Chapter 18
Iwas smiling before I opened my eyes.
Someone was knocking on the door, and for a second there, two different scenarios developed in my mind as I tried to predict the next second—Jinx coming in through the door with tea or my father coming in to wake me for the day.
Neither happened.
“Ora.”
That voice.
The arms underneath half my body.
I wasn’t lying on a bed at all, I realized, and the hand that was over the side of my waist wasn’t mine.
My eyes opened to two wide ones, mostly red, with some rusty maroons mixed in them. Quite possibly the most beautiful colors I’d ever seen, and they were right there for me to enjoy.
Just like that, I lost track of my thoughts. I had no clue what to expect of the next second, and I didn’t really care.
March.
March was here, lying with me.
I was lying on March, in fact. On his chest. And his arm was around me, and his hand now on my cheek.
His eyes were swollen with sleep, his lips so red they could have been painted by the most skilled artist. And they, too, were right there for me to look at.
To kiss.
I did so without thinking.
I leaned in, half-desperate to know if he was real, and he was. My lips touched his. He tasted like rain and roses.
Then came the knock on the door again—harder.
“He’s gone! Wake up, everyone—he’s gone!”
Suddenly we both sat up, March on the cot, me on his lap.
We looked at the door like it was a three-headed monster, then at each other as whoever had knocked—it sounded a lot like the Timekeeper Damon—continued up the hallway, slamming his fists on doors, shouting—he’s gone, he’s gone!
Somehow, I made it to my feet, thought to touch my hair, to smooth it down as well as I could. And March was standing beside me, just as disoriented, running his own fingers through his curls before he was in front of me, those big, warm hands on the sides of my face.
“Ora, do you remember last night?”
I could have laughed.
“I do.” Not only did I remember, but I came alive last night. I came…back to myself.
That lopsided smile. The way he looked at my lips.
“Let’s talk once we see what’s going on, okay?”
I held onto his wrists, lost myself anew in the colors of his eyes as I nodded. Smiled.
His lips pressed onto mine—like clouds, like cotton candy, like fresh snowflakes drifting from the sky. Just a ghost of a touch, but it was enough.
“C’mon—let’s go! We need to get going!”
“Who’s gone?” I breathed when he moved back, let go of me.
March shrugged, his cheeks flushed, his eyes sparkling. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
He turned and opened the door, leaving me to stare down at my feet for a second as I got myself together, only to realize that the glass floor was still there, and those old, lifeless gears beneath it as well.
My stomach turned.
Then March stuck his head inside the door once more, the flush of his cheeks gone.
“It’s Silas,” he said, and my stomach turned for a brand-new reason. “He’s really gone.”
Silas was gone.
We were outside the Hollow, in the room with the three-legged table, and Damon was on his knees there near the far left corner, close to the stairs that led to the only door there. He was on his knees in front of a hatch I hadn’t even noticed existed before.
It was open. The metal grate had been pushed aside, and cool air rose from the shaft below.
“He’s gone,” the Timekeeper kept whispering. “He opened the hatch sometime in the night. I didn’t hear a thing. He’s just gone.”
“Gone where?” I thought and March asked, while the others still spilled out of their rooms—Seth rubbing his eyes, Anika with her blanket still around her shoulders, Levana already scowling, Russ and Erith close behind. They all looked at the open hatch, then at Damon, then at each other.
“I don’t know—I don’t know where—”
“He went back.”
We all turned to Kohen as he slipped out the darkness of the Hollow, a grave look on his face. He was without his cloak for once, and he looked taller like that. Thinner.
“The tunnel that hatch leads to goes directly underneath the Labyrinth. Silas most likely knew,” he said. “He went back.”
Back, he said, and my thoughts spun and spun in my head as Mimi hugged her notebook beside me, eyes full of unshed tears.
“Why?” Damon said, shaking his head, still one knee against the floor when he turned his head back to look at Kohen. “Why would he go back to the Labyrinth? For what?”
“Not for what,” Cook said from a little farther away. “For who.”
Suddenly, a single word popped in the center of my mind.
Reggie.
His name had been the first thing Silas had said when we found him in that room—and I wasn’t the only one who thought it. I could practically see the name settling over the room, could feel the ripple of it spreading out.
Reggie was a Hand, too, from the Court of Clubs.
Silas had told us this the night before—and then Kohen had told us about how the game had taken him, how it had rewired his brain, had recreated Reggie, made him its own.
Part of the Labyrinth now, just as much as everything that was built or lived or turned inside its grounds.
It would remain so forever.
We’d all noticed Silas’s tears while he told this story—which to me was as much a fantasy as the stories about the Thirteenth Hour we were told when we were little.
Just a story—not real. We’d all noticed how he’d closed his eyes and had fisted his hands over his knees all the while as Kohen spoke about the last trial—which was the first backward.
“He’s going for the boy,” the old Timekeeper said, while the others, the new faces nobody had bothered to introduce us to stayed a couple feet behind, staring at the floor, shaking their heads.
“We should have known,” Damon said, finally standing up, hands over his head. “They were lovers—of course he would try to go back. Of course.”
Something inside me twisted and the echo of it drowned the voices in the room for a second as the others talked. There was a memory, almost within my reach but not quite, creating an itch inside me, in my very bones.
“…barely walk,” Mimi was saying. “He was using a cane! How would he—”
“He’s well enough to go anywhere on his own now.
Energy levels climb fast when there’s purpose,” Kohen cut her off.
“That’s not the issue here—it’s the Labyrinth.
” His eyes were glazed over as he looked at Damon but didn’t really see him.
“It’s not going to let him go. The boy…he belongs to it now. It won’t let him go.”
The story he’d told last night came back to me in waves—the dead host, the knife, the aging, the way the ground had claimed Reggie. Such an absurd, fantastical story.
Yet Kohen now looked as terrified as if it had all been real.
“Is there a chance—any chance at all—that Reggie really is still alive in there?” Mimi asked in half a voice.
Something like a shadow passed right through my mind—words bundled together, thrown at me as if from the sky.
I couldn’t make sense of them for the Time in me.
Then Kohen opened his mouth to speak and closed it again.
Several times.
Which was indeed curious.
“If something is owed to its games, the Labyrinth takes it back—but whatever that is, it doesn’t destroy it,” Kohen finally said.
“Then what does it do?” I wondered.
“It repurposes it. In this case, the game needed a host—so, yes, technically speaking, the boy would still be in the game. But he would not be the same person Silas is looking for. He’s now only the Host.”
“But he’s alive,” March pressed.
A flinch. “Functioning,” Kohen corrected. “Whether that counts as alive is a matter of perspective.”
I agreed somewhat. I’d been breathing and functioning so many times without actually feeling alive.
Nevertheless, it made no difference to me, and it made no difference to the others, either.
Mimi was already pulling on her boots. Cook had uncrossed his arms and was checking the Sparetime in his chronobank.
Seth cracked his knuckles. Even Levana who complained about everything, who had argued against every decision since the moment we were taken, was looking at that open hatch with something on her face that wasn’t reluctance for once.
“It doesn’t matter whether Reggie is alive or not. We have to go for Silas. He is alive—that we know for sure.” And it was enough.
“If you get caught—” Kohen started.
“The more time they have to prepare, the easier it will be for them to find us. I say we act now,” March said—and I agreed.
Kohen seemed to agree, too.
He looked at us for a long time. Nine faces. Nine sets of eyes looking back at him.
Then the old Timekeeper sighed deep and long, like he was exhaling the last of his resistance.
He said, “The queens. They most likely know, too.”
The queens.
The White Queen who’d created this whole mess with her counter-curse that had forced time to move backward for two whole weeks. The dangers of stopping the Great Clock. Risking the entire world.
The Red Queen, who, according to Kohen’s best guess, was the reason why our memories were gone.
The queens of the Clockrealm, who were supposed to protect their people at all costs, had done this. They were thieves, lying and stealing, then wiping the memories of the witnesses, too.
All the while the realm was none the wiser.
According to these Timekeepers, of course. According to Silas.
Suddenly it was getting really difficult to breathe, like all that information was finally catching up to me. Finally dawning on me. Finally starting to make sense.
“Then all the more reason to find Silas,” Seth said. “Now—before they find him.”
“Let’s go.” There would be time to think and make sense of things. I made for the hatch—it was right there, it was open, and it was going to lead us to Silas so we could get him back.
“Wait!”
A hand in front of my chest—Damon, but it was Kohen who’d called.
“Wait. Do not go in there,” he said. “There’s no telling what you’ll find. That tunnel was closed decades ago for a reason!”
“Well, Silas apparently opened it,” Erith said.
“And why don’t you go find him? You’re Timekeepers. You can do magic, can’t you?” said Levana.
“We can’t. The Labyrinth would never allow us,” Kohen said. “I’ve tried—many times.”
I believed him, if only because of how earnest he looked.
“Then we’ll go,” I said. “We found him once.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Kohen insisted. “The queens know—they will catch you.” With every word he said, he became more and more anxious.
“We can’t just leave him to fend for himself,” March said. “What if they catch him?”
Just the idea sent ice-cold shivers down my spine.
“If the story you told us is true, the White Queen will kill him,” said Levana.
“And the warden? Calren? Where is he?” Cook asked.
Both Damon and Kohen flinched.
“He hasn’t woken up yet. His mind…needs a bit more time,” Kohen muttered.
Then…
“Guys?” Russ.
He was looking down at himself, touching his hips.
No—his pockets.
“Guys, where is my chronobank?”
Russ’s chronobank was gone, and so was Levana’s. I had mine still, though practically empty, but the two of them swore up and down that they’d had theirs in their pockets all along. Had even slept with them.
So the only thing that made sense was Silas.
Silas had stolen their chronobanks because he needed all the Sparetime he could get to go to the Labyrinth.
A fool. He was a fool to go back there on his own like that, without even telling anyone. If he’d told me, I’d have gone with him. March would have, too.
We all would have gone with him.
Wasn’t that what we said in Mimi’s notebook?
Together.
“I’m going after him,” said Russ, moving for the hatch. “He has my chronobank—I’m going after him right now.”
“Step aside, Damon,” March said when the Timekeeper tried to get in Russ’s way.
He raised a brow at March, like he was suddenly surprised. “Or what?”
March was suddenly right beside him, shoulders wide, hands fisted, his eyes spitting fire—but when he spoke, his voice was still calm.
“Or I’ll make you.” A simple sentence.
Damon smiled a very bitter smile. He opened his mouth to say something, and I was already uncomfortable as it was, but Kohen beat him to it.
“Enough with the nonsense. Step aside, Damon. Let them through.” Because he knew we couldn’t just leave Silas when we went through all the trouble of finding him.
More than that—Kohen knew that without Silas, the story he told us would remain just a story. Silas was the proof he needed, maybe even more so than Calren.
“But we don’t know what’s down there, what they’ll find. For all we know, the Spade could be dead by now,” Damon said through gritted teeth, and the gears inside me malfunctioned loudly.
“He’s not,” I said, more for my benefit than anything else.
“He’s a smart boy. He knows what he’s doing,” said Kohen, his cheeks so pale he looked sick.
“We can’t leave him there all alone, and chances are, he won’t want to leave, especially if he finds Reggie.
” His wide dark eyes moved from one face to the other, and for a moment there, I could have sworn he was begging us.
He was pleading. “The Labyrinth will not let go of what belongs to it. You must get Silas back.”
“We will,” March said.
“We’ll carry him if we have to.” Seth.
“He better not have spent a second of my Sparetime.” Russ.
“Let’s just get this over with quickly,” said Erith.
Everyone nodded. Everyone stared at their feet for the longest moment, just to process the decision. To come to terms with it.
And we did.
Thirty minutes later, we were dressed, had food in our stomachs, and we were ready to go.