My skin was far too tight for my body.
“Sy, c’mon! Let me carry you,” Reggie kept saying. “Please, just let me…let me…”
He was crying, too. We all were.
“It’s almost over,” Silas said, taking Reggie’s hand in his, bringing it over the Timekeeper Clock.
“Who, Silas?” I thought I said. “Stop who?!”
His eyes flickered to me once, too dull, already lifeless, but they still held my heart perfectly still for a beat.
“The queens,” he whispered.
The next second, the ground groaned and shook like lightning had suddenly struck it.
A scream came from behind us in the distance. A bright white light illuminated the twisted shadows of the forest.
We were all on our feet, shielding Silas, hands raised, magic at the ready—though none of us would really know what to even do with it.
“Whatdid you do?!”
A voice, thin and sharp, assaulted my ears. A voice I knew well.
The white light grew closer and closer, and revealed her face with clarity. The White Queen looked murderous as she held up her hands over her head, glowing white.
“What did you do? I feel it in the air, I feel it—WHAT DID YOU DO?!”
Her scream could have been a monster’s roar.
“It’s over,” Silas said from behind us, and we had no choice but to step to the side, just slightly, so we could see him.
So he could see the queen, and the queen could see him.
She did.
Her eyes were two dark clouds, and her glowing hands shook as she slowly lowered them, coming closer and closer, half a step at a time. She looked like she wanted to eat Silas alive.
Holy Hour, she was a completely different person from the woman we knew.
“It’s already over. You can’t stop it now,” Silas said after a deep breath, and the queen smiled, but it was like her teeth were sharp and she wasreallya monster, not the White Queen.
“Impossible. You don’t have the power,” she hissed.
And Silas smiled, barely keeping his eyes open as he held onto Reggie’s hand. Reggie who looked just as lost as the rest of us, without a clue what was happening or what to expect.
“Why do you think I came here, Your Majesty?” Silas said. “I’ve used your Labyrinth to knit the magic together. It’s done. The curse took. The curse?—”
A gut-turning scream. All the questions that kept on piling up in my head disappeared.
Three things happened at once.
Silas hissed as if he was suddenly in unimaginable pain.
Calren’s face appeared between the trees as he came running, both his hands outstretched, his palms glowing with that same teal color that shot toward us like ribbons.
And the White Queen raised her hands over her head again.
The last thing I heard was her screaming—“NEVER!”
Then the white of her light became too bright, too loud, too warm, and my body was no longer my own.
I fell, the ground cold against my cheek, my mind begging itself to hold on a moment longer, just until something made sense. Just until we made sure Silas was okay.
Because whatever this was, whatever was happening here, there would be an explanation for it all. There would be answers, not only questions—but we had to get out of this forest alive first.
But no matter how hard I tried to cling to my senses, to see or hear orfeelsomething that wasn’t this scorching heatwrapped all around my body, I didn’t stand a chance. It was too powerful, and I barely had the means to resist to begin with.
My mind shut down—with Silas, March and the others in the very center, praying that I’d soon wake up and this would all turn out to be only a part of the game.
—THE END
