Nobody did, though. I made it all the way to my room without another attack, and I locked the door twice for good measure, before I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for hours to come.
The next evening,Lida came to wake me by banging on my door with both her fists.
“I knocked politely.Twice,” she told me when I unlocked the door, disoriented, still dressed, expecting to find a monster coming to eat me in her stead.
Apparently, thesurpriseshe so kindlydidn’treveal to me still, was coming soon, and that’s why we were only going to Master Talik’s class today, and we were skipping Asha’s training altogether. I asked why at least a dozen times, but she didn’t say. She just demanded I change my clothes and hurry out of the room to eat dinner before class.
Elida was waiting for us in the hallway, too, and she insisted we hurry as well, and the other Hands were just as confused as I was. Just as swollen-eyed and sleepy. I would imagine none of them got any decent sleep since last morning, after what we saw from that heartlock in the library.
Shivers erupted all over me at the reminder, and when March came out of his room just as I walked past it, I didn’t need to even turn to know that his eyes were on me.Alltheir eyes were on me at one point or the other, but right now none of them watched me the way they did last morning. None of them wanted to push me around or pick a fight with me, call me names.
Russ looked just like he always did, and Anika seemed perfectly fine, too. No red on her cheek and she wasn’t holding the side of her head anymore, but she did flinch when she caught me looking at her during dinner once.
I wasn’t angry. I didn’t think any of us were angry at this point—we’d already seen too much. Reggie’s memoryweighed over all our shoulders. The face of Silas, his smile, his magic, the way he’d looked at Reggie…
How would a boy likehimput a curse on the entire realm—and for what?Why would he, when he’d so clearly proved with his actions that he cared more about the life of another than his own? He’d used his magic to shield Reggie while he’d been stabbed by those knives in two places himself.
What reason would a being likethathave to want the entire realm destroyed? Because Reggie was alive when he cast the curse, and Silas must have known it. If he’d gone above and beyond, had risked revealing his identity in the garden instead of risking Reggie’s life, how could that same person then turn around and try to kill—not just Reggie, but the entire world?
The others thought it, too. I doubted any of them had come up with an answer yet.
At the workshop, Elida was with us, watching us from the back like a hawk. When it was my turn to go to the main table with Master Talik as he demonstrated how to disconnect a clock-bomb, I took my backpack with me, just in case. The Hands might have not been looking at me wrong today, but they had just last morning. If it hadn’t been for March intervening when Russ tried to attack me, I wasn’t sure how the morning would have ended. Certainly not like it did.
But I still didn’t trust them, and I kept the heartlock with me. Half of me was convinced that I should return it in the same box I took it from. It wasn’t my heartlock nor was it my memory. Whatever the reason I’d drawn that device, I’d seen all there was to see in it.
I had yet to make a decision.
March sat with me on the last row today, too, and I felt his eyes on the side of my face most of the time, but I never dared to look back. What I said to him last morning cameback to me with every heartbeat, and what he said to me still hurt. Stabbed at my chest like actual knives.
Traitor, thief—and ungrateful.
I wasn’t a traitor, was I? And I wasn’t a thief—I’d only borrowed the heartlock because I’d been curious. And I wasn’t ungrateful—Iwasthankful March had showed up at the library when he did.
But how could Isaythat when he kept telling me how he didn’t trust me every chance he got?
“All right, that’s all for today, boys and girls!”
The moment March was done watching Master Talik demonstrate which wires to cut when dealing with the clock-bomb, Elida was on her feet, clapping her hands, rubbing them together like she was suddenly excited.
Master Talik hardly glanced up as he started to gather the half-dismantled clock-bombs into empty boxes, and Elida rushed us all out the door. I didn’t care what the great reveal was or what thissurprisethey insisted on included. I just wanted her to get it over with so I could go to my room and be by myself, sketch, think, hopefully sleep until the next day arrived. The third trial was just around the corner, and the second one had already proved to us that what we learned in the past three days would most likely be perfectly useless. Whatever we would have to deal with, the best I could hope for was to be rested and well-fed going in.
At least that’s what I thought.
Then Elida stopped us just as we reached our dorms and stood before us with a nervous grin, her hat over her head still, her cheeks slightly flushed.
“On behalf of our queens, The White and the Red, please allow me, dearest Hands, to formally invite you to the Backward Banquet that will be held today inyourhonor here at the Labyrinth, just before sun-unset.”
I thought at first I must have heard her wrong. Everybodyelse must have thought so, too, because they were all turning to one another—evento me—to make sure we’d all heard the same words out of Elida’s mouth.
“A banquet?You mean like…a party?” Erith finally asked.
“Exactly! Exactly like a party, except a veryspecialparty that we’ve gone over and beyond to make sure you thoroughly enjoy, while at the same time, of course, keeping you perfectly safe.” A wink.
Now I was even more confused than before.
Elida was acting strange—well. Stranger than usual. She was sweating, too, if I wasn’t mistaken. Even that wink looked painful, like she forced every fiber of her being to do it.
“Tell the queens I said thank you. I will not be going to a banquet today,” I said and turned around to leave.
