That’s when I realized that I wasn’t meant to findmymask, but March’s. I was supposed to findhismemories to return, not mine.
“Guys, it’s working!”
I jumped around to find Anika and Erith standing face to face, each putting a mask on the other. They were smiling, they were laughing, they were chanting,it’s working, it’s working!over and over again.
And then the silver threads that outlined the eyes of the mask disappeared.
The next moment, Anika and Erith did, too.
Their bodies began to shimmer first, and then they turned into light—the same light that made the figures that continued to dance and jump without pause.
Before the minute was over, they had both blinked out of existence.
Cheers.
Clapping hands.
“Return the memories! Return the memories!” Seth shouted, his voice echoing a million times as he ran and jumped and grabbed another mask to see the memory it contained.
Meanwhile, across from him the thread holding the mask in Mimi’s hand snapped, releasing it.
She’d found the mask she needed to return, and I had, too.
I turned, my eyes searching between the partitions on the other side of the room, and my whole heart stopped when my eyes locked on March’s.
It hurt. Itburned.It stripped me of everything I was to see that look on his face.
Then he turned around and disappeared behind the closest partition.
I ran.
Cheering and clapping louder than the distorted music filled the room again—someone else must have returned the masks and the memories. Someone else must have blinked out of this ballroom. Someone else wasfree.
And March was standing there with his back turned to me at the very corner, his hands on the half-ruined wall, his head lowered.
There in his right hand I saw the mask he held. No threads were connected to it because it was the mask ofmymemories. The one that was finally going to set us both free.
He’d found it.
“March.”
He turned around reluctantly, and said, “No.”
I stepped closer, and we were hidden away by the partitions here, but we did hear another cheering from the center of the room.
Were all of the others already gone?
“We have to,” I said, and March shook his head, his eyes bloodshot, his breathing heavy.
“We don’t. It’s a trap,” he told me and raised the mask he held. “Howdid they get our memories like this? How did they know?! It’s a trap, Velvet. We mustn’t fall in it.”
I stopped a couple of feet away. “It’s the only way out. You saw,” I said, waving my hand back. “They’re free. They’ve unwon the game. We have to unwin, too. All the Hands must complete the trials.”
But March shook his head again. “Don’t you see? If we let them take this back, they’d have won! Whatever it is they’ve done here—tous—they would have won.”
“We can’t walk out of here if we don’t do this, Heartling.Please.” I stepped closer. “We’re so close. All we have to do is return the masks, and we’ll be free. We’ll be out there with the others!”
“There has to be another way,” March said, looking about us now, as if he were hoping a door would pop out of thin air somewhere. “I can’t…I can’t give that up, Velvet. Notyou.”
