It was infuriating how calm he was. Howgenuine.
I decided to let it go, anyway, and reached for a piece of glass on the floor again—we’d be much faster if we both worked.
Except March wasnotplaying around. He seized my wrist yet again, and I’d have had something to say to that, except the moment our skins touched, something inside my mind cracked.
Maybe notcrackedbut was set free.
Suddenly I wasnotin the arena of the Labyrinth anymore but in a kitchen.
White and red tiles. White and red cupboards.
The blood was just red, though.
I heard the muffled screams. I felt myself moving, though I wasn’t. Through eyes that weren’t mine I saw a whole different world, and the silhouette of a man taller than me getting closer and closer—excepthewasn’t coming to me. I was going to him.
Arms raised—myarms.
March’s arms.
A second later, another scream sounded, and a knife buried in flesh, and the pain that shot from my forearm paralyzed every inch of my body momentarily.
March’s body.
Blood dripped, warm and smooth. Someone roared. My focus was on the blade of that kitchen knife that had cut through my forearm and come all the way to the other side.
March’s—March’s—March’s forearm.
Then I was spit out right into the arena, and I was kneeling on black tiles again, watching him watch me with those wide eyes, his hand still around my wrist.
“What?” he asked, confused.
I had yet to take a breath.
March let go of me, the amusement faded from his eyes, replaced by raw suspicion.Concern.
For me.
“Nothing,” I managed to whisper and dragged myself back a little. “Go ahead.”
Please, please, stop looking at me.
“Are you okay?” Another thing cracked inside me—this one a definite crack, without a doubt.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Carry on, I’ll watch.”
The concern grew. The suspicion grew, and I saw it as if I’d spent years measuring it in a different life. But March returned to collecting the pieces of glass, and I returned to trying to breathe without being too loud. To trying to see March’s left forearm while I touched mine, like the pain had really belonged to me. I felt it pulsating underneath my skin still. But the white suits they’d given us had long sleeves, and I couldn’t see March’s arm at all. I could only hope that that flash, that knife, that blood hadn’t been a memory, but just a figment of my imagination somehow. Nobody had stabbed him in a red and white kitchen when he’d raised his arm to protect himself—or someone else.Nobody.
“There,” March said after a while. “This is it. I think this is all the glass of the bulb.”
Time’s Teeth, I had never been more thankful for a distraction.
We looked up at the platform, at half the bulb that still remained inside. I stood up, shaking my numb legs, but I didn’t mind the sensation. The pieces of glass were all there, and so was the sand, spread all around the base of the platform.
“I’m going to transport the timesand in first, trap it. Then I’ll mend the glass,” I said absentmindedly.
From behind me, March said, “I’ll be here to catch you if something goes wrong, Velvet.”
I didn’t allow myself to reply at all. I just pulled out my Life Clock from the suit pocket, and I called for the minutes it contained.
