“The Great Clock isn’t moving. You can see it.Everyonecan see it, regardless of what you remember. Do they teach you in your court about what happens when the Great Clock is stuck for more than two weeks?”
They did, in fact. “It falls out of order.”
He smiled and it was sharp as a knife. “The order that keeps this realm alive. Without it, it collapses.” And all the time the White Rabbit stole would snap back to its own place, and the Clockrealm would no longer have a timeline to exist in.
Yes, we all learned this. Since first grade—which had been plenty traumatic for all of us.
“How?” March said, inviting my eyes to his again when he moved, dragged himself closer and closer until he was right in front of me. Again, he pulled one leg up, tucked the other beneath it. The tip of his boot touched mine, and when he rested his arm over his knee, our fingertips nearly touched, too.
Electricity charges went up my arm at the almost-contact.
“How were you going to accept that, even if the magic of the Labyrinth would have let you leave?”
The magic of the Labyrinth,he said, and it did make a lot of sense. Why nobody had stopped me. Why there weren’t guards everywhere. If unwinning these trials was as important as the White Queen said, they would have made sure that we stayed put, wouldn’t they?
Unless they knew they didn’t have to. Unless the magic of the Labyrinth did it for them.
“Answer me, Ora. How?”
This is the first time you’ve said my name.And I could havesworn I’d heard it before—from those lips, that tongue, that very same voice.
I met his eyes. “I didn’t think about it. I didn’t…I didn’t want to believe it was real.”
Something in his expression shifted, but I wasn’t sure what. “I don’t trust you.”
Not a surprise. “You don’t trust anyone.” He hadn’t trusted the White Queen, nor the others in the forest, nor Elida the Royal Timekeeper.
This didn’t surprise him, either. “I trust what I see.”
“Then how do you not see how wrong this whole thing is?”
Close. He was so close. His eyes were on my face, on my forehead and nose and lips. He didn’t move, didn’t come closer, and I wanted him to, just so maybe I could understand.
March didn’t answer.
“How many freckles are on my face?” Words, slipping, falling right out of my mouth in my own voice, when I hadn’t even planned to speak again.
He didn’t hesitate this time. “Forty-eight.”
I had the urge to run to a mirror and count just to see if he was right, but I didn’t really need to. He didn’t trust me, he said as much, but I trusted him for whatever reason.
“I see you, too,” I said, and the night must have been holding its breath because I could have sworn time wasn’t passing just now.
He arched that brow so subtly. “You see me?”
I raised a finger to my temple. “In here.” He was in my head, too. “You’re making something with glass. It’s…it’s on this rod, and it’s spinning, and there’s a fire burning in a furnace. You’re…happy.” But more than that— “You’re proud.”
Countless seconds ticked by before March even blinked.
“And you’re sad,” he then said, and it was like a knife to my gut. “You’re alone, angry. You’re screaming.”
Alone. Angry. Screaming.
It all fit so well with the idea of myself that it terrified me. And the fear made me angry in return. The idea that he really did see me the way I saw him made me want to set fire to this whole place. The idea that hefeltme the way I felt him.
No, no, no, no—because that side of me was for me only. Nobody knew. Nobody wouldeverknow—that’s how it was supposed to be. And now this stranger was sitting here, telling me that he saw everything I worked hard to hide?
Time’s Teeth, I wassoangry so suddenly that I regretted having told him anything. Having spoken a single word to him, no matter what hefeltlike.
