Chapter 42
The soldiers parted—not because the White Queen told them to. They all looked so confused, their eyes moving back and forth from the Red Queen who was now on the ground, motionless, and to the White, whose magic died down a little to allow her to see when Calren called for her to stop again.
Whatever their reason, whatever had made them move back, I took it.
And when we all turned with our hearts in our throats and no words on our tongues, we finally saw him.
The Timekeeper moved like a force of nature, slow but unstoppable, and the soldiers moved farther back the closer he came.
Calren Hock.
“Call me Cal, or Ren, or anything that starts again.”
His voice, his easy smile, the warmth of his brown eyes came back to me so suddenly—but also like the memory of him had always been there. Like I’d known him even when I didn’t.
Such a strange, strange feeling, though he looked very different from the man he had been when he first came to pick me up at home.
Today, he looked like death walking.
His face was gaunt, his skin paper-white, his ginger hair matted to his skull. He was dragging his feet behind him, but his every step was somehow confident at the same time. His cane was gone. His hands were still wrapped in bandages, stained brown with old blood. His eyes were wide open.
And he looked furious.
“Would you look at that.”
The White Queen had lowered her hands even more, and the glow of her magic, white with ribbons of purple, was still around her fingers, but barely there. “The warden has awakened. How nice. I can get rid of you, too. So many birds with only one stone.”
Except…maybe it was just me, but she didn’t look too eager just now. Not like she meant what she said, at least.
Calren kept walking. Past the soldiers, closer to us, his eyes on the White Queen, like he didn’t even see us kneeling there.
Only when he was ahead of us, just there in front of Silas, did he stop. Sway in place.
For a horrible second, I thought he might collapse, but he didn’t. His hands were fisted, shaking.
“Go on, now. Go kneel with the rest of them,” the White Queen said, her voice kind of…airy just now as she waved him off toward us. “Just there, k—”
“He’s your grandson.”
That’s what Calren said.
…that’s what Calren said?
I looked at him, and the White Queen, at March and at Master Talik, all the others—had they heard the same thing? Because my ears must have been malfunctioning.
Because what would anybody’s grandson have to do with the fact that we were all about to die right here, right now, at the hands of this woman?
The White Queen’s white eyebrows rose. “Why are all of you rustbloods so ridiculous? I genuinely had hope for you, Calren.”
“It’s not a joke,” the Timekeeper said through gritted teeth, and he didn’t back away. Not even when the White Queen took a step forward. “He’s your grandson—and I have proof. He has your blood. He’s yours.”
I was falling—except it was a different kind of falling, one where I was still. On my knees. Fingernails sinking into March’s hands, and I’m sure he didn’t even feel it. Because he—and all the others—were falling while being still, too, just like me.
“Who are you even—”
The White Queen stopped talking. Stopped blinking all of a sudden.
Only looked at Calren—who’d turned just slightly toward us.
Who’d pointed a bandaged finger at Silas.
Silas—Timekeeper and Spade. Six hours this, and six hours that. Unheard of. An impossibility.
A glitch.
A grandson.
The world stopped. The air went still. The soldiers froze just like we had. The remaining light in the White Queen’s hands disappeared completely.
Even the sunrise seemed to pause, the golden light hovering at the edge of the horizon like it wanted to see what came next.
But the White Queen’s face.
Time’s Teeth, her face.
I’d seen emotions on her. I’d seen her trying to hide. I’d seen her happy, proud, hurt—enraged, too. But this was something else.
“No.”
“He’s your son’s son,” Calren said, and my mind spiraled and spiraled. “He’s your grandson, Your Majesty—yours.”
A step forward.
The White Queen brought her hands to her head, moved back, said, “Stop,” though only barely.
“You were pregnant when you were crowned, but queens are not allowed to have offspring. They’re not allowed a family other than their ruling sister,” said Calren, and it was like he was ripping me apart limb by limb.
“But you decided to risk it, carry the baby, deliver it.” He moved, the Timekeeper, and the queen moved back.
Lowered her head. Whispered to herself, no, no, no, no…
“Then you gave him away. You gave him to be raised away from the palace, and he ended up in a family of Timekeepers.”
Silas, why was your father raised by Timekeepers? I’d asked.
I looked at the boy now, and I saw him.
I saw his jawline, identical to the White Queen’s. I saw the shape of his brows and the curve of his lips.
I saw when he closed his eyes and lowered his head that he hadn’t known, either.
Now he did.
“That baby grew up, fell in love, had a son. It’s him.” Again, Calren pointed behind him at a shaking Silas. “He’s your—”
“STOP!” the White Queen shouted at the top of her voice. “You’re lying. Liar, liar, liar…” Her voice shook worse than before.
“I’m a lot of things,” Calren said, and the ghost of a smile crossed his ruined face. “But I have never once been a liar, Your Excellency.”
A second. Three. Six.
Her eyes moved, dark and bloodshot. They shifted from him to Silas.
And Silas was looking, too. Right at her as tears slid down his cheeks and his chin shook and his hands shook—but he tried to hold himself together. He tried to keep it all in.
Meanwhile, I was shaking with sobs, trying to make myself as silent as possible. Others were the same, and together we sounded like a choir.
It was a moment suspended in time—worse than backward, worse than stillward—its own occasion.
But this, too, didn’t last long.
“NOW!” Silas shouted all of a sudden, his voice sharp and loud. He shouted it like he wanted the sun in the sky to hear him.
Everything happened at once.
Magic erupted from both his hands and the ones behind him—the hands of Master Talik.
Ribbons of teal, bright and furious, unleashed in a single blast. The White Queen didn’t move. None of us moved a single inch—there was no time, there was no point, there was no rhyme or reason to any of this.
The magic shot forward and it slammed into her the way hers had been about to slam onto us.
The bright color hid her from our vision completely for a moment, but we still saw plenty when it began to fade.
We saw how her body lifted, how her crown flew from her head and hit the ground somewhere behind her.
Her white dress billowed and her hair whipped and her mouth opened in a scream that never quite made it out.
And then she fell.
She fell like someone had cut her strings, her body limp, hitting the grass right across from where the Red Queen lay. Except her face was still visible to me, and her eyes were open. Not blinking—just open. Wide. Dark.
Her lips twitched. Her hand twitched. Her chest moved—she was clearly breathing, no doubt about it.
But she didn’t blink, and those eyes…it didn’t look like anybody was home.
Moving was out of the question. I couldn’t even focus on the air that slipped down my throat, and I wasn’t the only one.
Even the soldiers hadn’t had the chance to move, to act, to stop anything or anyone—or to not stop them.
Both queens were on the ground, and they stood there in a circle with their swords and their wide eyes, looking from one to the other, to Calren, to us…
Calren’s legs gave out. He collapsed where he stood—forward, onto his knees, then his side. He fell flat on the ground, right between the two queens, his eyes closed, but he was breathing. Definitely alive.
Half the sun had broken over the horizon by then. The Great Clock loomed over us, same as always, telling us that the time was six s.b.
We looked at one another, and none of us had the slightest clue what to do next, and none of us was able to make sense of what just happened…
“Time’s Trousers, we’re still alive,” Cook whispered—and he sounded genuinely shocked by the fact. Just as shocked as I felt. As we all felt as we looked at Master Talik, at Silas, who were kneeling there, breathing heavily, stuck in their own disbelief.
“Guys…” Levana whispered, and all our eyes turned to her next, but hers were ahead. On the ground, on the Red Queen still lying on the grass—except her arm had lowered so we saw her face now.
None of us breathed. None of us moved. None of us blinked for the longest second…
Then the Red Queen opened her eyes.