Chapter 47 #3
I was in the back of a dark kitchen lit only by candlelight, and I was…dancing.
Every movement of my body was perfectly precise.
The feeling was incredible, like I was rising from within, like I was flying every time my feet slid on the wooden floors that creaked lightly as I moved.
There was no music in the kitchen—but I heard the melody clearly in my head.
And as I spun around, my eyes caught a sign hanging on the handle of a cupboard that said—NO DANCING!
Still, I danced.
Not going to lie, it felt good to chase that distant melody in my head. The way my body was moving was otherworldly—like I was born for this. At first, I thought whoever’s mind I was in right now was a girl, but no.
Because I spun around fast and I caught a glimpse on the shiny surface of a pot hanging on the wall below a cabinet, and I recognized the face perfectly.
It was Cook.
I let go of the mask, this time deliberately, and it slid up on its thread again, right over my head.
I was breathing so heavily, my heart pounding, my muscles slightly sore like I’d really spent the past few minutes dancing like that, when I knew for a fact that I could never move with such grace.
With such ease. The only time I’d felt so fully myself like Cook had in that memory was when I was playing hide and seek in the forest at home with Jinx and my father.
The others still searched.
March was nowhere to be seen.
Tears in my eyes as I moved a little to the side and jumped again, reluctantly, not even looking at which mask I’d grab.
The ballroom disappeared, and I found myself in a place I’d been to before, many times.
A forge, and I was spinning glass in front of a large fire, and I was smiling, so proud, so happy to be able to do such a simple thing it could have been funny.
But it wasn’t.
March had felt pure joy.
The thread snapped and I felt it. My eyes opened and I drew in a deep, long breath. The mask was still in my hand, no longer attached to the ceiling. I saw the ballroom, the figures dancing, jumping, and I heard the music, too. Even though the mask was still in my hand, I no longer saw the memory.
That’s when I realized that I wasn’t meant to find my mask, but March’s. I was supposed to find his memories to return, not mine.
“Guys, it’s working!”
I jumped around to find Anika and Erith standing face to face, each putting a mask on the other. They were smiling, they were laughing, they were chanting, it’s working, it’s working! over and over again.
And then the silver threads that outlined the eyes of the mask disappeared.
The next moment, Anika and Erith did, too.
Their bodies began to shimmer first, and then they turned into light—the same light that made the figures that continued to dance and jump without pause.
Before the minute was over, they had both blinked out of existence.
Cheers.
Clapping hands.
“Return the memories! Return the memories!” Seth shouted, his voice echoing a million times as he ran and jumped and grabbed another mask to see the memory it contained.
Meanwhile, across from him the thread holding the mask in Mimi’s hand snapped, releasing it.
She’d found the mask she needed to return, and I had, too.
I turned, my eyes searching between the partitions on the other side of the room, and my whole heart stopped when my eyes locked on March’s.
It hurt. It burned. It stripped me of everything I was to see that look on his face.
Then he turned around and disappeared behind the closest partition.
I ran.
Cheering and clapping louder than the distorted music filled the room again—someone else must have returned the masks and the memories. Someone else must have blinked out of this ballroom. Someone else was free.
And March was standing there with his back turned to me at the very corner, his hands on the half-ruined wall, his head lowered.
There in his right hand I saw the mask he held. No threads were connected to it because it was the mask of my memories. The one that was finally going to set us both free.
He’d found it.
“March.”
He turned around reluctantly, and said, “No.”
I stepped closer, and we were hidden away by the partitions here, but we did hear another cheering from the center of the room.
Were all of the others already gone?
“We have to,” I said, and March shook his head, his eyes bloodshot, his breathing heavy.
“We don’t. It’s a trap,” he told me and raised the mask he held. “How did they get our memories like this? How did they know?! It’s a trap, Velvet. We mustn’t fall in it.”
I stopped a couple of feet away. “It’s the only way out. You saw,” I said, waving my hand back. “They’re free. They’ve unwon the game. We have to unwin, too. All the Hands must complete the trials.”
But March shook his head again. “Don’t you see? If we let them take this back, they’d have won! Whatever it is they’ve done here—to us—they would have won.”
“We can’t walk out of here if we don’t do this, Heartling. Please.” I stepped closer. “We’re so close. All we have to do is return the masks, and we’ll be free. We’ll be out there with the others!”
“There has to be another way,” March said, looking about us now, as if he were hoping a door would pop out of thin air somewhere. “I can’t…I can’t give that up, Velvet. Not you.”
My heart was in a million pieces.
“I’ll still be here,” I promised, but it wasn’t the same. And he knew it.
I didn’t want to give him up, either. I wanted to keep that memory of how he felt when he worked that glass in my mind forever.
“It’s the only thing that keeps me grounded, listening to you breathe,” said March through gritted teeth, and it was like he ripped my soul right out of me. I moved, fell against his chest, grabbed the collar of his suit and hid my face under his chin.
“I need you in my head, Velvet,” he whispered, his hands on the sides of my face, and I wasn’t sure how I was still standing when every inch of me was shaking.
I needed him in my head, too.
I was crying. Hard.
“We’ll find another way,” he said, but he knew as well as I did that we couldn’t. There was no other way to unwin. This was how we got our freedom back.
I didn’t tell him that, though. There was no need. Instead, I raised my head, and with my eyes half closed, I found his lips with mine. Kissed them slowly. Tried to savor one last second.
He squeezed his eyes shut and held onto my face, and I felt his pain as if it were mine.
“I love you,” I said, the words both foreign and familiar on my tongue. Either mine or borrowed, just like his memories.
March stopped breathing. His chest went still under my hands.
“Find me, Heartling. Find me.” I would be forever waiting.
I kissed him one more time, and then my body moved all on its own. I leaned back, raised my hand, and put the mask over his face.