The day rolled by, slower than the others. Calren refused to show his face in the training area, and we even held Master Talik’s class without him.
Nobody really listened to the old Timekeeper this time, though. He was still talking about devices, asking if anyone wanted to try to fix this or that, but nobody did. What would be the point, anyway? They were obviouslynotpreparing us for the actual trials. They were just keeping us busy. Keeping us where they could see us.
None of it would matter.
But Master Talik did know a lot about the Labyrinth and the games, though. According to the stories he told us while he taught us, he’d been here two decades, had worked as a Timekeeper almost every single day.
Who better to ask my questions than him?
That’s why I planned to pay him a visit after dinner tonight, just to see what he’d say.
At dinner, though, Calren came back.
He didn’t say much, only that he spent the day with the queens and reported on everything we’d done, andeverything the team of Timekeepers had reported on our physical state. He said that as long as we continued to drink tea and eat the food served to us, we would be okay.
I believed him—only because by the end of the day my muscles were no longer sore, and the others were the same. Maybe because Asha hadn’t made us jump or climb earlier in the day. She’d made us sit instead, and taught us about weapons, using the arsenal of the arena to show us everything she talked about. It was quite interesting, actually—I was invested, especially since she promised that we would be sparring with one another tomorrow.
Yes, we were all feeling better, even though the trial was just yesterday—except maybe Silas and Reggie. They came to the eating hall last, and they looked incredibly pale, like maybe they thought they were back inside that tree with the wraiths.
The reminder sent bile up my throat but I pushed it down.
Neither of them spoke, though, when the others asked what was wrong. Neither of them even looked up for half the dinner, and neither ate.
March no longer spoke to me, either.
I wasn’t sure why, and I did notice how he stiffened when I touched his arm by accident. I noticed how his jaw worked when he spoke to the others, his profile turned to me. I noticed the shape of his curls, and the length of his fingers, and I thought maybe I was feverish or something, but no. I just wanted to be in my bed again, underneath him, getting devoured by his mouth.
It would be such a nice distraction.
“…plenty of creatures out there in the universe,” Calren was saying when I forced myself out of my head. “There are plenty of them that live inourrealm, too, that we might not know about.”
“Impossible—wherecould they live that we wouldn’t see them?” someone asked, and everyone was listening, but I was already back to analyzing March again. The muscles of his neck when he swallowed, his wide shoulders, the curves of his biceps.
Holy Hour, Ireallywanted his hands on me.
“I don’t know—underneath our realm, maybe? In the Spill, probably.” Calren answered. I doubted anything could live in the Spill, though. It was the edge of the realm, where anything that went off fell forever—but creatures were bound to die eventually if they fell.
“In time-loops nobody else sees,” Calren continued. “Even in glitches.”
“Glitches? What does that mean?” Could have been Erith who asked.
“Glitches of time. I don’t know, it’s all very messy. From a Timekeeper’s point of view, anything’s really possible—if not here then elsewhere. We do believe in Darton’s theory. You guys know his theory on timeliness, yes?”
“Of course we do,” said Mimi with a roll of her eyes. “Do you think us illiterate?”
Calren laughed. “Not a chance.”
Mimi was right, though. We all learned that theory in school over and over, but I was never twelve-hours certain that I believed it.
Basically, Darton was the Timekeeper who claimed that Time supplied a lot of worlds in the universe, not just ours, and that all timelines in all worlds happened at the same time—we just didn’t remember.
He also claimed that there was an infinite number of versions to everything and everyone, continuously, forever—which was where I hesitated to believe. Because if that was the truth, what was even the point of living?
To be honest, I didn’t really believe the story of ourcreation, either. I mean, what were the odds of a gigantic rabbit hopping about in outer space all by himself?Wherewould he have come from?
Of course, I said nothing, only continued to look at March as the others talked. I continued to analyze his every feature so that I could maybe draw him later, when…
“What?”
