My eyes moved to the chair near Reggie. It was empty. Had the Spade traitor sat there?
The same questions filled my mind again. How had hemanaged to get into the trials if he was part Timekeeper? Which Spade in the history of the Clockrealm would ever bed a Timekeeper?
Who was he? What was he like?
Why-why-why?
Maybe we knew before. Maybe he told us, or maybe we just noticed. After all, we were all in this together, weren’t we? And it had taken us unkillingallof the clockbeasts for the forest to let us leave that clearing. I knew because I’d tried to slip away to see the arena while the others had worked. I hadn’t found it—but back then I’d just thought we were farther than I’d realized.
And that was why I was scratching the surface of the table with all my might as the numbers in my head spun.
“Blood on your hands.”
I stopped. Looked up at March who towered over me from behind my chair. His eyes were focused on my hands.
“I said, your hand is bleeding.”
Suddenly he grabbed my wrist, and brought my hand in front of my face when I refused to look away from him. It wasn’t that Ididn’twant to, just that I couldn’t.
But my thumb was indeed bleeding right under my nail—it seemed I’d pulled at it more than I realized, and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Oh.” I took my hand back down and he let me, but again, his fingers remained imprinted just below my wrist where he’d touched my skin round the sleeve of the suit.
Whoareyou?
“What do you have there?”
He hadn’t moved away. In fact, he stepped to the other side, to the edge of the crooked table, put those large hands over the corners, and released half his weight.
Like that, his shoulders looked even bigger. Like that, he smelled even better.
I looked up at him again, eyes wide and lips parted, three ticks until I got myself together.
“Nothing.”
His thick dark brows arched a little. “You don’t want to share?”
“I said, it’s nothing.” Andno,I didn’twant to share, but that was beside the point.
“You did figure out to set those clocks into the future,” said Anika from the other side. She and Erith were holding hands tightly as they looked at Levana, still crying, then at Russ, bent over the table like he couldn’t bear to sit up straight anymore. All his hair was as silver as the spoons over our heads.
“She did,” March said.
Because a grinning, talking cat gave me a clue.Of course, I said no such thing, mostly because the Cheshire wasn’t here anymore, and chances were none of them had seen it.
“So, tell me. What have you got there?” He looked down at the lines I’d scratched on the table again.
Some words begged to be kept inside. Others were already out of my lips in a rush.
“There’s twelve cups and only one teapot and one bowl of sugar. I don’t think the hour can be undone if we jam all the minutes together in a single cup. I think if we divide it more…” My voice trailed off.
“The hour will be so broken that it can’t be used anymore,” said March in wonder.
Who-who-who are you?!were the next words on my tongue that I successfully held back. It was just the questionhe’daskedme,anyway.
“Correct,” I said instead. “But I don’t know if it’s true.”
The others watched us, watchedhim.
