Anika followed. “A boydiedtoday, or the-the-the game took him! We demand to speak to the White Queen this instant!”
I was curious to know what the woman would say next, but not surprised when she pressed her lips together. “I’m afraid their Royal Clocklinesses are busy with queenly things. And the game took a player, as is its right.”
The others exploded into shouts.
They all spoke at the same time, went closer, made more demands, but all I could think about was the terms that we’d been given to sign when we were accepted as applicants for the Turning Trials. It had been a long list revealing in detail what we were agreeing to, and it was the first thing we’d had to sign before the application process even began. I didn’t remember it word for word, but there was a clause in that long list that relieved the queens and the makers of the trials of all responsibility should a Hand lose their life during the games.
Because Reggie was dead—and he had known it was going to happen before it did.
While the others argued, I thought about the most important question, which washow.How much had he remembered from the game in forward? What had we really done at that tea party then?
“Silence, please, silence!” My ears rang and my focus snapped back to Elida the Royal Timekeeper. She was no longer grinning, but her cheeks were flushed and she had both hands raised. In her vest shone the chains, golden and silver, of what I assumed were three clocks hidden in her pockets. They said Timekeepers kept at least two clocks on their person at all times, one of them their Timekeeper Clock, but they never really said why.
The other Hands stopped talking. I stood up, too, went closer to see better. The way Levana looked at me when I stopped near March would have you thinking she daydreamed of my murder in her spare time.
“Now, please, be patient. Nobody quite knows what happened before the curse,” she said, and just like that, I had another word to add to my question:what came beforethe curse?
Not exactly helpful.
“But the game knows. The Great Clock knows what it requires to fulfill the counter-curse of our beloved White Queen. We have never questioned Time in the past, present or future, and we will not begin today.” Her voice was firm, loud. The Hands wanted to argue, opened their mouths, but one look at her face and they stopped.
Because we all knew exactly how right she was—the Great Clock was the reason our realm existed. If it needed something, it was going to have it, no matter how anybody felt about it.
And besides,Time devours everything—we were all raised with those words in our ears.
“When is the second trial?” I asked when another second ticked in silence.
The Timekeeper pressed her lips painted the same shade as her hair together again and pulled down the hem of her vest.
“The second trial, which is in fact the third, will take place in three days,” she said, and I, together with a few others, opened our mouths again to ask, but she raised her finger at us first. “No—wedon’tknow what the trial was, or what it will be. But don’t you worry, because the queens have a plan. Since you don’t remember anything since before you came to Neverwhen, we will be implementing all the lessons we’ve planned for this year’s Turning Trials—backward, of course, and starting tomorrow night—or yesterday, if you so please.”
Lessons.I didn’t plan to stay here for any lessons. I planned to find a way to leave just as soon as I was alone.
“So—now you will eat, you will bathe, and you will sleep, and tomorrow night—or yesterday”—she winked—“we will begin.”
Elida bowed her head for the third time, and in one movement spun around and basicallyranfor the open doors.
“Have we met you before?” I asked before I could help myself—that habit ofspeaking my mindwas truly a nuisance.
The Timekeeper stopped, turned her head. “Oh, no, I’m afraid not. My brother was your warden in the forward trials. I’ve never met any of you before.”
“And where is your brother now?” I was saved from asking by March this time.
Elida smiled and it looked considerably more painful than the smiles of the White Queen. Then she walked out the door without a word, and the help waved for us to follow them to the eating hall.
Just like that.
12
Isaid I wasn’t hungry, that I wanted to go bathe and sleep right away, and they let me go. When I was still in the bathroom, Lida came to my door with a tray full of food and a smile on her face, hercongratulations!the first honest one I’d heard since that nightmare ended.
When she left, I was thankful for the food she’d brought me. I was feeling way weaker than I’d realized now that the adrenaline had all worn off and I’d had a moment to sit and think. Without eating, I wasn’t going to manage to run away from this place, even with the Life Clock full of minutes for me to do magic with, now that I apparentlycould.
It had always been Jinx’s thing, magic. She was the creative one. She could come up with solutions and bring her creations to life with such ease. It came naturally to her. It never did to me.
So of course she’d made it her job to try to get me toloveit the way she did long before I was even encouraged at school or by my parents to give it a go. Meanwhile, I—like a true Spade—thought the price for it was much too high. Minutes of time for tricks—because that’s what magic was atits core: a trick that people believed. I would have rather spent that time searching. For more space, more life, more worlds. There had to be others out there. The universe was vast. So why waste all those precious minutes and hours doing make-believe?
Tonight, though, I was going to rely on magic the way I’d never done before, with a healthy dose of fear to keep me company as well, because I still didn’t know that it would work outside the game.
