The whole world came to a halt.
The words popped in my head one after the other, and while they did, my limbs froze, my lungs emptied. I couldn’t breathe at all because I was too busyseeing.
With eyes that were not my own, I saw fire, and a long rod, and glass at the end of it, molten like liquid amber. The heat coming off the furnace was almost unbearable, yet the rod turned steadily in these big, strong hands—not mine—the weight of it shifting with every subtle motion. The fire kissed the edges of the molten glass at the end, keeping it soft as the hands continued to rotate the rod to stretch its form.
With a nose that wasn’t mine I smelled the ashes and the almost acidic scent in the air.
With ears that weren’t mine I heard the spin-spin-spin of whatever that rod was attached to—maybe a chainrattling against the floor?—as well as the buzz of magic.
“Stuck in time and forced to unwin a trial?”
Time Himself must have spit me back out there at that table—or maybe it was just that voice. March’s voice that some part of me insisted I’d heard before.
I breathed and air slid down my throat with ease, and my mind was divided between what I saw now and what I sawthen,those hands that spun the rod. They werehishands—I knew because I’d seen them in the morning while he fisted them so hard his knuckles remained white. They were the same hands.
Curiouser and curiouser.
I’d never seen fire burning the way it did in that furnace. I’d never seen spinning rods or melting glass. I’d never seen or smelled or heard—yet the visuals in my head were so crisp I could have beenthereright now.
But I wasn’t. I washere.
“Did any of you consider thatthismight be the actual trial?” asked Russ the Diamond.
“The Turning Trials were never played backward,” said Levana the Heart.
“But this time could be different. This time, they could be trying out new things. Maybe they designed the trials that way, and they are only calling itunwinningto confuse us. Maybe it’s all part of the game,” Russ continued with his mouth half-full of peas.
Reluctantly, I reached for some food because my body demanded it. I feared I wouldn’t be able to function for much longer if my stomach kept growling like a beast.
“I asked my maid. She said it’s all real, and that the entire realm is in panic,” Levana said. “If we don’t unwin, in two weeks the Great Clock will lose order.”
My heart skipped a beat. I filled my mouth with vegetables again.
The Great Clock losing order meantthe end, indeed.
“And you believe her? She could be in on it,” Russ insisted. “I say it’s all part of their plan.”
“What if it isn’t, though?” Mimi the Club asked, and the way she was moving her hands up and down like she was trying to shake something off her fingers turned them into a blur. “Holy Hour, what if it really is all real? My maid said the same—that they don’t remember how, but the trials are over, that wecompletedthem. Guys…” She stopped, grabbed the edge of the table and leaned closer, looked at all of us with those wide green eyes. “I’ve never-ever-reven met any of you before.I swear it on Time.”
Shivers rushed down my body, just because I could have sworn I’d never met her, either.
Did I believe her or Lida oranyone? That was the real question. Did I believe in any of this?
It wasn’t a dream, that was for sure. But was this part of the trials, like Russ insisted?
“We don’t know for sure,” said a boy—not March. I stared at my plate as I chewed and chewed, the food perfectly tasteless to me.
“We do,” said someone else.
“Wedo not,”said a girl—could have been Helen the Heart.
“We—”
“The queen.”
The two words slipped my lips when I could have sworn I’d locked them in my head tightly, had thrown away the key. Yet they were there now, out of me, in the room, in their ears.
The Hands stopped. Looked at me.
