“Have you been down there to see him?” The way he looked at Master Talik now was nothing like he had before, in the Horologist’s study. Now he wasaccusinghim.
And the old Timekeeper cast his eyes downward immediately. “I have.”
“And?” Silas insisted—and we all knew whom they were talking about now. We all knew they meant Reggie, so we all held our breath and waited…
“There’s nothing to be done without bringing the Labyrinth apart completely—which is impossible,” said Master Talik. “It’s not him anymore. The game has him.”
The game has him, the game has him—I was starting to reallyhatethose words and what they meant.
“And Helen?” March said, making shivers rush down my back.
Master Talik moved uncomfortably in his chair. “Her family saw the body. She was buried in the Labyrinth grounds.”
Stabs-stabs-stabs at my heart.
Dead.A Hand was dead, another lost to a game. Alive, but…not.
A Hand was buried in the Labyrinth.
“So, that’s it? Nobody will be held accountable. Nobody willcare—and five years later, the Trials will start again—is that right?” Silas said, his voice rising with every word, mirroring the pace at which my anger grew.
Dead. Lost. Dead. Lost. De?—
“Protocols have changed. There are now different magics in place to make sure things don’t take a turn for the worse ever again,” said Master Talik. “The Labyrinth isnota joke. It is its own master. It makes its own rules, and we have to abide by?—”
“It’sunchecked magic that they steal from the rest of the realm!”
Silas was on his feet, screaming.
Damon stood up, too, and so did March and Seth.
Meanwhile, I closed my eyes to realize they’d been full of tears. I focused on my breathing, on how empty my hands felt as they argued, asked each other to sit down, to talk calmly.
They told us it was all in the past and there was nothing we could do.
Andthey—the other Hands who weren’t falling down imaginary holes on the ground—told them that this wasunfair, that it could have been any one of us, that somebody needed to be held accountable for Helen and Reggie.
On and on it went, for at least a couple of minutes. All the while I fell and cried and tried to see Helen’s face in my mind, tried to pull out the memory of her from wherever it hid in the darkness, tried to call out her name, to see if she’d answer.
I tried to keep my promise to Silas, too, even if only in my imagination, but nothing I thought about worked. No idea did the trick. Then…
“Ora.”
Ground.
Ground beneath my feet, not a hole.
Eyes in front of mine, brown and red and every color in between.
There was nothing I wanted to immortalize more than them. If only I knew the secret to drawing a soul as bright as his in a way that yousawit on paper…
“I’m okay,” I whispered when he raised my chin, and he looked at me like there wasn’t anything more pressing to him in those moments than the look on my face.
“Are you sure?” he asked, as if I had an optionnotto be okay. As if I could just walk out of here any time I pleased and forget about all of this.
I nodded. “I am. I’m fine.” A lie that would have no other choice but to become true eventually.
Everyone was sitting down again. Silas had his elbows on the table, his head in his hands, eyes closed. Master Talik’s cheeks were red, and Kohen looked like he was about to cry any second.
