Chapter 42
The applause made me sick to my stomach. The cheering, the calling of my name meant the people were all there, and they’d been watching us. They’d seen, and now they jumped to their feet in front of their seats and clapped their hands like they were happy.
We’d come out the other side of the tower, right in front of the audience.
Here, they had no tiered seating, only chairs on the ground in the distance, but the queens were in their glass box that had been transferred to the middle of the crowd, Time knew how.
They were both there, on their feet, the white one applauding, the red one waving her hand fan in front of her face.
Five of the other Hands had already made it out by the time I ran through the door on the side of the tower, March among them. Anika, Russ and Seth came after me.
Nine. There were nine of us left now, and the speaker spoke, and the audience cheered, and my insides felt like they were boiling together with my blood. Levana cried—sobbed. It was like knives being stuck all over my body every time I heard her sharp inhales.
Then there was Elida, come to tell us she was proud. Come to tell us that we did so well. Come to tell us that the third trial was officially unwon.
I expected the flash of memories to come over me, like it had happened the first two times. I expected to remember, then forget. A special kind of torture I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.
But the memories didn’t come. There was just…nothing.
That filled me with dread, too.
Not sure how I made it all the way to the palace when my legs felt so foreign to me. They felt like they belonged to someone else—another Ora. One of the other Oras from those mirrors, maybe.
But even so, I was inside, away from the scorching sun that had been beating me down and I hadn’t even realized it. I climbed stairs and turned hallway corners, and then there were doors, and words, and more words I didn’t care to understand.
Lida waited for me in front of the last door on the right. My bedroom, for now. She waited and she looked concerned when she saw me dragging my feet. They were all concerned, the help, as they waited to assist us now that the third trial was over.
But I didn’t need assistance. I just needed to be left alone.
“Please, go away,” I thought I told her, and for once, Lida didn’t argue. I don’t think she even said anything, only stepped aside to let me through, then closed the door behind me.
I walked and walked, seconds that sometimes felt like hours, and I found myself sitting on the floor with my back against the bed’s edge. Not sure why I didn’t just lie down, but I pulled my legs up to my chest instead, wrapped my arms around my knees with all my strength, and I cried.
I sobbed. I screamed, sometimes whispered.
I only stopped when unconsciousness took me, and I slept on the floor.
I slept for over ten hours.
When I woke up, the sky was dark, my head hurt like I’d split my skull open somewhere, and the clock on my nightstand said it just before ten m.b.
I was whole.
Such a strange sensation.
While I bathed, I touched my chest, my stomach, my limbs, tried to feel exactly where the change had happened, but it was everywhere, and nowhere at the same time.
It was inside, and that place that had been empty until the day before was now full.
Settling. Not exactly comfortable but getting there.
I was me again. I was the same Ora Reese I had always been. I’d never been broken. There was never anything wrong with me—it was just my compassion that I’d been missing. Just my compassion that I’d somehow given away in a game I didn’t even remember.
Now I had it back.
Now I felt, and I hurt, and I cared. That’s why I was crying again while I dried off and got dressed.
For Helen, mostly, for the look on her face as she fell together with the timewraith that had somehow managed to grab her ankle.
For myself, too, for having been so terrified since I woke up here.
For my parents who I hadn’t seen in such a long time that it felt like I’d lost them forever.
For March.
The hallway was empty when I walked outside, and my legs knew the way to the eating hall without my having to think about it.
Most of the Hands were already there, March included, and they looked…
off. Unplugged. Alive but not entirely conscious in the way they moved.
The way they didn’t even look up at me when I entered.
I felt exactly like that, too.
The velvet cushion of my chair felt like it was made of needles. I went through the motions of picking up food and putting it on my plate only because my body demanded fuel. When I ate, I didn’t feel taste. I felt nothing but the heavy shadows layering the inside of my head.
Nobody spoke.
By the time I was done with half the food, all the Hands were sitting around the long table.
All the Hands that were left.
No Reggie. No Helen.
No Silas.
“What was it?” Seth asked, maybe minutes, maybe hours later. “What did you get back?”
Goose bumps rose on every inch of my skin.
Of course they gave away something, too. The trials took from everyone.
It was Cook who answered first. “Imagination.”
Imagination.
What kind of a life could one live without it? How had he managed?
“Belonging,” Anika said in half a voice.
“Nostalgia,” Russ said. “I didn’t even realize I was missing it. It took me ages to guess the word.”
“My fear of spiders is back,” Mimi said, and I almost—almost laughed. Some of the others cracked smiles.
She had to give up her fear of spiders in the forward trials. How could they not?
“Compassion,” I whispered before I could stop myself, and they all raised their heads to look at me now. Eyes wide. Lips parted.
Like they understood. Like they finally got it, just like I did. They knew exactly what had been wrong with me and why.
Now I wanted to hide away in my room and cry again until the day was done.
“Patience,” Levana said, her eyes rimmed red, like she’d spent the whole night crying. That made sense, too.
I looked at March, waiting for him to speak, to tell us what he’d lost before, what he got back.
He kept his eyes on the plate and his mouth shut.
Then the door opened and Elida walked in, that fake smile plastered all over her face, her black suit perfectly pressed, her black hat an extension of her ginger hair.
“Good morning to the best Hands the realm has ever seen! I hope you’ve rested well, my friends. You deserved it,” she said as she came, and I flinched at the word—friends. We were not friends, her and us. We were most definitely not friends with anyone in this place.
“Where is she?” asked Anika, and Elida knew just like we did who she meant.
That’s why she said through gritted teeth and through her fake smile, “In her palace—where else?”
“Helen is dead,” Erith said, and a small scream escaped Levana. Stabs at my gut—I was so full again that the sensation took me by surprise.
Helen was dead. Reggie was dead. Silas was dead.
Time’s Teeth, I was going to lose my damned mind.
“Yes, it was very unfortunate—”
“Unfortunate?!” Levana cut her off, and she slowly stood up to face Elida, too.
A few of the others immediately did the same, and the Timekeeper stepped back, as if she suddenly felt threatened.
“I just mean that—”
But Levana didn’t let her finish.
“It wasn’t unfortunate—it was the trial that you designed! It was the trial that you were supposed to make safe! You’re supposed to protect us, damn it! Three of us are already dead.”
“How many more until you stop this nonsense?” Erith demanded.
“Do we all need to die for you to be satisfied?” asked Russ.
“No, no, of course—”
“Then why won’t you stop this?!” Anika shouted. “Why won’t you let us go?! There are people better equipped to unwin the last trial.”
“But it has to be you. You’re the Hands and—”
“We the Hands did not sign up for this, Elida,” I said, and I sounded much calmer than I felt. “None of us signed up for backward trials. We’re being forced to stay here, forced to participate. And the White Queen isn’t even here?”
I didn’t dare tell her that we knew the Red Queen had done something to us. I didn’t dare tell her that we knew people remembered.
“I-I-I…” Elida was already at the doors. “I’ll get the queen, I’ll get the queen. Just…just—” She didn’t even finish speaking before she slipped out, lightning fast.
The rest of us collapsed onto our seats again, exhausted already, but feeling slightly better for having let that out.
“She’s going to run to the queen now,” Erith said.
“Or she’ll just disappear for a few hours, like always,” said Russ.
“Do you think she goes to the room beyond the kitchen to see the queen?” Levana wondered.
“Probably,” said Seth, but…
“Actually, I know where the Timekeeper goes.”
We all turned to Mimi. She was moving—always moving—playing with the silverware, switching it from one hand to the other.
“What do you mean?” Seth asked her.
“I’ve followed her before,” she said with a shrug. “I know where she goes when she disappears.”
A second ticked by. We looked at one another.
Meanwhile I hadn’t even realized Elida disappeared regularly, and she knew where?
“Where does Elida go, Mimi?” Anika finally asked.
Mimi smiled, like that was exactly the question she was waiting for. “I can show you if you’d like.”
The next second, we were all on our feet, ready to go.
It wasn’t just Helen’s death that had given us this sense of urgency—it was everything, but most of all, it was the Backward Banquet.
Out of all things, I remembered that the clearest somehow.
Everything else had sort of…faded away, and I was more convinced than ever that the people knew. The people remembered.
The queens remembered as well. It was just our memories that had been erased.
Was it because we were the Hands? Was it because the curse affected us differently?
Or was something more going on here that nobody wanted us to know about?
Mimi lost her way three times.