The only thing unbroken. The only thing clean.
“Let’s spread out,” Mimi said. “Let’s try a few, see if we can figure out what they want us to find.”
“The speaker said we would need to return what wasonce borrowed,” Erith said. “I have…I have memories in my head that aren’t mine.”
Something about those words.
My stomach twisted in rhythm with the music from the broken strings and the ruined keys. I looked at March one more time, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was still staring at the masks.
“Me, too,” said Levana. “It’s one of the few things I remember clearly. I think it’syou, Seth.”
“Butwhy,though?” Seth whispered. “Why remember foreign memories clearly, when our own are gone? Because I remember you, too, Levana.”
“Maybe because they aren’t ours?” March whispered. “Maybe whatever took our memories couldn’t take what was never ours to be taken.”
“Guys, let’s just do this. We will be okay. Let’s just get this over with quickly, and then we can sit and talk outside,” Mimi said, then patted the front pocket of her suit. “I have the notebook right here. We’ll talk.”
We’d talk.
Yes, we would. We’d figure out whatever was happening here, and why.
“All we have to do is unwin this last trial. It’s the last one,” Anika said with a nod. “And it’s going to be easy. The first trials are always the easiest.”
She was right about that, too.
“We unwin this no matter what, and then we walk out of here, free. We walk right out of the Labyrinth,” said Erith, and we all nodded.
“Together,” Mimi said.
“Together,”we all chanted in unison.
Then we turned around, and we spread around the room.
I thought March would be behind me but when I looked, he was already moving to the other side. I wanted to runafter him—his proximity grounded me, and I needed his warmth to function properly, but he was right to want to be by himself.
We needed to finish this on our own. Each one of us had to unwin for all of us to unwin.
Freedom had never been closer.
So, I got to work.
The figures made of light were jumping all around me, still trying. Their hands went right through the masks, but when I jumped for the one over me, my fingers wrapped around the edge of it, and the thread holding the mask extended with me when I landed on the floor again.
The effect was immediate.
One second I was looking at a figure made of light, half faded from existence, wearing a dress and jumping impossibly high to try to reach a mask, and the next, the ballroom blinked away. I was instead sitting on a narrow windowsill made of grey stone, looking out at a place I’d never seen before, with so many tall buildings I couldn’t see beyond a few feet ahead.
Tower after tower after tower, some lighter, some darker, all of them high enough to reach the clouds.
I could only think ofoneplace that could look like this, and it was the Court of Clubs. They built all their buildings vertically, tall, and with as many stairs as possible so they could be on the move constantly, all the time. So that they could always have stairs to climb up and down from.
Beside me sat a little girl, maybe five or six years old, her skin a rich brown, her eyes light and as clear as the sky above us. My own hands were brown, too, which surprised me, like I’d forgotten that I was looking into someone’s head—and I knew exactly whose.
Mimi, because the little girl sitting beside me, looking up at me now, was a copy of her. Same face, same nose, sameeyes. A miniature Mimi, showing me a silver pocket watch as she giggled.
“Did I get it right?”
The sound of her voice shook me to my core. The rawloveand happiness that came over me—Mimi’s not mine—consumed me, and I jumped back. I had let go of the mask, thankfully, and in another blink, the ballroom came into my view again. My ears were full of the sound of the distorted melody, and the faceless figures were still reaching for the masks.
