He’d been sitting in the front row with three others, and suddenly he was moving toward the front of the room—no.
He was coming towardme.
Like a fool I looked up at him with my lips parted, not entirely sure if my eyes were telling me the truth. They were. March came all around my bench, stepped inside the seat, and sat next to me.
Sparetime save me, he was smiling.
“This isnear.” This time I spoke deliberately—and I was right. There were maybe two inches between our arms and thighs. It wasverynear, if you asked me.
“It is,” March confirmed, and with his arms over the table, he pretended to look ahead at Master Talik, who was speaking again, but suddenly I couldn’t focus on anything that wasn’t March’s face.
“You said,I’m not going anywhere near you again,remember?” It had only been hours ago. He couldn’t have possibly forgotten.
March turned his head toward me, and I forgot to breathe for a second. From so close up and with the bright lights overhead, I saw every detail of him like I hadn’t the morning before.
The heat on my cheeks turned up again. His eyes fell on my lips, and mine automatically went to his, and then I wasfalling down that hole in the ground, where even Time Himself couldn’t reach me.
March leaned in just a little, and I held my breath until he whispered, “I lied again.”
Then he sat back and turned to Master Talik.
I breathed. I looked ahead but didn’t see. My heart beat so fast I was terrified that he’d hear it, but it didn’t look like it. He’d have made a comment if he could.
“Liar,”I whispered before I could catch the word between my teeth.
“Traitor,” March whispered back, and he didn’t even try to hold back the smile.
Idid.
I tried.
I failed, and instead turned my head to the side as casually as I could so he didn’t see.
So, there I was, sitting at our first—orlast?—lesson, smiling while my heart pounded, and there were loads of anger and arousal barely contained under my skin, too. All because of this Heartling who liked glass, had somehow heard me screaming alone in the woods, and who lied without an ounce of shame or remorse.
“You mean to say that nopersonis in charge of the games? No person knows what goes on in the trials? No persondecidesor makes safety checks before throwing children in them?”
Cook’s voice was loud, and it snapped me out of whatever trance I’d fallen in so quickly, so fully. The smile on my face was behind the sudden surge of panic, too, and it helped in getting rid of it quickly.
When Cook’s words actually made sense to me, that helped in getting me to focus on Master Talik—while also somehow being perfectly aware of all the space March occupied on the bench next to me.
“We do know. Before the Turning Trials begin, we do know what the games will look like. We’re allowed inside to see the landscapes it creates.” A flinch on the old face. “Most times, that is.”
“So, why don’t you knowthistime?” Cook instead.
“We did. We knew. And now…we don’t. We’ve forgotten.”
Silence in the room for a tick.
“Even so, you must know what to expect based on the gears alone. You’ve been here two decades,” March said, and his voice was like music to my ears. It irritated me how everything about him appealed to all my senses, all my instincts, turned my own body against me.
What even was the deal with him? I’d surely met himbefore.It made sense that I had—we were Hands, and we’d been here two whole weeks before we forgot.Before the curse.
Now I was curious. I was dyingto know what it had been like when we sat in this classroom for the first time, if my eyes had insisted that there was no better thing in the world to look at than the profile of his face.
It was difficult, so very difficult to keep myself in check.
“You would be correct under normal circumstances, Hand,” Master Talik answered. “But nothing works properly during glitches, I’m afraid. The predictable becomes perfectlyunpredictable.”
