Chapter 5
Aknock on the door pulled my lids open like I’d been awake for hours. Sleep left me all at once, as if it was suddenly afraid of the sound, and it ran on all fours, far away from me.
Another knock and I was sitting up on a bed that wasn’t mine, taking in my surroundings, completely disoriented, about ready to believe I’d been taken and brought here against my will.
But I hadn’t.
I was in The Ever, the palace of the Labyrinth that was going to be our living quarters for the duration of the Turning Trials, and I’d come here of my own free will.
I’d gotten into that carriage and I’d come to Neverwhen.
I’d met the other Hands, and I’d met the queens in person—and I’d even been given the Life Clock.
I reached under the pillow, terrified for a moment that I wouldn’t find it where I left it, but my hand closed around it immediately. Holy Hour, it looked even more impressive under the sunlight slipping through the windows than it had the night before.
I could just see the gears and cogs turning in the very middle, before the face of the clock spread out to indicate the hours and minutes of both the time and the Sparetime.
Ordinary chronobanks were so much simpler, and smaller, too.
This almost looked like a Timekeeper Clock.
Those were powerful, able to hold hours and hours’ worth of Sparetime, capable of magics we couldn’t even imagine, but they could only be used by Timekeepers.
“Miss Reese, may I come in?”
The door.
Someone had been knocking on the door twice now, and I had yet to respond. Whoever was on the other side was a woman I doubted I’d met before. Her voice was unfamiliar—but what if I was hearing wrong, and it was one of the queens?
I was on my feet before I knew it. “Yes, yes—come in!”
The door opened. A woman with a round face and big brown eyes came through the door with a hesitant but genuine smile.
“Oh, good—you’re up.”
It was not one of the queens.
Suddenly, I realized I was standing there in the only nightgown I’d taken with me—a black one Mother had bought me the year before for my birthday.
She’d caught me staring at it on the display of a boutique downtown—it was a gorgeous piece made of black velvet and lace, but it wasn’t something I wanted to be seen in by other people.
Suddenly mortified, I threw the Life Clock on the bed and grabbed the silk sheets to cover myself as well as I could.
“Um…hello.” My cheeks were so flushed I was twelve-hours sure all my blood was currently in them.
“There’s no need for that, Miss Reese,” the woman said—and judging by her white uniform, she was with the help.
Her dress was loose and it fell below her knees.
Her apron was threaded with red, and her light brown hair was wrapped in a low bun behind her head.
“I’m Lida, and I’ve been assigned to help you throughout your stay in the palace by Her Royal Goodness. ”
“Oh.” I was at a loss for a moment because the concept of someone being assigned to help me with anything was very foreign to me. “I don’t…I don’t really need help, to be honest.”
The woman smiled, no hesitation this time.
“That’s okay. You can still enjoy it.” And she moved to the other side of the room, to the only door on the right of the bed, which led to the bathroom.
Small but perfectly clean, and it had served my bladder a great deal the night before when Calren first showed me to this room he called mine.
“I’ll prepare a bath for you, Miss Reese. Breakfast will be served in less than an hour. We don’t have much time.”
Breakfast.
As if on cue, at the thought of food my stomach growled like the gears inside it needed a good oiling. I looked at the two clocks on the nightstands beside the bed—it was indeed after eight s.b.
And I was indeed in Neverwhen, in a palace fancier than anything I’d ever seen before, anything I believed existed.
Spacious, clean, every piece of furniture polished—the vanity table, the armchairs, the wardrobe on the left of the bed.
The rugs on the dark hardwood floor could have been made of clouds.
Everything looked both lived in and brand new at the same time. Not mine.
The only familiar thing was Jinx’s picture frame that I’d put on the bedside table, and my untouched sketchbook near it. I’d wanted to draw the night before—the shape of March’s eyes, of his face, of his whole body—but I hadn’t had the energy.
Today, I decided. I’d draw all of him today.
Maybe I could do a quick sketch before I leave the room—
“Miss Reese, I’m waiting!”
The woman’s voice startled me. I was so distracted, I’d forgotten that she was in the bathroom, preparing my bath. Nobody had ever done that for me since my parents when I was a little girl—maybe that’s why.
So strange. So unlike anything I thought I’d ever live.
Even so, I couldn’t kill the smile on my lips for the time in me. “Coming!”
The palace was a wonder all on its own. With the sunlight slipping through the floor-to-ceiling windows, it looked very different from the night before.
Massive hallways and halls, beautifully carved archways, polished wood and smooth walls, paintings, and roses, and roses, and roses—so many roses.
The smell of it was heavenly at first, but it became almost too much a minute after I left my room.
The hallway of our dormitory was wide, too, with lanterns on the walls, and twelve doors in total—six on either side, across from each other.
My room was the fourth on the right, and the room of the Heart boy was the door across the hall.
I knew this because I’d watched Calren show him to it the night before.
I’d watched him watching me—up until he closed his door and I couldn’t see his face anymore.
Not a single word exchanged, yet it felt like I knew him better than the others already.
This whole thing was proving to be more than I had expected, even in the wildest scenarios I made up in my head.
The other Hands had maids and butlers assigned to them by the White Queen as well.
When we came out of our rooms, we did so at the same time—they seemed to be in perfect sync.
We were smiling, all of us, waving at one another, saying our good mornings.
March was grinning at me from across the hallway, too, and when I waved (and also almost bit off my tongue by trying to keep myself semi-composed), his grin turned into a full smile that made my knees shake a little bit.
I had never seen anything perfect in my life before.
Nothing was meant to be perfect—wasn’t that what our art teacher used to say?
She’d be surprised to hear she was wrong all along.
This whole place came close to perfection, too, with the tall ceilings and the spotless floors, and especially a wall made of glass in a huge round hallway we passed on our way to eat.
The glass was curved, and it had colors moving about somewhere inside it, like it was made of layers.
Colors and little lights—and they created figurines that were moving about, depicting the story of the Clockrealm’s creation over and over again, like the figures were stuck in a loop that went on forever.
There was the White Rabbit, wandering about in space, jumping from one star to the other, until He came upon Time, who was but a vicious current swirling and twisting in on itself.
Time was wild originally, unstable, untamable, until the White Rabbit stole a fraction of it and forced it into order by creating the Great Clock.
He ironed the seconds and minutes and hours with it, and created twelve for days and twelve for nights.
Thus, the Clockrealm came to be—a story that we all knew since we knew anything at all, but to see it here being played out on this glass was something else entirely.
The others felt the same—we stopped and looked at the Great White Rabbit stealing from Time at least a few times before the maids and butlers guiding us through the hallways reminded us that it was time to go.
Better yet, the glass wall gave us a clear view of the Great Clock and its tower as well. If we leaned down a bit, we could even see its face.
Our dormitory was on the third of five floors in The Ever palace, and apparently the eating hall was on the same floor, too.
It was a beautiful room—wide and spacious, with a single table set for thirteen in the middle, surrounded by windows through which fresh sunlight streamed in from one side.
Calren was already there, sitting at the head, smiling ear to ear.
He stood to welcome us to breakfast, and told us that we would be sharing all three meals of each day together in the same place from then on.
We were starving, so the moment we sat down, we went for the food—bowls of fruit and pastries, plates full of boiled and scrambled eggs, hams and sausages, delicious tea and milk and juices.
It was a feast unlike any I’d seen before, but that seemed to be the thing with everything around here.
I’d do best to get used to it, I thought.
The Hands told stories about their courts, about where they came from and what they did, what they liked and what they learned—and I loved listening to them speak.
March never did, though. I suspected he liked to listen, too. His attention remained on me—he sat across the table from me, two chairs up—even when he was looking at someone else. I wasn’t sure how I knew, just that I did.
Calren’s attention, however, always came back to Silas for some reason.