Chapter 28
“Your Chronal Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen of the Clockrealm, and our dearest, dearest Hands—welcome to the third Turning Trial!”
Johnny’s voice must have been made in some sort of a twisted, broken device.
It slid down the inside of my mind like nails on glass, and even though my eyes were closed and I was focused on my breathing, I still saw him in my mind’s eye.
I still saw his face, his wide eyes, heard his voice that was just as annoying as the device that carried it.
The third trial.
We were already at the beginning of the third trial, and who knew what awaited us in there this time?
Too soon-too soon-too soon, yet to some parts of me it wasn’t soon enough.
We were at the arena again, not in the forest. We were surrounded by the tiered seats full of people—more people than last time, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Lida had told me while she helped me put my suit on—brand new, though she insisted it was the old one, just washed—that we were becoming quite popular with how effectively we’d won the first and second games.
I asked her, “Do the people know what actually happened?”
And she said, “We know how much Sparetime has been shed!”
Impossible not to believe that all we’d learned about the trials in the past, all they’d allowed to be projected in the archive records was lies.
We had no idea what had happened in the other trials, either, and now I had this overwhelming urge to turn back time somehow and go find the Hands who’d already played, all who were still alive.
Too late now.
My eyes opened, and sunlight fell on my face but it did nothing to warm me. I was cold on the inside. My bones could have been made out of ice.
A look to the side, beyond Silas and Cook (I’d chosen to stand last in line this time, as far away from him as I could) and beyond Helen and Levana (March had chosen to stand in line after the two of them, as far away from me as he could). He had his head turned to me, too, his eyes on my face.
We hadn’t spoken much, March and I, since that night. The most we’d come to interacting was while sparring in the arena with Asha yesterday, and that was that. He hadn’t said a single word to me, and I hadn’t said a single word to him.
But I’d drawn him.
I’d drawn all of them, had written down their names. All the Hands that I’d absolutely adored when I first came here, and I thought I still did. I just…didn’t care much about anything these past few days.
It was like I was back to those first months after Jinx’s death all over again. I simply couldn’t be bothered, but my heart still did all those jumps and pauses and skips when my eyes locked on March’s, and my body still came alive under his gaze, always.
Say you want me or say you don’t.
What a fool.
What a time-damned fool he was.
The suspicion was there, though, clear in his eyes, and it cut me wide open. Filled me with guilt, as though I was the reason he didn’t trust me, not because he’d given up his trust.
…was I, though? Because I couldn’t help but feel like maybe it was just me. He didn’t have trouble trusting the other Hands. I never once saw him looking that way at them—except for Silas sometimes.
And even I knew Silas was hiding something, so…was it really me?
I guess they were right when they said you never really knew with Hearts.
“The third trial is a special one, indeed,” Johnny continued, pulling us both back to the now. March looked away from me first, though. “You’ve all heard of the Thirteenth Hour, I assume.”
Boos from the audience. Johnny laughed.
“Yes, I suppose we were all terrorized by our parents as children. All of us, equally, he-he-he.”
Here I’d always thought the Thirteenth Hour was a Spade thing—a myth that Spades had created to scare the little ones when they didn’t behave or refused to sleep. I should have known better.
“The hour that doesn’t belong to any clock.
The extra time that exists only when things and magics go especially wrong,” Johnny said, trying to whisper into that device of his, and making it whistle so loud most had to cover their ears.
“We all knew not to be naughty, lest the Thirteenth Hour would devour us all in its big mouth, chew all the hours and minutes and seconds in our bodies, undo us completely!”
The people laughed with him this time.
“Of course, we all know now that there is no such thing as a Thirteenth Hour…except in there.” Cheers and screams as the people jumped in the air.
I couldn’t see Johnny, but apparently he was somewhere to the right of the audience, because that’s where they were looking before they turned to the gates.
The glass dome and the trees were gone, no sign of them anywhere. No sign of the Tree of Years, either, almost like the ground had swallowed it whole.
Now, large golden gates were in front of us, surrounding what appeared to be nothing but a black cloud hovering just over the ground.
Raw darkness. Pure. It absorbed all the sunlight that fell on it like I’d never seen before.
That’s where the third trial would be held.
“The chamber beyond those gates contains more time than it can safely hold, friends,” the speaker said.
“Sound has been arranged here with care as well, and my advice to you is to listen closely.” The audience erupted in whispers, like they were suddenly all trying to figure out what Johnny could mean.
“Here’s the catch, though. If the Thirteenth Hour wakes, it is over,” he said.
“Over for good—and I do not mean that as a joke. It will destroy the chamber—and all of you, dearest Hands, with it.”
Applause. Cheers. Screams.
These people were indeed mad.
“And lastly, before I let you go, I will say this: you are allowed only five hours before the game becomes corrupted and the Thirteenth Hour wins. Five. Take more from the chamber, and you will have lost.” He breathed in deeply—right into the amplifier, and it was like he was breathing down my very neck.
“Now go—and may Time bless you with all the seconds you need!”
I looked back at the cheering crowd one last time. Every one of us did.
Yes, they were mad for cheering about everything Johnny said. And the Queens were there, in their neat little box, with an almost transparent curtain in front of it, too, to shield them from the sun. We still saw the silhouettes. We saw them standing there, the White Queen clapping.
“He’s not serious, is he?” Anika asked Calren, who was the only person standing with us down here, like always. Plenty of soldiers dressed in their polished armors, but they stood at a distance, eyes on us. Only our warden was allowed close.
“We’re not really going to be swallowed by the Thirteenth Hour,” Reggie said, half a smile on his face.
“Of course not,” Calren said, pulling down the satin black vest he had on, and over its pockets hung three chains, like he was carrying three different clocks on him today. “It won’t come to that—it’s an easy game. You’ll figure it out long before it becomes dangerous.”
We looked at one another, dumbfounded.
Holy Hour, what Johnny said was actually true—the Thirteenth Hour could devour us.
Why was I not surprised?
“I don’t want to play anymore,” Levana said. “This is nonsense, Calren!”
“We could die!” Erith hissed.
“You won’t die,” Calren insisted, coming closer to us. “Listen to me—nobody is going to die. Just pay attention and you will be out of there in no time. Do you understand?”
“Will there be any timewraiths in there? Tell me the truth—will they?” Mimi asked.
“There won’t. No timewraiths,” Calren said without hesitation, which was why I believed him. We all did.
And that did make me feel better.
“What is it, then? What’s the Thirteen Hour like?” I asked.
Calren looked at me, pressed his lips together. “You will be all right,” was what he said, a second before the gates behind him began to hum, then move with a screeching sound that I felt all the way to my bones.
“Guys, remember to stick together,” someone said down the line.
“We got this. We’ll win this, too.”
“It’s just a game, that’s all. Just a game,” Cook said, and he grabbed my hand in his. His other was in Silas’s.
“Yes, it is. Just a game,” Silas said, and our eyes met briefly before Calren rushed us forward.
We hadn’t spoken much with Silas, either, since the kitchen, but in that moment, I thought I saw all the secrets he carried on his shoulders. I saw clearly how he carried them all alone.
It made me curious, more curious—about everything.
All of it had to wait, though. Another day, another trial.
And as I walked with the other Hands toward that darkness, pushing my body forward against my every instinct, I swore to myself that when I made it out of the Labyrinth, I was going to tell the whole realm exactly what the Turning Trials really were.
Darkness. Sunlight didn’t reach through to us anymore.
I still had no idea how they managed to pull this off, how they made things overnight, raised towers and wiped out an entire forest, created black clouds that hovered over the ground—but it all felt very real.
The pressure of the cold air, the way it pressed against my skin, the way I couldn’t see anything at all to the point where half my mind was convinced I didn’t even exist—it was all very real.
As soon as we walked through those gates, we had to let go of one another so we could hold our hands up.
It was instinct. We already knew that if they wanted to separate us, they would, even if we were walking down the same corridor—just like they’d done in the Tree of Years.
So I didn’t bother talking, or asking the boys if they were still there.
Whatever this trial had in store for us, we would either play together, or not.