“Come—let’s go say hello to our friends, deary.” The White Queen gently turned the Red Queen to the side and toward the crowd, while she flinched.
“Friends,” she muttered, then drank all the wine in her glass in one gulp before she simply raised her hand andlet it go, right there in the air.
Lightning fast, one of the soldiers who was behind her reached and grabbed it long before it hit the floor.
The Red Queen gave us one last look, as dark as can be, full of malice. Then she moved through the crowd that had parted to let her through, and whatever magic had held me prisoner until that second began to release.
“Please forgive my sister, little tickers. She doesn’t much like parties,” the White Queen said, her hands together in front of her chest,her eyes wide and sparkling. “You all looksolovely. Enjoy the rest of the banquet!” And she basically glided away from us and toward the crowd, no soldiers following her movements, only her.
“Your—”
“No,” March and Helen said at the same time whenLevana began to call after her. I’d wanted to do the same. Ifshewas here, the Red Queen wouldn’t be, I figured. If the White Queen was with us, we would be fine, wouldn’t we?
“We can’t trust anyone,” Seth said under his breath. “Not right now.”
Shivers ran down my back, ice-cold. We looked at one another, and we were all equally confused, equally terrified.
They remember,I wanted to say. As did they, but we kept our lips sealed.
Then Elida appeared at the edge of the table as if thin air just birthed her. “Why are you all on your feet?! Either dance or sit down, everyone!”
Nobody danced.
When we sat, nobody said another word until the banquet was over, and the floor finally slid down to the ground again.
34
When Elida took us back to the palace, we waited until we were sure she was gone, then gathered at the end of the hallway, in front of my bedroom door and Mimi’s, to talk.
The others had just as much to say as I had thoughts in my head. We stood in a circle, and I had my shoes in one hand and my scarf in the other, exhausted already by the day, but restless, too.
“Theyknow,” said Helen, hands on her head as she shook it.
“Maybe he was just drunk. Maybe he didn’t know what he was saying,” said Seth.
“What about theotherguy then? I swear it—he remembered me,” said Anika. “The way he was looking at me—herememberedme.”
I believed her.
“Why, though?”
“What reason would they have to keep it from us?”
“Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone if they told ushowtounwin the trials, so we could do a quicker job and be done with it?”
“Because the Great Clockisstuck…”
“And the magic of the trialsismoving backward, and the sun is unsetting and unrising every day…”
“But it makes no sense!” Levana hissed.
She was right. It didn’t.
“It could still be that unwinning is actuallywinning—they’re just wording it differently to make this more interesting for the people. I’ve said this since the beginning,” Russ said, then flinched, like he already knew he was wrong.
“If this was just the normal trials, they wouldn’t have remembered how we were, how much we’ve changed, or what price we had to pay for whatever party we went to then,” Erith said.
“What do you think the price was, guys?” Mimi whispered.
