And the third Spade…
“I am absolutely, undeniably,almosttwelve-hours certain that winning would be more difficult than unwinning,” Seth said, deep in thought, yet his fingers tapped against the edge of his plate relentlessly.
“Precisely,” said Helen. “And theywilltell us how we won. They have to—it would be terribly inconvenient for them if we fail.”
Except if they were going to, they would have by now. They’d be here, right here, because if the Great Clock stopped at eight-thirteen, we only had about thirty minutes left.
All of us turned and stared at the polished doors for a beat. Then another.
Neither opened.
“Wewon’tfail,” Anika insisted, and there was red on her cheeks now, like she’d finally forced herself to snap out of the terror she was feeling until a moment ago. “The White Queen wouldn’t lie to us, and we’ve been here before, andwe won.Do you understand?” She even smiled a little, and it looked genuine enough. “We won once! We can win again.”
“Unwin,” said March, and the hair on my forearms rose. “And there’s only eleven of us now.”
Just like we’d looked at the doors, we turned to the emptychair right next to him, where the Spade would have been sitting if he were still alive.
Dead.
A dead Hand in the Turning Trials.
That had never happened before. For as long as the Trials had existed, some a hundred and fifty years ago, nobody had ever died. The games could be dangerous, but never life-threatening. The point was to give and take, and to create connections between the people of the Clockrealm, because the more different kinds of magics interacted in the same place, the more Sparetime was released in the air.
That was the whole point of the trials. Always had been.Notdeath.
Yet the chair remained empty, and we remained eleven.
“Whowas he?” someone whispered.
“How could we have just…forgotten?”
“Was he nice, I wonder?”
“Was he evil?”
“How can one possibly be both a Timekeeper and a Spade?!Madness, I tell you…”
But for me, the most important question remained, “Why?”
So confusing.
We looked at our plates, the table, ourselves. We looked, but we didn’t see an answer anywhere.
That’s when the doors opened all of a sudden, and the sharp laughter of the White Queen sounded from somewhere close by. My stomach turned and my hands fisted, and all of us were on our feet in a second.
That feeling of dread returned, even when I told myself that everything was going to be okay. Even when I reminded myself that I was still me, no matter how strange I felt—I’d seen it in the mirror with my own eyes.I will be okay.
Still, the empty chair on the other side of the table mocked me:no, you’re not.
5
“Stand still, the lot of you. Stop fidgeting.” A look back over her shoulder, white lashes batting. “My dearest little tickers,” the White Queen cooed.
My hands were shaking.
My entire body was shaking.
“Your Excellency, why are we here?” asked Reggie, and his voice shook, too. Broke halfway.
