Chapter 8 #2
March didn’t let me move away a single inch. “Would it help if I said I keep hoping you’ll come punch me in the throat just so I get to touch you, or that I’d agree to be your ground any time you please, or that I’m pretty sure I adore your smile much more than you adore this music?”
My mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
A loud, long sigh escaped me. How was he…like this?
I’d had crushes before. Boys didn’t talk like this. Nobody was ever this open.
“What—no answer?” he said, leaning his head down a little bit so my heart nearly broke my ribcage.
Kiss-kiss-kiss! screamed every single part of me, and I was terrified that he’d hear it somehow.
“One day I will have the perfect comeback to take that smile off your face, Heartling,” I said for now. “One day.”
He pulled. I didn’t resist—not even a little bit. My eyes were closed until I felt his lips on my temple, just a peck that sent charges of electricity throughout me.
“Until that day, then, I need the answer to a very important question,” he whispered in my ear.
Mind you, we were still dancing. We were still in the junkyard that wasn’t a yard, and we were still surrounded by the other Hands, who were screaming and laughing, throwing things at one another—yet somehow, we were secluded.
“What’s that?” I asked, perfectly breathless.
“What’s your favorite color?”
His eyes. His hair. The flavor of his breath.
“Red.”
Any other day I might have not wanted to reveal this to him for so many reasons, but tonight was different. It was…tonight.
“Mine, too,” March said.
“Well, of course it is,” I muttered with a smile. Red was the color of his court, just like green and yellow were the colors of Clubs, and white was the color of Diamonds, and black and purple were ours.
“Not that red.” March reached out his finger—never letting go of my hand but taking it with him until he touched my cheek with his fingertip. “This one.”
Cheesy, I wanted to think—but it wasn’t. Maybe it was him and maybe it was the Labyrinth, but every word tumbling out of his lips was redefining perfection for me.
“Your turn. Go ahead, ask me a question,” March said.
Why are you so open with me? Why aren’t you embarrassed? Aren’t you afraid of what I’ll say?
It was like he knew me already.
“What’s your…favorite number?” I asked because we’d already talked about colors.
“Forty-eight,” he said without missing a beat.
I laughed. “That’s awfully specific!”
He shrugged. “I’m a very specific guy.”
He was a very perfect guy, too, unfortunately for me.
Or was it fortunately?
Don’t mind me, I was lost in a haze tonight. I liked this tonight more than any others I’d ever lived, and the night wasn’t even over yet.
“You’re different,” I started to say, and I was going to explain how. I was going to even ask him if he was always like this, so open and honest and unafraid in the face of a stranger—because that’s what we were in reality. Strangers.
Except before I could elaborate, someone tapped him on the shoulder—Reggie.
He’d stopped with Silas at his side, grinning while the Spade smiled, and I realized I’d seen them dancing together around us, just like everyone else. They were dancing, switching partners, swinging and singing and screaming, too.
“Don’t be rude, Red. You’re in my debt, remember? The least you can do is dance with me,” Reggie said, and before any of us knew it, he’d grabbed March and pulled him away from me, spun him around with ease.
My stomach hurt from all the laughing because March’s face was priceless. It was the first time he was caught by surprise, and he indeed looked like he’d just seen a clock moving backward.
Reggie was dancing with March, and Silas stopped in front of me.
“If I may have this dance,” he said with a deep bow and an extended hand.
Of course, he could. I was still laughing when we began, and Silas held me the way a dance partner ought to hold you. Or the way they taught us at the school dances, at least. His hand was on the side of my waist, the other holding mine, and there was a good bit of space between our chests as well.
March would never, I found myself thinking. But March was busy trying to get Reggie off him while the rest of us laughed.
“Having a good time, I see,” Silas said as we spun around to the melody, which, by the way, hadn’t yet ended. The song went on and on, and I was sure it had been more than ten minutes since we started.
“Oh, yes, I am. This place is wonderful. More so than I could have imagined,” I said in a breath. Maybe because Silas was a Spade, or maybe because he was just Silas, but I didn’t feel like I should hold back from him. My instincts were perfectly at ease.
“It’s more than I’ve imagined, too,” he said, a strange tone to his voice as he looked up at the dark ceiling, like he was searching for something. “Especially the Hands. All of you.” Again, that lost look in his wide gray eyes as he spun us around and looked at the others dancing.
March had embraced his fate, it seemed—and Reggie—and now they were dancing, spinning around and moving from one side to the other lightning fast, putting on a show for the others.
Time’s Teeth, the way my heart beat at the sight of his face. It was abnormal—it had to be.
“Yes, indeed. You all are quite great,” I admitted, a little surprised myself. I really, really hadn’t expected to feel so welcome among the other Hands—or for my own self to welcome them so eagerly.
Probably because we all recognized we were in this together.
So, we danced, laughed for a moment at Reggie and March making faces and marveled at the way Cook spun Mimi, Anika, and Helen around in one motion as he danced with all three of them. His every movement was so graceful, so flawless.
Then Silas said, “Why did you come to the trials, if I may ask, Ora?”
I focused on his face again.
“My sister,” I said, the words escaping between my teeth before I realized what I said.
He just caught me by surprise. “She wanted to be a Hand before she…” I stopped.
Swallowed hard. “I came here to honor her memory.” And I’d never once spoken so freely about Jinx to anyone back home, even to the people I knew.
The smile on Silas’s face put me at ease right away, though. “Then you are braver than I gave you credit for,” he said, and it was like honey down my suddenly swollen throat.
I smiled. “She was far braver than me.” And that was the truth of it.
I expected Silas to ask me what she’d died of, but to my surprise once again, he didn’t. “I’ve always wanted a sibling, to be honest. Well—most times, anyhour. I do so enjoy my solitude, but sometimes being annoyed serves you in some strange way.”
I chuckled. “You have no idea how right you are. She used to come to my room every morning she had dreams—and she had dreams all the time—with a tray full of tea and pastry, and she’d announce, while I was still asleep, mind you, that it was time for a tea-talk.
” The memory was right there within my reach.
“She’d sing, tick-tock-tea-talk! in that annoyingly beautiful voice of hers, and she’d sit down and wait for me to be awake enough to handle a teacup—and her dreams.”
Silas laughed with me, and it was genuine. The way he looked at me as I spoke—he was almost as invested as March was.
Maybe that’s why it was easy?
“Well, now, don’t be surprised if I knock on your door with a tray full of tea the next time I dream,” he said. “My dreams can get pretty intense sometimes.”
“You know what—I wouldn’t mind that at all.” And I strangely meant it.
“Then I will hold you to that, brave Ora.”
Oh, the tongue on him—so smooth. But it was the earnest look in his eyes that gave power to everything he said.
“You said, you don’t know how to do magic before,” I said as the memory came back to me, and it was Silas’s turn to be surprised now.
“What’s that?”
“When we first entered this place, you said you don’t know how to do magic,” I explained, and his thick brows shot up instantly. “Do you?” It had just been an odd thing to specify us when he was one of us, too. “Have you started the School of Magic? How old are you?”
We usually started the School of Magic after high school, after we turned eighteen and our magic was more or less reliable.
Or, at least, when we had enough of it to understand how to use Sparetime from chronobanks to perform simple magics, at first. Maybe Silas was older than me and he’d already finished the first of two years—or maybe the whole two?
But he shook his head. “No, I just turned eighteen,” he said. “I only…misspoke when I said that. I meant we, not you.”
Except Silas had been very honest with me about everything he’d said so far, and this time, he wasn’t. It was very easy to see the difference, the way his eyes moved downward and his jaw locked and his shoulders went rigid.
I leaned in and whispered, “Looks like March isn’t the only liar among us.”
His smile confirmed it. Silas shook his head and his cheeks turned slightly pink. “They say Spades are the best at keeping secrets. Is that true?”
“Well, since you’re a Spade as well, you should ask yourself that.” But he was right—that’s what everybody said. I didn’t know if it was a Spade thing or not, but I would never in a million years tell anybody about our conversation, especially if to him it was a secret he wanted to keep.
“Then I say yes,” Silas said with a solemn nod. “It’s true.”
“My turn! Spade on Spade on Spade—may I have the next couple of dances?”
It was Cook who came to us this time, cheerful, smiling so big he looked like a different guy, and he spoke to Silas first, then me, then spun around as if to show us he had moves.
We both laughed, and Silas stepped away, let go of me. “Till next time,” he said with a wink, and I grinned. Till next time—and maybe then he could tell me more secrets to keep.
Dancing with Cook was otherworldly. I had no idea what I was doing, but that was the thing—I didn’t need to.
He spun me and threw me to the side, then caught me all by himself, and the rest of them had all gathered in a circle around us, clapping their hands and laughing—except March.
He wasn’t clapping, and he wasn’t even smiling, but I couldn’t look at him for longer than a second before Cook moved me.
He was incredible at this—and when I thought I was going to lose my balance, I stepped aside and held up my hands in surrender. Whatever he was made of, my body did not stand a chance.
Anika stepped in to take my place instantly. I walked as casually as I could behind Levana and Helen, clapping and cheering for the dancing pair—and I went to stand right next to March.
Like I said—I could have been another Ora.
Never in a million years would I have done this with anyone back home, but nobody back home would ever talk to me the way he did. So, maybe it was just him.
“Tired yet?” March asked, and he was finally smiling again as he looked down at me.
In fact, his eyes sparkled, and he looked over the moon. I liked to think that it was because I was near him now. I really liked to think that.
“Not a chance,” I said—and I meant it. The day had been long, yes, and my muscles were sore, but I was not ready to call it a night just yet.
A hand around mine that sent another jolt of electricity throughout me, and March pulled me to the side, near a particularly large pile of devices, and said, “It’s only fair that I’m honest with you about this,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m going to kiss you when you least expect it.”
Whatever it was about those words, in that moment I could have sworn to you that I had the whole realm in the palm of my hand. I couldn’t contain my smile if I tried, and March’s eyes drank it in, like it was exactly what he’d hoped to see.
“Well, you can’t take me by surprise now that you told me,” I said in half a voice.
“Oh, but I will.” His confidence was a breeze against my warm skin. I really did adore the way he even nodded his head.
I thought he was going to kiss me when we went back to the dormitory that night.
I expected it, was excited about it, and dreaded it all at once—what if I don’t know what to do?
What if I use too much tongue? What if I whimper or moan or embarrass myself when he goes for it?
The thoughts ran through my head and kept me nervous while we danced some more, then searched the junkyard for other things we could use to play.
But March didn’t kiss me that night at all.
I slept with a smile on my face and a heart so full I feared I would explode before sunrise.