“Tell me. Why…why, Sy—why?”
Silas sighed. For a moment, they only stayed there, forehead to forehead, in each other’s embrace, breathing.
“Promise me, Reggie,” Silas then said. “Promise me you will never-ever-reven tell anyone. Promise me.”
A tick went by. The whole world held its breath—or maybe it was just me.
“I promise,” said Reggie without hesitation.
And the colors faded away.
29
Ineeded a moment.
No—I probably needed much more than one moment, but I was only going to take one.
The others were moving, talking, whispering. Crying.
I was crying, too. My cheeks were still wet and there was something gnawing at my insides, but I couldn’t tellwhat.The device was there on the floor, with those metal strings wrapped all around the glass ball again, the light still burning inside it.
But we’d already seen what it contained. We’d already seen what memory was inside it.
Reggie. Silas. Magic in a color that wasn’t supposed to exist at all.
I found myself sitting on the floor, but I wasn’t the only one. Most had sat, too, and they were staring into nothing, thinking. Trying to figure it out.
It wasn’t that hard. We already knew that Silas had been half Timekeeper. We just didn’t know that that would translate into the color of his magic as well.
Now we did.
“I know this,” Mimi whispered from where she sat on her legs on my right. “Iknewthis, I think—I knew them and I knew how they smiled and how they talked to each other, but then…I don’t.”
Yes. That summed it up very nicely.
“I think Reggie showed me that thing once,” Seth said, hands on his cheeks as he stared at the device with teary eyes.
“I think they were lovers,” Levana said. “It looked like it.”
Yes. It did.
“Who took the memory out of him, though?” Russ asked.
“Was it the queens?” Erith.
My stomach twisted.
Eyes on me all at once. “Where exactly did you get this, Ora?”
I wasn’tweirdoanymore, it seemed.
Pulling my sketchbook out of my backpack again, I held it close until I found the drawing of the device, then showed it to them. They all leaned in to see better.
“I saw it on Master Talik’s shelf. I recognized it because I drew this…before. So, I took it.” I closed my sketchbook again, put it in my backpack, and took out the library book. “I was trying to figure out what it was.”
I stood up and put the book on the nearest table—I’d have to come back to put it in its place tomorrow. Right now, I didn’t have the energy or the will.
Then I went and grabbed the device off the floor, too, while the others stood up.
