Silas added, “Maybe that’s a question you should ask your queens.”
Yourqueens.
It didn’t escape my attention how he continuously seemed to separate himself from…everyone, pretty much.
“Enough,” Calren said, slamming his cane a little harder against the floor. “You’re tired. You need to rest. You need to be prepared for tomorrow—and the day after.” The second trial, he meant. “Go, now. To your rooms. And don’t try to leave the palace in the middle of the night again.”
His every word was heavy. Final. And there really was no arguing with him—and what could Calren even do? He didn’t call the shots around here. If we weren’t allowed in thejunkyard, it was because of the queens.Theymade the rules, ultimately.
So, we nodded at one another, and we went to our rooms without so much as a goodnight or another glance Calren’s way. Which did make me feel bad because I really believed that he cared about our safety—but itreallywasn’t fair. If anything, being kicked out of that junkyard made me feel like a prisoner. Like my every move was being watched for real, and my freedom wasn’t my own.
That night, for the first time, I actually considered if coming to the Turning Trials had been a mistake.
The next night,when Calren saw us to our rooms after dinner, we waited a whole hour to sneak out, to make sure that even if he stayed outside to see if we’d behave, he’d get tired thirty minutes in and leave.
We all took our shoes off, too, as we made our way down the stairs and through the hallways, then hid in the shadows all the way to the junkyard.
But when we got there, we found the doors wide open, lanterns burning inside—new ones, while the old one, thebigone, was gone. It had disappeared.
“Hold,” said Silas, when Reggie made to walk inside, and he put a hand over his chest, too.
“There’s nobody there,” said Reggie, and he was right. There were plenty of lanterns now in the junkyard, on the piles and on the walls and even a couple on the floor. It was empty—no Timekeeper and no soldier and no help.
“Watch.” Silas leaned down to the ground, grabbed something—a small rock. Threw it at the open doors.
It didn’t go through.
Instead, it caught on thiswebthat became visible only for a second when the rock fell against it, made of strings of white energy—like a net. It threw the rock back, then disappeared again. Became perfectly invisible.
The rest of us were speechless for a moment.
“A layer,” Russ then whispered. “We use those against timewraiths.”
Timewraiths.The monsters who fed on magic.
They were protecting this placefrom usin the same way.
Funny, wasn’t it? A little bit sad. A little bit absurd.
I stepped closer, a hand outstretched to feel the energy. It was right there, the heat radiating by the layer of magic that most likely spread all around the junkyard walls, not just the doors. And they’d left the door open so we saw the inside, so we knew they knew we’d be here again.
The others approached, too, and we all felt the magic, all who needed to be convinced that this was real. They really were going to keep us out for doingnothing.
A bad feeling settled in my gut.
“Well, I guess the mechanical garden it is,” Erith said.
“And I have some good news,” said Seth. “I think I found the kitchen.”
Hehadfound the kitchen for real. After training earlier in the day, he’d pretended he wasn’t feeling well and had asked his butler to go get him water and crackers. He’d then followed him downstairs, all the way to a door behind the main stairway that wasn’t marked with anything, but it was indeed the kitchen. When we got there, it was empty.
A few low lights on here and there. A lot of space and appliances and cabinets. Most importantly, a lot of food in the cupboards and the multiple fridges.
I ate just to have something in my stomach and grabbed a jar of peanut butter when we went outside to the mechanical garden to hang outand get some air. It wasn’t the same, though. And we all tried to pretend we were in a good mood, that we weren’t afraid—for each other’s sake—but we were. Confused and afraid and not really sure what to expect going forward. Time seemed to move incredibly fast in this place. A whole week had already passed, and with every new hour, I was wondering more and more about what was to come before this was over.
Then came the second trial.
17
