Chapter 46
March didn’t let go of my hand when we walked down the stairs and the hallways of the palace nor when we went outside. We didn’t really see anyone at that hour, but I loved every step we took like that anyway. He kept me grounded with his presence just like I kept him grounded with my memory.
I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“I saw the drawings,” he said as we went. “I really do feel like shit about it, but I saw them.”
“That’s okay. I’d have showed them to you myself, anyway,” I said, and I meant it. I really didn’t mind. He hadn’t been himself, just like I hadn’t been myself, either.
In fact, even in those very moments, I was having trouble remembering who myself had been these past two weeks.
“They were incredible,” March said. “The details and the shadows—you’re incredibly talented, Velvet.”
Heat on my cheeks. “That’s just because I had a good model,” I muttered.
He chuckled again, and my toes curled inside my boots. “Were those all from before?”
“They were,” I said with a nod. “I really did know you, even when I didn’t.” I knew the curls of his hair and the colors of his eyes, the shape of his lips, his silhouette.
“And I knew you,” he said. This, I didn’t doubt, even if there were no right words to explain it.
We made it to the mechanical garden and continued to move ahead. Memories crashed and burned, some faded as I took in the trees and the rose bushes, the hedges—all shielding what was underneath us.
The Labyrinth was alive under our feet. It was a monstrous machine that this garden tried to shield from our eyes but couldn’t. I was almost twelve-hours certain I’d witnessed how it did this days ago, but at the same time, I couldn’t pinpoint an exact memory of being here at all.
So strange.
Then we saw the others.
We both slowed our steps when we noticed the other Hands. I blinked a million times to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things, but then March and I exchanged a look, and I knew he saw them, too.
Mimi, Seth and Russ were sitting together on the grass, cross-legged, and on a bench on the other side were Anika and Erith, each sitting with their feet up, their backs against the bench’s armrests.
Cook was a few feet to the other side, arms wrapped around his knees as he stared at the tree over his head, and Levana was lying on the grass next to a large rosebush spilling steam every few seconds with a hiss.
They were all there, all around this large tree that seemed familiar, except I had no idea why. The apples hanging on the branches did, too.
The Hands looked at us when we went closer, but no one was surprised at our joined hands. No one said a single word when we went to sit near Cook.
Mimi wore her pajamas, but the rest of them were fully dressed. The silence was comfortable for as long as it lasted. We didn’t even look at one another, but we were all…calm. Like we belonged.
Time’s Teeth, I’d missed being this comfortable in my own skin. Whether it was March alone, or the garden and the other Hands, too, it didn’t really matter.
Then Mimi exhaled loudly.
“I keep thinking I’m going to remember something if I just sit here long enough,” she said. “But it doesn’t come.” She looked up then. “Anybody?”
Seth, who sat between her and Russ, leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “It’s like the lights in my brain are mostly turned off. I can’t…see a damn thing.”
That was exactly what it felt like to me, too.
“I think I dreamed of this very place once, but I’m not sure. I can’t catch the memory,” Anika said from the bench.
Cook shivered and wrapped his arms around his knees tighter. “It feels like I’m being…emptied out. Does that make sense? Like I’m being drained.”
“Oh, yes,” Anika said with a nod.
Across from her, Erith stared down at her hands, like she was hoping to have answers written on her skin. “If I could only remember what I’m forgetting…”
The panic was there, simmering underneath the surface of my mind, but I held onto March’s hand tighter. I knew I was losing myself, too. I felt it just like the rest of them, but I still had March. I was still anchored to this world. I wasn’t alone—and neither were they.
“We’re all in this together,” I said, more for my benefit than theirs.
Levana didn’t raise her head when she spoke, only continued to look at the sky. “Maybe it’s easier to forget. Maybe it’s for the best.”
“It isn’t,” said Russ from the other side. “We will remember. As soon as the last trial is over, we will remember everything.”
“We will be free. That’s what he said, didn’t he? The…the brother.” Mimi flinched. “I don’t remember his name anymore. I could have sworn I did just now…”
Ah, yes. The brother. Elida’s brother. The Timekeeper.
A face half lost in my mind came to the surface suddenly.
“Calren,” Cook whispered, and then the face became clearer, only for a moment.
“He did,” Levana said. “He said we’d be free when the trial was over.”
“But what if that’s not true? What if…we finish the trials and we’re still stuck here? What if we’re not free?” Anika whispered.
Tears in my eyes. Tears in most pairs of eyes around me as well.
March exhaled, and I felt the breath more than heard it. “Then we make sure we find them,” he said. His voice was low. Quiet, but steady. “Together.” And he squeezed my hand.
I didn’t know if I should have been comforted or terrified by the promise in his tone, but something about it made my chest tighten.
“Let’s write it down, then.” Mimi sat up straighter and reached for something in the pocket of her pajamas—her Life Clock. She pulled it out, and then a dark green light flashed on her other hand.
When the light faded, it left behind a little notebook with a green cover no bigger than her hand and a pen next to it.
She sat cross-legged again, put her Life Clock on one knee, and opened the notebook over the other.
“We’re stuck here with each other anyway. And we all know something’s wrong. Let’s make a pact to figure it out once it’s over,” she said and started writing.
“A pact,” I said, and a few others echoed it, too.
Yes, a pact made perfect sense.
“If we don’t get our memories back, and if they don’t free us, we will figure a way out by ourselves,” Erith said from the bench.
“And whoever did this, for whatever reason—we will uncover the truth. We will find out why, together,” I said, and my every word rang true. It was exactly right.
Mimi wrote down every word in her little green notebook.
“A vow, then,” Russ said with a nod. “We will take care of one another in the last trial, and when we make it to the other side, we will hunt down those responsible for keeping us here, for stealing our memories from us.” He brought a hand to his chest. “I vow to fight.”
All of us touched our hands to our chests, too, and repeated the words after him: I vow to fight.
I intended to keep that vow no matter what happened next.
“We deserve to know why this was done to us, and by whom,” Erith said, her voice shaking, her cheeks wet with tears. “We deserve to know who…who Silas was, and what curse he put on us, and why.” She sat up straighter on the bench. “We deserve to know each other. I can’t forget about you—I won’t.”
My own tears slid down my cheeks. I felt her every word like a knife to my heart, and I refused to forget about them, too. Not ever.
Mimi cleared her throat and brought her notebook closer to her face.
“We, the Hands of the 31st Turning Trials of the Clockrealm—Mimi, Seth, Russ, Cook, Anika, Erith, Levana, Ora, and March—do hereby vow that once the trials are done, we will stand united. We will uncover the truth of our forgotten memories. We will hold responsible those who’ve lied to us, and who’ve kept us stuck here, and who’ve forced us to play these trials backward as well,” she read.
“We will not abandon one another. We’re in this together. ”
Together, the rest of us said in unison.
Mimi nodded, closed the notebook and put it in her pocket.
“If any of us forgets, we’ll have this. We will remember whatever it is they’re trying to take from us,” she said, her chin quivering.
“Always,” Levana said with a nod.
After that, we settled into a comfortable silence again, drying our tears, breathing, looking at one another, making sure we remembered in any way we could.
The garden seemed to breathe around us, too, and it stood witness to our resolve.
I’d meant what I said, and I knew that they all meant that vow, too.
We were going to get to the bottom of this as soon as the last trial was over, and we gained our freedom back.
We would find out who was behind this and why.
If we’d already won—and unwon—the trials together, we could do anything.
Yes, we might be incomplete right now, being drained as we sat there. We might be missing even more than we realized—but none of us was alone.
And that was something worth remembering.
When we finally decided to go back to our rooms to sleep, rest, prepare for tomorrow’s trial, my heart was heavy. The tears kept pricking the backs of my eyes, and I kept blinking them away because I didn’t want the others to see me crying. I wanted to be strong for them, as they were for me.
But when March stopped by his room, it felt like something inside me was being ripped apart.
He watched me walk away those few feet of distance, and I saw how hard he was breaking, too.
I pulled my door open, and I stayed there just like him, the words at the tip of my tongue, my soul laid bare for him to see.
I didn’t have the courage to say it, though.
With my head down, I walked inside my bedroom, feeling like a stranger in my body again.
But before I closed the door behind me, a hand wrapped around my own. Pulled me back.
March was in front of me, eyes wide, chest rising and falling as fast as mine.
“Stay with me,” he whispered, and he broke every wall I’d ever put around myself, even if I didn’t remember they existed.
I nodded, unable to say a single word yet, but he pulled me out of my room again, led me to his, his door still open. All the others were still by their thresholds, looking out at each other, waiting.
For a good moment, we just stayed there, spoke as clearly as we could with our eyes.
Then, one by one, we all walked into the rooms and closed the doors.
March never let go of my hand as he led me to his bed, his room identical to mine. We didn’t stop, didn’t speak, didn’t rush, only got in bed together, me with my back to his chest, him with his whole body enveloping mine from behind.
My head was on his arm, and my heartbeat chased the rhythm of his. We breathed at the same pace together, too, until we slept.
It never once occurred to me that I forgot to draw him like I’d planned.
I should have.