Chapter 41
The deep red color of the magic was beautiful. It was the last thing I really saw before my eyes closed on instinct, and it reminded me of March. It reminded me of roses and hearts and blood and love.
And it was worse because when the magic wrapped itself around me, it didn’t feel like an attack.
I was sure that was on purpose, but it felt like a door opening or a lock turning or a window that had been shut for ages finally giving way.
Gasps and screams and deep breaths all around me.
March’s hand was no longer in mine. My body let go and I fell involuntarily, forward, straight onto the ground.
My cheek hit the dirt and the world exploded—not outward but inward. Into me. Through me.
Something-something-something’s wrong…
Every locked door in my mind blew open at once.
It was terrifying, and it caught me by surprise, and I didn’t know up from down anymore, myself from someone different. Someone new and old at the same time. All those doors opening, so fast, so fully—and behind them was everything.
Something-something-something’s…right.
Images poured inside me, one after the other, except these weren’t being presented to me in a gallery, and I wasn’t falling. No—I was grounded, body pressed against the soil, and these images, these feelings, these sounds were all coming from inside me, setting themselves free.
The carriage. The arena. The dormitory. Mimi’s face when she first said hi! Cook’s steady hands while we danced together. Seth’s grin and Russ’s laugh. Levana’s sharp tongue, and Anika’s worry, and Erith’s kindness.
Helen’s bright eyes and beautiful face and electric smile.
Reggie’s roaring laughter.
More and more doors opened as I gasped for air, as I saw, understood all that I was seeing and what they meant: eating hall-junkyard-mechanical heart-dancing-masks-timesand-tea party-wrinkles-clockbeasts—
Memories.
They were all my memories, and they were free.
I was crying, shaking now against the ground, thinking about the forty-eight freckles on my face and the feel of March’s lips against mine. And Silas, and Calren, and Elida, and the queens…
It was all there. All of it. Every second of every day I’d spent in this place, both forward and backward in time, every trial, every game, every moment of terror and joy and love and loss—flooding back into me like water into a vessel that had been empty for so long it had forgotten what full felt like.
I’d forgotten what it was like to be whole.
Then I blinked and it actually worked; I moved, and I actually rose off the ground on all fours. Others had fallen forward around me, too. Mimi and Cook and Seth on his knees behind me, whispering, Helen, Helen, Helen like a mantra.
And I knew Helen. I’d seen her smile and scream and fall. I’d seen the timewraith that had grabbed her ankle. I’d seen it with these very eyes.
March was beside me, on his knees, too, eyes closed and teeth gritted.
I found his hand in the dirt, laced my fingers with his again—because it was too much.
Our time—the first and the second and the third times were stacking on top of each other, building something so heavy I thought it might crush me if I didn’t hold on.
“Ora,” he whispered, and my name was like a prayer on his lips.
Tears fell from my eyes, dripped on the ground.
“I remember, March,” I gasped. “I remember everything…”
Then came the scream.
“WHAT DID YOU DO!”
The White Queen’s voice pierced right through me.
She screamed—no words, just sound. Pure, unfiltered rage, and she was looking at the Red Queen.
The Red Queen who was on her knees now, and blood was dripping down her nostrils as she looked up, and she was breathing like she’d been running, or…
Like she’d unveiled all the memories inside our heads at once.
“Enough.”
That word.
A single word that had more power than anything else she had ever said.
March pushed himself up and dragged me with him, and then I dragged Mimi, too, who was still shaking with sobs.
“Enough. We’ve gone too far. We’ve done too much. I will not erase them—they are children, for Time’s sake! Enough!”
The Red Queen stood up. Faced the White.
The White Queen slapped the Red right across her cheek.
“I am queen!” Her voice was worse than a knife going through my brain, and I watched, astounded, as the soldiers came closer, slowly, their swords unsheathed, but…
They kept looking at one another. They didn’t know what to do.
“I am queen—how dare you disobey me! I will take what is owed to me—what has been owed to me since I put this crown on!” she screamed and pointed at the crown glistening on her head with the beautiful colors of dawn.
“You cannot stop me, sister!” The way she spat out that word. “I am queen—nobody can stop me!”
The Red Queen slowly turned to face her again, red magic slipping from the palms of her hands.
“You’ve made me a thief. You’ve made me a monster,” she choked. “You made me steal and lie and cheat. You made me steal their memories—and now you want to erase them because you can’t stand to face what you’ve done to them!”
“What I’ve done?” The White Queen laughed and it sounded like glass breaking. “What I’ve done?! You sat beside me for fifty years. You watched. You helped—and you were supposed to extract the memories so I could destroy them, you cheat! I know you didn’t. I know you didn’t!”
The Red Queen flinched. “I know you know,” she said. “I did it on purpose.” Her hand raised, finger pointed at us though she only looked at the White Queen. “They are so young! I will not damage their minds like that—I refuse!”
It was her.
It was her-it was her-it was her—the Red Queen who was supposed to erase us but didn’t. Extract all our memories into Time knew what so that the White could then destroy them for good—but didn’t.
The argument wasn’t over.
“You think you’re innocent because you feel guilty?
” The White Queen stepped closer, her white dress catching the first real light of sunrise, the fabric almost glowing.
“Guilt isn’t innocence. Guilt is just cowardice dressed up in pretty clothes,” she hissed.
“You knew what we were doing. You knew all along!
“Stop it,” the Red Queen whispered, closed her eyes, lowered her head.
But the White didn’t. She instead pointed her finger at her face.
“You knew, and you stayed. You stayed because you like it, because you love this life. You stayed because you love being young and beautiful and rich and all-powerful—you love it too much to do anything about it!”
The Red Queen’s chin trembled. Her eyes glistened but the tears didn’t fall.
“I am doing something about it now,” she said in half a voice.
“Now.” The White Queen spat the word like poison. “Now, when it’s too late. Now, when I force your hand—how ridiculous! You think you’re brave?!”
“I am.” Her voice steadied. Hardened. “I’m brave because I’ve been a coward too long.
And you’re right—I did like it in the beginning.
I did let you manipulate me, paint the perfect picture for me.
I let myself be fooled and I let myself be dragged along because I believed I was powerless—but I am not.
I never was!” She turned to us, and suddenly she looked like she was about to fall apart any second.
“I am not like you. I can look at these boys and girls, at that man, and I can still feel something!”
It was the White Queen who looked like she was coming apart now, especially when the Red one said, “You can’t. You won’t let yourself. You don’t remember what it was like—”
“Don’t speak to me like I’m an imbecile, Aurelia!” she exploded.
My eyes closed, and I held onto March and Mimi tighter.
He was trying to look back, to see if there was a way out of here, a way to run—he and Silas both—but there wasn’t.
We were surrounded by soldiers on all sides, and there was nobody else there.
The fences were too far. The Ever was too far—and even if someone saw or heard us, who would dare to come close?
“I remember—of course, I do! I remember everything this crown cost me,” the White Queen said, no longer smiling, no longer bothered with keeping up the facade.
“It took everything from me long before I took anything from it.” Just now, she was quieter.
Colder. Like she hated the crown on her head.
“It’s because I remember that I know all of this belongs to me. It’s owed to me—I am queen!”
“And you need to be stopped.” The Red Queen took a step back.
“You were with me every step of the way!” said the White, laughing that ice-cold, fake laugh.
Her sister shook her head so hard her red curls bounced. “You made me—”
“I didn’t make you do anything—”
“—by threatening my family. You threatened their lives if I didn’t comply—don’t you dare stand there and pretend—”
“I gave you a choice!” The White Queen was back to screaming again. “I gave you the same choice I was given—sacrifice or lose everything. You chose the same thing I chose, sister. So don’t think for a second that you’re better than me in any way.”
The Red Queen was shaking. Her whole body vibrating with something that was either rage or grief or both. Impossible to separate. Impossible to even name.
“I am not better than you,” she said after a long, loaded moment.
When she spoke now, she spoke like these words had been sitting in her throat for decades, waiting to be released.
“I have never been better than you. I have been your shadow for fifty years—your accomplice, your coward, your willing prisoner. I have done things that will follow me to the Everstill and beyond.” She stepped closer to the White Queen. Chin up, eyes dry. “But I am done.”
“You’re done when I say you’re done,” the White Queen hissed. “I am queen!”
“You forget, sister,” the Red Queen said. “I am queen, too.”
It all happened fast and slow at the same time.
For a moment—just a moment—something passed between them.
Something old and complicated and full that none of us could even begin to understand.
They were sisters—maybe not by blood but by ritual, by crown, by fifty years of standing side by side.
They had shared a throne and a lot of secrets, a lot of wrongs, and whatever they had once been to each other, it was coming apart.
It was peeling away layer by layer right in front of us, and all we could do was watch.
Both women raised their hands at the same time.
They attacked—at the same time.
Red and white clashed in the space between them. The magic that spread in the air, red in places, blinding white in others, took my breath away. My heart no longer beat. My eyes no longer saw. My ears no longer heard—but I did feel March’s arms around me when he pulled me back.
It didn’t last long, though.
The colors, the magic faded from the air, though the energy still danced on my skin like a million needles were pricking me constantly. But the shapes and the colors of the real world came forward again.
My heart fell. Every hair on my body stood at attention.
The Red Queen was on the ground, face first, her arm over the side of it so I didn’t see her eyes, but she wasn’t moving.
And the White Queen was already standing from where she’d fallen on her back.
She was standing, wiping dirt off her cheek, rubbing her hands together while she looked at whom she’d called a sister for decades like she was disgusted.
“There,” she said and went closer, touched the Red Queen’s leg with the tip of her white shoe.
She didn’t stir. Didn’t wake up. I wanted to think her torso was moving slightly—she was breathing, alive—but I couldn’t be too sure.
“You always were too sentimental for this job, anyway.”
And the White Queen turned to us.
Her eyes were wild, her hair all over the place. The mask she wore today—and the first time I met her, and the last before I forgot—was gone. What was underneath was not a queen but a woman who was enraged. Who was about to unleash everything she had onto the world.
“Eh, I guess death is better, after all. Easier. Less messy.” She rubbed her hands together, raised them, and a little light was already shining in her palms.
“No,” I breathed, and a few others did, too, and we were dragging ourselves backward on instinct, though we knew there was nowhere to go. Soldiers were right behind us, a wall of them with their armor and their swords. March tried to push me back behind him anyway, but it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered anymore. If even the Red Queen couldn’t stop this woman, we were doomed for real.
“We’ll try,” Silas whispered while the White Queen closed her eyes and cranked her neck to the sides and worked her hands together as the light between them expanded, grew more intense.
It wasn’t just white now—it had strings of purple in it, too.
Two magics at once—how strange. I never knew it was possible.
I never knew a lot of things were possible, but I did want to try, whatever that meant.
“We’ll try,” Silas repeated—and he was talking to Master Talik, who had two chronobanks in his hands, one silver and one gold.
The old man nodded, offered the silver chronobank to Silas, who eagerly took it.
“We’ll try,” said Seth and Mimi and Levana, and I nodded, too. Whatever trying meant, we weren’t going to go down without a fight. At least we wouldn’t die kneeling, would we?
The queen’s hands rose. The Red one was still on the ground, as motionless as Reggie.
“On three,” said Silas, and I still had no idea what we were going to do, but we would be getting up. It wasn’t that difficult to figure out—we’d charge for the queen, no matter that the soldiers would get to us before we got to her. We’d still try.
“Three…”
His voice was barely there, and the light in the queen’s hands was almost her size now. We couldn’t see her face at all from the brightness as she gathered more and more and more…
One blast, and it was going to kill us. That big a charge of magic was going to fry every second in our bodies.
“Two…”
I swallowed hard, squeezed March’s hand for one last time.
He leaned in to kiss my temple, and to whisper in my ear, “I love you, too, Velvet.”
In that split second, I lived three timelines. Three different lives.
And in all of them I fell from him—in that split second.
I was in that ballroom, a mask in my hand, whispering to him that I loved him, asking him to find me.
Find me, Heartling. Find me.
He had.
He’d found me, and it would soon be over—but our love would remain timeless. I believed that with all my heart.
“One,” Silas whispered, and my body jerked. I was ready to jump to my feet and run and slam into the magic that was coming for us as certainly as the sun would climb higher in the sky.
But none of us even made it to our feet.
Instead, a voice came from somewhere behind us, behind the soldiers, behind the ruins.
“STOP!”
It was a voice I knew well, from before.
The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention when the realization hit me.
Calren had finally awoken.