Outside the window, the sun was just unsetting, and the sky was a fiery orange, like it wasmad.
“Yes, yes—most unfortunate!” the queen then said, and turned, put the cup onto the rack near her feet, then pushed it gently in line with the others—identicalones—against the white wall. “Poor ticker. He was so young.”
“But there must be something you can do,” Anika insisted. “He didn’t deserve to die. The game?—”
“The game knows what it deserves and what it doesn’t,” the queen cut her off, and she fixed the layers of her long white dress, then adjusted the crystal crown on her head, and folded her hands slowly.
“Now.” She cleared her throat. “How is it that you found me? This is my free time, you know. Was it your warden? I was certain she didn’t know?—”
“Ora,” Russ said. “Ora brought us here.”
The queen’s blue eyes settled on me. I swallowed hard, fisted my hands.
“I…I-I-I…” I hadn’t the slightest ideawhatto say, but every fiber in my being demanded that I kept the truth from them at all costs. No mentioning a talking cat. No mentioninganything.
“Well, little ticker? Speak—who told you to find me here?”
I could have sworn on anything that she was trying her best to keep her voice composed just now, and her eyes were spitting the same fire as the sky.
“Nobody.”Not the truth.“I heard talk in the garden about a room beyond the kitchen, and I was only curious to see what it was. I didn’t think you’d be here.”Truth. “Your Excellency.”
Did she believe me?
It didn’t look like it.
“It was luck, then. It was Time. We’ve been asking to see you since the last time we did,” Mimi said. “We were hoping you could tell us that Reggie was…okay.” Her voice broke.
“I’m sure he is, little ticker. They’re all veryokayin the Everstill.” She giggled. “Or so I’m told.”
Mimi began to cry.
She hid her face behind her hands, and she was sobbing, shaking, mumbling incoherent words into her palms, and the White Queen flinched at the sight.
“Oh, dear—is she all right?” she whispered, while Seth and Anika grabbed Mimi by the shoulders and moved her farther back, tried to console her. “Anyhour, tickers—as you can see, I am quite busy in my free time. I have to go overallthese cups before the sun returns to the sky again. Off you go!” she sang, and the others watched her like she’d grown an extra head on her shoulders.
“Busy with what? Everything in here is already spotless.” I looked down at the floor, the shiny white tiles. “Not a speckof dust exists in this room.” She looked at me, not kindly. “Your Excellency.”
“We unwon the games,” Levana told her. “And-and the Red Queen?—”
“What about the Red Queen?” the queen asked, and maybe it was just me, but her voice was sharp as a knife just now.
“We…we saw her,” Levana said. “We dreamed about her. All of us.”
“She didsomething,” Seth said reluctantly.
“Something?” She chirped the word like a bird.
“Yes,something.We don’t know what.”
Something stinks like rotten seconds,said the voice in my head.
The White Queen sighed, brought her hands together. “I’ll speak to my sister, I promise,” she said. “The something was most likelynothingbut a dream, I’m sure.” She batted her long white lashes at us. “The Red Queen sometimes has an ill temper, true, but she’sverykind at heart, I assure you. I’ll look into it myself!”
Would she, really?
I doubted it. Very,verymuch—and I didn’t even know why.
The others looked at one another, confused. Some relieved. Only March was as suspicious as me.
