Seth’s room was identical to mine. It had its own bathroom, virtually the same wardrobe, the same lamps and clocks, the same nightstands. It was easy enough to gather all my things—I didn’t have much to begin with. Then, Seth ran from his room to mine to bring over his stuff, and he ran from my room to his to bring my stuff here—and he looked reborn by the end of it. Fully charged.
Movement really added a glow to his skin.
When I closed the door to unpack, Mimi was just bringing the last of March’s things to his new room, too. Right next to mine.
We’d have a quarter of the day off, the queen said, to rest from the trial, to try to relax before Elida came to take us to our next lesson. I was thankful that Seth had asked me to switch rooms because putting my things in place and rearranging where I wanted everything to go—I even switched which side of the bed I’d sleep on, and put Jinx’s picture on the nightstand to the right—proved to be very distracting. It brought me peace, didn’t let me dwell too much on my reality, and by the time I was done and sat on the bed, the sunwas already higher up in the sky, warm, filling my new room with a gorgeous golden hue.
I opened a window, looked outside into the forest that stretched for maybe half a mile behind this side of the palace. Beyond the tall fence was the city of Neverwhen with its big buildings, steaming towers, with its people from all over the realm.
I wondered where the palace of the queens was.
I wondered why the White Queen needed to hide in some room behind the kitchen here in the Labyrinth and clean dishes that were already polished. And in herfreetime, no less.
I wondered if March was done putting his things in his place in his room.
And just as I finished that thought, I heard the sound of a window opening, and his head came out some ten feet away from me.
The way my heart jumped. The way my stomach fluttered. The way my mind became perfectly blank when our eyes met.
Sunlight looked very good on him. It made his eyes look more orange than red and gave a deeper reddish hue to his dark hair, and gave his skin a golden tint, too.
“Waiting for me?”
His voice was like music to my ears.
I wanted to sayno.I wanted to sayyes.
I said nothing at all, and a moment later, he disappeared.
A long sigh left me.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,”I quoted Mimi from that first night I’d seen her wandering around the grandfather clock.
Then came the knock on the door.
Before I understood what I was doing, I fixed my hair, combed through it with my fingers, put it behind my ears,and I made sure my purple tunic didn’t have any wrinkles on it. When I opened the door, my body did the same thing as before, like I was surprised to find him there when I wasn’t. Like I hadn’t known for a fact that he was going to come to my door in a minute.
“I said,were you waiting for me,Velvet?”
Velvet.
I wasn’t sure why I liked that name. It wasn’t even a name—just a word.
“Only because I was curious about what you said in the kitchen.” That was the first thing that popped in my head—his whisper while we’d been going to see the room beyond. He said,I saw you again.
March grinned. “Is that all?”
“Yes. That’s all.”
“Well, then. If you want to know, you’ll have to invite me inside.”
The teasing in his voice made me want to smile. I bit the inside of my cheek instead and nodded, stepped aside. “Come on in. The room’s new, anyhour.” Yet somehow the memories of the last time he’d been in my bedroom had come with me and all my things. Maybe Seth had unknowingly transported them here with everything else.
“Maybe you were here before,” said March as he entered, took a single look around, then stopped his eyes on me when I closed the door. “Maybewewere here before.”
Goose bumps all over my forearms. “No, I don’t think so. Not inthisroom.”
A second ticked by. I pressed my back against the door and sighed again, trying to release some of the tension but failing. It was too deep in me.
