Chapter 43
Ahappy ending was not what I expected when we were stuck in the ruins of the mechanical garden, waiting for our deaths.
I’d been twelve-hours certain that I would die that day. I’d believed it with all my heart.
Now, a whole week later, I still had trouble convincing myself that I hadn’t. I hadn’t died—I’d survived. I’d made it. I had all my memories back, too, both from the forward trials and the backward ones. Which was surreal all on its own.
I was still breathing—and so was everybody else.
Except Helen.
My heart and my gut twisted like the gears inside me were about to malfunction at the thought of her beautiful face, those large heart earrings she used to wear.
Since I’d remembered, the thought of her was constant. Just there in the back of my mind ready to come to the front whenever I wasn’t actively thinking about something specific. Always there.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way. It was up to us to keep her memory alive now, and we would. That was a promise I made myself, and I intended to keep it until my dying breath.
The Queens’ Palace was as vibrant from close up as it had been from a distance.
I’d seen it for the first time that morning while Silas and I walked to it together.
It sat at the highest point of Neverwhen, white marble and gold trim, its towers catching the sun from every angle so that no matter where you stood in the city, you could see it glowing.
Nobody had actually seen the inside, though. The palace was the home of the queens, and it wasn’t for ordinary people.
However, we were being told we weren’t ordinary. At least not at the moment.
Which was possibly why the Red Queen had invited us for tea at her palace, for a small talk before…
Before she was no longer the Red Queen of the Clockrealm.
What a curious, curious day to be alive.
The palace had eight floors in total. The Red Queen met us on a balcony on the fourth. Not a throne room or a council chamber or even an office, like I’d expected. A balcony—wide, open, with a stone railing draped in flowering vines and a small table set with tea for three.
That’s where we found her—then lost our breaths for a tick.
The view was astounding. Below us, Neverwhen spread out in every direction, its rooftops and spires and winding streets alive with morning light.
The Great Clock loomed in the sky, its hands moving without stop.
We couldn’t really see the Labyrinth grounds from here, but just to know that it was right next to the tower was enough to raise goose bumps on my skin.
Farther out were the lush green hills that separated Neverwhen from the four courts. The realm stretched far beyond them, but that was all we could see from here. And it was so very beautiful I had trouble convincing myself to blink.
The Red Queen was already there when Silas and I arrived, escorted by a Heart man wearing a butler’s uniform, with two soldiers covered in silver armor behind.
She was standing at the railing, looking out at the city, her rich red hair loose around her shoulders.
There was no veil on her, no crown, no gown like the ones she used to wear every other time I’d seen her.
She wore a simple red dress—no embroidery, no jewels—and her feet were bare against the pale stone of the balcony floor.
She looked like a woman, not a queen, though if you asked, I wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference.
I thought she hadn’t even heard us coming through the large glass doors, but…
“Sit,” she suddenly said without even turning around. “The tea is getting cold.”
I don’t know why I was tempted to smile.
I remembered her. I remembered all of her—when we first met, when we first spoke, what she said, how she’d grinned and how she’d looked at us. I’d always been at ease around her, as if my instincts knew. I knew deep down that she was…maybe not good, per se, but not bad. Definitely not bad.
Which was far more than I could say about her sister.
Silas and I went to sit at the table. Before we did, he propped his cane against the railing—the new one, dark wood, a gift from Master Talik, though he could walk just fine now.
But I suspected it was a Timekeeper thing, the cane, as Calren had one with him before, too.
He was still in recovery, but he was doing well, could stay awake for hours at a time.
Everything was falling into place, even if it felt like it was doing so slowly.
Silas made himself right at home and poured for all three of us without hesitation, while the Red Queen slowly turned around, a small smile on her lips that weren’t painted red for once.
Her face was bare, and her wrinkles took me a little bit by surprise.
The gray of her hair, too—at the roots. She looked…
more like herself than I could have ever guessed.
Then she came and sat in the only empty chair with us, took her cup and held it in both hands, and crossed a leg over the other.
For a while nobody said anything. We just drank tea and looked at Neverwhen waking up below us, and the silence was the comfortable kind. Not awkward in the least, which surprised me, too.
After a while, the Red Queen said, “You look well.”
“We are,” I assured her. “So do you.”
She threw me a quick look and a grin. “I haven’t felt more like myself in ages.”
“And her?” Silas asked.
I flinched; the Red Queen held herself.
We both knew who Silas was talking about.
“She’s been moved, actually,” the Red Queen said, her eyes ahead, on the city. “Just this morning, she was taken to the facility in Eastern Neverwhen. It’s the best place in the realm for people with her…condition.”
Condition, she called it.
The place where the White Queen was taken was an institution for the mentally unstable—for those out of time’s sync. Just like Calren had been when she’d attacked him in the palace.
Master Talik told us about it before we left that morning—it had quiet rooms, locked doors, healers and Timekeepers who specialized in minds that had come undone.
“Well, she’s alive. Breathing,” I said, then brought the cup to my lips and took a sip. Chamomile and honey—absolutely heavenly tea.
A bitter smile stretched her lips. “Only barely. Her heart beats, but she doesn’t speak. Doesn’t recognize anyone. Sometimes she whispers numbers.” A pause. “The healers say she will most likely stay that way.”
I looked at Silas. He was quiet as he held his teacup but didn’t drink, his gray eyes fixed on the horizon, too, on the place where the city met the hills.
I wondered what it felt like—knowing the woman in that facility was his grandmother. Knowing she’d tried to kill him without ever realizing he was hers. Knowing she’d given away his father fifty years ago and spent every day since then punishing the world for the loss.
“Do you agree?” The Red Queen was looking right at him. “I was told you went to see her yesterday.”
That was most definitely news to me.
Silas normally hung out at the hospital where both Calren and Reggie were getting the treatment they needed.
It was very close to the inn where March and I were staying—which belonged to a friend of Master Talik’s—and so we went to see them all the time, too.
The others had already left, had gone home to their families, eager to have their memories back. Their lives back.
But I’d had no idea that Silas had even wanted to go see the White Queen.
“I did,” he finally said, eyes on his tea as he played with his cup. “Nobody has any clue who…the father was. My…my grandfather.”
My eyes closed. It hurt him to talk about this—even think about this, and it hurt me, too. I couldn’t even imagine not knowing where I came from—or whom.
Then Silas looked up at the Red Queen. “Do you, by any chance—”
That’s when I understood why Silas had so easily accepted the Red Queen’s invitation last night, why he’d even seemed a bit eager to come to the palace.
But she cut him off. “No.”
The Red Queen put the cup down on the table. “She never told me anything. Never even hinted. I never suspected.” The smile on her face was sad. Almost…disappointed.
Silas nodded, swallowed hard, clenched his jaw.
“She still has family members alive. Maybe…” she added, and Silas nodded again.
“Yes,” he said, his voice ice cold. “Maybe.”
In that moment, I was six hours certain that he’d never seek the White Queen’s family out or speak to them, and six hours certain that he would right after we left here.
And I’d understand both.
“What did you think of her condition? Do you believe the physicians?” the Red Queen asked.
Silas took a slow sip of his tea, like he was getting himself together, and said, “I don’t know. I thought so, too, but she looked at me.” His eyes locked on the Red Queen’s. “She looked right at me, like she saw me. Like she recognized me.”
“And?” I asked, holding on tightly to the cup in my hand.
“Nothing. She went right back to whispering numbers,” Silas said.
A tick of silence.
“The courts have been informed about the allocation,” the Red Queen said then, her voice steadier now. “Basically, everybody knows everything.”
As it should be. The news about what the queens had done had spread across the realm—though the Red had never actually done any of it; she’d just kept the secret and had used the stolen magic.
“And Master Talik’s proposal?” I wondered as I took another sip of the tea.
“Accepted,” said the Red Queen, and my heart jumped.
The old Timekeeper had a proposal for a transparent monitoring system at the ready the moment the madness had come to its end.
“Starting next week when the proper arrangements have been made, every burst from the Great Clock will be logged publicly. Copies of the allocation records will be distributed to each court. Any discrepancy will be visible to everyone, immediately.”
And Master Talik would be free to make his timeometers, too, to do this. He’d been so excited about it—you could just tell he’d been working on this, thinking about this for a long, long time.
“And the Timekeepers?” Silas asked.