All that mattered was that we did not forget that green notebook.
And the people we’d already lost…what was the name of the girl who fell again?
Sweat on my brow. I didn’t remember.
“You have come to the edge of these trying times. You have traveled far along this winding descent. You have unwon what was once won, fair and square, and you stand now before the threshold of the final trial,” the speaker continued, then gave a moment for the applause to die down.
We were in the arena again, and behind us was the audience sitting in their tiered seats, and the queens were there, too, sitting on their high-backed chairs, only their box was covered in a thin white veil so we could barely make out their silhouettes.
The queens of the Clockrealm.
Something about them that I couldn’t quitecatch.Athought that flew so fast across my mind it was a complete blur.
“This is where threads end, our dearest Hands. Or…they begin again,” the speaker said. “In the place beyond this arch, you will find echoes of the past. To unwin, you will not need to take, but toreturnwhat was once borrowed.”
I looked ahead at the dome that had appeared inside the arena, made entirely of glass, except it was thick glass, half frozen, and you could see nothing but darkness inside it. The afternoon sun made the surface of it glisten like it was liquid just before I blinked, and the archway in the middle of it, some twenty feet ahead of us, had no doors, only darkness on the other side.
That was where it would all end. That was where we would finally be free.
The last trial.
Meanwhile the Great Clock stood atop the long tower just there in my peripheral, the hands stuck at eight-thirteen, and the Timekeeper Elida told us while she saw us down here today that it had been stuck that way since the backward trials began.
Funny thing about the Great Clock was that you could always see its face no matter what angle you looked at it from, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember the last time I’d looked.
All I remembered was that I’d woken up in March’s bed to a knock on the door, and the maid—Lida was her name, she said—had rushed me to my own bedroom to get ready.
“Go now—let us not keep you. The Great Clock awaits for the final unwin, and so do we. We will be watching closely, and we will be praying to Time. May all the seconds you need be with you, and may your time always be right!”
Applause.
Elida the Timekeeper smiled at us, and she was sweating so hard her entire face glistened.
“Come now, this is it,” she told us. “Come, let me walk you into the Ballroom.”
She waved for us to follow her. There were soldiers dressed in silver armor watching us on both sides, standing there on the green grass with their hands folded in front of them, like they expected us to run or something. How silly, when we couldn’t even try.
As if on cue, my legs took me forward.
Whatever magic was in the Labyrinth or underneath our feet in the machinery that worked without stop, it pulled my body forward and I was walking toward the glass dome whether I wanted to or not. There was no choice here—I was entering the final trial. We all were.
At least March was right beside me.
“Good-timing, guys. I will be praying for you,” Elida said, and she stopped some three feet away from the archway that seemed to lead into some sort of an abyss. “See you on the other side!”
Her voice was cheerful—too cheerful, and not genuine. March squeezed my hand, and we exchanged a look that didn’t really say much. What was there to say, anyway?
A whisper. A prayer. A soft cry. A deep breath from one Hand or another.
Without a word, we all walked into the darkness together.
Noneof us was sure what to expect, but when the Timekeeper saidBallroom,I expected some grand hall with red and white tiles, red and white roses, crystal chandeliers hanging on the ceiling.
What we found was something very different.
The darkness didn’t last for longer than a few feet. Thesunlight reached us through the ceiling eventually, and we found ourselves in a hallway set with black tiles, in front of a set of red doors, both open all the way. Beyond them was a ballroom, all right, except it was…in ruins. Covered in dust and cobwebs.
“What in Time’s Temper is this place?” Levana whispered as we crossed through the threshold.
