Chapter 3
Mimi Montes
The Club girl ran—which was a very Club thing to do. All Clubs ran. It was how they kept Time moving.
The Court of Clubs was a court of towers spiraling toward the sky, endless stairs to the very top of each. It was their way of life. How they kept alive.
Run, run, run, said the voices in her head, as images spun all around them—a large grandfather clock, a floor floating in the sky, a mask covering half her face, a boy spinning her around in his arms as she danced and danced…
Then she reached the very top of the tower and she stopped.
Not because she wanted to, no—but because someone was already there, waiting for her.
“Rowan.” The name slipped from her lips by accident.
The boy, who was two full inches taller than her, strode across the wide-open floor of the tower-top furiously, a dark look in his eyes, his jaw locked. The former Hand did not move, only braced herself for when he came—and he did.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her to his chest, held her there together with his breath, as if he was afraid if he exhaled, she’d move away.
No—as if he knew.
Eventually, she did. Not because she wanted or didn’t want to—but it was instinct.
This boy standing in front of her was no stranger, but he was.
They’d grown up together, and he’d promised her his heart, and she’d promised him hers—yet she didn’t have one anymore, she didn’t think.
She had nothing to give because he had nothing to tell her.
“You can’t even look at me.”
His voice was heavy, thick with accusation. But he was wrong—the former Hand was looking at him. She just…couldn’t focus as well.
“What are you doing here, Rowan?” she whispered, eyeing the doorway on the other side of the room where the stairs would be. A different set from the ones that brought her up here, steeper.
“You always climb this tower before midnight,” the boy said, lowering his head, a small, bitter smile on his face as he stuck his hands in his pockets.
He wore leather, brown and green, a vest that wrapped around his torso perfectly.
He had short hair cut close to his head, bright green eyes and tan skin, a crook on his nose that added so much to his appeal—he was everything the former Hand had adored her whole life. Adored.
And now…
“I’m running,” she said, and that should have been enough for a Club, so she made for the stairway across the room, but the boy stepped in front of her.
Moonlight fell on the side of his face from the glassless windows of the tower-top. This time she did look at him, focused, and it hurt her like a stab in the gut. It hurt her how perfect he was, how much she wanted him…before. How detached from him she felt now.
“Can you stop for a second?” the boy asked.
“I’ve got another lap—”
“No, Mim-Mim, you don’t. You’ve been running for the past two hours without stop. You skipped dinner again. Luna is worried.”
At the mention of her little sister’s name, she flinched. Stepped back.
“I’m worried,” the boy continued, going closer to her again. Taking her face in his hands gently, like he was afraid she might break now.
Funny, because she already felt broken.
“But not worried enough to tell me what happened.”
There.
The flinch.
The closed eyes.
The sigh.
It was all identical in every single person close to her, any time she spoke about this. Any time she reminded them of what she’d lost, what they could help her find, but refused.
“Mimi,” Rowan breathed, and it did hurt her, his pain. She felt it.
But she felt the emptiness much more. So, she stepped back.
“I’m not the girl you fell in love with anymore, Rowan.”
“Yes, you are,” he said without missing a beat. “You’re just…not whole.”
“And you refuse to help me.”
“I won’t risk it.”
A bitter smile on the former Hand’s lips. “Of course. The decree—”
“I don’t give a rotten second about the decree.” His hands were on her face again. “I won’t risk you!”
And she understood.
In fact, she was eleven-hours certain that she would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed. If it was Rowan in her place, if there was a chance that she could damage him by telling him the truth, she wouldn’t.
Yes, she understood.
But she’d long admitted to herself that she was selfish enough not to care. Because their roles weren’t reversed. It wasn’t Rowan who’d lost himself—it was her. And in the end, that was what mattered the most. That was why she felt betrayed, even though she understood.
“Then let me go,” the Club girl whispered, breaking her own heart, stomping all over the pieces of his. She saw it clearly, even though her view was a bit blurry—must have been the tears.
Rowan touched his forehead to hers. “Never.”
Never.
Such a simple word, yet she could have sworn she heard it being screamed somewhere close, by a voice that she knew but didn’t, in pure, raw rage.
She heard the echo of the scream clearly, and it took her focus from Rowan again as her mind chased the ghost of the memory instinctively.
Rowan spoke and spoke, moved his lips, but she didn’t hear a single word.
She couldn’t catch the memory of the scream, either.
“…you’re not well.”
A noise rang in her ears—almost like a chime. A chime she’d heard before…somewhere.
She blinked her eyes, the tears slipped, and Rowan’s face was crystal clear again. She’d wrapped her hands around his arms, had leaned in, her body craving him like always, but it was her mind that kept her back. Her heart was too empty.
“I can see that, Mim-Mim—you’re not well!” he said, a little panicked now. “You constantly lose yourself—don’t you see? You constantly slip, and it’s like you’re no longer even there, and I’m terrified!”
Pain stabbed at her chest and gut and neck. More tears spilled from her eyes as Rowan kissed her forehead and her eyes, and her nose, and her lips.
How long had it been since the last time she’d felt him so close?
A month or two, but it felt like decades to the former Hand.
“I won’t risk it. I’ll wait a thousand years if I have to.
I won’t risk it,” he kept chanting, planting kisses all over her face, and she was lost again, had slipped like he said, so her instincts took over when he kissed her lips again, and she kissed him back. Automatically, without really thinking.
Meanwhile, in the darkness of her mind, shadows moved until Rowan let go. Stepped back. Looked at her like she’d done so much worse than assault him or break his heart.
This, too, she understood. And he needed to come to terms with what she’d been telling him for weeks now.
“I’m not your Mim-Mim anymore, Rowan. Let me go,” she forced herself to say, and this time when she ran around him and across the room, he didn’t stop her.
Tears blurred her way. The tower was tall, and the stairway was wide, and there were glassless windows every few feet on the stone walls.
She usually liked to take a moment to look outside and appreciate the incredible architecture of her home, the towers, the trees, the lights dotting every wall like fireflies moving in the night—but right now she couldn’t.
Right now, she didn’t care. The echo of Rowan’s pain followed her every step down the tower.
She only realized she was outside when the warm night air slipped into her lungs.
She stopped running just outside the tower, but she continued to walk, like her legs were incapable of standing still, her body demanding movement.
She ignored all the other Clubs who were out and running, passed building after building, instinctively moving toward the edge of the neighborhood where there were fewer lights, so she could have a moment of peace.
That’s all she wanted—a moment of peace.
Of course, when you’ve lost—not only four weeks’ worth of memories, but half, if not more, of what you used to be, and when you had voices and faces and strange thoughts in your head you only barely recognized, there was no such thing as peace.
No, her peace was buried in the memories she couldn’t access, and the world was so cruel to continue living while she was stuck.
For a moment, she wondered if she ran all the way to the edge of the realm and fell down The Spill, if the nightmare would end.
For a moment, she wondered if the other former Hands were faring better, if one of them had remembered anything—and if maybe it was a better idea to run all the way to them so they could tell her what she didn’t remember instead.
Because the Club girl was so sure that she would reach all those memories beyond that veil of darkness in her mind, if someone only told her what she was looking for. She was twelve-hours certain she would then catch those memories at last.
She reached the end of the neighborhood that was separated from the next quadrant by a small forest she’d been in hundreds of times before.
She touched the bark of a tree and tried to lean in to rest for a second, but something flashed in her mind at the contact.
Something about trees and danger and magic and run-run-run!
—so she moved away again, closed her eyes, breathed.
Thought that maybe it was time to try.
Maybe it was time to search for the names of the other Clubs who’d been in the Turning Trials with her—though she only remembered one boy with green on his suit that day when they woke up in Neverwhen.
In fact, there’d been only nine of them there, when everybody knew that there were twelve Hands in the Turning Trials.
Which begged the question, where were the other three?
Which begged the question, how in the world was it possible to forget weeks and weeks, and for time to go backward, and for the queens to never once even speak to her before they shoved that scroll in her hands and sent her back home?
A long sigh escaped her, and she tried to think of Luna’s smiling face to calm her racing heart. Rowan was right—she was worried. Her parents were worried, too.
None more than she, though.
Even so, she still needed to be home to make sure Luna had slept.
But just before she turned to get back to town, she heard a noise—like a twig snapping under someone’s foot.
She was sure it would be Rowan, that he’d followed her, that he’d insist he would never let go of her no matter what she’d become, but…
Then she noticed the shadows.
It was dark near the edges of her neighborhood, but never unsafe. There were no such things as crimes in the Court of Clubs, not like they heard about in other courts, so the former Hand had no reason to be afraid, even though she could make out the shadows of two men on the ground in front of her.
Which meant they were standing right behind her.
The shadows were wider, shorter, neither of them Rowan, and by now she felt their presence clearly. They were close, too close, and something twisted in her gut.
She turned and planned to move farther back to give herself space while she turned the men away—they probably wanted to introduce themselves, like most everyone in the court since she’d come back from Neverwhen.
“Mimi Montes?”
The voice was thick, hoarse, definitely that of a stranger—a stranger that wore a hood that covered half his face, left only his lips and chin visible.
“I don’t have time for this,” the former Hand said and took a step back, prepared to start running, but…
The other man had a hood over his head, too, covering him almost completely.
Almost—but there was stubble around his chin, around his lips, and even though it was dark, she could have sworn it was orange.
His stubble was orange.
And while she lost focus for a moment, trying to see better, the other moved.
She only felt it when something hard and cold hit her on the side of her face.
Then there was only darkness.