Please, please, please…
The Eighth Hour lit up. Played its note. Faded away again.
The Thirteenth Hour did not hum or activate.
We all watched, stunned still as the Ninth Hour faded, and gave way for the tenth.
The sound it let out was wrong—way too low. The note of the First Hour. That’s because the plates alone hadn’t made the notes. It had been the bulbs all along that processed the sounds and created the triads that formed those sequences.
The Twelfth Hour rang, and the thirteenth remaineddark, and the First Hour started with a much higher pitch—that of the seventh.
We watched still, unable to move, as the hourglasses lit up, and every time the note didn’t follow the correct order, we waited for the Thirteenth Hour to start humming. It never did.
A full circle, and the hours were all alive. The bulbs all turned once more, and the timesand dripped down grain by grain—and they were working. They were all working, while the thirteenth remained dark.
Everybody screamed at the same time.
Hugs and cheers and laughter and tears—I couldn’t look away from the lights as they moved from one hourglass to the next, exactly at the right time.
Is it over yet?asked a voice in my head, one I was fairly sure I’d never heard before. It wasn’t the Cheshire, but it was definitely male.
I don’t know,I thought, a second before something moved in the distance, beyond the Fifth and Sixth Hour.
Doors opened, large, groaning, and the light behind them chased the darkness away.
I released a long, long breath, and with it all my fear.
Scratch that,I said to the voice.It is.
24
It was almost dawn when we walked out from those same gates, into the same arena. The sun was just about to unrise, and the sky was almost completely dark on the other side of the world. Beyond the screaming, cheering audience. Beyond the White and Red Queen, whom we could just see as dots of color in the distance, standing in their glass box and clapping their hands, waving at the crowd that was losing their minds as they screamed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, your Royal Clocklinesses—the second Backward Turning Trial has been officially unwon!”
Over.It was over.
We’d unwon the second trial.
And the moment those words registered in my mind, just like last time, I began to fall.
Flashes took over my mind. I saw broken glass and timesand everywhere. I saw lights and heard the melody, heardlaughter,and I could have sworn to you I recognized all the voices of the Hands.
I recognizedmine,too. We had been laughing. All of us, together.
I remembered for a split second. I remembered how it had been then, how different, and how much of it was still the same.
I remembered—and then the darkness lifted from my eyes, and the arena came back into view again.
Gone, gone, gone.Everything, all those memories—they were gone, and they left behind imprints all over me, yet I hadn’t passed out this time. I was still awake. My legs still held me, and the crowd still cheered.
I looked at the others, confused, so sure that I was just about to say something, but there were no words on my tongue now. No words in my mind, either. Just…emptiness.
And the way they looked about themselves told me they felt the same, too.
Elida was proud, she said. We’d been brave, she said. She always knew we’d make it, she said.
Then she urged us to move, to get to the palace, to follow the six soldiers dressed in silver armor who would make sure we were safe until we were inside the palace’s doors.
