened. His door, next to mine. His bedroom door.
It was impossible to keep myself in control. Impossible to stop my body from moving. Impossible to remind myself of all the reasons why this was wrong.
Before I knew it, I’d unlocked the door and I’d pulled it open, and I was standing by the threshold while March stood by his and watched me.
Unblinking, breath held, body frozen for a good moment.
Words popped into my head—stay; go; don’t come back; don’t come out of that room again—and they all died on my tongue.
March moved.
His door slammed closed. His boots slammed against the floor. His lips slammed onto mine.
I surrendered.