“I keep knowing things I don’t remember learning.” And it was harder to deal with than I’d have imagined before.
Before the curse.
“And I keep remembering all the things I don’t trust,” said March in wonder, scratching his chin for a second as he looked at the floor.
“What was it?” I wondered, drinking in the sight of him, half of me yearning to get closer, the other half insisting I keep distance between us at all costs. “What did you see?”
“You,” said March. The sun fell on his back like it was appreciating his silhouette. I wanted to melt onto him the same way, too, but I didn’t dare. “You’re just…sitting there.” His eyes closed for a moment, but moved fast under his lids, like they were searching for something—a thought. A memory he’d collected. “There’s grass underneath you, and a lake ahead. Large, green, shaped like an octopus.” Tears stung the back of my eyes suddenly. “The sky is not dark but not light either. Just a mix of all the colors, and you’re…you’re breathing.” He looked at me again, eyes opening slowly. “You just exist.”
Inside me something cracked, something empty that had been full before. I knew the lake he spoke of—it was indeed shaped like an octopus, with a round head and eight separate legs. Father had told me that when I was little and we used to go for picnics by the lake at least once a week. The image had stuck in my head. It was close to home, possibly not even ten minutes away from my house, and I went there often by myself when I grew up.
Sometimes I stayed for hours.
Sometimes I just caught a glimpse of the surface of the lake and headed back without even breathing in the scent of the water.
Before I started crying for real, I pushed myself off the door and went to March, a stranger in my own skin. But he was wearing a short-sleeved red shirt, and if I turned his arm just a little, I could see if the images that had popped in my head on the trial had been real. I grabbed his left hand and he didn’tstop me. I pulled up his arm, then turned it just slightly to see a small cut on either end—right where the pain had been.
“I saw you, too,” I whispered and touched the faded scars with my fingertips. The one below his forearm was almost completely covered by hair, but the other, where the tip of the blade had come out of just below the crook of his elbow, was very visible. “It hurt here. You had your arm up and the knife went right through. There were screams. I…” My own eyes closed. “There was blood.”
For a moment, March froze in place, and when I looked up at him again, I found him staring at my hands where they touched his scars.
I expected him to be mad. I expected him to want to get away from me—that’s what I’d felt when he’d seen me hurting.
But March only shook his hand, grabbed my hand in his, and said, “I was wondering how I got these scars just yesterday. I don’t remember any of it.” Just like I didn’t remember the thingshesaw. “Who was it? Who stabbed me?”
“I don’t know. All I saw was a silhouette, heard the scream, felt the pain.” And the blood—but I didn’t want to say that again.
Our eyes locked. I wanted to move away but didn’t. His hand was wrapped around mine and it was so warm. “Why do you have my memories, Velvet?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Why do you have mine?”
“Maybe…for safekeeping?” he offered, but we both knew that wasn’t it.
“The White Queen is lying about something,” I said instead.
He moved slightly to the side, ran his hand up my arm, making the blood in my veins come to a boiling point just like that.
“Everybody’s lying about something,” March said. “Did you really not know she was going to be in that room?”
“I didn’t.” But it hurt to know he hadn’t believed me, and I wasn’t sure why. He had every right to be suspicious. I was suspicious of him, too, no matter what it felt like to be near him.
“So, who told you about the room?”
My eyes closed. The grin was there, in the center of my mind.
March’s fingers touched below my chin, and he slowly raised my head. “What is it you’re not telling me?”
A lot of things.
“I didn’t know she was going to be there. And I don’t know why she was…doing what she was doing.”
“I think she’s a Diamond. They have obsessive compulsive disorders when it comes to cleanliness and polishing things,” March said. “It’s my best guess.”
“But whyhere?” I wondered.
“There are a lot of why’s to go around.” He looked down at my lips like that again, like he wanted to eat them just like he had that red velvet cupcake. “But I still don’t know the taste ofallof you.” He slowly moved closer and closer, and I was hyperventilating on the inside, but on the outside I was completely frozen. Refused to move an inch. “I want to fix that, Velvet. I want to know so badly.”
His lips were right there, just slightly touching mine. My eyes closed and I surrendered.Fix it, yes, fix it,I thought, but at the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was wrong.
