Chapter 9
The Labyrinth grounds were darker than I’d expected.
There were a few lanterns on lampposts here and there, but the light was dim, as if it had almost run out.
No soldiers patrolled the perimeter—at least none that I could see.
From here, it was like the whole place had been abandoned, the grass too long, the lights too dim, the buildings in the distance too dark.
But the deeper we went, the more the world changed.
It was subtle at first. The air was different here—heavier, warmer, laced with something I couldn’t quite name. There was this presence here, as if the air itself had weight and texture and intention here that was different from out there. From the rest of the world.
“Do you feel that?” Mimi whispered from ahead.
We all nodded because we all felt it—it was in the way we’d slowed our steps, had started looking around more carefully, had stopped talking completely.
For a moment there, I was eleven-hours certain that this was what the Timekeeper meant when he said the Labyrinth knew us.
My body knew it, too.
“Keep moving,” March then said, and we did. Part of me considered asking him if I could hold his hand, but I thought better of it in the end. My fear and panic were my problem. I’d deal with it myself, just like everyone else was doing.
Soon, we reached the first trees and went through a pathway made of square cobbles between them. It almost felt like the old oaks and cedars with their thick branches and heavy leaves were watching us.
Or maybe it wasn’t the trees at all.
The moon shone in the sky, half-hidden behind thin clouds, and the light that slipped through painted everything with a million shades of silver and gray.
Then the trees thinned, and we saw it—all at the same time. I knew because we all stopped walking as if by the press of a button.
It was the building that Kohen told us to find, the same one we’d all been sent to that day.
I hadn’t really paid much attention to it—my mind had been elsewhere, or everywhere at once—but it really was a palace.
A proper palace, five stories of pale stone and tall windows and archways carved with roses.
Dark, too, empty by the looks of it, and even from here I could see the vines that had started to climb the walls, as if happy they were free to stretch wherever they wanted.
It was beautiful in a way that made my chest ache, so deeply I thought I might fall.
I’ve been here before.
My body screamed the words—every nerve, every muscle, every drop of my blood. I’d seen those walls and those windows, I’d walked through those long, white doors, and I didn’t mean just that day we woke up here.
I meant other days—days I didn’t remember. Nights, too.
“You guys, that’s…that’s…” Erith couldn’t finish her thought.
“It feels so strange. Like…” Mimi waved her hands around, searching for the right words.
“Like coming home to a place you don’t know,” I breathed. That’s exactly what it felt like to me. Home, but…not.
“The Timekeeper didn’t say if we should stay hidden,” Seth said in wonder.
“We probably should. Let’s skip the front doors and try one around back. There will surely be plenty with a building this size,” said Anika.
We all agreed, so we stuck to the shadows of the trees all the way to the other side of the white building.
There were more of them, farther away, or maybe they were just groups of trees here and there.
We couldn’t see much in the dark, only the silhouettes, but one second they looked like a rooftop, and the next like branches.
When we got closer to the other side of the building, though, Cook suddenly whispered, “You guys, come check this out!”
We turned to find he’d gone deeper into the trees where it was darker.
He’d been so silent none of us had even heard him moving away.
Curiosity got the best of me instantly, so I was walking toward him before anyone else—and March was right behind me.
He was always close, and just his…existence helped make sense of mine. It helped a lot.
Cook led us all the way to the golden fence again, only this side didn’t look out at trees.
This side looked at two low hills—and lots and lots of twinkling lights on the other side that we could clearly see from where they dipped to meet one another on the ground.
“Holy Hour—it’s Neverwhen,” said Russ, and he sounded just as in awe as I felt.
It was indeed Neverwhen, the city at the very heart of the Clockrealm, where Timekeepers and Clockfolk from all courts lived.
The queens of the realm lived here as well.
It was alive, the city. From here, we could see the bright lights, the tall buildings, the energy that slipped right between those hills and made it all the way to us somehow. Buzzing like magic.
“When I finish school, I’m definitely coming to live here,” said Erith in wonder.
“I think I made that plan before,” March said, like these words slipped from his lips, too. Just the softness of his whisper, and the way he looked at me right after, like he was surprised to hear himself speak.
I smiled so big my cheeks hurt. Me, too, I wanted to say—except I hadn’t. I had never planned to live anywhere other than my home—which was just how things were. Most people lived their whole lives in their own courts.
But maybe I could plan it now?
Maybe signing up for the Turning Trials to get away from home hadn’t been the right call—but moving to Neverwhen altogether was?
Dreams. Silly, silly dreams—except in those moments, they felt real. They felt achievable. Everything felt possible.
But eventually we had to turn away from the view of the city and toward the palace again.
“Hey—if Neverwhen is right there, where is the Great Clock? I could have sworn I saw it…”
Mimi’s voice trailed off just as we stepped away from the trees and saw the dark tower of the Great Clock beyond the palace looming there like an impossibly big shadow.
My breath stuck in my throat, and I wasn’t the only one.
Yes, we’d all seen the Great Clock then, but that whole day had become a dream to me that kept slipping from my fingers any time I tried to remember something specific.
To see that dark tower and the Great Clock hovering in the air at the top of it was something entirely different.
It was already two m.b., but we all remained there staring at the gigantic face for a few more moments. Maybe it was giving me the feeling that I was being watched?
Too many things. Entirely too many, and the Great Clock didn’t feel familiar in the slightest, not like this in the dark. It had looked very different in sunlight, like another tower altogether. That’s probably why I had such a hard time tearing my eyes off it.
Finding a door on the side of the palace was easy, indeed—there were three just on the right of the building. We picked the first one that was hidden by overgrown white roses, and we couldn’t believe our luck when we found it unlocked.
Not a single soul was around us, and it was getting stranger by the second. We were sure we’d run into someone by now—this place was huge.
Still, none of us said anything as we went through into a wide corridor. The air in there was heavier and smelled of dust and dead flowers.
The roses.
We could just make them out in the faint light that slipped through the windows—vases over tables along the walls, the flowers inside them long dried and brown.
They were everywhere, mounted on brackets, tucked into alcoves, arranged on every surface as if someone had once wanted this place to smell of nothing else.
Had it?
The gears in my stomach turned—the answer was there in front of me, but it was just out of reach. Trying to catch it was going to make me sick.
The others felt it, too. Nobody spoke still, but a few ran their hands along the wall as they walked.
Anika stopped at a window and pressed her palm flat against the glass like she was waiting for someone to tell her not to.
Erith stopped and stared at her reflection in a small mirror over a vase full of long-dead roses.
The image was distorted because its surface was covered in a thick layer of dust, like nobody had been in this place for years and years, not just weeks.
We walked through and we looked and we stayed silent—more ghosts than people. Shells.
Another hallway, this one wider, with doors on its walls instead of windows, all of them locked. But the one on the other end was slightly ajar, so that’s where we went.
More of the same tables, vases, dead flowers. More of the same scent, the same heavy air.
I thought that was it—that was all we were going to find in this place. I thought everyone had gotten it wrong—or maybe we’d found the wrong palace—because clearly this place was abandoned. Clearly. Nobody lived here and they hadn’t in years.
Then we went through the door at the end of the hallway, and all the lights came on.