But whatever was in the air here that wouldn’t let me get up that fence was better at hiding—I couldn’t see anything no matter how hard I focused. No shimmer, no smell, no sound. A piece of nothing as hard as concrete.Magic,more powerful than anythingIcould come up with, even if I’d been twenty, even if I’d had a hundred minutes in that Life Clock. There was nothing I could do about it.
I wanted to rage. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry—because I’d thought it would be easy. I’d been so, so sure that I’d be home by this time the next day.
Instead, when my lungs worked normally again, I sat upand rested my elbows on my knees, closed my eyes and continued to breathe, because raging and screaming and crying wasn’t going to help me in any way.
“You’re a piece of clockwork, you know that?”
The voice that came from behind me made my heart pause—not just because it had caught me by surprise, but because it belonged to March.
The panic and the excitement came together and nearly suffocated me. I still had my breath held when I turned to look back, six-hours certain (or maybehopeful?) that I’d imagined it.
I hadn’t. He was standing there by a tree with his arms crossed and his shoulder resting against the trunk, watching me with a smile on his face that wasn’t pleasant at all.
He nodded his head up toward the fence. “So you were just going to run away?”
Heat on my cheeks—why? I had no idea.
Lies crossed my mind but none stuck. What would be the point?
“Yes,” I said.
March pushed himself off the tree, then walked past me and to the fence. Leaned back against it, stuck his hands in the pockets of his pants, and looked down at me—all perfectly casually.
Moonlight looked good on him, I noticed. It hid the shades of red and brown in his eyes but gave an unearthly glow to his hair and skin, like the moon was trying to compensate for muting his colors. It did a very good job.
“Why?” he then asked.
This confused me. “What do you mean,why?” It was an absurd question. “We’ve already done the trials. I didn’t sign up for another set—and a backward one at that.”
His eyes squinted. His suspicion grew and his jaws locked a little tighter—all details I could have easily imagined. Buteven so, they made me want to say something, say more.Convincehim that I wasn’t the monster he—and most likely Levana—thought I was.
“Look—this entire thing ismadness.We woke up at that table, clean and dressed up, missing one Hand. We walked out of that forest missing another. What do you think will happen in the next one if we actually play?”
Silence for a beat. March looked up, somewhere to the side, and I was stuck on the sharp edges of his jaw, the gleam in his eyes, the way the silver light bounced off his smooth skin and enhanced the curls of his hair. He wore black pants, and a dark red shirt that must have been made for him. It was tight around his wide shoulders, muscular arms and chest, then fell a bit loose around his waist and narrow hips.
But what I couldn’t figure out waswhyI continued to stare, analyze him in such detail, even when the rational parts of me insisted that I shouldn’t.
I simplycouldn’tstop.
“Are all Spades traitors, then?”
Slowly, March slid down the fence and sat on the ground. Like that we were almost eye level. He raised one leg and held his arm over it, and with his other hand he plucked grass blades from the ground.
Fluid motions. So slow. So damnconfident.
“I’m not a traitor,” I said.Please keep moving.
“But you were going to run away.”
“As shouldyou.” As should all the Hands.
An arched brow. “And doom the entire realm?”
My mouth opened. Even if I’d had something to say—which I didn’t because I’d made it a pointnotto think, and I hadn’t allowed myself to even consider what he was saying—he wouldn’t have let me.
“You were just going to run away and let the curse sweep up all of our time, kill everyone in the realm because youcan’t be bothered to care?” His voice was low, neutral, and he spoke like he was in no rush, only curious about the answer.
“We don’t know that there was a curse. We don’t remember?—”
