Chapter 41
It should have been over.
We trapped some of the timewraiths, and more fell, disappeared, and we unplanted the seeds. The rings on the wood were all glowing, most fully. However we’d killed that glow in the forward Turning Trials, it was now restored.
We were on the ground and there should have been an exit here—there should have.
But there was none.
“Did we do something wrong?” Anika asked as we searched and searched, spread out farther, then went back again.
“Did we not unplant all the seeds?”
“Did we miss a level completely?”
“Guys, Helen isn’t here.”
My stomach twisted something awful. We looked at Levana, her eyes red still, bloodshot, and she was shaking. We were all shaking.
“She will be all right,” Anika told her. “She’ll find her way.”
Anika didn’t believe her own words for a second—and neither did anybody else.
“She might be down there—she might,” Seth said, and he, too, was trying to get himself in a place where he could focus on unwinning this trial. “We just have to keep moving and we’ll get to her.”
I was the same—which shocked me all over again. It felt like I was changing.
There, while I watched—it felt like I was changing, like the feelings in me were altering, my thoughts brand new, and I had no idea why or how.
Was I losing my mind? Or was it March, somehow?
Maybe the game?
“What else can we do?” Russ shouted. “Where are the talking flowers here—hello? Anybody? Anything?!” And he went to poke some of the flowers that were not very vibrant or bright against the tree. When nobody responded, he began to kick them.
It was more disturbing to watch than I would have thought.
Cook was on him, wrapping his arms around the guy while he kicked and thrashed.
“Stop it, Russ, stop it!”
“Kicking flowers isn’t going to help anyone. The trial hasn’t been fully unwon yet,” March said, more irritated, less composed than I’d ever seen him before. “Let’s spread out. Let’s see what more this place challenges us with.”
“But we fell!” Russ hissed. “Maybe they didn’t see us! Maybe we just need to tell them we’re here—because we already fell!”
“How are you going to do that when this place goes on forever, sandbrain?” Erith snapped.
I went a little farther. This whole place could have been an illusion because she was right—it did look like it went on forever.
There were no actual walls—every time I thought I reached the edge of the canopy that had looked very different from outside, it would turn out to be just a curtain of leaves and cords and tree roots, with another maze on its other side.
Everything was greener, more alive, and there were birds here on this level now, too.
It was brighter, even though not a single sun ray slipped through the large leaves.
Regardless—we were still stuck, and trying not to panic wasn’t working.
What if there was no way out? What if there were more seeds we planted, and what if we never found them—what if?
The other Hands argued, and I moved farther away on instinct—I had enough screaming going on in my head that I was barely able to contain it.
There must be something we were missing.
I felt it in my bones—there was something else.
The trial would have ended if we’d unwon properly just like it had the first two times. The trial would have ended—
I stopped.
My lungs stopped.
My heart stopped, too, for the longest second when I pulled back another one of those curtains made of leaves and ropes and saw the other side.
A doorway—so dark no light could survive near it.
It did not fit with the rest of the Tree of Years, not the way the roots and the vines twisted, not the color of them, not the feeling of it.
They looked lifeless, completely lifeless, like a portal to the Everstill—a dark and twisted Everstill, that is.
And it looked exactly like the one we found up at the top of the tree when we first entered. Identical.
Something moved behind me, but I was so consumed by the sight of that doorway that I didn’t even move back.
“There it is,” March whispered from behind me. “Over here!” He stepped around me and ahead, closer to the hole.
The others came running.
“Time’s Temper, it’s the same doorway,” Levana said, and if I’d had any doubts that I was seeing things, they all faded away. I couldn’t bring myself to move yet, but the others had no trouble going closer.
Something about that darkness.
Just like when we saw it the first time, every fiber of my being was screaming at me to get back, get away, run and do whatever I needed to stay away. Whatever was in there was not only not good—it was disastrous. Horrifying. It was going to suck me dry worse than the wraiths.
“How did it get down here?” Seth asked.
“I knew it, I knew it—we were supposed to go through it first!” said Erith.
“What if we blew it? What if we did the whole thing wrong?” asked Russ. “What if we’re supposed to get back up there all over again?!”
The idea sent ice-cold chills down my spine. Not enough air in this place for my lungs.
Get it together! I screamed at myself in my head when I began to get lightheaded, too.
This was where I was now. It didn’t matter what I felt—I’d survived this once, and apparently, I was going to have no other choice but to survive it again. None of us would.
The others were still arguing when I forced myself to get closer. We stood in a half circle around the doorway, and it sometimes looked only like a dark hole, and sometimes like a tunnel when a little light pulsated in the middle of it. No idea where it was coming from, though.
“There’s no other way,” Seth was saying. “We either go through there, or we don’t make it out.”
A silence deep enough to drown me followed his words. We all knew he was right. We all knew there was no other way. If there was, the doors would have opened to let us out by now, wherever they were.
“Fuck it,” Levana said. “I’m ready to get out of this place. Let’s do it. I’ll go first.”
Taking in a deep breath, she wiped the tears that slid down her cheeks, stiffened up her quivering chin, and she went into the doorway.
Run, run, hide! my mind screamed at me, but I stayed put. I watched all the others get themselves together, some faster, some slower, and follow Levana into that darkness that promised me all the nightmares in the world, until only March stood there at the edge, watching me. Always waiting.
I don’t want to go, I said in my head, but my tongue was stuck between my teeth. I was too shocked to cry, but my eyes blinked less and less. Like they were terrified of what I might miss if I blinked normally.
“I’ll be right behind you,” March answered anyway, as if he could read my mind in my unblinking eyes.
That was it. That was all I had—knowing that he would be behind me.
Maybe that was all I needed.
Taking in a deep breath, I moved. I stepped right into the darkness, certain that I was never going to make it out again.
The tower.
There were so many things I expected to find on the other side of that tunnel.
Monsters, clockbeasts, wraiths, all kinds of different challenges.
Instead, I found myself inside the tower.
I recognized it because the walls were that same gray color, and there were no windows anywhere that we could see, but some stone blocks were chipped at the edges, and sunlight peeked through a little.
There were no stairs here, though, and no cages hanging by thick chains, only four doorways all around us, each as dark as the one we came through.
Four symbols were carved over each, painted in black—club, heart, diamond, spade. No note, no tip, no nothing—just that.
“They want us separated,” Anika whispered, and her voice echoed in the tall ceiling. It was so tall, in fact, that we couldn’t see it. All we saw was darkness.
Was the cage up there still?
Maybe, even though these doorways hadn’t been here when we first entered the tower.
“The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we walk out.” Mimi stepped forward, hands fisted to her sides so they didn’t shake. “I can’t stay here a moment longer.” And she walked ahead toward the doorway marked with the club symbol.
Seth followed without a word, only a deep, loud breath.
Anika went next, and Erith followed her into the darkness marked by the diamond. Something moved next to me and a hand fell on my shoulder—Cook. He was white as a sheet, his eyes round and full of terror, possibly the same as mine. We would be going in there together.
I nodded, as if he’d asked me a question and I was responding. Behind him, Levana and March were in front of the doorway marked with the heart, March’s eyes on me.
Cook went ahead, slowly, dragging his feet, and March gave me a curt nod, too. As if to say it’s okay. As if he really thought we were going to be fine.
I didn’t believe it for a second, but even so, I followed Cook with my breath held.
Darkness.
Our footsteps echoed, bounced off the walls. I was on the right, and Cook was on the left, and we were moving at a steady pace, hands ahead to make sure we didn’t slam onto a wall by accident.
The air became colder the farther we went.
“Do you see anything?” Cook asked a few seconds in, and he sounded even more terrified than he looked.
“No. Keep moving,” I said, just to make noise. Just to hear my own voice, to convince myself that I was still here, that I hadn’t disappeared. The darkness hadn’t erased me from this trial yet.
The sound of our footsteps was what kept us company, and we did keep moving. We never stopped, not to take a break, not to take a single deep breath.
It felt like hours passed and also only seconds. Like time here moved differently, too—not too slow or too fast, but something…else. Something in between.
And then there was light.
I noticed it flickering ahead and I stopped walking. The sound of footsteps I’d gotten so used to hearing stopped abruptly, too, and suddenly I felt like my mind was completely empty.