Andthatwas something worth remembering.
Whenwe finally decided to go back to our rooms to sleep, rest, prepare for tomorrow’s trial, my heart was heavy. The tears kept pricking the backs of my eyes, and I kept blinking them away because I didn’t want the others to see me crying. I wanted to be strong for them, as they were for me.
But when March stopped by his room, it felt like something inside me was being ripped apart. He watched me walk away those few feet of distance, and I saw how hard he was breaking, too. I pulled my door open, and I stayed there justlike him, the words at the tip of my tongue, my soul laid bare for him to see.
I didn’t have the courage to say it, though.
With my head down, I walked inside my bedroom, feeling like a stranger in my body again.
But before I closed the door behind me, a hand wrapped around my own. Pulled me back.
March was in front of me, eyes wide, chest rising and falling as fast as mine.
“Stay with me,” he whispered, and he broke every wall I’d ever put around myself, even if I didn’t remember they existed.
I nodded, unable to say a single word yet, but he pulled me out of my room again, led me to his, his door still open. All the others were still by their thresholds, looking out at each other, waiting.
For a good moment, we just stayed there, spoke as clearly as we could with our eyes.
Then, one by one, we all walked into the rooms and closed the doors.
March never let go of my hand as he led me to his bed, his room identical to mine. We didn’t stop, didn’t speak, didn’t rush, only got in bed together, me with my back to his chest, him with his whole body enveloping mine from behind.
My head was on his arm, and my heartbeat chased the rhythm of his. We breathed at the same pace together, too, until we slept.
It never once occurred tome that I forgot to draw him like I’d planned.
I should have.
47
Iwas shaking.
Not a lot of things were worse than knowing you weren’t in control of your own body, that if you wanted—andI did—to turn around and walk away at any moment, you couldn’t. Your legs would move backward. They wouldn’t walk you away—they would take you straight to where you weresupposedto be, not where youwantedto be.
Nobody cared about what I wanted. Whatwewanted.
We were going to enter the fourth and final trial in a backward timeline, and that was that.
It made me rage.
It made me desperate.
It took all my hope and threw it at the wind.
And through it all, I could do nothing but stand there and listen.
“Hear, hear!” said the voice of the speaker who might not even exist at all. I’d never once seen his face, but I had heard his voice in my dreams just the night before, I thought, amplified by magic, made to sound like it was coming from everywhere at once.
The crowd cheered. The other Hands looked as hopeless as I felt. March stood beside me, and I instinctively reached for his hand—screw who could see. Screw what anybody would think.
He gripped mine without hesitation, too.
“A warm welcome to our Royal Clocklinesses, to you, ladies and gentlemen, and of course, to the stars of today—the Hands of the Turning Trials!”
Bile rose up my throat. I looked at March, and he was more pissed off than I’d ever seen him, I thought, eyes bloodshot, jaws locked. The others did, too. We all exchanged looks to try to remind one another of the night before. Of what we’d promised. What Mimi had written in that small green notebook.
Together.We were in this together, and once we were free of these trials, we would find the truth no matter the cost.
