Calren didn’t hesitate. “Yes. There will be no wraiths in the remaining trials. I can promise you that.”
A bitter smile curled my lips. “So youdoknow.” He always said that nobody really knew what the games would be like, but he did. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to make that promise.
Calren sighed. Stood up. Touched the floor with his cane once, and the doors he’d closed a moment ago opened.
“You’re tired. You’re weak. You need rest. Let’s talk tomorrow.”
Just like that the help poured in to get us going. The others tried to argue, tried to protest, but they shouldn’t have bothered. What they said wouldn’t matter anyway.
Lida was there to help me to my feet, like she thought I wasn’t capable of standing up myself.
“I’m fine. Just give me space. I can walk on my own,” I told her, and she did. She moved back a couple feet and nodded, waited.
Then March looked at me as he waved his own butler off—a man with a round face and hair as dark as his big eyes. “What’s up withyou?”
I raised my brows at March. Other than the fact that we’d been running about in a gigantic tree, fighting for our lives, going through slowed time and time-loops, and giving up whole parts of ourselves, he meant?
“Nothing,” I said.
The suspicion in his eyes was evident. I moved toward Lida without another word.
I sleptlike I fell dead, then came back to life in the morning. All those cuts and bruises on my hands were almost gone, the skin just slightly red now. I’d bathed with Lida’s help, and she’d practically dressed me in my nightgown herself, before she tucked me in. I was gone before she left the room, but when I woke up, she was still there. Claimed she’d let herself in because I’d refused to wake up by her knocks, and breakfast was already served.
My muscles screamed in protest, so much more sore than I’d expected, but Lida seemed certain that after breakfast, I was going to feel much better. I didn’t believe her, but I also didn’t argue.
When I made it to the eating hall on the other side of the third floor, all the others were already there. Only Calren was missing, his chair at the head of the table empty.
“There she is,” said the others as I went to take my seat on the other side, near March.
“Sleepyhead,” they muttered. “We knocked like ten times!”
“Didn’t hear you,” I muttered, then reached for some water, and tea. My throat was so dry.
“Sleep well?” March asked, and I nodded.
“Like the dead.”
“Me, too,” said Cook from across the table. “I swear I couldn’t bring myself to keep my eyes open to even get dressed. I slept naked.”
Others laughed.
I filled up my teacup and grabbed a piece of toast with my favorite sour cherry jam.
“I did not need that image in my head, Spade,” Levana said with a roll of her eyes.
“He’s right, though. I could barely move, and my muscles are killing me,” said Russ.
“And our Life Clocks are still loaded,” said Anika from the front of the table, looking at her Life Clock like she could hardly believe her eyes.
“All right now, since we’re all here—spill it.” Reggie put his cup down and cleared his throat. “What did you forsake?”
The gears in my stomach malfunctioned. My heart skipped one or three beats. I looked up at Reggie—everyone did—and he was grinning.
“Why don’tyouspill it yourself, you ape,” Helen said, a grin on her face, too.
In fact, everyone was smiling, the wounds we’d gotten the day before barely there.
They looked rested. They looked…perfectly okay.
