But March smiled. “Another time, then.” He grabbed the edge of the sketchbook, gave one last lingering look at the face of the Red Queen. “This is…incredible work.” And he closed it.
Not sure why it felt like I was reborn. Not because of what he said—just that I didn’t have to sit here and watch himseeall that I’d thought of him at one point in our lives.All that I still thought of him, practically against my will. I wasn’t ready yet.
“We’re going to have to do the second trial,” I said, and my voice sounded strange. Calmer than usual. Softer.
Notmydoing—just my body.
“There’s no way out,” he said with a nod.
“How is this not illegal?”
“The queens can make anything legal. They have all the power,” March said.
Unfortunately, he was right.
“What if we…what if one of us dies?” Because we’d all seen Reggie. He’d known since the beginning, since we first sat at that table. He’d known.
March looked at me like he might have a universe hidden in his eyes, and I caught but a glimpse of it. “You’re not going to die.”
He said it with such conviction that I believed it. Just like that, I believed him as if he was telling me that the sky was blue in daylight.
I wasn’t going to die.
“Neither are you.” I was convinced of this, too. Somehow.
With that out of the way, I grabbed the cupcake and bit into it. Tastier than I expected, which was why I ate half before I offered the rest to him.
March hesitated. Clear to see that he wanted to say no but couldn’t. He took the cupcake, and his eyes remained on my lips when he put it in his mouth.
He ate the whole piece in one bite.
Fuck.
I pulled my bottom lip in my mouth on instinct—maybe I had something on it that he was watching so intently?
When I did, he froze mid-bite for a split second and finally looked away.
“Why were you sitting outside my door?” I wondered a moment later when I found my voice, ignoring the heat that had climbed on my cheeks. But he was sitting there entirely too close, and the way his jaws moved as he chewed—why am I sexualizing chewing?!My mind was getting curiouser by the minute, but I still needed to know if he’d hoped I’d open the door.
“There was no other place I wanted to be,” he said, but I heard what hedidn’tsay out loud, too. I heard it when he thought:I don’t know why.
That was answer enough for me. I understood not knowing why just fine.
“It is possible that it was you?” I asked.
“Me, what?” March refused to look at me still.
I wanted to stop looking at him as well, so I stood up. Better to move, to give myself something else to see.
“The memories. You have mine, I have yours. Is it possible that you did it…before?”
March stood up, too. “No. It takes a lifetime of practice to even begin to reach for a memory. Transporting it from one mind to the other is notoriously difficult even for a seasoned Memorist. I couldn’t have done this if I’d tried.”
Exactly what I’d figured, too, but it was worth asking.
March wiped his lips with the back of his hand and stepped to the side of the table, closer to me. “Why are you always by yourself?”
“None of you like me. It’s easier.” For them, as well as for me.
