Chapter 43 #3
“It’s the reason I couldn’t do it,” she whispered.
“I couldn’t erase something so whole, so pure.
So powerful. The way you love gave me hope, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
” She laughed, and it was short but straight from the heart.
My eyes closed and finally the tears slid down—happy tears.
So, so happy… “I told myself I was simply being practical, that a veil was faster, cleaner than an extraction,” said the queen.
“But it was just the love. What it reminded me of.” Again, her hand went to her chest. “I was a girl with a full heart once, too. Maybe I can become one again.”
“Hear that, Ora?” Silas was grinning ear to ear, looking at me like he was proud. So much prouder than he’d been for his own self. “You saved all of us. Again.”
I laughed. “That would actually be you, but I’ll take it.”
“It was all of us,” he said, and both the queen and I nodded. It was indeed. We all saved one another, and in turn, made an actual change.
With the help of a certain Cheshire Cat, of course, who’d told me exactly where to find the records the first time I asked, but I never even realized it. The room beyond the kitchen.
I wondered, would I see him again when I went back to the Labyrinth?
Just the idea made goose bumps rise on my arms. A talking, grinning cat. What a strange, strange world I lived in—and I loved every second of it. Maybe even more than I had ever realized, if the Red Queen was to be believed.
“What about you? What about…after?” I asked her with half a heart.
I knew she was going to be present in the trials the councils would hold for her, to punish her for her crimes.
There would be an investigation—she’d initiated it herself, had demanded that the courts plan the trial, and they’d agreed because, I suspected, the people were terrified.
Nobody knew what to do without queens in charge.
So, whatever the Red Queen had demanded, I was sure they’d do it.
And I knew, as she did, that it was the end for her, an end she needed.
“After my punishment, if the council and the new queens allow, I’ll live out the rest of my unnatural life on my own. That will be my happy ending.”
Except to be alone wasn’t a happy ending at all, I didn’t think.
At that, the Red Queen stood up.
My heart jumped. “We can surely visit sometime,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Absolutely,” she said. “I’m well aware that I have no right to ask for anything, but I would very much like to be considered a friend.”
My smile was instant and mirrored hers.
“A friend.” With the Red Queen. The former Red Queen.
“I would be honored to be friends with people who are far braver than I could ever be.”
“You were brave in the end,” Silas said. “That’s what counts.”
“Untrue,” said the queen. “But a kind thing to say, nonetheless.” She nodded her head deeply.
Silas and I remained seated, half glad, half sad, half…
unsure. Of everything, really. “Well then, I’d best get to it.
I have quite a lot of things to pack, it turns out.
” She glanced around the balcony, at the palace behind her, at the towers and the marble and the gold. “Fifty years’ worth, to be precise.”
Her smile remained in the center of my mind long after she was gone, her bare feet silent on the marble floors.
She disappeared inside the palace, and we could no longer see her, but we remained sitting there in the morning sun for a few more minutes, almost as if we expected her to come back.
Almost as if we expected something to change.
It felt like closure, yes, but it was also…sad.
Eventually, Silas put his empty cup on the table. “What a story.”
The laughter came suddenly and slipped out of me before I could catch it. “What a story, indeed. Forward and backward and all the way to the end that also feels like a beginning.”
“Well, backward steps are part of the dance, too, aren’t they?” he said, and I couldn’t agree more. “My curse worked even better than I could have expected.”
“What was it exactly? And how did you manage it?” If even the Red Queen had been impressed…
“Didn’t you hear?” He flashed a grin. “I have talent.” I rolled my eyes, but I knew he was teasing.
And I did believe what the Red Queen said—he did have a lot of talent for magic.
“I planned to force the queens to speak the truth publicly and to never be able to lie again. I’d have no regrets if it weren’t for our Helen. ”
Stabs at my heart.
“It wasn’t your fault, Sy.”
He nodded, said, “I know,” but he didn’t believe me. He had carried the guilt on his shoulders since the day he found out, and I doubted he’d ever put it down.
In time, that would be okay, though. I was certain of it. If going stillward had taught me anything, is that one could make loss a part of themselves and live on without needing to be stuck.
After all, we were only given a little bit of time here on this realm. It was our duty to make every minute count.
Finally, Silas offered me his hand, and I took it. We both stood up.
“I have a proposition to make,” I told him. “I would very much like for you to agree to be my best friend.”
He slowly laced his arm around mine, and we made our way toward the open glass doors, too.
“Agree? I thought I already was.” He gave me a look. A suspicious look. “You are mine, anyhour, whether you agree to it or not.”
Cheeks flushed, I nodded and grinned and nodded again. “Then it is settled.”
And indeed, it was for the rest of our lives.
“Are you ready?” March asked, holding my hand like he knew exactly how much I needed to be grounded.
Sometimes—only sometimes—I still felt like I was falling down an endless hole with flashes of colors and shapes spinning all around me—or was I spinning around them?
I could never be too sure, but the quickest thing to help was March.
The colors of his eyes, all the shades of red and rust hidden in those spheres that had become the entire world for me in all kinds of twisted realities and shifted timelines.
The way he smiled at me when nobody was looking, like he belonged to me fully.
The way he held my hand like it was the most important thing he’d ever hold.
And how he saw me—his memory that was still in my head. How I smiled sitting there at that bench. How he felt while he analyzed me.
If I had to put the feelings into words, I’d say they all translated into everything is perfectly okay.
“To see them? Yes,” I answered honestly, resting my head over his shoulder.
When Silas and I came back from meeting the Red Queen, he was already there, sitting at the stairs of the hospital building that was just around the corner from the inn where we were currently living.
I’d been over the moon, had jumped in his arms so fast Silas had blushed, and we’d told him all about the meeting right there.
When Silas went in to see Reggie, we stayed out there, sitting on the stairs, watching a few kids play near a fountain several feet away…and waiting.
For my parents, whose carriage was about to arrive any minute now. The wide road ahead of us was busy enough so that a carriage passed every few minutes, and every time it did, my heart jumped.
But my parents weren’t here yet.
“And to tell them that you won’t be joining them back home?” March asked, and I about passed out sitting.
“Not so much,” I muttered, closing my eyes for a moment.